With the election campaign now well under way in Britain, it has been interesting to see the responses and reactions of Christians. Of course, there will always be those who peddle their narrow agendas and demand that the government acknowledge their own perspective on whatever they think a Christian society should look like. But what has been more surprising is the way that otherwise open-minded, even liberal, Christians are emerging as covert fundamentalists, only prepared to listen to (never mind take seriously) those politicians who they think they already approve of. People who are quite happy to think outside the box on all sorts of issues to do with church and faith are taking up what can only be described as tribal (even feral) positions, not through discussions of the issues but just telling the rest of us which party leaders they will listen to and which ones are to be dismissed without any sort of hearing. The country is in such a mess that it seems highly unlikely that any one individual of whatever political colour is going to have all the answers. And of course from a Scottish perspective, there are more than just three parties of significance, which is especially relevant given that the fourth party is the current Scottish government!
Narrow-minded faith in politics
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April 16, 2010 at 3:58 pm
I agree with you argument and I’m not surprised you’ve blogged on this today!
The problem is that ideologically i disagree with some of the parties, UKIP and BNP for example. Are Christians meant to always have an open mind or are there ideological bases for certains parties where we need to say that the values of this party are incompatible with Chrsitian faith. It’s then a question of who defines my christian ideology.
Are the three centre parties all broadly compatible with Christian faith or not? do some favour the poor over the rich, if so it’s a justice issue where we have a responsiblity to stand up for the marginalized. But then it’s a question of politics and interpretation of what people are saying and who stands up for the marginalized…it’s all swings and roundabouts.
April 17, 2010 at 1:36 am
“open-minded, even liberal, Christians…emerging as covert fundamentalists”
I suspect there is a book waiting to come out of that insight… I look forward to reading it.
April 17, 2010 at 8:43 am
Yes, Geoff – though George Ritzer has already said something along these lines with his characterization of McDonaldization as the ‘irrationality of reason’, which in this case translates as ‘I believe in freedom of speech just as long as you say what I want to hear’. Since making this post, things have changed a bit as the opinion polls are now putting the Liberal Democrats (third party) ahead of Gordon Brown’s Labour party, following a somewhat grumpy calvinistic performance from Brown in a TV debate. The other two leaders had a lot to say about people, Brown was all about policy, and watching it again (how sad is that?) the only actual person he mentioned was his long-dead father, a Presbyterian minister, who seems to be the only person he ever talks about. What does that tell us? Of course we have to admit our own prejudices, which don’t include much space for miserable calvinists!