How should Christians vote?
A friend posted online a short story which highlighted a primal issue for Christians in voting on June 8th.
Recently, while I was weeding my forepart garden, my neighbours stopped to conversation as they returned home from walking their domestic dog. During our friendly conversation I asked their little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said she wanted to exist Prime Minister someday.
Both of her parents, Labour Party members, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were Prime Government minister what would be the first thing you would do?"She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people".
Her parents beamed with pride.
"Wow, what a worthy goal", I said. "Just you don't accept to wait until yous're Prime Government minister to do that", I told her.
"What do you hateful?" she asked, and then I told her. "You lot can come up over to my business firm and mow the backyard, pull out the weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you lot £l. Then you can go over to the shop, where the homeless guy hangs out, and yous can give him the £fifty to use toward food and a new firm."
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me directly in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come up over and practise the piece of work, and you can merely pay him the £50?"
I said, "Welcome to the Bourgeois Party."
Her parents aren't speaking to me anymore.
It is, of course, fictional, and some would read it as rather brassy. But it does open up up a key consequence often left unexcavated in Christian discussion of politics: if we are truly seeking the welfare of our neighbour, does that primarily involve providing aid in the grade of social security, or does that primarily involved enabling all to participate in the dignity of piece of work? Or, put it another way, should nosotros tackle poverty or the root causes of poverty? When Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool, tweeted:
If there is to be an ballot, may I inquire all followers of the risen Christ to recollect, speak and vote so as to help the poorest and displaced.
— Paul Bayes (@paulbayes) April 18, 2017
In fact, the Conservatives have long focused on helping the poor by addressing the root causes of poverty, such as family breakup, failing schools, chronic joblessness, debt and drug/alcohol addiction. No matter how many £x,000s you hand out to drug-addicted unmarried mothers or drunkard and abusive fathers, it is no remedy at all if it doesn't raise them out of squalor and offer them and their children the hope of life and living transformation. Yous might retrieve a bishop would empathise that, but too many of them seem to be locked in a epitome of 1970s statist socialism, where the optimal expression of Christian compassion is for welfare to be limitless and all moral judgment suspended.
He was rather more positive well-nigh the recent pastoral letter of the alphabet issued by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, which urged Christians to be actively involved in thinking about politics and ensuring that they vote. (In fact, Christians are more than active in voting than the public equally a whole.) Yeah, in its telephone call for education for all, funding of health services and concern for refugees, it might have sounded like 'motherhood and apple pie', merely both are adept things, and if they seem nether threat and so it is worth speaking upward for them. But the letter of the alphabet as well used the language of 'cohesion, courage and [nigh controversially] stability' in its response. In contrast to the longer pastoral document produced prior to the last ballot, which was widely (but I call back wrongly) seen as 'left leaning', the utilise of this language has been seen as a nod in the direction of the Conservatives, as even Hilton acknowledges:
…In the present political climate (and the state of the political party leaderships) the Archbishops' exhortation of "cohesion, courage and stability" sings much more from Theresa May's hymn sheet of "strong and stable leadership" than Jeremy Corbyn'due south phone call for.. um.. what exactly?
Not surprisingly, such a nod has been seen as a Bad Matter by clergy taking a different political line. Then Al Barrett's open up letter of the alphabet of response has garnered quite a few additional signatories. After thanking the archbishops for 'highlighting the vital issues of educational activity and housing, of customs-edifice and healthcare, of overseas help and campaigns confronting slavery, trafficking and sexual violence', the alphabetic character expresses 'deep business concern' over the employ of language:
Most prominently among those concerns is your use of the word 'stability'. We appreciate the word's Benedictine roots, and the critical gimmicky challenge of "living well with change". However, words also acquire meaning from their common usage in the present, and it is incommunicable to escape the fact that the leader of one of the major political parties competing in this General Election has used the phrase "strong and stable" almost as a mantra throughout the election campaign thus far. For your pastoral letter to focus and then positively on such a politically freighted word seems to united states of america, at best, every bit a instance of desperate political naivety, and at worst, an implicit endorsement of one party in this election.
Though I retrieve this criticism is a little unfair, I can quite empathise information technology. I think that the archbishops are attempting to recast the significance of linguistic communication past noting that different means that it has been used—in other words, trying to indicate out that 'stable' might hateful something else in the Christian tradition than Theresa May is trying to make it mean in the electric current context. Just I can't help feeling that this strategy is merely too subtle; however persuasive your argument, the linguistic communication has a particular association in the minds of the public at the moment, and using such linguistic communication to shape your agenda is always going to appear as though y'all have capitulated. You might likewise try pointing out that '4 legs good; two legs bad' does actually have some justification arising from the physics of equilibrium and locomotion.
