Explainer

Creed

Language

Politics

4 July 2023

6 min read

The language of politics can’t domesticate religion

Political life’s Left-Right structure fails when it tries to co-opt religious perspectives. Graham Tomlin outlines why it misses so much of what makes them interesting.

Graham Tomlin

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

an aerial view down in to the parliamentary chamber shows MPs sitting on benches on the left and right hand side

The UK Parliament's House of Commons chamber manifests the left-right divide.

House of Commons Twitter.

The New Statesman recently released their ‘left power list’ – “the 50 most influential people shaping Britain’s progressive politics.” As I read it through, one name caught my eye – Justin Welby. He comes in a comfortable mid-table position at no. 27, behind Gary Lineker and JK Rowling, and ahead of Gordon Brown and Marcus Rashford.

The Archbishop of Canterbury may perhaps be a strange addition to a list of left-leaning figures. Not all his predecessors have been so - his predecessor but two, George Carey, is often seen espousing views from the right. It is not accidental that the present Archbishop has served in times of a Conservative government, while George Carey held the role during the latter years of New Labour. It is perhaps the job of Archbishops to hold the government of the day to account, so perhaps not surprising that Welby is seen as a critic of the Conservatives. If the government of his time had been Labour, perhaps he would be seen very differently.

However, what got me thinking was not so much the identification of the Archbishop as left-leaning but the co-option of the Church’s voice into the wider narrative of the left-right political spectrum. The language of ‘left’ and ‘right’ dates back to the French Revolution, where, in the National Assembly, the supporters of the king sat to the right of the President, and the revolutionaries sat to his left. Subsequent governmental institutions in France continued the seating arrangements and the language became embedded in political discourse far beyond France. Since then the ‘left’ has always been associated with ideas such as freedom, progress, equality and reform. The ‘right’ has valued older institutions of social life such as family, locality, individual responsibility, duty, tradition and so on.

Left and Right... shoe-horns religion into the procrustean bed of a political ideology that cannot do justice to its true nature.

Left and Right is a structure of political life with which we are very familiar. But when it comes to co-opting religious perspectives, it misses so much of what makes them interesting. It has no place for God, for revelation, for prayer, the mystical and the miraculous, the hosts of angels, the language of virtue or the surprising delight of grace. It shoe-horns religion into the procrustean bed of a political ideology that cannot do justice to its true nature. It emasculates it of all that makes it interesting and distinct.

This attempt to domesticate religion has a long pedigree. The Christian Church was born into a world dominated politically by the Roman empire, and religiously by paganism. This new claim that the God behind all things had revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ was definitely awkward, but by and large, pagans were happy to fit it into their view of the world, if only the Christians were happy to regard Jesus as yet one more god alongside the other gods – a private option for those who preferred that kind of god, as opposed to Jupiter, Mercury or Aphrodite. The early Christians however refused to comply. They insisted Jesus was God, not just a god. They resisted their founder being co-opted into the pagan pantheon, or even the Roman imperial regime, refusing by and large to serve in the army if that meant killing their enemies in defiance of Jesus’ command to love them, or offering worship to the gods in civic festivals, even when their contemporaries could not understand the refusal to join in what to them was some harmless ritual to keep the gods happy.

Even more, early Christian thinkers such as Athanasius argued that the coming of Christ into the world was too seismic an intervention to be simply co-opted into existing paradigms. In particular, the Resurrection of Christ was either a gigantic hoax, or an invitation to re-think reality all over again from a new starting point - that humanity’s greatest enemy - death itself – had been defeated once and for all. As the theologian Lesslie Newbigin put it:

“At the heart of the Christian message was a new fact. God had acted in a way that, if believed, must henceforth determine all our ways of thinking. It could not merely fit into existing ways of understanding the world without fundamentally changing them. According to Athanasius, it provided a new arche, a new starting point for all human understanding of the world. It could not form part of any worldview expect one of which it was the basis.”

