Christianity and Party Politics

Keeping the faith

Martin Steven

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415870832
• eBook ISBN: 9781136848384
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Christianity and Party Politics aims to discuss and evaluate the contemporary relationship between party politics and religion. The book focuses on the important role of the Church in both electoral politics and public policy formulation in the twenty first century, and argues that contrary to the established secularisation argument generally applied in Europe, religion continues to be a powerful influence, particularly within British politics.

Steven begins by examining the basics of electoral and party behaviour, how religious affiliation has traditionally influenced the way people choose to vote, and how recent surveys have suggested it continues to do so. Moving on to discuss how this affects the behaviour of party politicians, the role of the Christian church as an interest group is analysed; to what extent are these major societal institutions continuing to influence public policy decisions?

Broadening the debate out to the international context, the work evaluates how the relationship between party politics and religion has been affected by global factors, the 'war on terror' for example. This discussion is developed through analysing the influences on the way in which Christian groups choose to lobby and influence public policy. Steven suggests that increasing European integration is forcing Christian groups to become more pro-active in their approach, to combat the decline in the more 'automatic' domestic influence they previously enjoyed. In relation this to the influence of American politics is analysed, debating whether tactics from the more pluralist US system being adopted by Church leaders elsewhere?

Providing a valuable and long overdue contribution to the field, this work will provide readers with a detailed knowledge of how the worlds of politics and religion interact.

1
Introduction

The neglected dimension of British politics

In the late summer of 2008, the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, gave an interview to The Times newspaper in which he forecast that the ‘worst recession in 60 years’ was heading towards the United Kingdom (UK). In the early spring of 2010, Mr Darling gave another interview, this time to Sky News, in which he described how the ‘forces of hell’ had been released upon him from the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office as a consequence of his remarks (Sky News, 24 February 2010). There then followed a series of bullying accusations directed towards Mr Brown that were investigated by the head of the British civil service, Sir Gus O’Donnell – or ‘GOD’ as he is affectionately known around Whitehall, the heart of British government – who concluded that the accusations had no foundation. In and around the Palace of Westminster, or ‘The West Minster’ as it was historically known, such disagreements are commonplace – after all, modern British parties are ‘broad churches’ where a range of personalities and policies frequently collide.

The use of religiously charged metaphors is not unusual in British party politics – indeed, the opening paragraph of this book can itself act as a convenient metaphor for its main focus: the relationship between Christianity and party politics in the UK. While – prima facie – the daily business of British politicians is more preoccupied with the secular and not the sacred, scrape beneath the surface and the importance of religion, and particularly, Christianity, is never all that far away. Indeed, that simple truth constitutes the main contention of this monograph – the absence of conflict or division in relation to religion on mainland Britain should not be equated with an absence of significance, an error that many electoral and party scholars focusing on Britain have increasingly made.

Political scientists have, on the whole, chosen to ignore the role of religion in British politics – this is primarily an ‘institutionalist’ failing, with an over-emphasis on the decline of church attendance in the UK, the absence of a confessional party, and linked to this, any significant social conflict related to religion.¹ However, a more rational perspective reveals the true political influence of the British churches – voting behaviour continues to be significantly affected by Christian values, parties continue to sustain Christian groups, a state Church continues to sit and vote in Parliament in London, and more and more conscience-based issues increasingly pose ‘irrational’ challenges for policymakers. Further, while this book does not include comment on either the ‘economics of religion’ literature (i.e. the rationalist argument that church attendance is positively affected by an open, American-style religious market – see Stark and Iannaconne 1994), or the ‘free-rider’/prisoner’s dilemma game theory of the collective action paradigm (i.e. the inherently irrational nature of organisational behaviour – see Olson 1965), it applies a public choice framework, defining churches as interest groups who rationally wish to protect their collective interests within the context outlined above.

Indeed, the United Kingdom hosts a distinctive interface between politics and religion, unique among advanced industrial democracies in Western Europe and North America – yet has been badly neglected by political scientists working in the field. The relationship is both multifaceted and fluid as a consequence of Britain’s unwritten constitution and the nature of its party organisational framework. In Western Europe, the political sphere is frequently summarised as being ‘secularised’ – a straightforward relationship between one party, the Christian Democrats (CD), and one religion, Christianity, which is gradually weakening (Van Kersbergen 1994: 42–5; Norris and Inglehart 2004: 209–10). Meanwhile, in the United States, interaction between political and religious actors is dominated by evangelical Christian interest groups exerting influence in Washington as a result of developing mutually beneficial links with the Republican Party (see Wilcox 2006).

