When religion and politics intersect

Political discourse took an interesting swerve over Easter. The Conservatives put out a meme poster on Good Friday that caught my attention.

From a theological point of view, the use of an empty cross to mark the day the gospels report Jesus was crucified, is slightly ironic. From a political point of view, the symbolism is equally as empty. I was left feeling this was posturing along similar lines to the insistence on Union flags being flown from government buildings and being in the background of Zoom interviews. It's a nationalist tangent trying to link in to a cultural heritage of being a 'Christian country'. The Tories were trying this ten years ago (I blogged about it angrily then), and it's making a reappearance.

The linking of politics with religion is often included in lists of 'signs of fascism'. So it wasn't a surprise to see comparisons on Twitter of the Conservative meme with Nazi propaganda.

Previously, there have been British political parties that have tried to co-opt Christianity for their cause. This is one such example:

This poster campaign was some time ago now. The BNP has disappeared, outflanked by UKIP, the Brexit Party and the Conservative Party, which seems to have moved to the right with each passing election.

If overtly aligning with religion is a known tactic of the far right, then what does it say about a government when it starts aligning with religion?

In a way, this intersection of politics and religion feels almost inevitable after the power demonstrated in harnessing the white evangelical vote by the Republican Party in America. (75% of white evangelicals voted for Trump last year; the theological label is practically synonomous with Republicanism now.) The recent Conservative electoral success has been driven by following the right wing American playbook and the government are doubling down on it. So it's only natural that they would eventually come and try to claim religion.

But not to be outdone, Labour leader Keir Starmer decided to do a publicity piece for Easter by visiting a church.

In his (now deleted) video, Keir describes the way the church in question, Jesus House, a large, black majority Pentecostal Church in London, has supported people during the pandemic, including recently hosting a vaccination centre.

This caused a slight problem for Keir, though. Jesus House has a track record of opposing LGBT+ rights and is accused of promoting "conversion therapy" to "cure" gay people of being gay. Conversion therapy is controversial. It's often likened to torture.

As can be imagined, this visit did not play well with Keir's support base. Here's an example.

It's surprising that Keir didn't know there could be controversy attached to this visit. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson were criticised for visiting Jesus House, for exactly the same reason.

I'd put Keir's mis-step down to religious illiteracy. I get the sense that some politicians see "religion" as some kind of old fashioned benign relict of days past, acting as a stable force for good in society. But not all religion is like that.

Keir may have thought he could go along for the photo opportunity and praise the way Jesus House is hosting a Covid vaccination centre, and that would be it. But 'pick and choose' is a difficult game to play with religion because fundamentalism is a complete package. A politician can try to separate out religiously-motivated activity they agree with and activity they don't, but an unequivocal endorsement of a church implies endorsement across the breadth of the espoused creed.

For the fundamentalist evangelical church in question, supporting people during the pandemic and their opposition to marriage equality are both motivated by their belief system. There is no way of differentiating between the two in terms of where they come from. From their perspective, the wellspring is the same - trying to 'be true to the Bible'.

In his subsequent apology, Keir says he didn't know about Jesus House's opposition to LGBT+ rights, and that it was a "mistake". He took down the video on Easter Monday.

I predict there are going to be more attempts to use Christianity as a political weapon. The Conservatives have been cynically smarter in just co-opting Christian symbolism without the burden of having to endorse any activities motivated by a belief system. It's a fundamentally empty appeal to a sense of "Christian" without having to pick their way through the specifics of a creed.

They did it again on Easter Sunday.

General Election Viewpoint: What no Westminster Declaration this time round? Wonder why?

Five years ago, in the run-up to the General Election, I posted an objection to the ‘Westminster Declaration’, which was an attempt to get every Christian to sign a petition to protest against various medical ethical issues and, of course, only allow heterosexual marriage to be called marriage. I wrote about it at the time because I felt it was deeply flawed when it talked about stem cell research and the plight of embryos, but didn’t mention IVF, which struck me as hypocritical.