Thus, Christianity was bound to transcend the political structures of its time - or any time for that matter. A bold Christianity, true to itself, could not just be co-opted within an alien political or social structure – it was always going to be an awkward bedfellow with the empire.

In more recent years, a number of theologians have made the same point. Philosopher and theologian John Milbank wrote a ground-breaking book in the 1990s, Christianity and Social Theory, where he criticised the whole venture of the Sociology of Religion as domesticating Christian faith into an alien structure of thought, where society was taken as a given, and religious faith explained away by secular theoretical categories. Sociology for him was its own non-neutral theology, a rival discourse to Christianity, ‘a secular policing of the sublime’, domesticating it and reducing it to fit with the narrow categories of sociological theory.

Christianity just refuses to fit into foreign categories that try to tame it

More recently, James Mumford, in his short book Vexed, written with half an eye to the American experience, shows how again Christianity just refuses to fit into foreign categories that try to tame it, and how it consistently blows apart the moral and political packages that both left and right offer us in modern life. So, for example, the deeply Christian notion of the sanctity of life – that human life is sacred, to be respected in all its forms, and cannot be taken away by another human being - leads both to an abhorrence of unwarranted abortion (the American right cheers at this point), yet also to a restriction of the right to carry guns that take life (not so popular among the Republican base.) Conservatives prize family values, yet are happy to allow economic competition to permit zero-hours contracts that make desperate parents vulnerable to shifts in the market that mean they cannot feed their children. Christians might agree with the first, but disagree with the second. Similarly, the left prizes inclusivity, yet at the same time, promotes assisted dying, baulking at extending this inclusivity to the elderly person who would have to make an active choice to go on living, when pressure may mount to leave their money to their offspring and vacate the scene early. Again, the left champions the sexual revolution yet, despite its suspicion of economic liberalism, holds back from a critique of the consumerism of much sexual culture, that values being able to move onto new sexual partners as desire dictates.

So, Mumford argues, Christians may find themselves adopting a strange mix of beliefs and opinions – or perhaps only strange when seen from the perspective of a secular mindset – opposed to unwarranted abortion, yet in favour of gun control; in favour of family life, yet wanting economic intervention to the labour market to ensure proper pay for workers.

The point here is not so much to argue that Christians have a unique political viewpoint that is distinct from left or right, but that Christianity is more than politics. Beneath the surface of Christian political convictions, such as those that come from the Archbishop, lie (or should lie) a whole host of deeper commitments – to God, to the insights that come in prayer, to the most vulnerable in society, to a sense of a deep order and structure to the world that cannot be toyed with by progressive political fantasies, to the reality of Resurrection. None of these quite fit the simple left-right equation. The bishops may or may not be right in their political pronouncements – and there is room for debate on that, but trying to make them fit into the narrow categories of mere politics just doesn’t work. God is too big for that.

Article

Character

Comment

Politics

Virtues

5 March 2025

5 min read

Are virtues irrelevant in today’s uncertain politics?

We need to exercise the character traits that uphold our values.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson Csorba works in deep tech, following experience in geopolitics and energy.

President Zelensky raises a hand while President Trump talks at him.

MSNBC.

In Oliver O'Donovan's Finding and Seeking, the theologian makes a telling comment about virtue, virtue referring to ‘the goodness the world has already seen and known…. Talk about virtue is always third person talk, observers’ talk about deeds that have already taken determinate form.’

Put differently, virtue is about the past. It is about how others have lived and acted in admirable ways. But it is not about today, in all of its ambiguity and uncertainty.

To put it directly – virtue falls apart when hit with reality. It is easy to talk about what virtuous people have done, much harder to be virtuous in the present. Or so O’Donovan says.

There has been a lot of talk over recent years about the need for virtues and values in politics (and in the world more widely), but what even are these things?

Values are principles or standards that individuals or societies consider important.

Virtues are moral excellences or traits of character, such as courage, patience, or humility.

Virtues are the moral character traits individuals need to uphold values, in practice.

When thinking about virtues and values, I often reflect on a simple but profound point made by Nigel Biggar speaking at Oxford University many years ago:

"If you want pure heroes, you won't have any."

