Giles Fraser: The three options for diversity

Giles Fraser, Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, writes in the Church Times:

The way I see it, there are three options: (1) Frau Merkel’s nostalgia for some monoculture where we all look and sound the same; (2) my commitment to diversity, which may entail a limited retreat from the language of the common good; and (3) Professor Hauerwas’s view that we can have both diversity and vibrant public morality, if we accept that the latter comes with boisterous dis­agree­ment.

I would love no. 3 above to be possible. I, too, love a good scrap, and sometimes we ought to be having more scraps about public morality. But, deep in Muslim Whitechapel, a scrap about the common good looks too close to real fighting to me. Agon­istic pluralism is all very well in the university (I know: it’s a cheap shot), but it is dangerous in a genuinely diverse society.