Cross-check what matters when voting

Three perspectives to inform how we vote wisely.

Sam Rylands

Sam recently completed a doctorate in political theology and is the Vicar of St Andrew's, Fulham Fields.

A pen draws a cross in a box on a ballot form.

What principles will shape your vote this Thursday? What or who will primarily guide your decision in the ballot booth? Podcaster and former political advisor Alastair Campbell’s old adage “we don’t do God” suggests that religion and politics don’t mix. Yet some of the most important movements for social and political justice in modern history had Christians at their heart. Think Wilberforce, Fry, Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, or the lesser-known but worth-a-google, Melanesian Brotherhood.

What wisdom might the Christian faith have to offer when thinking, not just about this election, but how to approach politics in general? Like lions on the England football shirt, all good things come in threes– so, here are three Christian perspectives that can inform political engagement.

First, earthly kingdoms are penultimate. God’s kingdom is ultimate.

Perhaps the moment that Jesus is drawn most explicitly to comment on the politics of his day, was when he was asked about paying taxes. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Given how frustrating it can be watching politicians avoid responding directly to any question posed, we might sympathise with those who wanted a direct answer here. But for Jesus, to say yes would position him as a traitor to the Jewish people who wanted to resist and subvert the authority of the Roman Empire. To say no, however, would be to signal revolutionary intentions to lead a rebellion against the occupying Roman force.

Set within this political trap, Jesus responds by asking for a coin and turns the tables by asking, “whose face is on this coin?” “Caesar’s,” comes the reply. “Then give to the emperor what belongs to him,” says Jesus. Yet, before we allow this response to justify opting out of political practice or hallow every existing ruling power, Jesus continues: “But give to God what belongs to God.” And what belongs to God, we ask? Well, as the writer of the ancient Psalms poetry put it, “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” Nothing short of the whole universe and beyond belongs to God, the creator of heaven and earth. So, in taking the coin, Jesus is not giving a blanket affirmation of Caesar’s rule, but challenges each and every earthly kingdom by relativising it in the light of God’s eternal kingdom. What has sustained so many Christians in challenging and renewing the political context of their day is the trust that before, behind, and beyond the rising and falling of each earthly authority stands God’s eternal kingdom. This kingdom is not in competition with the kingdoms of earth, vying to secure its own territory, but is a kingdom inaugurated by a king who wears a crown of thorns, forgives his executioners, and is raised from the dead to proclaim, “peace be with you!” The call to follow Christ within the political is to retain the perspective of this eternal life.

Second, politics needs a perspective beyond personal interest.

Holding an eternal perspective, however, is not to say this world or politics does not matter. In contrast, justice, compassion, and seeking a world as God intends it to be matters precisely because of eternity. How we live here and now has eternal significance. How we treat one another and care for all of creation has eternal significance. What belongs to God? We all do. Each person is made in God’s image. As a coin bears the image of its ruler, so we are marked by the image of God. When we consider our political responsibility, therefore, we must do so not with our own cares or concerns alone, or even primarily. Rather, we should ask what political responsibility we have towards others? How do my political decisions or actions impact my neighbour, both local and global– particularly those on the underside of the political power of the day? As the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterill, recently shared, “as a Christian, I’m hoping and I’m praying, that when I vote, when you vote, we won’t be placing our vote according to what’s best for us, but for what’s going to be best for God’s world.” If God’s power is displayed most fully in Christ who came, not to be served, but to serve, giving his life for the sake of the world, then political power cannot be a means for securing our own advantage over and against others. A Christian approach to politics recognises that my flourishing is bound up and inseparable from the flourishing of all others.

Third, let’s disagree well.

However, even if we could agree on the importance of politics beyond personal interest, we won’t all agree on what this looks like in practice. For instance, whilst two people might agree on the need to ensure a welfare safety net for the most deprived in society, their perspectives on how best to achieve this might differ greatly. Christians are not immune from such disagreements and (not that you would know it from the promises of each political party) no political system can deliver heaven on earth. How then are we to reconcile our political differences?

Returning to the theme of belonging and image bearing, the church bears the image of Christ. The church is the Body of Christ, comprised of many different members yet united, as one body. One of Jesus’ final acts on earth was to pray that the church would be one in the same way that God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one. Unity in difference. This image offers a counterweight to how political differences are played out across the news and social media platforms. Here, to vote or think differently is often to become an enemy, or even to forfeit one’s belonging as a bearer of God’s image, another person worthy of inestimable dignity and value.

Belonging to Christ, however, is to know that belonging together runs deeper than divisions of race, gender, societal status, and political tribalism. It is to trust that my sister or brother in Christ, with whom I might strongly disagree politically, is a gift to me, a showing of Christ, that I would otherwise fail to see on my own. If Christ really is the way, the truth, and the life, then the truth is beyond my final possession of it. This does not mean indifference or relativism. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes, “unity is Christ-shaped, or it is empty.” But if we can recognise one another placing our penultimate political judgements under the same scrutiny of Christ’s coming kingdom, then even in our disagreements, the church, bearing together in costly communion, reveals a belonging together that anticipates the ultimate: a world where things can only get better.

