The Conservative Party at Prayer

Strange, I'd always assumed it was the Conservative party which would be destroyed by the EU referendum, not Labour (update: though Michael Gove might still manage that). There's still time, but there's also something very interesting about the line-up of potential candidates. 80% of them anyway:

Liam Fox: "a society that actually aborts 180,000 unborn children every year is a society that needs to be asking a lot of questions about itself. For me it's a simple personal belief. It says, "thou shall not kill", it doesn't say, thou shall not kill unless Parliament says it's OK. For the same reason I'm against the death penalty. However, I do accept...that if the majority of the population decide that it's something they find acceptable, I've got to live with that. But I'm not going to be quiet and I'm not going to pretend that my views are other than they are for the sake of political convenience."


Stephen Crabb: "There's something unattractive about politicians who wave a flag called faith, but at a personal level it's important for me. The Old Testament talks about 'widows and orphans' - shorthand for the poor and vulnerable.

"Not a bad guiding star for social policy. Jesus Christ oozed compassion."

elsewhere, wisely but sadly: Warning of a "creeping intolerance" towards Christianity and religion, the Conservative Cabinet minister said "hard-edged secularism" had created "an enormous chilling effect" in workplaces that prevented people talking openly about their beliefs.

"I have never found it easy as a politician to talk about my faith," he said. "In an age where every word is watched for something that can be construed as a gaffe, off-message or representing some bigoted or irrational attitude, it is a topic which many of us steer clear of.

"It kind of makes life simpler."

Teresa May: “You don’t think about it at the time, but there are certain responsibilities that come with being the vicar’s daughter,” Mrs May admits. “You’re supposed to behave in a particular way.” She was always tall and walked with stooped shoulders because she was self-conscious. She was quite a swot at school. “I shouldn’t say it, but I probably was Goody Two Shoes.”

She was brought up listening to Test matches on the wireless with her father. Her pin-up was – I kid you not – one Geoffrey Boycott. “I have been a Geoff Boycott fan all my life,” she admits, laughing. “It was just that he kind of solidly got on with what he was doing.” ....

The Mays have no children, one of those “ultra-intrusive subjects” on which she has been silent until now. “It just didn’t happen,” she says quietly. “This isn’t something I generally go into, but things just turned out as they did.” She admits to a sense of loss. “You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don’t have.” As a strong Christian, she believes in making the best of the hand you are dealt. 

Boris Johnson: Boris Johnson has said it would be "pretentious" to suggest that he is a "serious practicing Christian" even though he "thinks about religion a lot".

Mr Johnson, who is tipped as a future leader of the Conservative Party, has previously compared his faith to the radio reception of Magic FM in the Chilterns (a metaphor which Cameron later borrowed).

Nicky Morgan:  "I've always been a Christian, but I suppose I particularly renewed my faith about ten years ago, shortly after being selected in Loughborough."The Church there was so active, that it made me realise just how much the churches contribute to community life, and that was something that I appreciated. So that was the moment for me to not just be a quiet Christian, but to step up and to say publicly that I was a Christian involved in politics," 

Tim Farron should call a prayer meeting. I'm serious.

Update: the danger of posting any politics story at the moment is that it can go out of date very quickly. Michael Gove "It's because I am a Conservative I believe in the rule of law as the foundation stone of our civilisation. It's because I'm a Conservative I believe that evil must be punished. But it's also because I'm a Conservative and a Christian that I believe in redemption. (source). The National Secular Society aren't going to know who to brief against first...

Update 2: Andrea Leadsom: "I always try to ensure that I'm doing what I think God would want me to... I try and keep in mind that God's there and guiding my hand and helping me...I try to keep my beliefs and my faith through the work I'm doing." from Christians in Parliament interview.

Don't Read All About It

Christians need to exercise a healthy scepticism towards the mainstream media, and find alternative sources of news alongside it. That seems to be the lesson of the last 7 days. If you're a newly elected political leader, you can expect more scepticism towards your faith than towards your politics, and if Jesus does play any part in your life, don't bother mentioning it to a journalist because they'll leave that bit out anyway. One high profile BBC broadcaster notes that 'it's almost socially unacceptable to say that you believe in God'

A sensible approach might be to assume, even if it seems unkind, that every worldview is worthy of suspicion and scrutiny, and that it’s not just some chap in the Lib Dems talking to someone who may or may not exist in the sky who should be grilled about his fundamental assumptions, but everyone who expresses an interest in making big decisions on voters’ behalf. Yes, we should be suspicious of Tim Farron’s Christian worldview – but only in so far as we suspect everyone’s funny jumble of beliefs and assumptions.

