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.

Essay

Art

Culture

Film & TV

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Time

1 January 2025

5 min read

Symbols in culture – the interface between the Seen and the Unseen

Open your eyes.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles.

an all seeing eye hovers above a renaissance style picture of the supper at Emmaus.

Pontormo, via Wikimedia Commons.

As December gives way to January, we become conscious of time rolling on from one year into the next.

The moment is often marked by that most famous image of the New Year: the Roman god Janus standing sentinel at the threshold; two-faced, gazing back into the past, but also forwards into the future.

The double-faced god is a striking symbol to depict this interface of time. But we also often find symbols at another important interface: the place where the Seen meets the Unseen.

Symbols have always existed at this touch-point - between the spiritual and the material. We might even say between heaven and earth. Symbols possess a power which goes beyond the strictly rational. They are more than their constituent parts.

In the moment when Jesus effectively instituted the church, he tells his disciple Peter: “Behold, I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Here, Jesus not only uses symbolic language with his image of the key, he also assigns Peter (and so the church) a divinely-appointed role: to stand there at this threshold between the seen and the unseen, and to have an effect.

The mission then, to occupy and influence this frontier between both realms, is significant. It’s worth considering – especially at this liminal time of year - what a culture’s symbols say about its direction of travel. What are the symbols that saturate our conscious and unconscious world? What effect are they intended to have by their creators? What influence do they actually have in the seen and unseen?

Our culture is saturated with symbols that were always meant to exert influence in the unseen. Some consciously; other maybe less so.

The notion that symbols act on reality is not a merely Christian concept. Far from it. In many cultures, the origins of written communication have often been interwoven with both mystery and magic. The futhark, for example – the basis of the Old Norse runic alphabet in Scandinavia – developed directly out of shamanistic practices. In a word: witchcraft. Certain symbols were graven into material objects in order to have a specific effect. A rune for protection carved into the haft of a warrior’s axe; a rune for fertility on a woman’s comb or belt. Symbols to curse; symbols to bless. All intended to manipulate the reality around them. Effectively they acted as a kind of spell.

Roll the wheel of history forward a bit and we see the cross itself became a powerful symbol across the developing civilizations of the world, especially in Europe. Making the sign of the cross became synonymous with an invocation of God’s blessing or else protection against some evil. An outcome all the more extraordinary when one considers the origin of its use – a shameful incident of execution, standing on a lonely hill.

Similarly, the Crescent represents one of the great symbols of history, often in antagonism with the Cross. Think of the symbolic reversals still visible in the architecture of some parts of Spain. When the Iberian peninsula fell to Moorish conquest in the early eight century, the cross was torn down, all symbols of Christian faith effaced, only to return eight centuries later with the Reconquista. Today, you can see still the Cross surmounted on clearly Moorish architecture, a visible sign of those historic conflicts.

Such warring symbols of unseen spiritual realities are hardly consigned to the history books. Witness perhaps the most live example playing out all across the cities of Europe. The Star of David opposed and disdained by those waving black, green, red and white flags.

Nor is the clash of symbols simply a matter between the great religions of the world. The rainbow flag represents a certain positioning within the realm of the unseen wherever it is planted. In other contexts, our culture is saturated with symbols that were always meant to exert influence in the unseen. Some consciously; other maybe less so.

Apple’s ‘apple’ is not just an apple. It is an apple with a bite taken out of it. Elsewhere, symbolic representations of devil horns proliferate – to be expected on heavy metal t-shirts and album covers; perhaps less so throughout myriad children’s TV shows and movies across our streaming channels. Yet they are there.

The ‘One-Eye’ symbol has been associated variously with freemasonry, Luciferanism, Satanism and the occult. It appears in anything from pop videos to movie posters to political protest logos (“Just Stop Oil” anyone?). Even a ubiquitous pose-for-camera for celebrity photo-shoots. Once you clock it, you’d amazed how prevalent this symbol is across our culture.

Does it signify anything? Or nothing at all?

You have to assume that the creators of such symbols don’t include them by accident. Some are hidden in plain sight; others are brazen and bold. Either way, they are meant to be there. But why?

Symbols have always been used in the casting of spells. These days, we give so much head space to the consumption of culture, myriad symbols flashing in and out of our consciousness as we scroll ever onward, have we any idea what spells we are subjecting ourselves to – irrespective of whether we believe they are effective or not?

Against such murkiness, perhaps this season of Christmas rolling into the New Year is a good time to consider what some might consider the ultimate symbol appearing in our reality of the Seen: the Incarnation.

In a way, Christ identified himself as the visible interface between the seen and the unseen when he said: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

And yet, the Incarnation also transcends the mere symbolic. Yes, Christ points to an unseen reality, but he is also the ‘thing’ itself. He is both Seen and Unseen in one. Not a symbol pointing to something else, but the thing to which all symbols ultimately point: the central reality in the universe where God and creation meet.

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