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Politics
5 min read

Politics needs some deep stirring emotion

In politics, the struggle between our reason and desire is a fair fight.
A young woman in a blue suit stands at a wooden box in a parliamentary debating chamber looking upward while speaking.
British Youth Council parliamentary debate.
British Youth Council.

“The government you elect is the government you deserve.” So goes the famous quote, variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Joseph de Maistre and George Bernard Shaw. Of all these thinkers, Maistre is perhaps the most interesting, describing the business of government as a kind of religion, a political “faith” – one complete with dogmas, mysteries and even ministers.  

Maistre was, somewhat surprisingly amid the turmoil of eighteenth-century France, a staunch monarchist. His argument was that, if the authority of a political leader was only a product of social convention, then that authority would always lack a sufficient degree of legitimacy, leaving the door wide open for violence and strife. His solution was to defend the divine right of kings. This was a controversial position, as much then as it is now.  

Aside from his famous quote about elections, Maistre’s political philosophy is oft-criticised as polemical, hearkening back to a golden era of European monarchy that never really existed. Nevertheless, within his writings, Maistre laid bare a reality that we often prefer to keep veiled: that our political will is as much about what we find to be emotionally compelling as it is about what we find to be rationally convincing, indeed, the latter is very much dependent on the former. The more social scientists are able to demonstrate the reality of subtle phenomena such as confirmation bias, unconscious bias, and racial prejudice, the more we see that we are often being governed by pre-cognitive or non-cognitive instincts, even those of us who like to think that we are better than that. In the end, we have to concede that when it comes to politics, as with so much else, the struggle between our faculty of reason and the desire of our heart is a fair fight.  

  

“They have few standards by which to judge between falsehood and truth in revolutionary movements.”  

Amy Buller

In 1930’s Europe, there was certainly a lot of emotionally compelling politics around. Fascinated by the language and culture of the German people, thinker and educator Amy Buller made repeated visits to Germany from the 1920’s onwards, often accompanied by reading parties of British academics, church leaders and university students. In those decades, as the political landscape of Germany began to shift, her purpose became less about countryside walks and studying, and more about the facilitation of urgent, open and honest dialogue between Buller, her fellow travellers, and their German counterparts in the churches and universities wherever she had contacts. As Hitler rose to power, and even before the full horrors of Nazism became widely known, Amy was compelled to find out why so many people, especially young people, were being attracted by what she saw as a “brutish” ideology.  

In 1943, amid the violence and destruction of World War II, Buller published a book, Darkness Over Germany, which gives a first-hand account of the many people that she and her travelling parties had met, and the conversations that had taken place. Like Maistre, Buller proposed that without God, politics was a dangerous kind of faith in something, one that tended towards violence. In the introduction to her book she writes of “…the tragedy of a whole generation of German youth, who, having no faith, made Nazism their religion.”  

It’s common these days to hear complaints about the political apathy of the young, with polls commonly reporting that only about 50 per cent of British 18 to 24-year-olds are intending to vote in the next General Election. However, there are those who raise the caution that this may not be a symptom of apathy, so much as a symptom of the cultural and structural injustices that put barriers in the way of young people engaging with our nation’s political life. Young people are not likely to “believe in” a political system from which they feel excluded. As Buller’s writing notes – when this happens, young people are likely to put their “faith” in something else.   

Maistre’s solution was perhaps too extreme for modern sensibilities: asking the politically minded populace to believe that their leaders were imbued with the authority of God, by God. In the twentieth-century, Buller took a more moderate view. As the Nazis began to view her with suspicion, trips to Germany became increasingly difficult to arrange, so she travelled elsewhere to places such as Hungary and Bulgaria. Wherever Buller went, she found more and more young people who wanted to talk to her about their political hopes and ideals. Summarising the whole, Buller suggested that Europe’s political landscape was eschewing “shallow rationalism” and instead being shaken by a “deep stirring” of emotion, particularly among young people. She recorded the observation: 

“They all want change, and they all want a chance to play a part in that change, but so few have any religious faith, which means that they have few standards by which to judge between falsehood and truth in revolutionary movements.” 