Reasonable (mostly) words at the Spectator, but just look at the headline it's been given. 

What's the message? Keep quiet about your Christian faith. If you don't, and it's something positive, it won't be reported anyway, either that or we'll use it as a stick to beat you with. Welcome to a 'free' media. 

So, head for the bunkers? No, the suspicion and misunderstanding faced by the first century Christians was several orders of magnitude worse than anything in the UK at the moment. And what is the advice of their main leader? "Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you, but do it with gentleness and respect." (1 Peter 3) We still need to be PG certificate Christians, Prepared, Gentle, and suitable for a general audience. And meanwhile, pray for Tim Farron, who has suddenly become one of the most high profile Christians in the country. 

Is Jesus Welcome in the Libdems?

The 'issue' of Tim Farrons Christian faith has become one of the key debates of the Libdem leadership campaign. We've had party leaders before who've professed some kind of faith, quite a few in fact (Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron) but none as boldly or plainly as Farron. 

2 of Norman Lambs team have got into trouble for asking leading questions of Libdem members. They rang to quiz members on what they thought of Farrons views on abortion and gay marriage, whilst asking different questions about Lamb. One Libdem commented:

I was one of those members called and asked about my opinion on Tim Farron. I knew all the background about his faith etc so realised what was going on with the loaded questions etc

It sounds like they were doing this without Norman Lambs authorisation, but the issue hasn't gone away. It was raised at a 5 live phone in this week (from just after 20m in here), and took up a large chunk of the debate. Farron claimed that it was his Christian faith that lay behind the 'push polling' during the debate, and Victoria Derbyshire followed this up by quizzing Farron about his faith, and his views on abortion and sex education.  It was good to see Farron standing up for his position on abortion: "I'm not saying it should be illegal, but it is always a tragedy... when anyone is in a situation when they feel that they need one." Farron nailed it "(we should) not be scared off by people who are trying to bracket you". It's interesting that for about 8 minutes of the 30 minute discussion, Norman Lamb doesn't get a word in. 

There is an emerging list of liberal 'clobber' issues which are taken as a litmus test for whether anything else you say is worth a hearing. Support for gay marriage is one of them, abortion is another, and I can see euthanasia joining the list before too long. Libdem members are talking openly about feeling excluded:
Current discussions within the party haven’t always been a pleasant experience for me as a Christian. Some in the party seem to have decided that people of faith have no logic, no reason, and shouldn’t hold party positions. I have been told that faith is irrational and that “True Liberals” don’t let faith influence them. 

To have this debate out in the open is better than it progressing in whispers behind hands. Hopefully it will create a line in the sand that is clear that committed Christians can play a full part in the LibDems. There shouldn't be a mainstream political party that's closed to people of Christian faith (or any faith, for that matter). And Christian faith is just as valid a reason for holding political views as socialism, neoliberalism, materialism, or any other philosophy. 

Faith & Welfare, Saints and Safety Nets

Review of Greg Smith Faith, Progressive Localism and the Hol(e)y Welfare Safety Net

You wait weeks for a report on faith and welfare and then two come along at once. Actually, there have been plenty, and with the re-election of the Conservatives, I'm sure there'll be many more.

The William Temple Foundation asked me to review Greg Smiths 'Temple Tract' on faith and welfare. Two recent events made it worth the read. The election result was one: though a Labour government would have still faced some of the issues and realities that Smith describes. The other is the recent report from the Cinnamon Trust, highlighting the vast scale of faith-based social action, and encouraging churches and other faith groups to do more in partnership with other agencies, such as local authorities.

It's this relationship between faith groups and local authorities that Smith focuses on. With a track record in ecumenical work in deprived urban areas, and a key role in the Evangelical Alliances research programme, he brings together the findings of EA research with case studies of local partnership working, and the realities of the welfare state in austerity Britain. Whilst the Cinnamon Trust report encourages faith groups to get on and work in partnership with others, Smiths e-book raises some of the issues those faith groups will need to wrestle with.

