From Babel to Pentecost

By B.C.

LOCAL authorities in Britain spend a lot of money trying to make themselves understood. The council in Southwark, part of south London, offers translation into 70 languages; the authorities in Crawley, near England's south coast, spent £600 translating a lifestyle magazine into Urdu at the request of one citizen. Haringey in north London regularly posts translated versions of documents which nobody downloads. Such excesses have prompted Eric Pickles, the communities minister, to urge councils to stop wasting money on foreign tongues and encourage people to master English. But even when they are using Shakespeare's tongue, councils have a communication problem. They have been urged to stop using terms like "horizon-scanning", "functionality" and "coterminosity" that baffle the public.

That is one of the reasons why local authorities and religious communities have trouble getting through to one another; and they do need to talk. A group of Christian legislators, drawn from both chambers of the British parliament, has just issued a report about co-operation between councils and faith groups; it finds that the relationship is extensive but often dysfunctional because the two sides can't make each other out. Up and down Britain, churches and other religious groups organise food banks, debt advice centres, and care for the elderly. Sometimes this is done in loose co-operation with the council, and sometimes services are formally contracted out. I hope to describe some of these partnerships—what works and what doesn't—in future postings.

There are some objective problems which no linguistic legerdemain can dispel. Local authorities place overwhelming emphasis on "equality" in the provision of all services. Councils fear that faith groups will use their social-service roles to propagate their own beliefs or to practise discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Churches, for their part, are often wary of taking money from councils who may try to impose on them an ideology which they find alien. This gap, plus the government's equality law, has already led to a virtual collapse in the role once played by Catholic adoption agencies in finding homes for children.

But quite often, the report found after sifting through answers from 155 councils, the gap is bridgeable; religions can give the necessary assurances that they will treat everybody alike. It was a pity, though, that "faith groups have to wade through labyrinthine processes with swathes of acronyms to decode" when dealing with local authority. Indeed, several council responses to the survey had "included incomprehensible jargon-filled paragraphs" which made it "unsurprising" that faith groups were wary of formal co-operation.

About two councils in five had a dedicated "faith officer" whose job was to liaise with religious groups; but in many places, this role had been merged with that of "equality and diversity" officer. And whatever their titles, these municipal bureaucrats had yet to a correct a situation where "local authorities often have a poor understanding of faith groups"....and levels of "religious literacy" were low.

All of this makes sense. But it is also true that religious groups use arcane language which outsiders (including local council officers) would find baffling. Almost all religions involve an elaborate set of practices and beliefs, evolved over many centuries, whose vocabulary is highly specific. Add to that the fact that many religions pray and preach in languages other than English. And in traditional religious communities, the basics of faith hardly need to be articulated; they are passed on, by osmosis, from one generation to another.

But for Britain's religions and town halls to communicate, both sides will have to learn how to explain themselves better. At their worst, local government mandarins and many religious types are guilty of the same sin: they use arcane language to preserve their own status and exclude outsiders. Perhaps a dollop of American culture can help. Europeans who travel to the United States are often impressed that members of small communities (geographical, religious or any other kind) have a good ability to describe their main features to an outsider, a skill that reflects America's mobility and fluidity. ("Our little town was founded by Ruritanian settlers and it's famous for making ball-bearings and cakes...") It will help if Britain's priests, rabbis and imams could be similarly clear next time the town council's diversity officer calls to do some benchmarking of their coterminosity.