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 wa...
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