Snith's main premise is that recent politics and economics have created a new environment for churches and faith groups. Recession has thrown more people into poverty, and austerity has resulted in a thinner 'safety net', with more means testing. Meanwhile the government has raised the profile of localism - in some cases devolving to local councils the responsibility for parts of the welfare system (e.g. emergency grants and financial aid). This gives both a new challenge, and a new opportunity, for faith groups to work in partnership with local authorities in welfare delivery.

The book splits down into several readable short sections:
 - An outline of recent changes to welfare since 2010, and the current (frightening) picture of poverty and inequality
 - The contribution of faith groups to welfare, with a particular focus on the responses to Evangelical Alliance surveys.
 - A brief survey of 'progressive localism' - how a combination of austerity and local devolution is creating space for new partnership between faith groups and local authorities to provide welfare support.
 - Case studies of what this looks like in Blackpool and Preston, with an honest survey of the relative strength and levels of co-operation among the churches, and between the churches/faith groups and the local council.
 - 'Common values and sticky issues' - highlighting some of the hurdles to faith group and local authority partnership, and two of the ideologies which would challenge that partnership in the first place: neoliberalism (everyone must take individual responsibility, so don't help the 'undeserving poor') and secularism (faith groups have no part in the public sphere).

The e-book is a call for faith groups to work with local authorities in this new environment. However it also recognises that localism can degenerate into a postcode lottery - if more welfare provision is local, then it also becomes more dependent on the quality of local partnerships, personnel and delivery. The case studies highlight how much difference local factors can make to the quality and outcomes of support given by the faith sector.

Smith also points out that most of the time, there are no issues with faith groups being involved. The main exception is ‘only when people of faith feel so committed to their beliefs that they explicitly present them as truth claims, and when the perceive their beliefs as normative or binding on others that there is real difficulty’

Here is his summary of the argument of the paper:

I have argued that the growth of poverty and inequality and the neo-liberal project to roll back the hard fought for protections of citizens via state welfare, have led to a constructive reaction by churches, people of faith and others of goodwill, to fill the holes in the welfare safety net. But a holy safety net on its own is hardly sufficient to meet that need. Where central government has delegated, or more truthfully abandoned, many of its responsibilities to local authorities, without providing sufficient resources for the task, there are opportunities for creative partnerships. And in a context of post-secular progressive localism there are public spaces in which values and beliefs can be publicly articulated and where apologetics and religious dialogue can take place.

In other words, churches and faith groups both have new opportunities to serve, in partnership with local authorities, and new opportunities to bring the values of faith into the public square.

In the light of the Cinnamon Trust report I found this a useful booklet to read, provocative and challenging. It has a good summary of recent changes to welfare, is well researched and well referenced, and the combination of local case studies with the wider national picture works well. It was helpful to read the warning that discussions of 'the common good' from positions of power and institutional religion don't give voice to the actual experience of those who need, and are falling into (or through) the safety net.

Just a few quibbles - some page numbers with the index at the start would have been handy. I also was trying to work out who it was aimed at - a lot of Evangelical Alliance research was quoted, so parts of the booklet focused specifically on Evangelicals, in compare/contrast mode with other streams of belief and non-belief. But the main argument of the book seems to be directed at 'faith groups', and there's never an attempt to make a biblical or theological argument for evangelicals to be involved in the welfare state. If the audience was Evangelicals, then it needed more theology, and if it was faith groups in general, then the booklet probably needed less about Evangelicals in particular, and more research from other sections of the 'faith sector'.

I also found it a bit hard to follow Smiths definition of 'progressive localism'. I think I know what he was getting at, Progressive does not mean liberal or elitist. Rather it is something more fundamental than that: an attitude of mind or outlook on life that is, ‘outward looking and creates positive affinities between places and social groups negotiating global processes’. The term progressive has been used to emphasise that new alliances between different community and faith groups are not merely defensive, but ‘rather they are expansive in their geographical reach and productive of new relations between places and social groups. Such struggles can reconfigure existing communities around emergent agendas for social justice, participation and tolerance’. Progressive localism would be even less elitist if there was a clear definition of it that didn't rely on so many abstract nouns.

I was also surprised by the big leap in the final sentences to the conclusion that ‘for new times we need to see some fresh thinking. More democratic engagement, and a renewal and transformation of the major institutions of our society' It's not clear either what kind of transformation is required, or which institutions he's referring to. The radical final paragraphs seem to go way beyond the evidence and argument presented in the previous 20 pages, and I wondered if there was another booklets worth of thinking needed to unpack them! 

