The utter miracle of disliking an election result

Voting is a profound act of love, argues Luke Bretherton, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Crowd barrier surround empty space at a night time political rally.

After the Harris rally at Georgetown University.

Well, there we have it. It’s done. Donald Trump has won. History has been made.

Today, and for the days to come, there will be celebrations on the streets. There will be weeping on them, too. And that is somewhat of a miracle.

Earlier in the year, I interviewed a political theologian, Professor Luke Bretherton. It was, and still is, the most enlightening conversation about politics I have ever had. It was for an episode of our Re-enchanting podcast, which is apt, because that’s exactly what it did for me. Luke was able to scoop me up out of political disenchantment and remind me just how miraculous of a thing true democracy is – even if, no, especially if, it doesn’t go the way we hoped.

What should you do if you’re feeling bereft about the result of this almighty election?

Well, I should imagine there are a number of things – but one of them could be to acknowledge the imperfect, rare, paradoxical, beauty of such a feeling.

I’ll let Luke explain a little better, shall I? Here’s a snippet from the Re-Enchanting episode (recorded months before this American election), you can find the full episode here.

But, for now, if you should need it, allow Luke’s wise perspective to be a balm for your sad soul.

Politics is really the name for the formation of a common life. We can't survive, let alone, thrive as humans without others, and so, to have any kind of life - let alone a flourishing life – you’ve got to form a common life with others. As soon as you do that, as soon as you try to navigate and negotiate some form of common life, you’re going to come up against people that you dislike and disagree with.

At that point, you have a choice of one of four things: you can either kill them, which of course, appears to be the solution throughout a lot of history. You can make life so difficult that you cause them to flee, you can create a system to coerce them – to get them to do what you want without having to listen to them, without having to negotiate a common life with them. Or you can do politics; you can negotiate some form of common life without killing, coercing or causing to flee. And those really are the only options. We make it very complicated, but that’s really what’s going on.

Are you going to form a common life with people? Or are you going to kill them, coerce them, or cause them to flee? I think Christians should be pretty invested, both for theological reasons and for practical reasons, in the option of doing politics. Part of that politics is what we might call statecraft – laws, bureaucracies, parliaments – but politics is wider, simpler, and more important than that. It’s a social practice through which we form a common life.

And our commonalities may not outweigh our differences… we can have very real differences. As we know from a Christmas dinner, or a thanksgiving meal, the uncle who drives you bonkers is also the person who passes you the Brussels sprouts. So, it’s learning that we can hold tension, that life is complex, that people have multiple loyalties and that politics is the negotiation in the midst of multiple loyalties, ambiguities and tensions. Otherwise, politics dehumanises others and ourselves.

And so, the act of voting is, in itself, an act of loving your neighbour. Because, if you’ve voted, you’re not looking to bomb, torture, or kill in order to get your way.

And this is beautiful.

It’s an extraordinary paradox, it’s called the loyal opposition: if you lose the election, you’re prepared to stand on the opposite benches. You don’t take to the hills because you don’t like the results.

It’s the water we swim in, and so we don’t see the miracle of that, the miracle of agitational solidarity. The notion that I can be utterly opposed to your view on tax deferential policies but I won’t kill you.

That’s a rare thing in human history.

Let’s just take a moment to realise the miracle of that.

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Comment

Freedom of Belief

Politics

20 October 2025

5 min read

The UN promised freedom of belief — but 80 years later, it’s still elusive

Flawed, fragile but still vital to those without a voice

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Trump addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The White House.

It’s been 80 years since the United Nations was founded, at the end of the Second World War, primarily in an attempt to avoid a third global conflict.

So on that score, at least, I suppose one must accept that the UN has achieved its primary objective. But why, then, does the overall feeling towards the organisation today seem negative?

The UN’s founding charter outlined three other major goals alongside maintaining “international peace and security”: developing “friendly relations” among nations; international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural or humanitarian problems; and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, “without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion”.

