SUBVERTING THE MANIFESTOS: A CHRISTIAN AGENDA FOR CHANGE

A contribution to the election debate from Ekklesia (www.ekklesia.co.uk)


1. Can there be a healthy role for faith in politics?

Like other citizens, Christians in the UK face tough choices at the general election, as candidates from a range of parties and perspectives seek endorsement for public office. These choices are not just about what and who to vote for. They are also about the style, tenor and form of Christian engagement with the political process.

Many people are rightly concerned about the manipulation of religion for partisan purposes. When faith is used to bully, dominate, exclude and oppress it becomes ugly, deformed and unattractive.

As they reflect on their participation in the electoral debate, Christians need to ask themselves not just “how do we get a hearing?” (which can easily be a self-interested question) but “how and to whom are we accountable for our actions in the political arena?”

To be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, through whom we see God, the world and people around us in a radically different way. It is this alternative way that should shape anything Christians seek to do or say in the public arena.

So our first task as followers of Jesus is not to figure out how we “get a piece of the action”, as if the Christian community was some club or lobby group vying for position. It is to ask what difference the Gospel makes to how we see and use power.

The starting point, then, is not with manifestos and promises (we will come to those in a minute), but with the nature and identity of the Christian message.


2. The really subversive manifesto

Jesus was and is a deeply political figure. He challenged the religious and political authorities of his day. His followers called him ‘Lord’ because they recognised in him God’s power of love overcoming the human love of power.

Jesus gathered around him a movement made up of those deemed unworthy, impure and undesirable by the religious and political authorities of his day. (There is a picture of them at the beginning of St Matthew, chapter 5.)

In showing special concern for outsiders Jesus demonstrated that true religion is not about privilege for the few, it is about how a new community of equal worth can be created on the basis of something beyond manipulation – God’s favour-free love.

By contrast, the political orders we create usually revolve around self-interest and the preservation of control by the wealthy and powerful. General elections can be a salutary reminder of this fact.

The new order that Jesus proclaimed and lived (what he called the kingdom of God – precisely to indicate its challenge to power-as-domination) was based on very different priorities.

The Gospel involves a radical reversal of power. With Jesus the last come first, the hungry are filled, the poor are blessed, outsiders are welcomed in, enemies are loved, swords are put aside, wrong-doers are forgiven – and (as Mary’s Song puts it) self-appointed rulers who block all this fall from their thrones.

God’s alternative society is achieved not by compulsion but through communion. Jesus gathers around him a new community of equals. This community is not political in the sense that it claims power from others; it is political in opening up a public space where power is changed from a death-dealing, divisive force to a life-giving, unifying one.

God’s power, in other words, is nothing like ours. It alters the rules of our power-games beyond recognition. It is about giving not grabbing.

It is in this sense that Christianity rightly focussed on Jesus is deeply and inherently political. It changes the agenda from one of competing for interest to developing shared interest.

Jesus did not seek to grasp political power for himself and his friends. He refused violence. But in showing how God’s domination-free kingdom overcomes the selfishness, manipulation and bloodshed of the established order he also made himself a public enemy.

Rulers do not like the rules that favour them questioned. So rather than risk their own monopoly of power, the political and religious authorities of Jesus’ day had him executed as a common criminal.

Christians are those brought together not just by the life and death of Jesus, but through God’s vindication of everything he was and is – the life-beyond-death by which the Gospel’s alternative order is made real.

The church, the community of Jesus, is called ekklesia because it is ‘called out’ to announce and practice the upside-down life made possible by him.

It does so not in private, but in full view. Ekklesia was also the name for the public square in the time of the early Christian communities.

It follows that an idea of Christianity separated from politics, rendered non-political, turned into a spirituality that has nothing to do with the decisions we face in daily life, is a profound misrepresentation of the Gospel.

The Christian Gospel is about the Word made flesh, about God’s spirit infusing the fabric of our personal and corporate lives, about conversion to a new way of being, about a new order of just-peace flowing from the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

It is more than evident that the new life the Gospel offers us as persons-in-community is about something infinitely bigger and more radical than the choices Christians face (alongside those of differing life-stances) at the general election.

Indeed, the election itself is about less than is involved in the realm of politics and economics – as the narrowness of the party platforms and campaigns painfully illustrates.

In participating responsibly in the electoral process Christians may rightfully be grateful for the relative freedom created for them and for others by a democratic order that mediates power and stops it from being wholly monopolised by one group or faction in society.

On the other hand, they will not be naïve enough to think that all the big issues are decided by elections. Politics is about how people shape public life all the time, not just about how they vote once-in-a-while.

What’s more, the electoral process is still dominated by the ‘haves’ at the expense of the ‘have nots’. And the levers of economic power that will play a big part in determining the future of people and planet are generally unaccountable at the ballot box. They remain overwhelmingly in the hands of a corporate few.

So there are severe limits to the choices that will face us on 5 May 2005. But they are still important ones. How should wealth be produced, used and shared? How do we run public services? How do we care for and sustain the earth? How can poverty and war be reduced and eliminated?