The bigger question is whether the pastoral letter of the alphabet is really going to aid any Christians in the pews to think faithfully nearly how to exercise their democratic right, and I am non sure it is. Any approach that involves tip-toeing through the blood-red, blue, yellowish and fifty-fifty peradventure green and purple tulips, (though imperial tulips are now in short supply after the local elections), is doomed to failure, because yous are always going to appear to be leaning in the direction of one colour of tulips or another. And I am not sure that that is what is needed. About people need, not guidance on which particular party to vote for, merely a much more profound understanding of how existence a Christian makes us retrieve about the whole process. Information technology is sobering to compare the pastoral letter with this Cosmic perspective on the French election from the noted philosopher and theologian Jean-Luc Marion. Marion does not pull his punches in terms of the dilemma facing Christian and Catholic voters:
At that place are two levels to the respond: voters in general, and Catholic voters. In general, I think that the state of affairs is rather clear. Information technology is reasonable to support Macron against Le Pen, for obvious reasons. These include the tradition of the National Front (NF), coming from the far right, which is very deeply involved with a night by in France. And secondly, the NF has no realistic position on the economy and general government. So, as a denizen, for me in that location is no hesitation.
Merely there is this new business concern for Catholic voters. If you consider, as nosotros say in French republic, Macron'southward "societal reforms"—concerning public and individual moral standards—and as well if you consider the moral consequences of unleashed globalization, you can accept strong reservations about voting for Macron, because on these questions he is not close to a Christian and Catholic view.
And to that extent, I think that the French situation is quite close to the concluding American ballot. In that location, Catholic voters were divided—not only betwixt correct and left—merely disagreeing with the general tone of the populist campaign of Trump, and disagreeing with the moral and social orientation of Hillary Clinton.
But the refreshing thing is the way Marion locates the whole procedure within the big picture of what information technology ways to be Christian in the contemporary world.
I think that Catholics demand to reach out in nigh of the directions of the political landscape, without establishing a "Catholic party." It would be nearly asking questions, raising issues and debating everywhere. That is the first Catholic office. Our social club has to know that Christian idea is very powerful. 2d, that it never yields to whatever intellectual fashion or something like that. Third, that precisely because Christianity is true, it cannot be realized immediately on Earth. So we should not be surprised or shocked because there is no perfect Christian political society, or fifty-fifty a Christian political project. This is normal.
And lastly, this situation of being "in between"—what we used to call being in via, being "on the manner"—there is room hither for deep transformation of society according to Christian convictions. On questions similar poverty, peace, climate change and ecology—all of these are our concerns, and they are fundamental issues for the rest of the world. And so nosotros can do a lot, and in general Christians do a lot.
Hither is a powerful vision of the importance of Christian influence on the globe—but also a statement which takes the pressure off and the contention out of whichdetail party to vote for. It feels to me that ordinary Christian voters would be helped past this level of statement from the archbishops, rather than the attempt to re-conform the linguistic deckchairs of the party that is about certainly going to form the next government. Some cynics might say that it the compromise of the Establishment of the Church of England which prevents such big moving-picture show, theological perspectives to exist offered—only I couldn't mayhap comment on that.
Before the terminal General Election in 2015, I listed these wide concerns that shape my thinking on whom to vote for:
- Dealing with people holistically, created in the image of God, and non merely equally units either of consumption or production.
- Recognising the importance of creativity, work and the opportunity to contribute to social club.
- Treating people equally responsible individuals, who should exist held to appropriate business relationship for their actions.
- Recognising our common fallenness and corruptibility, rather than treating people equally purely rational. We are discipline to addictions and temptations which cannot simply be treated as 'market forces'.
- Seeing people every bit individuals-in-community, recognising the value of 'social upper-case letter'.
- Supporting the place of the family within order, as its primary building block, and giving attention the importance of fathers and mothers in the germination of children.
- Creating a culture of hope and redemption for those who end up in situations for which there appears to exist no possibility of escape or change.
- Treating people equally, and undermining centres of ability which protect their ain vested interests.
- Seeing politics as a service to order more than than the do of power; engaging in fence with a concern for truth and not political ambition.
There is much that could exist said almost each of these, which for me are rooted in a biblical theology of what information technology ways to be human. And each of them has a bearing on a whole range of problems, from health and education to prison reform and economical strategy. But every bit I limited them, I am again struck by the lack of a unproblematic 'left-right' binary. And having been immersed for the last few months in the Book of Revelation, I call back I would also want to add something about the limited power that Governments exercise and should have, and a circumspection about seeking our salvation through any detail party—or political arrangement.
My hope and prayer is that, whichever mode we vote, nosotros will do so 'seeking first the kingdom of God' (Matt six.33). Or, as St Paul says:
Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatsoever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, call up near these things. (Philippians 4:8)
(Cheers to Peter Ould for the opening narrative, and Patrick Gilday for the link to the interview with Marion.)
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