In praise of politics from the pulpit

Religion and politics have been intertwined since biblical times, argues the Right Rev Stephen Sykes. It is neither possible nor desirable to separate them today.

I had hardly thought it possible for someone as intelligent as Andrew Marr to be so muddled and wrong on the subject of Christianity and politics. But the article "Clean Up Britain, but don't do it from the pulpit" in the Independent on Wednesday 23 October, contains a tissue of misunderstandings.

We get off to a bad start in the first sentence with its reference to Jesus. Marr remembers, correctly, that Jesus once said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (the story in context is to be found in Mark's Gospel, 12:13-17). From this memory we are to understand, it seems, that Jesus intended his hearers and disciples never to mix up religion and politics. Really? In those days there was no separation of religion and politics. The whole point of the question was to skewer Jesus on the alternative of heresy in relation to Judaism, or insurrection in relation to Roman imperialism.

Marr might have paused to recall the second half of Jesus' soundbite, ". . . and to God the things that are God's". I know of no qualified student of the New Testament of any religious affiliation or none who seriously argues that this means that politics is unthinkable with spirituality, Marr's explicit inference. On the contrary, most students of early Christianity now recognise how very closely related is the spirit-world to the world of politics. "We wrestle," said a first-century author (traditionally, but not probably St Paul), "not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Letter to the Ephesians, 6:12).

But, surely, "politics is a rough and worldly struggle for power", as stated in the lead sentence in paragraph two? Marr seems to want to say that because this is so, it is no fit arena for practising Christians. So what follows is a whole series of propositions to which real Christians would have to assent, but which if acted upon would make the House of Commons unworkable. The rhetoric of this passage is transparent. On the one hand you make the teaching of Jesus a kind of misty idealism; on the other hand, you assert that the real world is governed by thugs and bruisers. Impasse.

Then comes the piece de resistance. It turns out, conveniently, that "most politicians are, like most of their country-folk, tepid contemporary believers". Cries of relief all round. Never mind the claims; never mind the logic. The great majority of Britons have decided that Christianity is an unsuitable faith to be taken too seriously. Jesus turns out to be an inspirer of private moral passions. Real politics is about the struggle for power and "practical, secular programmes".

The curtailing of the courtesies of decent argument at this point is striking. It is not as though there has not been a great deal of Christian thought since the days of the Gospels about how Christians might govern precisely in the secular, the time and place of the saeculum, as Augustine of Hippo understood it. It is not as though there is no theory, classically articulated by the Lord Chancellor in a recent lecture in Ely Cathedral, on how practising Christians might contribute to legislation in a country of mixed beliefs and practice. It is not even as though the life of contemporary Christian churches does not exhibit most of the stresses of organisations coping with the facts about power.

A practising Christian is perfectly capable of engaging with the powers (the restoration of the biblical plural is important) of the modern world.

Pulpits have their place. (The newspapers are pulpits. Is Andrew Marr afraid of competition?) Parliaments are pulpits as well as legislative chambers. But what really counts is what happens in the streets. The Lawrences have a right to speak, and do speak, from street level. So do countless clergy and church workers in this country. I have in mind the sterling labours of a young Church Army Captain and his wife, who in the last three years have been working among seriously disorientated and alienated young people on the streets of a local town.

It seriously diminishes and distorts the Christian religion to banish it to the interior realm - Goebbels' preferred solution, not Jesus'. It seriously weakens the possibilities for a real contemporary debate if power is assumed to be impervious to moral constraints.