For a rich country like Britain these issues should be about responsibility, not naked self-interest. Will we be a welcoming society, or a fortress against those fleeing persecution and injustice, for example?

Christians are those whose allegiance to Jesus and to his alternative kingdom (“not by might, not by power, but by my spirit says the Lord”) ought to make a radical difference to their political choices – and to what they argue for and commend in the public arena.


3. Redeeming Christian politics

In the last US presidential election much media attention was given to powerful religious groups and lobbies who misused the cause of Jesus to justify economic inequality, environmental degradation, the punishment of the poor, the amassing of weapons, the exclusion of gay and lesbian people, state execution, and bitter confrontation over painfully difficult issues like abortion.

In seeking to create a conversation among Christians (and with all in public life) about how faith can be positive, challenging and life-giving in the public arena, Ekklesia seeks to operate in a wholly different sphere to the politics of fear and domination perpetuated by the so-called ‘religious right’. It invites those of different political and theological persuasions within the Christian community to do likewise.

Ekklesia also rejects the assumptions, aspirations and strategy of ‘Christendom’ – the lingering idea that Christian faith (or any faith) should have a privileged or dominant position in the political order. We suggest that this falsifies the subversive, upside-down Gospel of Jesus.

The ‘Christian society’ is not one imposed on the political order, but a set of free associations which attract and bring change by example and involvement (the service, action and witness of the church in society).

Instead, Ekklesia commends an engagement between faith and politics which is open, honest and mutually corrective – one focussed on the responsible use of common civic space and debate to reshape our common life on the basis of equality, argument and mutual respect among those of all faiths and none.

Campaigning is clearly part of this picture for all concerned. For Christians, political action and mobilisation should be based not on self-regard towards our own interests or on the intent to manipulate, control or dominate.

Instead it should be based on witnessing to the different kind of life that becomes possible in the company of Jesus, on the basis of a rejection of violence, on a willingness to share, through respect for the earth, and with particular concern for “the least of these my brothers and sisters”.


4. Reshaping the political agenda

Finally, as Christians make up their minds about whether and how to vote, and as they consider how to continue to act politically beyond the election, the following challenges (partly developed, with grateful acknowledgment, from a document put out by US churches last year1) commend themselves for prayer and reflection.

1. War is contrary to the will of God. Christ pronounces his blessing on the peacemakers. How can we help politicians to make peace with justice a top priority and actively to seek non-violent solutions to conflict?

2. God calls us to live in communities shaped by peace and cooperation. Policies that abandon significant segments of our urban and rural populations to hopelessness degrade us all. How can we encourage politicians to work with communities for renewal and reconstruction based on justice?

3. God created us for each other, and thus our security depends on the well being of our global neighbours. How can we work with politicians for international policies for cooperation, the priority of poverty-reduction, debt-relief, fair trade, mutual good governance, and economic sharing?

4. God calls us to share bread together and to be advocates alongside those who are most vulnerable in our society. How can we support politicians to yearn for social justice, to reduce the growing disparity between rich and poor, and to see taxation and spending as a way of sharing resources better?

5. Human beings flourish when they are able to recognise in themselves and others the image of the God of infinite love. How can we encourage politicians actively to promote racial justice, equal opportunity and freedom from menace for everyone?

6. The earth is a gift of God. How can we ensure that politicians recognize the earth's goodness, champion sustainability, and uphold our common responsibility to be ecological stewards in all areas of policy?

7. Christians have a biblical mandate to welcome strangers. How can we make sure that politicians oppose xenophobia, give priority to the suffering of refugees and asylum seekers, and handle migration issues as a matter of global justice rather than narrow self-interest?

8. Those who follow Christ are called to heal the sick. How can we work with politicians to support adequate and accessible health care for all, regardless of income or status?

9. Through the transforming power of God’s grace, all humans are called to seek right relations with each other. How can we assist politicians in developing a restorative rather than retributive approach to the criminal justice system and to the people effected by it?

10. Providing enriched learning environments for all is a moral imperative for those who seek God’s shalom. How can we work with politicians to encourage fair, life long educational opportunities and proper support for children’s services?

11. God wills life in all its fullness. How can we support politicians in responsibly guiding public decisions about issues of life and death in medical services, in the responsible and controlled use of biotechnology, and in genetic research?

This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it suggests some important parameters in making our choices and developing our engagement with political processes. These challenges concern political leadership, certainly – but also community participation and constructive Christian engagement. Elections may inevitably be about ‘us’ and ‘them’ to a certain degree. Politics as a whole shouldn’t be if it is to be healthy. It is too important to be left to a class of professional politicians and leaders alone.

1 The original statement was called ‘Christian Principles in an Election Year’, put out by the National Council of Churches USA. NCCUSA has had no involvement in our redraft, and should not be deemed responsible for it. Ekklesia found it a fruitful starting point for considering global concerns in a UK context.