Damian Thompson writes in the Spectator:
Gordon Brown’s Cabinet is the least Christian in British history. Its members sneer at the Churches’ teachings about sexuality. They bully faith schools with relish, making them talk to primary schoolchildren about sexual intercourse. They are just about to force Catholic schools to advise teenage girls on where to procure an abortion. They want to compel religious institutions to employ people whose beliefs run entirely counter to the values of those institutions. They favour ‘assisted dying’ and are surreptitiously working to enshrine it as a legal right. This is hard-edged, doctrinaire secularism of a variety that even Tony Blair couldn’t stomach. Admittedly, his government didn’t ‘do’ God, but this lot want to do Him in.
Britain’s Christians, you might expect, would be deserting Labour in droves. Not so. According to an opinion poll last month commissioned by the think tank Theos, support for the Tories among Christians had crept up by only two points since the last general election. In contrast, ‘unbelievers’ — that is, people who say they have no religious faith and who probably agree with Harriet Harman on abortion, gay marriage and the delusional nature of faith — had moved 13 points in the Tory direction
The argument here isn't that there are no Christians in the Labour Party. In fact, given the opinion poll results it may well be that there are a number. The issue is that Labour's policies and approach to key issues is anti-Christian.
BUT (granting for the moment that Damian Thompson is right in his analysis)...are the Tories a clear alternative?
Well, David Cameron describes his party as 'a modern and radical party'. Mmmm. OK, what do those words mean?!
Here is David Cameron, voice of the 'family friendly' party, with the CONSERVATIVE party's line on homosexuality:
So, on this issue of sexuality 'modern and radical' also means anti-Christian. That is the blue corner, and as the quote showed, the yellow corner are the same too.
So, as a Christian voter, on the issue of sexuality, our main parties are all anti-Christs.
Perhaps we can distinguish the speed and vigor with which they wish to throw off his bonds ... but when heading towards a cliff speed isn't the main issue is it?
HT: Pete
PS. Peter Hitchens would like to ask David Cameron these nine questions here.
BUT (granting for the moment that Damian Thompson is right in his analysis)...are the Tories a clear alternative?
Well, David Cameron describes his party as 'a modern and radical party'. Mmmm. OK, what do those words mean?!
Here is David Cameron, voice of the 'family friendly' party, with the CONSERVATIVE party's line on homosexuality:
So, on this issue of sexuality 'modern and radical' also means anti-Christian. That is the blue corner, and as the quote showed, the yellow corner are the same too.
So, as a Christian voter, on the issue of sexuality, our main parties are all anti-Christs.
Perhaps we can distinguish the speed and vigor with which they wish to throw off his bonds ... but when heading towards a cliff speed isn't the main issue is it?
HT: Pete
PS. Peter Hitchens would like to ask David Cameron these nine questions here.
3 comments:
It is odd how politics is seen as an arena for debates about ‘morality’ – tho’ alas many Christians (and people of faith in general) have a habit of equating morality with what people do with their dangly bits. It is interesting to note in the Gospels what angers Jesus is the hypocrisy of the outwardly moral – indeed the devout, who knew their Scriptures well, and did all the upright things people of faith should do. Yet they lacked humility and compassion.
A good portion of Levitical law and the ‘advice’ of the writers of the New Testament is concerned with social morality. What could loosely be described as ‘caring for widows and orphans...’. It is curious that although Christians deride the secular state for its laxity on sexual morality, there is little appreciation of how well the secular state enacts social morality – certainly better than when the churches were fuller and the Bible better known.
Indeed, think back to the 19th century – the churches were fuller than today with approx. 50% church attendance, many people, particularly the middle-classes, knew their Bible well. Yet the lot of your average person was not brilliant. A huge extreme in the division of wealth, working-class people living in abject squalor, capital punishment, child labour... the list goes on. It is ironic that it is secular, liberal democracy that has brought an end to these problems. This is borne out more-so in our neighbouring social democracies of the Northern Europe, where church attendance is even lower than the UK, yet their societies have fewer social problems – lower divorce rates, lower teenage pregnancy, a higher age when teenagers have sex, greater social equality & lower violent crime rates. Whereas the most Christian of Western nations, the USA – which even today still has a church attendance of 50% - has the most extreme of wealth division, high divorce rates, high teenage pregnancy rates (particularly in Bible Belt areas), high levels of violent crime and imprisons more of its citizens per capita than China or Iran!
So perhaps it is time not to put too much emphasis on the religious agenda of politicians (or lack of same). It would appear that as religion has lost its place in Western societies these societies have actual considerably improved their record on social morality. Now there’s food for thought...
Hi,
Thanks for your comment. I am a low level blogger and don't get many comments from people I don't know. So welcome!
As you haven't signed your comment, I can't address you by name - sorry for that.
From your blog piece as well as from what you have written here I guess that I won't be the right person to engage you - I have neither the time or brain power! As you say that you have posted it on several blogs I hope someone else can be of more use in terms of your assumptions (where do morals come from? If laws are merely morals with legs (ultimately prisons/bullets) who gets to impose their morality on who? And how do they get to right to do that?)and your views on history (secular state/influence GOOD - Christian state/influence BAD)!
