Who do we think we are?

A couple of years ago I was invited to do a round-table discussion in Brussels with the then President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy. The event began with him delivering a thoughtful and intelligent paper in which he derived the pragmatics of European political order from theological and philosophical perspectives rooted in Martin Buber. I couldn’t imagine a British politician (a) doing this, or (b) thinking this was a useful thing to do.

The paper was a good start to a stimulating debate. The question that got me going had to do with what I called ‘the European narrative’.

At the time I was traveling frequently to Kazakhstan for interreligious work on behalf of the then Archbishop of Canterbury. When I first went there in 2003 the country had only been independent for twelve years - and it showed. Even in the rapidly developing architecture of the newly-designated capital city Astana, it was evident that this was a people trying to work out who they are by where they have come from.

Young people were enthusiastic about rapid economic development and cultural exposure to a world that had hitherto been screened from them. Reference to political hegemony, elected dictatorship or corruption was met by acknowledgement of reality, but the placing of that reality in the context of an emerging new reality. In other words, they were building something new.

Come back to western Europe and it appeared that we are not building anything, but merely trying to hang on to something we have inherited, but don’t necessarily value.

OK, this is a bit broad-brush. But, it is a contrast from which I have never quite escaped. The question it raises - and which I tried to debate in Brussels - is: what is the narrative that drives what we are building in Europe… and who is creating that narrative?

The problem, it seems to me, is this: we have derived a narrative from a century of conflict, and the received narrative is shaped around not fighting with each other. Fully understandable. But, for my children’s generation the wars of the twentieth century are as remote as the Battles of Agincourt or Waterloo. Whereas I grew up in a 1960s and ’70s Liverpool that still bore the physical scars of the Blitz (bomb craters, the wallpaper of a bombed house still on the outside of the (now) end terrace), my son and grandchildren live in a city that no longer bears those marks.

This is why I wonder if Europe needs a new driving narrative that helps us consciously shape who and what we want Europe to become. Van Rompuy disagreed with my question, arguing that the need to avoid conflict - or, more positively, to build a secure community - was still the dominant factor in European identity. When pushed, he argued that the narrative has to do with solidarity. My question about what ‘solidarity’ means to young unemployed people in Greece or Spain did not get an answer.

So, the questions remain. Who do we think we are and what do we want Europe to become? And who will shape the narrative for a new generation?

About the author

The Rt Revd Nick Baines is the Bishop of Leeds (for the Diocese of West Yorkshire & the Dales). He was previously Bishop of Bradford (2011-14), and before that was Bishop of Croydon. He read German and French at Bradford University and, before ordination, worked as a Russian linguist at GCHQ. Nick Baines became a member of the House of Lords in 2014. He has represented the Archbishop of Canterbury at international faith conferences and is the English Co-chair of the Meissen Commission which develops relationships between the Church of England and the Protestant Church in Germany. He also preaches regularly at conferences in Germany – in German.