In a recent report, published by the Jo Cox Foundation, increasing the public’s “political literacy” was highlighted as a key response to prevent the outbreaks of abuse, intimidation and violence towards elected officials. As any educator will tell you, literacy is a two-way street – it includes not only the “shallow rationalism” of knowing information, or knowing where to access information, but also the ability to communicate that information effectively to others. Such communication comes from a much deeper, embodied kind of knowing, one which requires one to have assimilated knowledge and worked with it, feeling its malleability, and testing its apparent truth-claims against an internal standard of what is true and false, or right and wrong.  

For Buller, this internal standard was inextricably linked to faith. To the end of her life, she remained open minded as to what form this faith might take, albeit her own religious practice was firmly Christian. Cumberland Lodge, the educational charity she set up to promote her aims, was from the start open to those of all faiths and none, and she warmly welcomed dialogue between those of different faith groups, including atheism. But in 1943, as Amy Buller looked with hope towards the prospect of a post-war Europe, she summed up the political landscape as follows:  

We are now faced with the greater task of bringing healing to the nations, including our own, I am convinced this cannot be done without a faith in God adequate to the tremendous task of reconstruction.  

Given Amy Buller’s open-mindedness, one can read the word “God” in this statement its broadest possible sense, as referring to whatever moral compass one takes as an internal standard of what is true and false, or right and wrong. But the point remains that the political will is therefore not a matter of rational thought, or not only of that, but is an expression of feelings and instincts that run far, far deeper.  

Article
Belief
Church and state
Comment
Politics
6 min read

Danny Kruger, Christian values, and the dangers of thin religion

Thick or thin? Christianity’s role in Britain’s cultural crossroad

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

A backbench MP stands in an almost empty chamber and speaks
Danny Kruger addressing Parliament.
Parliament TV.

In case you hadn’t noticed, a speech given to an audience of about seven people in a sparse House of Commons recently went viral. Danny Kruger’s recent call for a Christian restoration in the UK has generated a lot of attention. 

I've noticed two distinct responses in recent days. On one side, there are three (or more) cheers for Danny. He has been interviewed at Christian festivals, lauded for a brave, deeply considered and soulful appeal to the Christian heritage of the nation. He has been thinking deeply about this for some time as demonstrated in his book Covenant, sometimes seen as a manifesto for a renewed Conservatism based around the claims of family, community and nation, and summarised in this Seen & Unseen article. As one of the most prominent voices against the recent bills to permit assisted dying and the termination of full-term embryos, he is clearly reeling from the impact of these devastating recent votes in the Commons that, more than anything else, seem to demonstrate how far the nation has slipped its Christian moorings.  

Yet it’s not hard to stumble across another reaction. A former Bishop of Oxford called Kruger’s claim that the UK was a Christian nation anachronistic and counter-productive. Others have pointed out that many Jews, Muslims or hardened atheists would not be delighted to be told that ‘it is your church and you are its member.’ Others question whether there can be such a thing as a 'Christian nation'.

Some have picked up on a darker side to all this. Recent riots outside hostels for immigrants in Rotherham and Norwich showed protesters carrying flags of St George, even brandishing a wooden cross. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage have recently been speaking much more openly about the ‘Christian values’ on which Britain is founded, and many on the extreme right seem to have latched onto Christianity as at the heart of what they see as a cultural, civilisational war. Kruger’s talk of the gap left by Christianity’s demise being filled by Islam and, what worries him more, a kind of ‘wokeism’ that blends ‘ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism’, sets up a stark opposition. He goes on: “That religion, unlike Islam, must simply be destroyed, at least as a public doctrine. It must be banished from public life.” Does that language stray a bit too close to the aggressive language of more extreme voices on the right?  

Now I have some sympathy with this. I have written before of how I also fear the pagan gods are making a return. Like Danny Kruger, I too believe the recent votes in the House of Commons are a dark and dangerous turn toward death not life. Yet I can’t shake a nervous feeling that, without some careful thought, we might be summoning up shades we might not be able to control.  