The UK context is rather different. The now former Prime Minister Gordon Brown – mentioned at the start of the chapter – personifies a peculiarly British tradition of being privately motivated by faith without necessarily publicly talking about it, or more to the point, making it part of his formal partisan identity.² Cultural, rather than spiritual, heritage becomes much more of a factor when it comes to British politicians approaching the topic of religion – they may be motivated by their faith to do good works and take part in public service – but they do not talk all that much about it. This can obviously be compared with both the United States (US), where politicians cannot be elected to high office without setting out in detail their religious value system and also many other Western European Union (EU) member states where parties adhere to a confessional label. However, that does not mean that the ‘religious factor’ is not relevant or important to British politics, simply that the relation ship is less two-dimensional.

First, the mechanics of Britain’s unwritten constitution have created a unique set of Church–State relations.³ The Church of England maintains bishops in the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords – known as the Lords Spiritual – while prior to devolution in 1999, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was commonly described as being the closest institution to a parliament outside of Westminster (Kellas 1989: 178). The churches have played a vital role in highly politicised issues such as the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century as well as more modern twentieth and twenty-first century campaigns urging society to tackle Third World debt and child poverty.

Second, the nature of the British party ideologies has created a much more open relationship between religious interests and parties, compared with other EU member states and the United States. There is no Christian Democratic tradition – the right-of-centre party, the Conservatives, is independent of any religious affiliation, and there are Christian groupings in all three major parties. The Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF) promotes family values, the Christian Socialist Movement (CSM) advocates social justice while the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum (LDCF) endorses moderation, tolerance and progressive ideas. So, in many ways, church identity transcends partisan affiliation in Britain, and not vice versa – as the Republicans do in the US, or the Christian Democrats do across Europe.

In the wider context of the EU, the nature of the relationship between political and religious actors creates a much more rigid structure, and one that is experiencing a discernible trend of secularisation – the State or dominant Church will frequently keep out of political debates, primarily because it is actually unnecessary to do so owing to Christian Democratic party organisations, yet CD support is generally in decline.⁴ They continue to function as major political actors in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, for example, but place much less emphasis on ‘Christian’ issues, while in France, Spain and Italy, they have been superseded in importance by ‘people’s’ parties or equivalent blocs (Van Hecke and Gerard 2004; Duncan 2006). It should also be noted that, outside the UK, the Northern European tradition of sustaining Protestant state churches has also somewhat dissipated – in Sweden, for example, the Lutheran Church was disestablished in 2000, and this is also being actively considered in Norway after the Government set up a commission to look into the issue in 2006. Meanwhile, the church tax procedure in Germany has been substantially altered over the decades, and it is now optional. Similarly, in the US, a strictly regulated relationship exists between Church and State, which in turn can be linked directly to the now established relationship that exists between Republicans and the Christian Right.⁵

None of this is to argue that religion matters more to British politics than in the rest of Europe or America, or that it is more influential, but simply that it does not fit neatly into a narrow classification, and specifically, the ‘secular Europe’ sociological argument (Habermas and Derrida 2003). The ‘new orthodoxy’ of the 1960s saw scholars view religion as being either irrelevant or contrary to democratic politics in Western Europe (Berger 1967; Martin 1978). Meanwhile, in the US, the role of religion in politics is high profile but also highly controversial with fundamentalist Christians forming interest groups to lobby government over emotive single issues such as abortion or same sex marriage. The British case, then – among other things – illustrates the meaningful conceptual difference between ‘freedom from religion’ and ‘religious freedoms’ (see Table 1.1 for a typology among advanced industrial democracies).

Table 1.1 Church–State relations versus Christian parties

This book provides a first attempt to reverse the neglect of the religious dimension of British party politics on the false assumption that the ‘new orthodoxy’ had led to other variables becoming more important. In the UK, churches have an independent role to play in politics – they neither represent a single issue or interest, nor do they represent a party. Linked to this, the parties do not seek to monopolise Christianity as a label or policy platform. There is also no equivalent of politicians such as Joschka Fischer (German Greens) or Sophie in’t Veld (Dutch Liberals) in the UK – politicians who are ‘politically’ atheist and serve in parties that are also publicly/formally secular. The British sociologist, Steve Bruce, argues that secularisation in the UK is irreversible (2002: 73) – however, there is no consistent statistical evidence that supports it becoming any less important to British politics. Policymakers continue to respect the role of religion in politics because they recognise that a substantial proportion of British voters continue to relate their religious views to their political views. It may be difficult to quantify precisely how influential all of that is, but what is not in doubt is the fact that it is influential.

Prior to the emergence of the ‘third way’, and Tony Blair’s modernisation of the democratic left, many debates in British politics effectively centred around the disjuncture between Thatcherism and Socialism, and the role of redistributive taxation in relation to individual wealth. In 2010 – and the end of the New Labour project – the key issues in British politics are politicians’ expenses and illegal wars. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s new challenge is not the question of how to redistribute societal assets but their vision of how the role of the State as a whole relates to individuals. Kidd (2009) argues that the whole notion of ‘personal responsibility’ is one that modern British politicians are attempting to capture electorally. For so long as that continues, religion will matter to British politics⁶ – both to its parties and to its parliaments.

