E-Day: What is Politics For?
Today is Election Day. Millions of Britons will vote for one of the main political parties and millions more will try something a bit more exotic. Whatever else they do, most will (we are told) use the elections as a poll on Gordon Brown's leadership, the Labour government and politics in general.
There are obvious dangers in this. Elections should be about what they are about, not lightning rods for the amorphous storm clouds of public anger. Yet, it is understandable that in this instance people should be voting on wider issues. If nothing else, the expenses scandal has got people thinking about politics.
In spite of what they are thinking - ranging all the way from disdain to disgust - there is real opportunity here. If we are serious about re-invigorating British politics, we should take the time to ask what politics is actually for.
Recent decades have seen us freight politics and politicians with greater expectations than is reasonable. The Enlightenment narrative told us that health, wealth, education and social and geographical mobility would deliver utopia. In the twentieth century, each of these fell under the remit of government. The political process and those who ran it were left with an enormous burden of responsibility. When the process failed to deliver and politicians turned out to be as fallible as the rest of us, those who had put their trust in princes were left severely disenchanted.
The New Testament's understanding of political power speaks directly into this situation. As Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, observes in a forthcoming collection on God and Government, God intends the world to be ordered, but until he (not we) finally achieves this, he uses human authorities to bring a measure of his order to human affairs. Because this puts enormous temptations in the way of those authorities, God's people have the vital responsibility of calling to call them to account.
Thus understood, the Christian vision of political power should steer us away from the twin dangers of over-expectation (politics can deliver the good society) and cynicism (politicians are all corrupt), and towards a realistic but hopeful understanding of government.
However we vote today we would do well to maintain this vision of what politics can be expected to deliver - and of what role we have to play in helping it achieve it.
Nick Spencer
God and Government is published by SPCK in December 2009.
Links
Follow the BBC's Election 2009 coverage here
Read the Telegraph on the European Elections here
Explore The Guardian's series on 'A New Politics' here
Join the Theos debate on MPs and corruption here
A good balance to keep, although I'm more of the persuasion that "he uses human authorities" doesn't only apply "until" but always. In this view, there has to be a realistic optimism that says politics can deliver a better society even if not "the good society". My hopes in this area lead me to vote Green today.
Date:
2009-06-04 15:12:22
Author:
Julian