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

Culture

Freedom

Justice

11 September 2025

4 min read

Free speech for me, but not for thee

A hate crime hoo-ha and the limits of free speech

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Two brown bears fight while baring their teeth.

Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash.

It was the the legendary Manchester Guardian editor CP Scott who said “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” His dictum hay have held a century ago, but it doesn’t stand up today. In post-truth societies, facts are anything but sacred. And, leaving aside for now whether the opposite of sacred is freedom, comment isn’t free either.

I don’t mean in the sense of whether or not you have to pay for it – you’re not paying for this, for example – but whether comment, as Scott took it for granted to be, is an act of freedom. Graham Linehan, the Father Ted comedy writer, temporarily lost his freedom to a squad of police officers at Heathrow airport for a social media post he’d tweeted: "If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

The subsequent hoo-ha has precisely been about whether Linehan should have been free to make his comment. The police, under prevailing hate-crime laws, felt obliged to arrest him. Subsequently the media, politicians and assembled chatterati – even the Met Police commissioner weighed in – wailed how ridiculous it all was and, adopting serious-face, what a threat it represented to free speech, which is one of the most potent graven images of our time. Facts may be free these days, but comment is sacred.

Except it also depends whose comments and opinions are deemed sacred. So some people’s speech is more free than others. Take the Free Speech Union (FSU), founded by the liberally-challenged Toby Young. Here, right-wing freedom of speech is inalienable and non-negotiable. So silly intrusions into the views of Islamophobes and critics of trans-activism? Outrageous. But supporters of Palestine Action (PA), nearly 1,000 of whose supporters had to be arrested by police for peacefully holding placards? Not a word. They’re all lefties, you see.

As Hugo Rifkind pointed out in The Times, neo-conservative and FSU director Douglas Murray was asked by Daniel Finkelstein whether his free-speech principles extended to PA’s superannuated supporters. Apparently not. And Reform UK’s Richard Tice simultaneously believes that protesters outside asylum hotels are “part of who we are”, but that the correct response to PA protesters is to “arrest and charge the lot. Jail them.” Forgive me, but I thought a central tenet of faith in free speech is that it’s consistently applied?

“Part of who we are ” used to be a tolerant, inclusive and pluralistic society. Not just campaign for our lot and bang up all the rest. And I’d contend that we should self-regulate freedom of speech rather than legislate for it. The Met Police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, seems to agree with that: “Regulations that were understandably intended to improve policing and laws that were intended to protect the vulnerable are now tying officers’ hands, removing appropriate professional discretion — which some call common sense.”

That “common sense” is much beloved of freedom-of-speech warriors at places such as FSU. But they always get to define what it is and who gets to benefit from it, because it’s tribal. “If they pick on you, we’ll pick on them,” declares Young on his FSU website. It’s freedom for my tribe to say what it likes, not yours. And freedom of speech is meaningless if it’s not for everyone, including your political enemies.

Where we agree is that freedom of speech should not be adjudicated by the law. There are enough laws without legalising what people can’t say or write. Where, I imagine, we disagree is that it shouldn’t be adjudicated by Young and Murray and Tice either. As matters stand, we have those who want to legislate for the right to free speech and those who campaign to restrict it. Nothing can come of that.

By regulating ourselves, the risk is run of sounding conservatively nostalgic for a golden age of civility that never really existed, or rather that was imposed by social authority. It’s the sort of proposed solution you hear when someone says it’s really a question of good manners. It’s true that freedom of speech largely worked in a period of deference, but deference was probably not a good price to pay for it.

What can be said is that, like any freedom, freedom of speech comes with congruent responsibilities. We hold a responsibility not to cause violence with what we say, even or especially if that means turning the other cheek. In ecclesiological management terms, this would make freedom of speech a pastoral rather than systemic provision. We serve each other; we don’t require the state to serve us.

Linehan’s post was fine up until it’s final phrase. But it’s peer pressure, not the law, that should have prevented him from using it. Taking the violence out of speech should be an educated, peaceful instinct. And that remains a social duty, not a governance one.

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