Article

America

Comment

Conspiracy theory

Politics

12 September 2025

6 min read

Charlie Kirk: the problem is not murder but anger

How to confront the rage in politics, in media, and in ourselves

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

An aerial view of a gazebo at the site of the Charlie Kirk shooting

The site of the shooting.

KSL News Utah, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The killing of Charlie Kirk has shaken most of us – including me. Over the past year or so, his pop-up debates on US university campuses kept appearing on my different social media channels, and they were fascinating. Here was a young, articulate conservative, venturing into college campuses – generally left-leaning, progressive places - opening up conversation, debate and challenge. He was opinionated, provocative, unafraid to voice unpopular opinions, generated hostility, but seldom seemed to show it himself. No question was off limits, he seemed to respect those who attacked him, and he made no secret of his Christian faith.

I agreed with some of what he said but by no means all of it – that’s the point of public debate. His views on gun control, Israel, and Donald Trump just for starters, would be some way from mine. But inviting debate on controversial issues, seeking to change other people’s minds by discussion and reasonable argument is the very heart of a well-functioning democracy. There are precious few spaces where progressives & conservatives talk – and Charlie Kirk’s campus debates were one of them. It’s tragic that they cost him his life.

In our times, such heinous acts are not usually committed by some secret, politically-motivated cabal, but often by an unhinged or deluded self-radicalised loner, influenced by fringe groups in politics or culture. In the UK, Axel Rudakubana, who killed three young girls in Southport, turned out not to be a terrorist after all (“he did not kill to further a political, religious or ideological cause” said the judge on sentencing) but a disturbed and lonely young man who killed for no apparent reason other than mental instability. The same was true for Ali Harbi Ali who stabbed the Conservative MP David Amess, Sirhan Sirhan who shot Robert F Kennedy, James L. Ray who murdered Martin Luther King, even (despite all the conspiracy theories) Lee Harvey Oswald who killed John F. Kennedy. All of them fit this category of lonely, unbalanced people who kill because of some grievance, sometimes loosely politically motivated, but usually acting alone. Conspiracy theories are alluring, but usually unfounded.

It's tempting when something like this happens to draw all kinds of wider political and cultural lessons. And there have been no shortage of them over these past days. “Because they could not prove him wrong, they murdered him” went one trope. The problem with that is that ‘they’ did not kill him. One young man - now in custody - did. To imply that every left-leaning person in the USA or elsewhere is somehow responsible for Kirk’s death ironically colludes with the darker motivations of this act.

It's Jesus who explains why. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

Sounds harsh. We all think murder is wrong, but losing your temper with a work colleague? Calling your neighbour an idiot because of who they vote for?

The saying points to the root of murder as rage. And boy, is there rage around today.

There are different kinds of anger. There is the red-hot furious kind where your blood boils and your temperature rises. Yet that kind of anger can settle into different mood - a hardened, determined malice, a fixed hatred of the person who provoked your anger in the first place and a determination to get your revenge, or to silence them once and for all. What both kinds have in common is the red mist that descends and remains, leaving an inability to see past the enmity, a refusal to see the humanity in the other person - the fact that they are, at the end of the day, a ‘brother’ as Jesus put it - a blindness to the essential commonality between you and the person you hate.

Anger is a dangerous thing for us humans. It deceives us into thinking that because we think we are in the right it gives us license to do despicable things.

Killings like this have always occurred, from Julius Caesar, to Abraham Lincoln, to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to Yitzhak Rabin. And they always will. No political solution will ever erase the possibility of a mentally disturbed or angry person taking it into their own hands to murder another human being, particularly one with political prominence.

Yet we can do something. When we build algorithms that encourage the strongest and most extreme views, a media culture that highlights argument and division, refuse to see the common humanity in people we disagree with, when we demonise the opposition and blame them for all the ills of society that we see, we sow the seeds that enable this kind of tragic event to happen.

Another deceptively simple piece of New Testament wisdom runs: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

It is good advice. Yes, we will get angry from time to time. But don’t let it take root. Sometimes a certain righteous anger can be a good thing – but it’s rare. Anger is a dangerous thing for us humans. It deceives us into thinking that because we think we are in the right (and we may well be) it gives us license to do despicable things. The heart of Christian wisdom on anger is that it is God’s prerogative to exercise wrath. Our anger, however initially righteous, tends to harden into something more sinister. God alone can sustain righteous anger that will truly bring justice.

The right response to the murder of Charlie Kirk, the response that reflects the Christian faith that was so important to him, is not to blame it on an entire group of people, to tar them with the brush of the deluded young man who committed this terrible deed, but to see again the essential humanity that we share with our enemies. It is to actively cultivate a culture that encourages restraint rather than rage. It is to learn to be ruthless with our own tendency to hold grudges, our own deep-seated hostility to those whose views we find repulsive. It is to learn to hate racism, but to love the racist, to hate crime, but to love the criminal.

To respond wisely is to recognise that even my enemy - whether progressive or conservative - is a human being created and loved by God, a fellow sinner like me, and to look for the things we have in common, more than our differences. When Jesus taught us to love our enemies, he may have asked us to do something supremely difficult, but it is the only thing that can overcome the kind of malice that led to the tragic death of Charlie Kirk.

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