For the last few months Ekklesia staff, associates and partners have been thinking and talking about our approach to the 2015 General Election and beyond.

For the last few months Ekklesia staff, associates and partners have been thinking and talking about our approach to the 2015 General Election and beyond. The resulting research paper and our special election website were launched on Friday 6th March, two months before polling day. The launch happened to coincide with my weekend away with fellow members of ‘Unite for Peace’, a small group of (mainly) Christian pacifists who meet twice a year, which provided an opportunity to discuss the paper in more depth.

We began on Friday night with a conversation about our hopes and fears for the general election. Many of our members work in public, non-profit and faith organisations and see at first the impact of austerity on the poorest people in society. The fears of the group were mainly that life could become a lot worse for many, particularly, as one person put it, if the mainstream parties continue to stay within their “narrow furrow” of cutting public services. Whilst one or two people didn’t feel the election would change much, most of us still could see glimmers of hope: whether due to an excellent local candidate, a particularly inspirational party, or a sense that May 7th might prove the start of a changed national conversation. Everyone warmed to the phrase coined by Ekklesia associate Vaughan Jones, that an election is an ‘event in democracy’ and all were clear that whatever happens on May 7th, on May 8th we will continue to work for the vision of a fairer, juster society.

Saturday was spent considering ‘Vote for what you believe in’ in more depth. We talked about the practicalities that arise when we aim to vote for our beliefs. Should we vote for a party that we are fully behind, even if it has no immediate chance of success? Or should we vote for a party we partially agree with, because we believe it provides the best opportunity to bring about positive social change, even if only on a small scale? Does the answer to this question vary if are in a safe or marginal seat? What are our options if the party we want to vote for isn’t fielding a candidate in our constituency? As the Ekklesia paper notes, there are no simple answers to these questions but we all felt it was helpful to think about these points as we grapple with who to vote for. We also felt it was important to recognise that no party will ever align totally with our beliefs, and that as Christians, our duty is to work within the limitations of the political processes we have at our disposal, whilst being engaged in promoting ideas for the common good in all aspects of our lives.

We also had fruitful conversations about the values espoused by ‘Vote for what you believe in’. Everyone felt these provided a useful framework to think about politics, particularly because they were constructed around many Biblical principles, rather than party policies. Many felt the values were also a helpful way to talk about politics to friends at church, and that they were broad enough to be of interest to people of other faiths and none. As one participant said, “they’re common sense really”. At the end of the day we spent some time looking at possible election results, based on this interesting Guardian analysis. For the first time in our lifetimes we are seeing a possible challenge to two party politics, and at this point, the chances of a coalition or a minority government seem fairly high. Whilst some of the options may seem less attractive to us than others, the idea that voting is just one part of the political process was reassuring as we all felt the story won’t end at the election. We were also much encouraged by the positive energy of Scottish politics since the referendum and hopeful that we could learn much from our fellow citizens north of the border.

Our final discussion on Sunday morning focussed on pledging to vote for what we believed in and what that meant to us. We are all in different constituencies and our responses were understandably different. Our choices ranged from voting for the party best aligned to our beliefs, voting for the second best because the party of choice wasn’t standing, voting for a candidate because of their track record, and not being sure which way to go. For some of us, not letting in a party we were totally against was a consideration. For others, voting for the party we believed in even if it let another party win the seat, was a better option for long term political change. But, whatever choices we were considering, we were all united in agreeing that the ‘Vote for what you believe in’ framework provides a helpful way to think about voting.

If you’d like to have similar conversations within your local community, please feel free to download our election paper and visit our election site for more information.

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© Virginia Moffatt is chief operating officer of Ekklesia. Before working for Ekklesia, she spent 30 years working in services for people with learning disabilities, most recently for Oxfordshire County Council.

*More on the issues in the 2015 General Election from Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/generalelection2015