Given that the UN is comprised of 193 countries, it is perhaps little wonder that “friendly relations” and “cooperation” between all sides have not always been forthcoming, and that instead clear cliques have formed between Western countries on the one hand, and much of the rest of the world on the other. (Perhaps the clearest such clique at the moment is the 2021-founded “Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter”, the identities of whose members - China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, et al - may lead one to wonder what exactly it is in the UN charter they wish to defend. Short answer: “sovereignty”, code for doing whatever they wish, without interference.)

As for the pursuit of “human rights” - my primary focus as an employee of an NGO - perhaps the greatest obstacle remains the lack of a truly united consensus over which rights should be included in the definition.

The closest that the nations of the world have come to an agreement on this score was the adoption in 1948, three years after the founding of the UN, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was backed by 48 of 58 member states at the time, but which failed to secure the support of others, including apartheid South Africa, the former Soviet bloc, and Saudi Arabia.

A primary objection in the case of Saudi Arabia was to Article 18 of the declaration - the bit about religious freedom and which includes the claim that everyone should have the right to change their religion or belief, an issue that remains problematic for many of the not-so-united nations of the world today.

The UK, meanwhile, was happy to ratify the UDHR but expressed frustration at its lack of legal force, and it was nearly 20 years before another treaty, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, attempted to correct this.

But while the 174 signatories to the ICCPR - including Iran, Russia, Cuba and China (though the latter two without ever ratifying the treaty) - are at least on paper legally obliged to uphold this international treaty, the challenge of enforcement remains. For example, while the signatories of the ICCPR are obliged to provide freedom of religion as defined by Article 18 of the covenant, which closely resembles the same article of the UDHR, few practical tools exist to hold to account any state that fails to meet its obligations.

In the case of persistent violators like Iran - the focus of my work - it seems the best we can currently hope for is to see a “resolution” passed by the majority of member states, outlining the ways in which the particular violator has failed to provide its citizens with the religious freedom (among other things) that should be their right according to the international treaties it has signed, and calling on them to do better.

But when pariahs like Iran can merely continue to deny that such failures exist, call them “biased” and “political”, and all the while prevent access to the country to the independent experts (“Special Rapporteurs”) best able to ascertain the veracity of the allegations, such “resolutions” can at times appear rather hollow.

At the same time, for advocates of human rights in non-compliant countries like Iran, the public shaming offered by such resolutions at least provides an opportunity for otherwise voiceless victims to be heard on the international stage. And when real change inside the country can sometimes appear nigh-on-impossible, you tend to take the small wins, such as hearing the representatives of member states mentioning the names of individual victims or groups in the public arena.

Many mentions are made, for example, about the plight of the Baha’is during every UN discussion of human rights in Iran, and while it is less common to also hear about my own area of interest - the persecution of Christians in Iran - there is usually at least one mention, which for us advocates (and we hope also the victims we represent) provides some comfort and hope for future change.

So 80 years since the establishment of the UN, it is clear the organisation has much room for improvement, but I remain persuaded by the argument that if we didn’t have the UN, we’d have to invent it.

“Friendly relations” - a helpfully loose term - between our disunited nations will always be a challenge, but increased economic ties globally over the past 80 years have also provided potential pressure points for those who fail to follow the rules. (If, for example, Iran wishes to see sanctions removed, Western countries can and should continue to demand improvements in the area of human rights.)

As for the UN’s endeavour to see increased “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”, the question of what such rights and freedoms should entail will continue to be debated, with persistent areas of challenge including not only religious conversion but also abortion and same-sex relations.

It is not uncommon, for example, to hear representatives of Muslim states such as Iran questioning what Western nations really mean by “human rights” and accusing them of using the term only as a “pretext” for their own “biased” agendas.

But for all its challenges, 80 years after its establishment the UN continues to offer the only forum today where countries of contrasting beliefs can come together to discuss their differences on the world stage.

Whether that is a worthwhile exercise remains a matter for debate, but to the degree that it is, the UN remains the primary channel through which such conversations can take place.

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