THE UNWISDOM OF ‘CHRISTIAN’ POLITICAL PARTIES
Interesting cross-post from Cranmer’s Curate and links quite well to a post from yesterday, exploring Christian influence within the Tory party. What do you think?
THE UNWISDOM OF ‘CHRISTIAN’ POLITICAL PARTIES
A married Christian male with a successful business background and a track record of working hard for his local party who has just been turned down as a parliamentary candidate in favour of a glamorous lesbian may be tempted to join a specifically Christian party.
Whilst thoroughly sympathising with this brother’s exasperation, Cranmer’s Curate suggests this is ill-advised.
Christian Britain did not have political parties with a Christian label. Whig, Tory, Radical, Conservative, Liberal, Irish Nationalist, Unionist, and eventually Labour were the awnings under which political argument took place in the ideological marketplace of a broadly Christian society.
By eschewing the Christian label, these parties refused to claim a monopoly of Christian truth or virtue. With the exception of the more utopian socialists and romantic nationalists, they made the much more modest claim that their party combined principle and pragmatism in a way that worked best for the nation at a particular juncture. Imbued with the biblical idea that God in his Providence allowed Caesar a delimited sphere within the temporal ordering of His world, Christian Britons had a realistic view of political programmes.
William Gladstone, who led administrations that radically transformed the United Kingdom in the 19th century, wrote this to his wife on April 6th 1874:
I am convinced that the welfare of mankind does not now depend on the state of the world of politics: the real battle is being fought in the world of thought, where a deadly attack is being made with great tenacity of purpose and over a wide field upon the greatest treasure of mankind, the belief in God and the Gospel of Christ (Philip Magnus, Gladstone, 1954).
Now in post-Christian Britain, where Gladstone’s prophecy is coming to dark fruition, Christian political parties are appearing on the ballot paper. Are they doing any good?
They are certainly not getting many votes, and arguably they are a symptom of post-modern ideological fragmentation. Furthermore, by adopting the Christian label they arguably fail to made the distinction between Church and State so effectively upheld by the political leaders who helped to shape our Christian-influenced democracy.
Orthodox Christians finding it increasingly difficult to get adopted as candidates by the mainstream political parties may be advised to join forces with moral co-belligents in forming a new secular party or hooking up with UKIP if they are persuaded by its line on the EU. Or else keep plugging away in the mainstream parties.
In any event, a new generation of able and faithful Bible-believing Christians is sorely needed in the secular political process to call our democracy back to the Christian principles that formed it. At the same time, Christians have an invaluable role in upholding the thoroughly biblical idea that humanly-constructed political philosophies must of necessity see through a glass darkly.
That arguably involves steering well clear of ‘Christian’ political parties.
Tags: Christianity, Politics
February 16th, 2010 at 2:50 am
So are Christians to be mute only to cower and tremble in the priest hole of dhimmitude while the church celebrates the politics of diversity and its own deconstruction .
February 16th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Certainly not.