It's the kind of thing I probably wouldn't have read without being asked, but I'm glad I did. It's made me think about what we do here in Yeovil, and that I need to do more to encourage and give a voice to those members of our church who are engaging at the sharp end of this. Many people have no idea of what's going on around the bottom rungs of the social ladder. 

I don't know how the Temple Tracts work, but I'd really like to see a response to Smiths arguments from the Centre for Social Justice.

Faith, Progressive Localism and the Hol(e)y Welfare Safety Net is worth a read if you want something more chewy to put the Cinnamon Trust report into context, or for local church leaders involved in partnerships with their local authority, or wondering what that might involve. David Camerons re-election makes it even more relevant, and there are wider issues for the church here not just in provision, but in prophecy - how do we challenge the state when it neglects the most vulnerable, and how do we give a voice to those who are rendered even more vulnerable by a system which is supposed to be helping them. 

The church, and faith groups in general, are not in a place where we can happily take welfare provision back from central government and say 'that's fine, we'll carry on where we left off in the 1940s'. The Cameron government is also showing a worrying tendency towards abdication: following the Lansley reforms the Health secretary is no longer responsible for the NHS, academies are devolving and breaking up the education system, and Eric Pickles has just received a knighthood for 5 years of asking local authorities to make bricks without straw, responsibility for more provision yet with fewer resources. I'm glad there's an increasing openness for the state, voluntary and faith sector to work together in supporting the vulnerable, but it's not enough to keep rescuing people from the river, we need to head upstream to find out why they are falling in. 

Christian Liberals

Tim Farron:

You would do well to find a public figure who will more passionately and articulately talk about their faith. Farron became a Christian aged 18, a decision he describes as "the most massive choice I have made," and his faith seems as powerful and fresh as ever: Speaking at the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast in 2013, he said: "Christianity, I am convinced, is not 'a bit' true. It is either not true, or it is so compellingly utterly true, that almost nothing else matters...if it is [true], it's the most important thing in the universe bar nothing; and if it isn't, we should close all the churches and sell them off for something else. There is no middle way."

and a friend of mine in Yeovil who joined the Libdems after an election night all-nighter at the house of a local vicar. I wonder who that could have been?

Mr Wilson watched the election with friends at the house of his local Church of England vicar.

“I had voted Lib Dem,” he said, “and spent a good part of the day after the election feeling down. It wasn’t just the national picture: in Yeovil we had lost David Laws, a very good local MP.

“But then, in the evening, I said: ‘No, I am going to turn this into something good.’ I went online and joined.”

Mr Wilson laughs when asked why. “Probably for the same reason I joined the Anglican church. It might be something psychological."  (haha! Anglican mind manipulation techniques, works every time)

With a nominal Anglican heading the Conservatives, and a Catholic current favourite in the Labour leadership race, we could end up with the 3 main parties being led by Christians of one stripe or another by the autumn. Who'll be in charge of UKIP is anybody's guess. 

Pre-Election Prayer

"The Bible says Submit to the authorities for they are God’s servants who give their full time to governing.

Our great and loving God, we thank you for (candidates names), and pray your particular blessing on them all. You are the great king of all, and we commit into your hands those who will hold authority and be trusted to lead our country forwards. We pray for ourselves, that you would guide us in our thinking and voting, and help us all to play our part wisely as responsible citizens as together we seek the good of all. Have mercy on us and on our whole nation, for the sake of Jesus Christ who died for us, rose again, and loves us; for he is Lord, and we pray in his name. Amen."

This was the prayer that closed our Hustings on Tuesday night, and I asked for a copy of it. A good thing to pray for a general election. 

Christianity: Public Benefit, Personal Benefit

The contrast between the Christianity I see our culture belittle nightly, and the Christianity I see our country benefit from daily, could not be greater.

The reality of Christian mission in today’s churches is a story of thousands of quiet kindnesses. In many of our most disadvantaged communities it is the churches that provide warmth, food, friendship and support for individuals who have fallen on the worst of times. The homeless, those in the grip of alcoholism or drug addiction, individuals with undiagnosed mental health problems and those overwhelmed by multiple crises are all helped — in innumerable ways — by Christians....

...genuine Christian faith — far from making any individual more invincibly convinced of their own righteousness — makes us realise just how flawed and fallible we all are. I am selfish, lazy, greedy, hypocritical, confused, self-deceiving, impatient and weak. And that’s just on a good day. As the Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…And there is no health in us.’

