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

Belief

Creed

Politics

27 October 2025

7 min read

If a King can pray with a Pope, there's hope for MAGA and woke to talk

Once bitter enemies found peace through prayer - offering a quiet challenge to today’s culture warriors

Graham Tomlin

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

The Pope and King Charles walk together from the Sistine Chapel

Royal.uk

Last week, King Charles met the Pope.

There was a part of me that wondered what Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, and even the young Ian Paisley would have of made it. Not much I imagine. The days of sharp theological barbs thrown between Protestants and Catholics over the mass, purgatory, the place of Mary, praying to the saints and so on are largely over. I imagine they had a cup of tea, admired Michaelangelo’s painting in the Sistine chapel and had a chat, but the main thing they did was to pray together - the first time a British monarch had met to pray with a Pope since the Reformation.

So this was quite a big deal. Prayer carries much more significance than tea. But why did it matter so much?

To make sense of it, you have to remember the history.

In the aftermath of the English church’s break from Rome under Henry VIII, later consolidated under Elizabeth I, one of the most influential books that emerged from the English Reformation was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, originally published in 1563. Alongside the ubiquitous King James Bibles, copies were to be found in English homes up and down the country for centuries afterwards. The book was a grisly catalogue of Christian persecution down the ages, and a thinly veiled side-swipe at the author’s main target - the Roman Catholic church, or “popery, which brought innovations into the church and overspread the Christian world with darkness and superstition.” Back then, that was how most British people saw the papacy.

In 1605, a plot led by a group of English Roman Catholics to kill King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) and to blow up the Houses of Parliament was rumbled – the infamous Gunpowder Plot. For centuries afterwards on the anniversary of the conspiracy (until Health & Safety and modern squeamishness toned it down) the English lit bonfires, launched fireworks, and burnt effigies of the Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes to celebrate the deliverance of the nation from papal tyranny. At the time - and partly as a result of that event - Catholics were feared in England much as militant Islam is today in parts of the west – as a shadowy force infiltrating the nation from other European countries (mainly France and Ireland in this case), intent on changing the religion of the country, and imposing arbitrary and tyrannical rule on the population of Britain.

Later in the same century, the looming prospect of a Catholic monarch put Britain into a spin. Charles II had been restored to the throne in 1660 after his father’s execution during the Civil Wars. Charles’ own Protestant credentials were always shaky – a fear that was confirmed by his deathbed conversion to Catholicism in 1685, but at least during his lifetime he remained a Protestant Anglican. The real problem was the heir – Charles’ younger brother James, the rakish Duke of York who was most definitely a Catholic. The same fears of papal tyranny and arbitrary rule, taking away the precious freedoms of the British people were the talk of the coffee houses and broadsheets of the 1670s and 80s.

All the more remarkable then, that relationships between Anglicans and Roman Catholics have develop to such an extent that Anglicans (alongside other churches) were guests of honour at the late pope’s funeral and the inaugural mass of the new pope - and a King prays with a Pope.

So why have things changed so much?

Part of the answer is that times have changed. Europe is less obviously Christian than it was back then. The Christian churches have realised they don’t have the luxury of fighting over such matters. With Christian theology becoming less of a ‘public truth’ that held nations together (much as notions of freedom and democracy do for us today) arguments over it became less fraught and charged.

Another reason is the lengthy conversations that have taken place between churches in the ecumenical movement throughout the last century that have carefully been able to unpick the disagreements, clarifying what was and wasn’t at stake in the fights between Lutherans, Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox and others. These conversations haven’t solved all the issues. Different Christian denominations still disagree on a lot, especially today on issues like human sexuality and the like, but over time, they have at least brought clarity and a certain harmony to some of the historic disagreements. Anglicans still convert to Catholicism, and Catholics become Anglicans (or Orthodox or Pentecostals). The King and the Archbishop of York could not take Holy Communion with the Pope, but they could pray. I know from personal experience the depths of friendship that come when you recognise a brother or a sister in a Christian that you disagree with but in whom you can still recognise an essential commonality.

Another key part of the answer is that the Roman Catholic church has changed. Last year for example, the Vatican department that oversees relationships with other churches issued a study document called ‘The Bishop of Rome’. It was part of an ongoing conversation between the Roman Catholic Church and other world churches on the role of the Pope in the modern world. It talked about the Papacy as having a ‘primacy of service’, its authority linked not to the triumphant but the suffering Christ, of how the Pope offered a kind of ‘personal’ kind of leadership, Orthodox churches a ‘collegial’ form (led by groups of bishops) and the Protestant churches a form that stressed the importance of the whole community.

In other words, here was the Vatican asking other churches how the Papacy can be a help and support to Christians around the world. Back in the nineteenth century, in the first Vatican Council of 1869, the language was very different. The papacy was there by ‘divine right’, essential for the church, implying that other churches really ought to come back into the fold of the Church of Rome. The Roman Catholic church now seems to take a humbler, more generous stance which makes it possible for a King to pray with a Pope again.

It's a heartwarming story. We constantly lament today the polarised, fragmented and angry nature of our politics and our cultural debate. The ecumenical movement of the Christian churches over the last hundred years may not be the sexiest development in recent cultural history. It involved long and painstaking conversations, the building of friendships and relationships across suspicion, a willingness to see the good in the other even when you could not agree. Yet this combination of time, patient conversation and humility has yielded fruit.

In the seventeenth century, British Protestants saw Catholics as the deadly enemy seeing to undermine everything they hold dear - pretty much as some people do today see Muslims, or as progressives see conservatives or vice versa. Does this story hold out any hope of finding healthier ways to live together across our religious and political divides? Maybe. It's different of course because Catholics and Anglicans share the same basic faith, they recite the same Creed, they read (almost) the same Bible, they worship the same Jesus. With Islam we're talking about a different faith altogether. The ‘woke’ and the ‘MAGA’ people don’t seem to share much at all.

But yet we do share a common humanity. And with patience, conversation, a willingness to look for the good in the other, some form of peaceful co-existence, with freedom to debate, or even to change religion might become possible.

For that we can hope. And like the King and the Pope, pray.

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