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Does politics do God?

 
Carl Laferton | 23 Feb 2011

Interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph last Sunday (obviously!) as Gordon Brown delivered the latest round of Blair-Brown sniping. This time, the battlefield was religion in politics.

Three opinions were noted:

  • “We don’t do God” Alastair Campbell
  • “To claim or imply divine sanction for a political cause is wrong” Gordon Brown
  • “Judgment is made by other people … and it’s made by God as well” Tony Blair

This has got me thinking. I know I don’t agree with the first (the irony is that by deliberately not "doing God", Campbell was in fact taking God into account, if only by ignoring him. You can't "not do God"). I know I do agree with the third.

But should I agree with the second? In what circumstances might I agree, or disagree?

Can anyone leave a comment outlining in broad terms how Christians should approach politics? Or a useful (short!) book or resource on the subject?

And while I wait for your help, I’m going to take a look at these three helpful articles/sermons:

1 Comment

Kip' Chelashaw

11:01 PM AEDT on January 8th
This is a huge topic and there seems to be lots about this in the Reformed World e.g. Trueman's new book Republocrat (which I somewhat disagree with)

In brief my view is Scripture is sufficient for every area of life (see e.g. 2 Tim 3:16-17 and note especially that 2 Tim says that Scriptures is able to equip us for every good work). Question is - is politics a good work? Oh it most certainly is. Which leads to the next question how then does Scripture equip us in the realm of politics. My suggestion is that we should spend time looking at Scripture and examining how words such as government, authority, state, ruler, power, dominion etc are used and from there, deriving an explicitly Christian view of politics. At the moment my thinking has led me to the see that our current governments have over extended themselves way above what Scripture expects them to do and I am convinced that this is largely why we in are the BIG BIG financial mess we are in and to which our political parties need to be told: a plague on all your houses!

Kip' Chelashaw

Carl Laferton

Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.