The signs – and the solution - lie in the past. For centuries, Christianity, like all other religions, has been used as a weapon in civilisational wars. It happened in the Crusades of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. It happened in the Balkan wars involving Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s and 2000. It happened in the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, where your neighbour being Protestant or Catholic was a reason to kill them.  

Theologians and sociologists sometimes talk of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ religion. ‘Thin’ religion is simply a badge of identity. It often blends religion, politics and nationalism and serves as a motivation to unite people around a cause, such as Hindu nationalism, Muslim victimhood, or Christian supremacy. It is religion seen purely as a label, a badge of tribal identity over against other religious identities, however deeply felt. It is often nostalgic, ranged against enemies who are determined to destroy it, denigrating those who are not part of the religion as less deserving of value. It sees the Christian god as one of many gods – our god – which we must fight for against other gods, rather than, as Christian theology has always taught, the one true God who sits above all other gods, the God of the whole earth. It is paradoxically a manifestation of the kind of the kind of culture that Danny Kruger hates: “a return to the pagan belief that your value is determined by your sex, race or tribe.” Tommy Robinson’s faith seems as good an example of this as any. This is ‘thin’ religion.

I propose a simple test. If someone advocates Christian values and regularly goes to church, then they have a legitimate voice. 

‘Thick’ religion, however, is different. It is not just a badge of identity, but entails a set of distinct beliefs and practises. It means submitting yourself to the disciplines of the faith. In the Christian context, it a belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for the sins of the world, rose again on the third day and will return one day to judge the living and the dead. It involves a serious attempt to live the Christian life, to love your neighbour, and even your enemy, helping the poor and vulnerable, praying regularly, being consistently present at church worship and so on.  

Christian hymns have always had a fair amount of militant imagery, from ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to ‘Fight the Good Fight’, and more contemporary ones about God ‘fighting our battles’. Yet this has always meant a serious fight against enemies within – pride, greed, anger and spiritual lethargy. When it became focussed on human enemies, as it did in the Crusades, a line was crossed from ‘thick’ into ‘thin’ religion. 

It's not always easy to tell the difference between those who adopt thick and thin Christianity. I propose a simple test. If someone advocates Christian values and regularly turns up at church, then they have a legitimate voice, and are worth a hearing. If they turn up weekly to hear the Bible being read, to take part in Holy Communion alongside other people, regardless of their ethnicity, wealth or background, pray regularly, then, we can assume, they are serious about it. They are submitting themselves to the discipline of learning Christian faith, seeking to love their neighbour and trying as hard as they can to love their enemies. They may fail from time to time but these are the signs of someone who has grasped the grace of God which is the heart of Christian faith. Danny Kruger passes that test. Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, as far as I know, don’t.  

If some shout loudly about Christian values, about the danger of losing the heritage of our civilization and yet show no interest in going to church, living the Christian life, praying or even trying to love their enemies, then we should take what they say with a large pinch of salt. They have no skin in the game. 

When the heart of Christianity is hollowed out, it becomes moralism. It becomes the law not the gospel, as Martin Luther would say. The cross literally becomes a stick to beat others with. Paradoxically, it is only ‘thick’ religion that ends up founding and changing cultures. Early Christianity, the kind that converted the western world, was definitely ‘thick’ religion. It was not just a badge of identity. It had a whole set of distinct beliefs and practices that marked Christians off from the pagan world around them. It did not set out to advocate for political causes in the power corridors of Rome, build a Christian civilisation, lobby Caesar for ‘Christian laws’. It set out to produce people with ‘a sincere and pure devotion to Christ’ as St Paul put it, loving God, neighbour and enemy. And they changed the world by accident.  

Thin religion is a dangerous thing. It uses religion as a tool for dominance and conflict. It makes sceptics think we need less religion in public life. Thick religion is good religion. It forms good people. It builds healthy societies. It’s the kind we need more of, not less.  

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