Article

Creed

General Election 24

Politics

3 July 2024

5 min read

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.

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Comment

Freedom of Belief

Politics

War & peace

17 June 2025

5 min read

Iranians long for regime change, but weigh up the cost

Dreams are easier to utter than act upon

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Smoke rises from the site of a bomb amid a high wide view of a city at twlight

Tehran.

I received an unexpected response from an Iranian friend of mine this week after asking how he and others were feeling in the wake of the ongoing crisis.

My friend - like many, a staunch advocate of regime change in Iran - told me that despite his long-standing enmity against the Islamic Republic and its leaders, the conflict had if anything brought Iranians together against a new, common enemy.

For while he and many others would love to live in an Iran that offered them greater freedoms, they are also fiercely proud of their country and, as he put it, will seek to defend it at all costs.

Both this friend and other Iranians that I have spoken to since the bombs began to fall last Friday have highlighted how Iran’s “territorial integrity” has been breached by Israel, in violation of international law.

And so while some might perceive an attack on a tyrannical regime and its nuclear arsenal to be an exception to this rule, it should hardly surprise us that those within the country affected may take a different view.

Both the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the exiled crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi - whom many perceive to be the most realistic leader of any new revolution - have used their platforms to call on Iranians to seize this moment to rise up and reclaim their land.

Yet, with bombs falling all around them and a weakened regime still known to be capable of brutally responding to any attempts to revolt, such dreams are easier to utter than to act upon.

Meanwhile, as Tehranis are encouraged to flee their city and some have already seen homes, loved ones or livelihoods destroyed, it may well be that Iranians have other things on their minds at present than attempting to overthrow their oppressors.

One very present concern for many Iranians at the moment will be the fate of loved ones who remain in prisons as the aerial bombardment continues.

Tehran’s Evin Prison, for example, is on the edge of District 3, which residents were told they must evacuate on Monday ahead of another onslaught.

But as the Australian-British former political prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert noted in an interview with Sky News, the prisoners in Evin had no option to flee and instead found themselves locked inside tiny cells, hearing the sound of bombs and rumours of what was taking place but without any real clarity.

“Nobody's going to have a clue what's going on, and it's utterly terrifying to think that you're locked in a place, you can't flee, you hide, you can't take action to protect yourself, and you don't have access to information,” she said.

There is not even any guarantee, Moore-Gilbert noted, that these prisoners will be being taken care of by the prison guards, who will no doubt have other things on their mind.

“There are literally thousands, dozens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people in prison in Iran, most of them Iranian civilians,” she said. “The prison population inside that country is enormous. The conditions are dire in the best of days. Do they even have electricity? Do they have running water? What on earth is going on? My heart goes out to them.”

Among the many prisoners in Evin are a handful of Christians, detained or serving sentences on charges related to their religious activities but framed as “actions against national security”.

Like many Iranians, Christians, as a long-oppressed minority, have every right to hope for a change in the country and a future Iran that would better embody the prophetic words from the Book of Isaiah, believed to have found their fulfilment in Jesus, of “freedom for the captives” and “good news for the poor”.

And yet Iranian Christians must also wrestle with the biblical command to “submit to the governing authorities” and to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”.

It is, then, perhaps no surprise that in recent years, as hopes of regime change have regularly come and gone, that Iran’s Christians have tended to focus their prayers instead on the increase of “God’s kingdom”, as many more Iranians have continued to find new hope in the Christian faith.

Such hopes, in theological terms, are built on firmer foundations than any dreams for a change in the nature and essence of tyrannical regimes like the one currently still clinging onto power in Tehran.

And whatever the future brings, when this current crisis is over, the Iranians who have found their ultimate source of hope and joy in Jesus Christ will know that they still have something to hold onto, whatever they may have lost: the promise of God’s presence with them today and a bright future for tomorrow.

It may be that another revolution is what many Iranians crave, but there is also something revolutionary, I believe, about the prayer that Jesus taught, which leaves the ultimate course of our lives in the hands of God.

“Your will be done,” Christians have prayed throughout the centuries; and Iranian Christians will continue to pray this whatever the future holds for them.

It is perhaps little wonder, then, that it is the Gospel message that Iranian Christians have continued to preach, in spite of persecution, and regardless of whichever direction the whims of popular support have turned.

One of the passages that an Iranian colleague of mine most frequently recites in our team meetings is the call for us to “act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God”, and I was reminded of this as I noted the response of British-Iranian bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani to the current crisis.

The bishop, the bookies’ favourite to be the next Archbishop, prayed simply for the Lord to “have mercy”.

As a lover of The Lord of the Rings, I am also reminded of the line from Gandalf, when Frodo is claiming that Bilbo should have finished off Gollum when he had the chance:

“Do not be too quick to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

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