A separate but related dimension to this is the relationship between Christianity and the quality of representative democracy in Britain. The key contention of this aspect of the research is that the UK can be placed much closer to the US than to the rest of Western Europe, in terms of the role religion plays in the public sphere. The continental European tradition of secularism⁷ has substantially less resonance in Britain – no constitutional attempt has been mounted to protect the British State or its citizens from the Church, and there has been no need for a confessional party to develop either. It is possible to refer to common ‘Anglo-American’ values in this respect where Christianity is regarded as complementary to modern democracy, rather than being in conflict with it – and this book will explore this idea in more depth throughout each chapter.

The UK is – ostensibly – a secularised country with falling levels of active church attendance, yet institutional religion continues to play an important and prominent part in democratic life. Eisenstadt’s ‘multiple modernities’ thesis (2000) can be applied to Britain where centuries-old Christian traditions mix with postmodern secularism. But why is this? Christianity and Party Politics supports the argument that the answer lies with British public opinion and voting behaviour – despite the fact that the extant literature in the field has increasingly neglected this aspect on the false assumption that the ‘new orthodoxy’ had led to other variables becoming more important. Not only is that not necessarily true, but the decline in importance of religion within this context is also misrepresented.

The context: British elections and parties

The UK’s longstanding two party system, sustained by a majoritarian ‘First-Past-the-Post’ electoral system, has deep roots in the sort of social cleavages that help to define other European countries, along with a lengthy tradition of forming single party governments. Operating in the context of the ‘Westminster model’, parties hold power consecutively on their own, generally without coalitions, rarely serving more than two parliamentary terms under the same leader.⁸ Labour and the Conservatives can be likened to the Republicans and Democrats in the US, or other parties in anglophone countries that do not have proportional representation electoral systems. The party that wins the most seats (more than the other parties combined) also wins sole power in the House of Commons, and proceeds to push through its legislative programme with very little opposition.

In this respect, the power of the party is highly significant in British politics as, ultimately, there is no written constitution or separation of powers to prevent the governing administration doing what it likes. It is also the party to which elected politicians owe their first loyalty – in America, candidates choose their party, working their way up through state-level legislatures. In other parts of Western Europe, parties are obviously powerful (for example, the Netherlands has an especially strong list system) but there also exists much more decentralisation (with the exception of France, which has an elitist approach to training politicians, in any case). However, in the UK, a career in politics first and foremost means a career in a party, and the self-interest of parties and overall quality of democracy are not necessarily always synonymous.

The Conservative Party is the oldest political party in the world, capable of tracing its origins back to the civil wars, with a parliamentary membership sometimes described as being the ‘most sophisticated electorate in the world’ due to its MPs’ ability to vote for the leader that is most expedient at that particular moment. It also wears John Stuart Mill’s description of it as ‘by the law of their existence the stupidest party’ as something of a badge of honour (Considerations on Representative Democracy, 1861) – the ‘stupidity’ in question referring to a distrust of any fanciful ideological baggage, as opposed to a lack of capacity for intelligence. After thirteen years in opposition – and a succession of four different leaders – the party regained power in the May 2010 General Election, as part of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats,⁹ with David Cameron becoming Prime Minister. Mr Cameron’s ability to blend traditional Tory values with twenty-first century presentational qualities is seen as his main asset, although the victory in 2010 was far from convincing. The three pillars/factions of the party centre around first, the merits of the free market economy; second, ‘one nation’ Conservatives who believe in the importance of civil society and social cohesion; third, traditionalist Tories who believe in the Union, the Royal Family and the established churches. The second strand was overtaken by the first when Margaret Thatcher became leader – not really a ‘conservative’ at all, Mrs Thatcher promoted free market values and deregulation in a radical and unprecedented way. Meanwhile the third strand lurks, providing the party with a socially conservative base that does not exist in any of the other main parties.

The Labour Party grew out of the British trade union movement, with which it maintains close links, albeit slightly less close following the leadership of Tony Blair. Blair, along with erstwhile allies Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, created ‘New Labour’, after the General Election defeat of 1992, and the sudden death of their leader, John Smith, in 1994. Repealing ‘Clause Four’ – the section of the party constitution that committed it to a redistribution of wealth in society – was both crucial and problematic, and continues to provide the party with ideological divisions. From a ‘Blairite’ perspective, it was about moving the party forward and towards the centre while still retaining its social democratic credentials first established by the likes of Hugh Gaitskell and Tony Crosland; for others, it was the abandonment of the entire raison d’être of the British Labour movement. After all, when Mrs Thatcher was asked what she considered to be her greatest legacy, she replied ‘New Labour’.

The Liberal Democrats are an important party in the UK, but have always been badly affected by the majoritarian electoral sy...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Religion and Politics
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 The electoral context
• Part 2 The Christian lobby
• Part 3 The religious issues
• Notes
• References
• Index