Who would Jesus vote for?

The world has been shocked-
people will remember this day

Yes the day Rowan Williams took a stand about something.


For those of you who don't know...
The Archbishops of York and Canterbury (John Sentamu and Rowan Williams Respectively) have issued a joint statement, asking people to not vote BNP, but to get out and vote- for someone.

As statements go, this isn't that controversial. When they attacked the finance sector in the begining of the recession you would have been forgiven for thinking 'they've picked a winner hear, everyone will agree'- however somehow people still managed to complain.

This time allying yourself against xenophobic racists is a little harder to see as wrong.
Unsurprisingly the BNP have complained. I did a quick google for "archbishops oppose bnp" and found this well argued piece.
I did find a better article here.

There does seem to be some criticism that they told people how to vote, and that they don't represent the public.
In short I think-
1-they just seem to argue that the BNP is not a good choice, (which given the way elections have gone in the past, appears to be the view of the public)- rather than say it is moral to vote labour/tory/lib-dem etc.
2-No they are not representing the public. They are representing the church of England, and it is for them to preach to the church (and public if they will listen).
The argument 'you need to be represenative of the public' doesn't hold water, particularly as the BNP are clearly not the representative of the majority of the public (not being in the top 3 parties that people remember), and so by there own argument should just keep silent.


Anyway they have tried to make a stand, and actually I think they're onto a winner.
However I think they should have said a little more, so here is my addition - mostly influenced from a lecture the Bishop of London Richard Chartres gave a while ago...
[not word for word, but ver close]
"..in this country the three main strands of christianity can be seen -broadly- as being Anglican, Roman Catholic, and free-church - largely represented by Methodists and Baptists.
Each one of them has FAILED to do what they intended to do,
that is they have failed to to achive monopoly of religious adherence in this country. For the reason we are truly blessed.
*mild confusion goes round the room*
Let me contrast for you the situation in Russia-before the revolution the church was the Russian Orthodox church, and the state was the church. To be Russian was to be Orthodox Christian.
But then with the excesses of the Tsars, revolution came into the air - at which point the general populace apposed the state, and by correlation the church.
And so for many years under the communist rule, no christianity was seen as publically acceptable, indeed it was banned - but with also the support of the populace (in the whole at least).

In this country we have not had that situation, our trade unions leaders have been methodist lay-preachers. You have been able to oppose the state without opposing Christ.
And that is a very good thing indeed, for the church is meant to speak prophetically to the state...."

For that reason we do not have a party in this country that can be seen as 'the christian party'. Because actually what government would Jesus vote for?
We can probably work out many of his values, but how would he implement them? He was never into government/politics himself, and so we can only conjecture.
And so one christian conjectures that the Conservatives actually are able to deliver the good moral leadership, whilst another feels that Labour is the fairest government and the conservative party proved its folly in the 90s, and yet another goes for the green party.

And from that- it seems completely right for the CofE leaders to condemn the BNP as fraudulantly claiming to be the 'christian' party, (not to mention that the first few chapters of ACTS show many instances of the Jews (Peter in particular) being shown that they need to be more inclusive of these 'outsiders' i.e. stop being racist and only supporting Jews).
It is also perfectly fine for the ArchBishops to NOT say who we should vote for, but instead encourage us to make up our own minds based on the wisdom we have recieved and the morals we have.


If the BNP thought they could get away with a poster of 'who would Jesus vote for' and not have a large christian organisation complain at them, they really need a reality check...
and a good sermon.