Finding God through Politics

The Bishop of Chelmsford, Rt Revd John Gladwin, gave the following address at St John's College Cambridge on 17 February 2008.

After the extraordinary fuss surrounding the remarks of the Archbishop of Canterbury about the relationship of British Law to Sharia Law, who could be in any doubt but that the mixture of religious faith and political life is extremely powerful.   Indeed, in some situations that mix can be lethal.  Both religious belief and political ideology stir up the deepest passions within the human heart.

There is nothing new in this.  St John’s account of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion is highly charged.  It is the most political of the four Gospels record of these events.   St John confronts the issue of power -   Pilate’s power, the power of the religious establishment and the power of God.

There are still huge numbers of people who hope that the 20th century solution to the challenge of how religion and politics mix can be made to work in the 21st century.  Basically the solution is to secularise – to keep the two separate – even by constitutional convention.   We can see the anxieties this creates by what is happening in Turkey – par excellence the model secular state in a Moslem culture.  Thousands take to the streets to defend the secular model when the government opens the way to young Moslem women students being able to wear the traditional scarf on University campus’.

There are other forces at work in the cultures of today’s world.  Whilst we were in Palestine/Israel this past November we noted the growing power of religious orthodoxy among our Jewish friends and heard that for many Palestinian young people the secular option had not delivered so they were turning to Islam. Young women are again wearing traditional Islamic dress.   An almost universal criticism of the Oslo accords on Palestine/Israel in the 90’s was their exclusion of religious leadership and life which many thought had opened the way for extremist opinion to hold the field.  In other words failure to address an issue that is there opens the door for less desirable outcomes.

So the Archbishop is right to raise the question and begin to open the door to the possibility of some new provisions.  It will not do to allow the emotions raised by the use of the words ‘Sharia Law’ or the retreat behind the slogan of ‘British’ values to allow the fog to descend on these matters.   We may well want to debate with the Archbishop about the principles and ideas he is putting forward – to avoid the question is not an option.

We see in John’s account how the event – Jesus’ trial and crucifixion – changed the way faith and politics were perceived.  After this event there could be no return to where things had been before it all happened in this way.   The failures of the past arrangements were made manifest in this act of both religious and political injustice.  The future required had to be about something different.  What had happened to Jesus and the claim of the church that he had risen from the dead demanded new ways of thinking.

The first thing that comes to the surface is the experience of finding the love of God in the face of the suffering and rejected one – the victim of injustice.  The power of God is here.   That has been a great motivating force among Christians down the centuries to learn to stand with the marginalised, the excluded, the poor, the victim – those whose faces do not fit.   It is easy for the forces of power in our world to stereotype people and communities whose faces do not fit.   The religious leaders found Jesus to be a threat.   So what did they say to Pilate?  Not Jesus is a threat to our religious traditions.  They portrayed him as a threat to political stability and authority.   The life of God – the love of God – the power of God – in such moments is to be found in the lives of those being victimised.  That is why politics, in a society seeking to maintain justice and the rule of law – has to struggle with the experience of those on the margins.

There is a second thing.  The power of God is manifestly working through the processes of the politics of the moment.  Pilate and the authorities are part of the mystery of the love of God working to redeem the world.   That is why Jesus always treated them with respect – even when they were at their worst.   It is far too simple to have God meet us from the margins as if God has nothing to do with the dilemmas of power in the world.   The whole of the Biblical story speaks of the purpose of God for the redemption of the world working through the often muddled and sometimes corrupt business of governance.   Pilate, Jesus noted, would have no power unless it had been given to him by God.

That is why the church has to take its place in the ground between the excluded and those who wield authority in our world.  In a democratic society whose values are rooted in our Christian tradition it is especially important that the church facilitates the conversation between those who feel themselves on the margins and the heart of power in our society – both politics and culture.

That is exactly what the Archbishop of Canterbury was seeking to do in that now famous lecture the week before last.   Only when that engagement takes place do we open the door to change and a different sort of future.   If we can get the encounter between faith and politics right we may find ourselves drawn more deeply into the love of God in Christ.  It is full of risk.  It can be messy and even nasty.  But, as St John teaches us in his Gospel, God is at work in all of this.  That never ceases to amaze human life.

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