Clarke an agnostic former politician is organising a series of lectures on faith and society. Mr Clarke, home secretary from 2004 to 2006, lost his Norwich seat at the last election and is now a visiting professor of faith and politics at Lancaster University. He also admits that Labour made mistakes on immigration and Church relations.
He says – I shared much of the ethical basis of Christianity but I simply couldn’t – and still can’t – believe in a Supreme Being. I call myself an agnostic, because I believe some things are unknowable.”
He has, however, reinvented himself hand in hand with the Almighty as a visiting professor of faith and politics at Lancaster University. “The traditional view on the Left is that faith is a pernicious thing and just wrong. I happen to believe that in general faith is a force for good.”
His new part-time job involves working with the Religion and Society Programme, a £12 million research effort to establish and define who we are and what we believe in as a nation.
The findings are being presented in a fortnightly series of meetings in Westminster organised by Clarke, using all his former contacts and his old knack for making headlines. Last week, Professor James Conroy attacked the way in which religion is taught in schools; before that, Trevor Phillips of the Equality Commission complained about Christians wanting to be above the law on issues such as sexual orientation.
At a time when everyone from Professor Richard Dawkins to the Queen is expressing strong opinions about God, Clarke finds himself at the centre of things again. “I believe very strongly that faith has to be properly thought about in Britain. We have a very ill-informed debate about things like faith schools, in which people are talking out of deep prejudice about what they say is happening, when it is not actually the case.”