Moral debates need to return to public square, says Archbishop

Dr Morgan laid the blame for the current economic crisis with market driven policies, and a tendency towards attaching a monetary value to everything, including human life.



This, he added, had deeply damaged the public's sense of community and trust in public bodies. He also warned of a “groundswell” of public concern about “excessive self-interest”.



“Despite the undoubted pain it has brought in its wake, the global recession may have helped bring us to a tipping point. Market-driven politics have been discredited," he said.



Dr Morgan was speaking at the start of a two-day meeting of the Church in Wales' Governing Body in Lampeter on Wednesday.



He said that the church needed to speak up even in difficult moral debates because all aspects of life were relevant to God.



“Since the 1960s, moral and ethical debates and passion for great causes have been increasingly frozen out of politics, which has helped to create the divided society we have today. To some extent the church has been complicit in this.



“The growth of ethnic and religious diversity, political correctness, the rise of atheism, our absorption in our own internal politics as well as the prevailing political atmosphere have all conspired to still our voices.



“Now we need to start lifting them again, raising the consciousness of our congregations and communities, challenging perceptions, looking at the bigger picture and helping to put the difficult moral debates firmly back on the political agenda.”



Dr Morgan insisted that it was a basic human right for Christians to be involved in public debate and refuted the claims of some that publicly expressing a Christian viewpoint offends people of other faiths.



“To argue as some do, that we should not even engage in public debate is to diminish our human rights. What we have to remember as well is that people of other faiths have no problems with Christians taking the lead in these matters. It is nervous public officials or aggressive secularists who have their problems,” he said.



The Archbishop also praised the Church in Wales’ Education Review, launched today, which claimed that pupils in schools with a Christian ethos are outperforming their peers in secular schools.



He emphasised the importance of a spiritual dimension in all schools and expressed his concerns about the Welsh Assembly Government’s decision earlier this year to allow sixth-formers to opt out of school assemblies.



He said, “The law that requires a daily act of worship in schools is not a mandate to compel pupils to recite the Lord’s Prayer and be so inspired that they turn up at church the next Sunday. It is an invitation to experience what faith and commitment might mean.



“How vital it is, therefore, to feed the minds and hearts of the 17 and 18 year olds who stand on the cusp of adult life and all the responsibilities it carries.



“We must help them encounter a world that is not a bland secular wasteland, but a place of rich spiritual diversity where faith plays a fundamental role in moulding and shaping our live.”