Christianity helps us recognise and confront those weaknesses with a resolution — albeit imperfect and fragile — to do better. But more importantly, it encourages us to feel a sense of empathy rather than superiority towards others because we recognise that we are as guilty of selfishness and open to temptation as anyone.

More than that, Christianity encourages us to see that, while all of us are prey to weakness, there is a potential for good in everyone. Every individual is precious

guess the author? It's worth reading the whole article. He probably has a slightly better grasp of the heart of Christian faith than his boss. 

99 Days To Go - how to get my vote

Fixed term Parliaments mean that 120 days of electioneering replaces 200 days of Nick Robinson speculating over the election date. What would you prefer? I don't yet know how I'm going to vote, but here are a few of the things which will affect it:

 - We have a family member who has coeliac disease. Because of EU food labelling regulations, we can now tell with every item of food whether it's safe for them to eat. Restaurants are now obliged to tell us about the allergen content of every dish they serve. This is a massive plus for us. Given the volume of lobbying against the laws, you can bet they'd be dropped like a hot brick as soon as we left the EU.

 - Mental health services in the UK are doing even worse than the NHS as a whole, with reduced funding and beds, and a broken system of care. Depression is more like alcoholism than a broken leg. Broken legs heal, you can be discharged as fully fit and don't come back until you break something else. Depression and mental illness tend to recur, but the NHS system is to discharge people once they are better, thus removing all formal support bar the GP (who offers an occasional 10 minute consultation). Unsurprisingly, many relapse. Given the nature of mental health, there aren't any sizeable lobby groups speaking out on behalf of the anxious and depressed, so I'm pleased the Libdems are making some noise about this, and disappointed that they seem to be on their own.

 - Over a million people used food banks last year, this is a national scandal. We can't have a government that pretends that austerity, benefit sanctions etc. are working. I'm pleased that more people are in work, though many of those are using food banks too. Billions have been poured into the economy through extra borrowing and quantitative easing, but where have they gone?

 - Speaking of borrowing, whilst interest rates are at a historic low, isn't this a good time to borrow to invest? I thought that was the idea of low interest rates anyway, to encourage business to borrow and invest, so why doesn't the government follow the same logic? (But)

 - The environment has disappeared off the agenda, the 'greenest government ever' was a pile of steaming compost, and the only thing people talk about now is fracking. Last year was the warmest ever in the UK. Brazil, that place that used to have a rainforest, now has a drought.  If Eric Pickles had a biscuit for every renewable energy proposal he'd blocked he'd... oh right. We ignore this one at our, and everyone else's, peril. The poor and vulnerable of the world suffer most from the over-consumption of the rich.

 - If I get an election leaflet through the door which spends most of the time whining about the other party, displaying distorted bar charts, claiming credit for an initiative which was actually a campaign by a cross-section of the community, not just them (yes I'm talking about the A303), then I'll think less of the candidate for taking me for a fool. I'm not going to vote for someone who assumes I'm stupid. (here is one recent selection of local leaflets)

 - Neither am I going to vote for someone who seems more concerned about gaining power than they do about using it for the benefit of the community.

 - Having foreign aid at 0.7% of GDP isn't a massive burden for the 5th richest country in the world, and I would rather we erred on the side of generosity. What goes around comes around. I would have thought UKIP of all people would understand the concept of standing your round in the global village pub, but they don't.

 - Immigration: we're in a mess over this one. Despite the promises, we are importing people faster than we're providing the infrastructure for them (housing, services etc.). Thanks to recruitment policies for the NHS, we have a health service that would collapse without foreign-born labour. (Which in turn leeches qualified doctors and nurses from countries with far more need of them than we do). We're in a mess over integration too: attempts to define 'British Values' splutter out, or emerge knee-jerk in response to things like the Charlie Hebdo killings. We talk about 'tolerance' and 'rights' mainly because we don't want people interfering in our personal so-called freedom, not because we believe in them as principles of liberal democracy. We are neither physically or philosophically equipped to deal with the current influx of cultures and people, but neither do we know how to talk about it sensibly.

