God And Community Cohesion

Following the urban riots of 2001, and the more recent terrorist attacks, community cohesion has replaced multiculturalism as the key social policy objective of both national and local government. Since these events were seen as having a religious dimension, they raise the question: is religion contributing to social cohesiveness - or actually undermining it? Alan Billings suggests that the positive influence of religion will be in proportion to the ability of the faiths to see pluralism as a gift from God, and to accept that we live in a diverse society where a plurality of beliefs and values will exist until the world ends.