Wednesday 13 January, 2010

UK
Politics

By Charles Gardner

Evidence for the growing importance of the Christian vote – not only in the United States, but now also in Britain – comes with a video newly produced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as he launches his election campaign.

Already well behind in the polls, the ‘son of the manse’ whose father was a minister calls on Christians to stand up for their beliefs in public life – somewhat paradoxical given that his Government is being criticised for attempting to quash religious freedom.

“I don’t subscribe to the view that religion should somehow be tolerated but not encouraged in public life, that you can somehow ask people to leave their faith at the door when they enter a town hall or a Commons chamber.”

He cited “debt cancellation”, child poverty and environmentalism as the issues on which Christian churches and charities have acted as “Britain’s conscience”, adding: “The lessons of the gospels need not be kept separate from political life.

“If Christians engage in politics then all of us together can build a society where wealth helps more than the wealthy, good fortune serves more than the fortunate, and riches enrich not just some of us but all.”

Fine sounding words, but the above issues he cited are all acceptable areas of social policy with which few disagree. In other words, he’s happy when Christianity is all about socialism, but wary of it when it comes to issues of personal faith and morality.

When he granted a 15-minute exclusive interview with Premier Radio, the London-based Christian station now accessible across the country on digital, Victoria Laurence was told what questions he wouldn’t answer: “I wasn’t allowed to ask him about his own faith, his family, what he prays about or if he prays before making policy decisions.”

Suddenly those high-sounding words ring hollow. But socialists who leave God at the door – the cause of many of our problems – need to be reminded that Christianity is a ‘package’, not a pick ‘n’ mix assortment of sweet ideas. It is not OK to take the social applications you like and leave out the rest including vital codes of conduct on areas such as discipline, sexual behaviour, attitude to finance, neighbours, family and forgiveness.

And it is under this Government that we have witnessed the relentless pursuit of easier abortion, steps towards euthanasia and the constant erosion of free speech with Christians discriminated against in the workplace to satisfy political correctness that seeks to avoid offending minorities such as Muslims and homosexuals.

And whatever happened to the New Labour promise to tackle the causes of crime? The scale of ‘Broken Britain’ has been laid bare in a Yorkshire Post investigation revealing that young people in children’s homes and foster care in the region are being convicted by the police at the rate of more than one a day. And Yorkshire schools have been forced to exclude pupils for violence 26,000 times in the last three years alone.

Experts blame family breakdown, an over-emphasis on children’s rights and a decline in moral standards and say a raft of government initiatives have failed to tackle the problems. Official figures show the number of broken homes is increasing across the UK and the proportion of children living with married parents fell from almost three-quarters in 1997 to less than two-thirds last year.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who heads the influential Centre for Social Justice think-tank, said young people were more likely to turn to crime if they had experienced family breakdown, gone through the care system or been excluded from school.

And Norman Wells, director of the Family Care Trust, added that it was no coincidence that the rise in youth crime had accompanied “a large-scale abandonment of moral absolutes, an emphasis on self-gratification and self-expression, the vigorous promotion of a children’s rights culture, and the fragmentation of the family.

“There is an established link between the breakdown of traditional family structures and rising levels of youth delinquency and crime,” he said. “Simply put, if there were less family breakdown and more family stability, there would be less crime.”

But our government is repeatedly undermining family life, and marriage in particular, going to great lengths to emphasise the acceptability of all types of ‘partnerships’ – gay or otherwise – and encouraging us to leave our children with minders while our women go out to work. And the latter isn’t even helping the economy, now in dire straits.

In the first of a so far excellent new BBC 2 series on The British Family in which she tackled the state of post-war marriage, Kirsty Young touches on the subject of women in full-time employment, an issue forecast by one expert as having disastrous affects.

While acknowledging the significant role played in rising divorce rates by World War II, she pointed out that most women were happy as housewives in the 1950s when only one in five went to work. “My own mum was at her happiest as a housewife and a mother.”

Interestingly, she quoted a young Margaret Thatcher as saying that she believed the idea that the family suffers when mum goes to work was “much mistaken”.

And the sixties did not swing for everyone, Kirsty said. It was in fact “an era shrouded in shame and silence for some” as a result, among other things, of sex outside marriage.

She added: “In pursuit of our individual happiness we run the risk of de-stabilising our families.”

The high immediate post-war divorce rate, to some extent stemmed by the work of the National Marriage Guidance Council, returned with a vengeance in the sixties.

Yes, I know, some will point to the scandal in which Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson now finds himself embroiled with allegations of financial impropriety involving his wife and fellow MP Iris who has shocked the political world through revelations of having engaged in a sexual relationship with a teenager 40 years her junior. All the more shocking, of course, is that the couple are known to be devout Christians. But scandal and impropriety do not negate the commandments of God; they only emphasise our fallibility and, yes, sometimes hypocrisy.

The positive aspect of this debacle is that at least Mr Robinson is seen to bring God into the equation amid confessions of repentance and forgiveness – and those are good Christian virtues too. None of us is perfect. Even David, the ancestor of Christ and Israel’s greatest king, scandalised the religious world of his day with blatant adultery and, even worse, murder as he tried to cover up his earlier sin by digging himself deeper into the mire. But he repented, and was restored.

Back to our own lawless generation, Norman Wells adds: “Two-parent families are in a far better position to monitor anti-social behaviour which often leads to more serious crime.”

If we were really to tackle the causes of crime, it would require nothing short of a social revolution in our thinking and culture, with discipline re-introduced to the home and classroom (where corporal punishment has been effectively banned by our bleeding-heart liberals) and capital punishment re-introduced for murder.

The Bible, which advises that if you spare the rod, you will spoil the child, adds these wise words: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

Photo: Wikipedia