But let me say thank you for introducing Jesus Christ into your first paragraph. It is his authority over all of life that means that how we treat the poor, how we live as the poor, how we 'use our dangly bits', how politicians govern AND how Christians conduct theme selves at work matters.
Jesus Christ has this authority because he is the eternal Son of God, our creator and because he is God's chosen King whose authority has been established in his life, death and resurrection. His authority is a present reality for every person and every 'King' who lives and breathes because of him and one day, rich and poor, Western and Eastern, we will all give account to him as to how we have used all his good gifts.
That is THE imposition to engage with. Jesus has ALL authority over everything and everyone. And he commands you and me, and every politician included, to 'repent and believe the good news' to come to him and live. For as Judge he is also Saviour through his death in the place of sinners.
I couldn't agree more with you that in the light of this morality is about way more than what happens between the sheets. It is about what happens between the ears, between rich and poor, between black and white, between male and female, between bloggers, between employee and employer, between creature and creator. God cares more deeply than you or I about wickedness and injustice in his world.
That is in part why we as a church asked our politicians a range of questions about themselves and their views on a range of issues. Clearly we couldn't ask them everything. But there was more to it than sex!
More significantly though, that is why Jesus' life, death, resurrection and apostolic gospel are so searching. And so wonderful! He alone can deliver us from the penalty and (in eternity beyond his return) the presence of sexual sin [be it adultery, fornication, sodomy or bestiality] and greed, and laziness, and lying, and cheating and stealing. And yes, from religious hypocrisy (which as you say, is a very offensive sin indeed). Amazingly he will do this for all who turn from their sin and trust him.
You are welcome to come back at me. I'll try and engage with you if you want that. I see you are a religious studies student, and so you may well have the head start on reading and thinking time!! But I will do my best. I must go and grab lunch in the remaining minutes of my 'lunch break'.
There is food for the body! Which strangely is what Jesus gives too.
;)
Thanks again for your comment.
Yours
Tim
Tim
Thanks for this.
Yes, that is well and good, but this is BELIEF or FAITH; when it comes to systems of government and governing an essentially nominally Christian (if that, at church attendance at 7%) society, there has to be asked the question why religion has been pushed out of the government of society. Well, as demonstrated by my last comment, the reason is that religion, even though church attendance was around 50% in Victorian times, didn’t make for a better country. There are those who like to look to the Christian social reformers, such Elizabeth Fry or Wilberforce, however it can also be argued that these people were ‘Christianising’ Enlightenment ideals.
Conversely it has to be asked why religion is now desperately trying to push its way into society. Lord Cary’s appeal for a sensitive judge to preside at MacFarlane’s case against Relate is a case in point. Cary seemed ignorant of the facts and presented it as a case of religious discrimination when in fact if MacFarlane was so keen to only counsel couples who had a Biblically acceptable relationship, why was he content to counsel unmarried couples? Besides the fact (I know from having been offered a placement at Relate when I trained as a social worker in the early 90s) MacFarlane would have been asked if he had problems with same-sex couples at interview and signed the organisation’s Equal Ops policy when he received his contract. But Cary and other Christian voices projected the issue (which was simply a man unwilling to fulfil his contract of employment) as ‘Christians being marginalised’. My own thought was it was a homophobic tosser, playing the God-card and probably on the lookout for a compensation payout! Thankfully he lost.
It is unfortunate many Christians, particularly Evangelical Christians, have gotten themselves embroiled within matters of personal sexuality as if this is a worthy cause. My advice (having worked within several Christian organisations and for an Evangelical church) is that personal morality, for adults, is best left to the individual.
As for Jesus’ Lordship – well that is also a personal opinion; there is little evidence other than faith and wishful thinking, is there? For many years I worked as a social worker in cancer care – working with anyone aged 16 onwards who had a terminal diagnosis of cancer. Many overtly religious told me Jesus would heal them – they all died; nasty, painful deaths, often leaving young families. I am sure this made sense to the faithful, to me, it aided in my disillusionment with organised, exclusive religion.
My experience of life suggests Christians, even the most devout, are not the best advertisements for their faith (& you must remember that for several years I was a very active member and on the staff of a large Evangelical church and was then an Anglican monk for several more years). Christianity may be about the Lordship of Christ, but – if we’re being honest – it is also about making the self feel better about the self and because of this, a great deal of personal issues and foibles muddy the waters of faith.
There is great irony in the fact that liberal, secular, democracies of the kind found in Northern Europe and inc. the UK, are much better at protecting the rights of the religious than if we had a theocracy or a greater involvement of religion in politics; this is ironic, but true nevertheless. The two are best kept a part. As history demonstrates when they mix there’s usually a spilling of blood, metaphorically or, alas, literally.
So, all in all, religion and secular society are best kept separate. There are times when Christians (or people of other religions) have a role in looking at issues morality. But Kant, Locke, Hume etc. have provided ample means to provide for a moral society (indeed Protestant thinking and theology shamelessly borrows from them).
That’s my take on the matter.
Regards:
Steven
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