I also didn’t like it because I thought it was mainly about the typical ‘micro-morality’ self-marginalising issues that Christians get het up about. And I felt it was probably, on balance, homophobic.

(Now I think it is definitely homophobic. There’s nothing in there about preventing divorced people from getting married again – something Jesus clearly said was a sin. There is a reference to marriage being "lifelong", but nothing explicitly about divorce. I suspect the hypocrisy is because there are lots of divorced-and-remarried people sitting in the evangelical churches this Declaration was pitched to, but not many gay people.)

Anyway, this gained traction. Some of my Christian Facebook friends signed it. I know people who were at churches where everyone was asked to sign it. It was supported by groups like Christian Voice and bloggers like the self-styled Archbishop Cranmer. It was supposed to be a big deal.

I also knew Christians who didn’t sign it, for a variety of reasons – the language, the way it sought to enshrine Christian privilege, the distillation of the gospel into medico-legal nitpicking, the blatant homophobia.

But what’s interesting is that the Westminster Declaration hasn’t been revived, revised, updated or promoted this time around. Nobody has been posting it on Facebook saying they’ve signed it and all other true Christians should sign it too. The website is still running, but the latest news on there is from 2012. 

Why not?

Is it because gay marriage is now legal and therefore the Declaration is irrelevant? The battle has been lost.

I don’t think so. I think it’s something else.

A quick run-down of the major exponents reveals some very small-c conservative organisations. I say ‘small-c’ because none of them would publicly advocate any particular party. I know one of them, CARE, provides a rolling supply of free interns to Conservative MPs. I know someone high up in an organisation linked to CARE described their organisation as ‘conservative at heart’, although I don’t know how big the C was when he said that. It was in a discussion about party politics, so there’s an implied large C. And supporters of the Declaration were certainly right wing. Cranmer has a list of Conservative Heroes on his blog’s sidebar, starting with Maggie Thatcher, so we know whose side he’s on.

And you know what... cynically, I’d say this was an operation to swing Christians towards voting Conservative. The Westminster Declaration website listed the opinions of all the candidates on these ‘crucial’, ‘Christian’ issues. And of course, the Conservatives were more likely to be against them. Generally right-wingers get more agitated at the thought of people having control over their own bodies and freedom to express themselves. Independence of action implies independence of thought; not following the rules implies questioning authority. And where would that lead?

But then it was David Cameron’s Tory-led coalition that made gay marriage legal. That must stick in the craw of the organisations that led the Westminster Declaration. Imagine persuading people, firstly, that these issues really mattered, and then secondly, implying that they ought to vote Conservative to avoid these terrible things happening. And then, when they got their wish – a Tory government in all but name – those things happened anyway.

Talk about duped. Cameron actually called gay marriage a cause he passionately believed in. After he was PM, of course. He’s many things, but he isn’t actually stupid. You don’t alienate a group of people who might swing the election for you. There are about 6,000 Christians in most electoral seats. That’s a large lump of electorate.

CARE have gone for a different tack this year, which is much less bombastic and preachy even if it about the same old personal morality issues. The only people trying to repeat the work of 2010 are the decidedly fringe 'Christian Party' who have turned it into a 'Declaration of British Values.' Generally it seems like Christians aren't getting sucked into this again this time round.

It could even be the case that more Christians have realised that after five years of exponential foodbank growth and bedroom taxes and disabled people killing themselves before they starve to death, and tax avoidance by the very rich, and a government that went to war with Brussels to make sure bankers could get their bonuses, and scandal after scandal, there are more important things than stem cells and whether gay people can commit to love each other until death parts them.

Disconcerting things #2

When you agree with someone you don't normally agree with.

This happened to me earlier this week in an interview with UCB Radio as Jon the Freelance Theologian. Paul, the presenter, read out a quote from Peter Tatchell, founder of gay rights group OutRage!, about the problem with freedom of speech is that anyone can say anything.

I may be the first interviewee ever on UCB to say they agree with Peter Tatchell, but when someone is right, they are right.