Put differently, people – including the most virtuous at first glance – are complicated.

Yet, our world is one in which virtue seems to be in short supply. Some would even say virtue (and values) are non-existent, or on the verge of extinction.

The older I become, the more I am left reflecting on why it is that so few individuals – in political life, but also more generally – seem to live without principle. Integrity – which I define as ‘your word (or principle), and action aligning’ – seems increasingly a thing of the past.

Many seem to think that integrity is ‘old-fashioned,’ acting accordingly, saying one thing and doing another as if there are no repercussions.

This is replaced with an ‘anything goes’ mentality, focused on short-term gratification. It is a “you do you” culture, acting without conscience. People seem to believe there are few if any repercussions for doing bad things. This culture is not only permitted, but even celebrated.

The American situation is, of course, the example par excellence of this. American politicians and diplomats wake up each morning waiting for what their President will write on social media, responding accordingly. Alliances are thrown out the window. Nothing is off the table.

There is seemingly less interest in Western societies in being good persons, doing what is right in hard circumstances, and where few or no people are watching.

Whether in politics or in society more widely, people seem increasingly focused on protecting themselves, doing whatever they need to do to get ahead, rather than looking out for each other.

So where do we draw the line? Is there space for virtue (and values) in a world where growth is slowing, and more people are battling for parts of a shrinking pie?

I believe the answer is yes. My sense is that many people are today yearning for clarity of values and virtues in a world that is becoming much more anchorless.

There does then seem to be interest in values and virtues, but it is perhaps worth remembering that values and virtues are like muscles... It is possible to lose these muscles without practice.

In my home of Canada, where I recently moved back, many value decency, politeness, and a sense of moderation.

In 1955, while serving as Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B Pearson put his figure on this pulse, delivering a series of lectures at Princeton University entitled Democracy in the World. Pearson argued that a sense of moderation is a leading value for Canadians.

He described this as a ‘confidence in the ability of the peoples and the leaders of democratic nations to grow into the new situations and to accept the greater self-discipline which the preservation of freedom in an interdependent world requires.’

And he saw Canada as especially emblematic of this ability to grow into new situations, this adaptability in working in an interdependent world.

Many Canadians believe that the thirteen provinces and territories need to adapt and work together in order to respond to the threat of the United States.

The candidate for Leader of the Liberal Party, Mark Carney, seems to agree (and is rising in the polls because of this), whereas his opponent Pierre Poilievre is moving in the opposite direction given his more combative approach. But Poilievre has time and the opportunity to turn this around, channeling Canadians' frustrations into a vision focused on the values and virtues we share in common.

In other words, Canadians value working together when faced with challenges, valuing this solidarity when times are tough. We become more courageous the tougher things become.

The virtue of courage is here a noteworthy virtue, so well proven in the Great War battles of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and The Somme, or the Battle of the Atlantic in World War Two.

We see this Canadian virtue emerge often in times of crisis.

Andrew Davison in previous writing in Seen & Unseen is especially eloquent on courage, writing that this virtue is:

‘both bracing and realistic. It reminds us that all is not well with the world. We will often need courage because doing the right thing can be costly.’

There does then seem to be interest in values and virtues, but it is perhaps worth remembering that values and virtues are like muscles – a point made by Carney in previous writing and speeches. And Poilievre, well-known for his considerable discipline, certainly understands the importance of the exertion that builds muscle."

It is possible to lose these muscles without practice. Over recent years, societies and individuals have become more permissive, rather than encouraging consistent exercise.

The question therefore is less about whether values or virtues will survive in the harsh light of reality. Instead, it is whether societies – their political representatives and citizens – are open to making the short-term investments necessary to uphold what they believe is good in their countries and in the world?

A tall task, to be sure, but one that I believe is both possible and necessary for Canadians and non-Canadians alike. Canada can here be an example for the world.

This task – upholding certain values and virtues, is not third person talk, as O’Donovan suggests. It is rather an imperative for action in the present. We are called to act accordingly today.