Religious Pluralism and Society

Hello. My name's Gavin de Costa.

I'm Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the

University of Bristol in the UK,

and I'm professor of inter religious dialogue at the

Pontifical University of Saint Thomas in Rome.

So I have a great time being in those two countries.

Today, I'm going to start off first about the

multi faith societies we live in in Western Europe and I want

to cover some key,

concepts related to empire, globalization,

and migration.

This is an astounding fact that Europe

covers eight percent of the globe

and between the fifteenth and twentieth century right up to

nineteen sixteen,

you have to guess and I'll leave a little pause,

how much of the world did Europe actually own in

terms of colonization?

And the answer is hold on to your seats,

this is quite astounding, eighty percent.

So that's eight percent of the globe had control over eighty

percent of the globe over five hundred years

and that had huge consequences.

Now if you happen to be doing English literature and you're

studying something like Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness,

it's well worth reading that if you haven't read it which kind

of shows the complex issues of colonialization and imperialism

in different countries and there's a lovely image in

Conrad about the sword and the torch and the recognition

that, empire

brought about a lot of developments,

a lot of positive things,

but it also brought a lot of negative things including

in many ways subjugation of local communities, cultures, and tribes.

So colonialism is a big, big

factor in how we come to our pluralist societies today.

In fact, I'm a living example of it which I'll briefly go

through just so that you can see how this operates.

Okay.

So you know my surname's De Costa

and originally I was probably part of a Hindu outcast fishing

group, Da Costa, son of the coastal

fishers and because we were outcast in

the sixteenth century, my ancestors

converted to Catholicism.

How come Catholicism in the sixteenth century in

India? Answer Portugal.

So the Portuguese carried out both missionary activities

and also

a lot of trade and it was the missionary part that converted

my family from an outcast Hindu group to eventually

European Christians and I say European Christians because

we lost all our culture.

We became

Latin Christians of the Western right and through that process,

my parents eventually in India which was also part of the

British empire moved to Kenya.

I was born in Kenya and in nineteen sixty eight came to the UK.

And all of that process tells you something about how the

empire really did have an ownership of

so many parts of the globe.

And then the last bit of the story is how come I'm here?

In sixty eight, I came to the UK because my parents

chose British citizenship because they were part of the

empire and I came just before the time when the gates

closed and a lot of,

Kenyan nations weren't able to migrate here.

So along with empire,

we get this concept of globalization which really

starts meaning the development of technology and trade that

connects up the world in very, very complicated ways.

We're all experiencing it right now, in fact, with gas energy

supplies, fuel supplies,

and the way climate change is happening.

We are interconnected.

I just wanna finish with a few words about the UK

because in terms of, kind of pluralist society,

the majority of, the UK actually registers itself as non religious.

That's fifty one percent.

These figures are from two thousand and eighteen.

But the religious groups,

Christianity is the dominant group and second to that is

Islam and that's six percent and roughly three million

Muslims.

And the pattern of, Islam's migration here is very interesting.

It comes

partly through the empire connections when many Muslims

came here in the sixties.

That was during the period I came here in fact.

Pakistan and Bangladesh were if you like the main groups

coming to the UK.

Then we have Hindus which are eight hundred and thirty five

thousand and again, India and Pakistan

are the main locations.

There are lots of others of course but that's where the

main groups came and the third largest group of

Sikhs five hundred thousand and quite interestingly large

numbers of Sikhs were in East Africa where I was and came to

this country at the same period.

And all those three groups were really related to Britain's

expansion in terms of textiles and

mainly manual labor.

If you compare that with the United States pattern,

the US only took in very professional highly qualified

people, so you have different sorts of demographics.

Jews, three hundred thousand and the main

influx comes during the war in terms of refugee

and the largest growing groups amongst the Jews are

the Orthodox, the ultra Orthodox

and in North London and they will soon be the largest Jewish group.

So when you think about religious groups in the UK,

you've got to think about the different groups within

them and the fastest growing ones.

And then Buddhists come in finally at a hundred and

seventy eight thousand and the largest group that recruits

from white local people.