How the cross marks our ballot -Apr 18, 2005

The woman looked rueful. “Oh well, it’ll be over in a few weeks,” she announced loudly. At first I thought she was talking about the queue, or even the post office we were in. There are fewer of those by the month. But no, she meant the general election.

So far the UK election campaign has been dominated by dismal displays of competitive narrow-mindedness and self-interest on the part of its main protagonists.

If the work of election strategists, psephologists and focus groupies is partly to hold a mirror up to the populace, the current verdict is decidedly unflattering.

Britain is, apparently, a country gripped by xenophobia, more concerned with personal gain than social need, disinterested in global inequality, lax about civil rights, obsessed by tax advantage, and willing to forget both wars and rumours of war.

This is only part of the story, of course. But, together with political disenchantment, it is probably the largest part. Faced with such an unedifying spectacle, what are Christians to do?

The question assumes that there is a coherent, identifiable group out there called ‘Christian voters’. But there isn’t.

Surveys indicate that while Britain’s regular churchgoers are more likely to be involved in voluntary work and to give to charity than those of no fixed religious opinion, they do little to distinguish themselves at the ballot box.

A few years ago the development agency Christian Aid carried out a detailed study of the views of its supporters. It found that many were much more conformist in their stance than the activist minority that supported political action for global justice.

Similarly the Church of England might not be the Tory Party at prayer any more, but its heartland remains middle England, and its radical fringes are locked away in urban areas and in relatively small pockets of resistance to the establishment.

The situation in the ‘free churches’ (which long ago had the dissent knocked out of them) and among Catholics (whose adherents are still somewhat shaped along national and ethnic lines) is not dissimilar.

As for evangelicals inside and outside the historic denominations, they tend to be conservative in temperament but with a radical tinge on some issues – such as the trade justice.

Overall, Christians are as much divided by the cross they are offered at the ballot box as they are in understanding the meaning of Jesus’ cross on a Sunday morning.

Christians like to think that they elect with their consciences. But in spite of the Gospel’s special concern for the vulnerable, most actually vote in solid accord with their own economic interests.

That is true across the Western world. So while rich Christian leaders sat a few feet away from President George W. Bush during his inauguration in Washington DC in January 2005, pastors from desperately deprived parts of the capital were firmly excluded by police cordons.

Throughout history Christianity has often been co-opted by princes, kings, barons, landowners and autocrats. Well-off believers frequently mistake morality for respectability, and faithfulness for maintenance of the status quo.

However the heart of the Gospel message is deeply subversive. In Jesus’ upside-down economy the last come first, the hungry are fed, swords are cast aside, strangers are welcomed, the poor are blessed, enemies are loved, wrong-doers are forgiven, and the mighty fall from their seats… not exactly a welcome image for sitting MPs!

It is all-too-evident that this Good News about a radical transformation of hearts, lives and societies is not what our dominant political systems are willing or able to offer.

In fact the major political parties are now private corporations. What concerns them first is not peace, justice and welfare for the people; it is branding, product placement, consumer compliance – and a seat on the Board after an AGM every few years.

How the parties avoid really important issues is by pandering to fantasy (tax cuts, more spending and less borrowing all at the same time), spinning inconvenient facts, and offering a narrow range of choices around a highly select set of issues.

Professional politicians say they want people to participate. Actually they just need them to grumble and conform. Which is why apathy and hostility towards the system is so dangerously prevalent. That and the stupefying effect of saturation consumerism.

But as disillusion grows, action on the environment remains weak. Alternatives to war policy are ignored. The suspension of habeas corpus goes unnoticed. Immigrants are talked of as human detritus. The suffering of asylum seekers is mired in bogus statistics. And the growing gap between rich and poor is seen as ‘inevitable’.

Meanwhile more and more key decisions are taken by those who wield the biggest stick in the marketplace, not by government (which has become a boo word even for those who govern) or by civil society (where voluntary action is in danger of being hijacked to prop up ailing bits of statutory care).

