Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Christian political parties - are they a good thing?


christian democrats, originally uploaded by friendly-fire.

I came across a blog recently which was highly critical, quite reasonably, of the Swedish Christian Democratic party, on the grounds that it had been giving support to policies that compromised Christian principles. The solution, in the author’s view, is to establish a new party.

From a British perspective, the notion of a Christian Democratic party on the Western European model is alien. All three of the British political parties draw on a variety of roots. The Conservatives have long included a strand of Catholic/Anglican tradition, represented by MPs such as the late Enoch Powell, a High Anglican, Norman St John Stevas, a Roman Catholic, Chris Patten, a liberal Roman Catholic, and Anne Widdicombe, a former Anglican and convert to Catholicism. The Liberals grew out of the Whig party but there were Quaker and Nonconformist adherents. Labour, too, had Methodist and other Nonconformist support in its early days, and was also the party of choice for working-class Roman Catholic immigrants, especially in areas like the London docklands and Clydeside. More than occasionally, as the original idealism wore off, the latter were liable to become infected with corruption and sleaze.

But the British parties, which are essentially loose, ad-hoc and pragmatic alliances, have also drawn on other support. The Conservatives are the natural party for those with landowning and business interests and a strong in their promotion of consumerism, whilst Labour has been and still is heavily influenced by atheistic Marxism. A committed Christian of any stripe is not going to feel completely comfortable in any of the British parties.

The British two-and-a-half party system is sustained by the first-past-the-post electoral system, and under a more proportionate voting arrangement, it would probably break up, giving perhaps half-a-dozen parties. But in countries where this is the situation, the parties must inevitably form ad-hoc and pragmatic alliances in order that governments can form and act. Compromise in inherent in such a system.

Where does this leave any party attempting to apply religious principles? In a society dominated by secular values, the options for a political party are either to compromise or stay out of the main arena and attempt to influence from the edge. In the long term, eschewing power and staying on the sidelines is probably the better way as it is just not possible to impose religious views on people who do not subscribe to them. But though UK politics are in a bad state at the moment, perhaps the British way has much to recommend it. Christians can join a party of their choice, but they must accept that they will have to work with people with some of whose views they will not agree, and at times will be forced to compromise. If they do not want to do that, there are, in a democratic society (or even a non-democratic one), many other ways of exerting influence than through party politics.

But even in a favourable environment, a Christian political party would be faced with particular difficulties. Politician have to establish fiscal, economic and foreign policies. Christian teaching often gives little guidance as to what should be done. Sometimes it is unclear how principles ought to be applied. For example, it cannot be right to apply a policy which would leave a significant proportion of the population in poverty, but without a sound understanding of economic mechanisms, governments can and often do implement such policies out of plain ignorance. I hope to return to this subject later.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...