Swimming against the blue tide

I don't think I've ever woken up to a Britain that felt so changed as I did the morning after the results had come in for the 2015 General Election. I went to bed with thoughts of equal red/blue and a generous dollop of orange (and hopefully some refreshing swathes of green) and woke up to a country of two halves - blue and yellow. It was an even bigger shock because the opinion polls had the Tories and Labour running neck and neck, so I had been imagining how parties would have to come together in alliances - even speculating that this was going to be the way of UK politics from now on, and a good middle way it seemed, to me at least.

I suppose it shows how unpredictable politics can be. When party politics was just blue or red, things seemed a lot simpler. It seems ironic that an election campaign which saw more parties represented in front of live audience sessions than ever before, should have paved the way for a political landscape which is more one sided than ever - both south and north of the English/Scottish border. And more oppositional. One can only imagine how it will be for David Cameron, whose party wants to press ahead with more austerity measures, to face Scottish Nationalist MPs across the bench, since their main aim is to oppose austerity. One might almost feel a tiny shred of sympathy for him. Almost. 

Waking up to a blue and yellow "United" Kingdom, I felt I was sinking into a pit of gloom all day, and am still struggling. This is to do with many things - the fact so many people now need food banks, the gap between rich and poor, the nagging feeling the NHS isn't safe, etc. etc. 

More pressingly, however, I'm gloomy about the following nightmare scenario: David Cameron's 2017 referendum on Europe is fuelled by a UKIP surge (after Nigel's short holiday) and a majority are persuaded our best interests lie outside Europe. This further worsens our relationship with Scotland as they want to stay in Europe, leading to overwhelming pressure for another independence referendum. This time Scotland votes YES. The morning after, I wake up, not even to blue and yellow, but to a blue with an increasingly purple tinge. I am no longer an EU citizen, or even a citizen of the United Kingdom, but a little Englander instead. My passport will be doubly illegitimate. 

Prof. Linda Woodhead has carried out research that suggests Anglican clergy consistently find themselves positioned to the left of their congregations politically:
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/31-january/features/features/time-to-get-serious

She argues that England as a whole is now generally slightly right of centre, with Anglicans even more to the right politically. However, 'official church teaching is positioned much further to the left of both the population, and even more so, Anglicans.' I'm not sure what teaching she refers to, but she may have a point. Someone has quipped that Anglicans are 'Telegraph readers led by Guardian readers'. Why is this?

The calling to 'seek and to save the lost', is hard wired into clergy, so that any political party which appears to favour the wealthy over the poorest in society is going to be regarded with suspicion. Ideologically I find it much harder to map the Conservative vision onto a Christian vision, than I do a socialist vision. The liturgy of Ordination for new priests enjoins them to 'resist evil, support the weak and defend the poor'. After a while, it changes the way you see society. Of course, there are many ways of being lost, and lostness can equally apply to those with wealth who are spiritually poor and whose hearts are closed to those in genuine need, those who are unemployed through illness or disability; or who are working and still unable to live at any standard even remotely approaching comfortable. And you do see need when you're a minister. It sniffs you out.

As fortune, or the Lectionary, would have it, that gloomy Friday morning, 8 May, was the feast of Mother Julian of Norwich, whose most famous quotable quote was 'All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'. So I tried to take consolation from that. It's just that, as one of our typically slightly less than right wing church leaders tweeted: 'all manner of things may not be quite as well as some of us had hoped'.

afraid of secularisation?

Iconic spires litter the British countryside

Since the successful banning of prayers as part of the agenda of council meetings in Bideford, Devon, there has been a lot of talk about the ongoing march of secularisation in Britain. I occasionally wonder if the perception of secularisation is stronger amongst believers than amongst the general public. If you were asked 'Is Britain a secular democracy or a Christian country?' what would you answer? 

The Church of England is established in law but, as Richard Dawkins was at pains to point out recently, most people who self identify as 'Christian' in polls, rarely read the bible or go to church. Perhaps the National Secularist Society now want to move onto banning prayers at the beginning of Parliament, or promote the separation of Church and State so traditional Remembrance Day services in which we sing the National Anthem ('God Save the Queen' - a prayer) will become impossible.

Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has recently co-authored a book called 'We don't do God', a reference to Alistair Campbell's now infamous response to a journalist trying to get Tony Blair to discuss faith. This 'official' political line has never stopped politicians pronouncing, at news of tragic or violent deaths, that 'our thoughts and prayers are with the family...' 

However, politics and faith seem to be slightly easier bedfellows these days, with Cameron at least admitting that his Christian faith is a bit like a poor radio signal - 'it comes and  goes.' Where legal rulings have come down against individual Christians for practices which appear to be at odds with Equality Law, and those individuals are described as being 'persecuted', I'm afraid I do part company - being persecuted is what Christians in Nigeria, China and Egypt face and it involves physical harassment and often torture and death.

So how secularised are we?

Something that stayed with me recently on travels around the countryside was the proliferation of church spires visible from train and car windows. Apparently on TV shows about desirable locations they always show a shot of a spire as a kind of background reassurance that this place is a good place to live. I wondered about a countryside devoid of spires...this would be secularism taken to its logical extreme. 

Alain de Boton might be upset there were no churches to give his devotees a warm spiritual glow (without of course any actual substance) but what the absence of churches would say would be that there is no upward, vertical direction to our human existence, just a horizontal one as we (rightly) reach for human relationship and love. But our love is fuelled by His - 'we love because He first loved us' (1 John 4:19.) God made the first move and always does. A spire points us to heaven and suggests we need something more than just each other and the things we perceive with our senses. I think a lot of people who are at best lukewarm about the church, would be quite upset at the thought of a full blown secularisation in the UK. It just might prove to be less tolerant than the dear old C of E.