This could be a recipe for despair. But it shouldn’t. Instead we can see it as a clarion call to action. Politics has to be continually reclaimed from the deadening hand of corporatism and restored to people and communities.

Fresh opportunities for reshaping the political terrain are afforded by the alternative globalization of cyberspace, the extension of civil society, and the cultivation of small-scale alternatives to homogenized power.

This is where the churches come in. Thy can and should play an authentic part in redefining the agenda in more hopeful ways.

However there is a genuine fear in many quarters that the involvement of religion in politics automatically means malign manipulation and disguised power bids.

That indeed has been the danger of the ‘Christendom’ approach, which leads to the mutation of a liberating Gospel into the preservation of supposedly ‘Christian societies’ - ones where justice is wrongly identified with the vested interests of particular religious institutions.

But Christendom is now collapsing before our eyes. The unhealthy convergence of church and state is undesirable and unsustainable. And although on a global level certain kinds of religious hegemony are aggressively reasserting themselves, we should be under no illusion that this is anything but a retrograde step.

The demise of a religiously sanctioned political order, which shackled deity to domination, should be no threat to Christians. The Gospel is not about seizing power from others. Neither does it involve abdicating responsibility. It is about levelling, liberating alternatives that work by attraction rather than compulsion.

Plural societies that offer freedom for both religion and non-religion require neither a naked public square nor one dominated by special interests. Instead they need civic and political arenas where different actors can cooperate and contest without fear or favour.

Likewise, post-Christendom politics means reversing the religious right’s agenda. It involves Christians refusing the temptation to create a ‘Christian vote’ or to wield ‘moral majorities’ like weapons. Rather than reducing ethics to individualism it focuses on the major choices about power, money and violence.

In recognising the essential humility of its un-lordly Lord, the post-Christendom stance also declines special favour for Christian institutions. Its concern is to redress injustice and to model the new community of equals made possible for us in the companionship of Jesus.

This suggests a radically different approach to difficult issues like palliative care – one that enhances the underlying solidarity of those who suffer with those who try to alleviate suffering, instead of pursuing simplistic antitheses about curing or killing.

A positive post-Christendom perspective can also help Christians make more hopeful choices about the election on 5th May.

For example, we can choose not to be mesmerised by the limits of what is on offer, real as they are. There may only be an inch between the leading parties in our modern technocracy, but it is an inch that can still make a significant difference to those at the rough end of society – the homeless, the unemployed, refugees.

It is also important to open up space for alternatives. We can support individual candidates of real worth, including those opposing corporatist politics both inside and outside existing parties. There are numerous tactical voting options. There is the case for electoral reform to extend the range of options and alliances. And there is the European horizon to challenge the exclusivism of nation states.

Some may also choose to abstain publicly. Non-voting does not necessarily equate with apathy. Nor does deliberately voting against one party rather than for another imply negativity. They can both be democratic means of influencing outcomes. It is also possible to forge links across party lines and to promote ‘associational politics’. Those who want to subvert the restrictions of the system have various ways to do it.

Just as important, the general election provides an opportunity to stand up and be counted. Christians can challenge the death-dealing idea that Britain ought to be a fortress against the poor and the persecuted. They can seek to put the life of the planet and global debt back into the debate.

Other options include reframing tax and spending as a means of sharing wealth rather than fighting over it, questioning our societal obsession with growth through consumption and waste, and pointing ‘good governance’ back at ourselves.

It is obviously difficult to get such concerns anywhere near the mainstream media right now. But there are hundreds of hustings run by churches all across the country where alternative voices can be heard – witnesses to a different vision of politics.

Above all, Christians should avoid a fixation with the current polity – whether by too much hope or too much despair. For the real alternative does not reside in temporal political systems. It bursts out of the subversive manifesto of the Gospel, and in local and global movements which call those systems to account on behalf of the excluded.

Simon Barrow (www.simonbarrow.net) is co-director of Ekklesia. His background is in journalism, adult education, politics and theology, and his weblog is: http://faithinsociety.blogspot.com