 - Ideology & Character: I'd have a better idea of who to vote for if any of the political leaders actually believed in something. For one thing it's easier to work out what they'll do, Cameron and Miliband give the impression of making it up as they go along, based on not sounding like one another. Clegg is the clearest and (oddly) most consistent. But to be honest there isn't a leader of a mainstream political party that I trust. They have schemes but no vision. It doesn't help that they're all about my age and most are career politicos: where have all the talented and experienced politicians gone who knew how the real world functioned?

 - Christians are encouraged to pray for those in government, and to work for the good of their community. I believe its my moral duty to vote and to be politically involved. So I don't have the Russell Brand option.

 - The NHS is a great blessing and a bottomless pit. There is no obvious stopping point for the amount of cash you can pour into it: why should one hospital get a high-tech bit of kit and not another? At what point do you go for a cheaper, but less effective drug over one which gets better results but costs 10x as much?

 - The future may be more like 90 years ago than 20. The welfare state again is a great blessing, but it nationalised community support. People haven't needed unions, churches, working mens clubs, community spirit etc. because the things we used to do out of neighbourliness are now done by the government. Despite the empty rhetoric and the absence of strategy, the 'Big Society' has started to re-emerge in recent years. It is too complex, too costly, and too ineffective, simply to leave everything to the government. That's not an easy piece of logic: do I leave the government to pick up the tab for my bad health choices? Do I complain about the litter in the park on Facebook and ask what the council are going to do about it, or pick it up and bin it myself? We can't leave everything to politicians, if we ever could.

 - I'd rather have politicians who can admit mistakes, admit that they've learned things they didn't know a few years ago, admit that they tried something and it didn't work. We know that all politicians can do bluster, from Boris to Burnham. Stop it.

I do wonder if this is the best time for ages for those who really care to get involved in politics. The fragmentation of the voting system means that smaller voices are more likely to be heard (the Greens, with 1 MP, and Plaid, with 10% in a recent Welsh poll, are to feature in national debates). UKIP is clearly a party in flux, the Libdems could turn left (Farron/Cable) or right (Laws/Alexander) after the election, historic allegiance to the Conservatives and Labour is drying up - Scotland is a straw (or maybe a salmon) in the wind for Labour, the North of England will be next, given a decent alternative. This either spells a dangerous vacuum, or a great opportunity, for 'normal people' to get involved in reshaping our politics and parties. Leaving it to the career politicians isn't working.

If Jesus ran the Home Office (and the railways)

The YouGov website invites you to imagine what Jesus would think of immigration, gay marriage, and rail nationalisation. Because obviously, these are the 3 things he's most bothered about in the UK at the moment. When you put in your opinion, the results of a recent poll are then revealed:


   
YouGov note that Jesus would be strongly out of step with public opinion on the death penalty (the majority are in favour of it) and on immigration (the majority favour tighter controls). But as the table shows, we still have a tendency to think Jesus agrees with us, whether we're Libdems on marriage or Kippers on immigration. It's a reminder of our tendency to make Jesus in our own image. (For another excellent example of this, read 10 sins we take less seriously, and work out whether Christians are just relaxing about stuff that we were too uptight about, or letting the world and the culture mould us instead of Jesus).

Full tables are here, which also has a breakdown of the results by declared religious standpoint. Not surprisingly, those of 'no religion' think Jesus would be more likely to support gay marriage than either Christians or those of other religions. And I can't get my head around the 1 in 20 'Christians' who think that Jesus (refugee to Egypt) would want no immigration at all into the UK. I suspect we are dealing with a spectrum of understandings of what 'Christian' means!

The unasked question was 'how much does this shape your own view?' I also wonder whether the sizeable number of 'don't knows' for all questions represents the historical and cultural distance between us and Jesus, or (in the case of Christians) the legacy of several generations of privatised spirituality which doesn't give people the tools to think through issues in the public square. Immigration is a big issue, how do we as churches help people to think Christianly about it, rather than leaving it to a bidding war between Farage and Cameron?

Ht political betting.

Theologygrams

The author of the excellent Theologygrams blog turns out to be curate just down the road at Sherborne Abbey. The Abbey has an excellent lecture/seminar programme, including a good current series on faith and politics, and Richard Wyld is doing a gig on theologygrams in the new year.

The power of Christian faith to unite across the political divide

Have we found something on which all the party leaders agree?

