Christians urged to subvert party manifestos
-21/04/05
Like other citizens, Christians in the UK face tough choices at the general election, as candidates from a range of parties and perspectives seek their endorsement for public office.
Politicians from the three main parties have addressed the churches directly, and religious interest and pressure groups have launched campaigns which urge Christians to make their cross count and flex their political muscle through the ballot box.
But today the Christian thinktank Ekklesia has published an alternative approach for the election and beyond, which questions ‘Christian power games’ and looks at how to subvert rather than simply endorse ‘politics as usual’.
‘Subverting the Manifestos: A Christian Agenda for Change’ argues that Christians should look beyond questions of how they make their own voice heard in the election debate – something that often turns them into just another self-interested pressure group.
Ekklesia’s alternative includes a critique of both the “Religious Right” and those who seek special positions of power and privilege for Christians and Christianity (“Christendom”).
General elections, the document says, are a salutary reminder that the political order revolves around the preservation of control by the powerful. But the churches’ first task, Ekklesia suggests, “is not to figure out how it ‘gets a piece of the action’… It is to ask what difference the Gospel makes to how we see and use power.”
The document shows how the central themes of the Christian message turn conventional assumptions about power and its use upside down. It argues that politics is about people and participation, not just elections, and that Christians should work with others in civil society to claim politics back for people.
It also singles out eleven areas where Christians can deepen and widen the scope of current political debate. Specifically, Christians are being urged to discuss and explore with candidates:
– how peace with justice can be made a top priority with active pursuit of non-violent solutions to conflict
– how work with communities for renewal and reconstruction can be based on justice
– how priorities of poverty-reduction, debt-relief, fair trade, mutual good governance, and economic sharing can be developed
– how the growing disparity between rich and poor might be addressed, with taxation and spending seen as a way of better sharing resources
– how racial justice, equal opportunity and freedom from menace for everyone can be actively promoted
– how the earth’s goodness can be recognised, sustainability championed, and common responsibility to be ecological stewards in all areas of policy can be upheld
– how xenophobia can be opposed, priority given to the suffering of refugees and asylum seekers, and migration issues handled as a matter of global justice rather than narrow self-interest
– how adequate and accessible health care for all, regardless of income or status, can be supported
– how restorative rather than retributive approaches to the criminal justice system and the people effected by it can be developed
– how fair, life long educational opportunities and proper support for children’s services can be encouraged
– how public decisions about issues of life and death in medical services, in the responsible and controlled use of biotechnology, and in genetic research can be responsibly guided