(update: Justin Welby has blogged on the topic too - ...the Prime Minister and other members of the Government have not said anything very controversial. It is a historical fact (perhaps unwelcome to some, but true) that our main systems of ethics, the way we do law and justice, the values of society, how we decide what is fair, the protection of the poor, and most of the way we look at society . . .  All have been shaped by and founded on Christianity. Add to that the foundation of many hospitals, the system of universal schooling, the presence of chaplains in prisons, and one could go on a long time. Then there is the literature, visual art, music and culture that have formed our understandings of beauty and worth since Anglo Saxon days.

It is clear that, in the general sense of being founded in Christian faith, this is a Christian country. It is certainly not in terms of regular churchgoing, although altogether, across different denominations, some millions attend church services each week. Others of different backgrounds have also positively shaped our common heritage. But the language of what we are, what we care for and how we act is earthed in Christianity, and would remain so for many years even if the number of believers dropped out of sight (which they won't, in my opinion)... Welby's answer seems to be yes and no - Christian roots, but not Christian practice)

Nick Clegg,

There’s been, I think, a really interesting debate actually, over the last few days in the context of this year’s Easter about whether we are, or are we not, a, a Christian country.  It seems to me that it is self‑evidently the case that our heritage, our traditions, our architecture, our history, is – is infused by, by, by Christianity.  Of course it is and there is nothing remotely controversial in saying so.

But of course what flows from, from those great Christian values is also a wonderful tradition of tolerance, of diversity, of recognition of other peoples, other faiths, other – other denominations, of our ability to live and work cheek by jowl.  Different faiths, different communities, people of all faiths and none, and that is something which seems to me is entirely consistent with our, with our Christian traditions and history and indeed, values that have infused our country for a very, very long period of time.

and "it's stating the flamingly obvious that we as a country are underpinned, informed, infused by Christian values. Christian heritage, Christian history, Christian culture, Christian values and I think that is something that is obvious about our identity as a nation."

David Cameron, "I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country"

Ed Miliband Britain is a Christian nation and is lucky to have the CofE as an established church (effectively, I can't find the original interview - done in Israel a couple of weeks ago - but he's quoted as saying the same thing in several places).

Nigel Farage: "we have been saying for years that we should be more muscular in our defence of Judeo-Christian culture"

No comment from the Greens, otherwise we'd have a full house.

Question

If, as David Cameron says

"we are a Christian country"

why are Christians forced to choose between work and faith for not working on Sundays, despite having told their employer beforehand they couldn't do so, and then having their shifts changed? A decision then backed by our court system?

At what point does this sort of rhetoric simply become meaningless (left-leaning readers will probably respond 'as soon as Cameron says it')..?

UK Snapshot: post-christian christenings, faith-based politics, changing churches.

1. The BBC has a piece on '10 ways christenings have changed', in advance of Prince Georges baptism later today. The last 2 of the 10 are an improvement, but I'm not sure about the rest! One thing is certain, we've moved on a long way from the original idea of godparents as potential surrogate parents who would step in if a childs birth parents were martyred for their faith.

update: one of the trends - increasing numbers of godparents - is followed religiously (if that's the right word) by Prince George, who has 7. That makes for an interesting precedent: the most I've ever agreed to is 6 (bartered down from an original 16!), and I encourage people to aim for 2-4. 

2. Labour MP Stephen Timms highlights a recent Demos report (free download) which argues that faith groups are more likely to be sympathetic to left-wing perspectives than those of the right, and that "faith is a very good starting point for politics, and for progressive politics in particular, because faith inspires, on a large scale, exactly the values that can make politics work: responsibility, solidarity, patience, compassion and truthfulness."

3. Christian Today has an interview with Phil Potter, new national head of Fresh Expressions for the Anglican church. "my vision is to see the culture of the church itself change. That change would see it becoming a culture which welcomes and embraces an ongoing cycle of transformation and renewal for the sake of the Gospel." You might almost suspect he's been talking to his boss. The CofE has tended to change in nausea-inducing lurches, we don't seem to be able to celebrate anything good without erecting a Grade 1 listed monument over it. 

To review, decide, plan and change on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual cycle is a good spiritual discipline both for the church, and for individual Christians. The irony is, we have the resources in our tradition to do this: from the Catholic side, Ignatian prayer (with the practice of a daily 'examen of conscience', a spiritual review), and from the Protestant side the idea of 'semper reformanda' (such fun we still cit it in Latin) - 'constant reformation' as the guiding principle of the church. But it's our attitude to those same traditions, our idolisation of them, that makes change such hard work.