c. 1997 Religion News Service
LONDON _ As the British electoral campaign moves toward its May 1 climax at the poll, the nation’s churches have had a remarkably high profile, causing some critics to charge they are aiding the effort to oust from power Prime Minister John Major and the Conservative Party.
The high profile has been prompted primarily by two reports _ moral examinations of the economy not unlike those issued by U.S. Roman Catholic bishops and major denominations in recent years _ and the controversy generated by them.
It began last October when the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales, published a summary of Catholic social teaching they said was intended to stimulate the Catholic laity into thinking and talking about public policy issues before the election was called.
The report, however, was widely viewed as a scathing attack on the policies pursued by the Conservative government since 1979, despite the bishops’ insistence they were not backing any political party and all parties remained legitimate options for Catholics.
The other, published earlier this month by the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, the ecumenical body linking mainstream churches of the two islands, focused on what is perhaps the most important single issue in the election: jobs and the economy.
Written in sweeping form, the report asked whether the advance of technology has made the goal of full employment impossible and, if so, does society have to reconcile itself to working out the most humane and civilized way of coping with permanent, mass unemployment.
While the report ultimately affirmed the churches’ belief, based on both theological and economic reasons, that given the proper political will _ including the need by the affluent to pay higher taxes _ it is possible to create a full-employment economy.
The report, however, upset both the Conservative party and its chief contender, the more leftist Labor Party, headed by Tony Blair.
Behind the reports, however, has been the smoldering tensions between the country’s major denominations and the Conservative government, simmering since the Conservatives came to power.
In 1985, for example, the state-established Church of England issued a blunt, sharply critical report castigating the government of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for its treatment of Britain’s poor, especially in the inner cities.
Government sources leaked copies of the report in advance. When it was published, Conservative Party critics promptly dismissed it as Marxist theology.
Throughout the Conservative era, the churches have been hostile to what they consider the Conservative government’s stress on individual responsibility and the virtues of capitalist competition rather than co-operation.
Some church leaders accuse government leaders of participating in the”the canonization of greed and selfishness.” Meanwhile, for most activist British church members, the welfare state established by the post-war Labor government from 1945 on _ accepted and maintained by successive Conservative governments through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s _ represents something of an ideal translation of Christian principles into social structures.
Beyond this, church leaders are expressing frustration at the British electoral system, which regularly delivers power to political parties enjoying the support of only a minority of the electorate.
The churches say the system has had a baleful effect on the current campaign, pointing out that the Labor Party, which in 1992 succeeded in plucking defeat from the jaws of victory, is so frightened of yet another failure at the polls it is doing its best to present itself to the electorate as the same kind of animal as the Conservative Party _ just more respectable, trustworthy, and honest.
This turns the political debate between the two main contenders for power into an argument about means rather than ends. And both parties are ignoring the issues the churches say need to be addressed.
Among those issues, according to church leaders, are the question of the vulnerability of members of parliament to corruption; the constitutional structure of the nation, including the place of Scotland and Wales; the subject of Britain’s place in Europe; and, most dominant, the issue of jobs and the economy.
The election has attracted a bigger showing of single-issue parties than usual, including an anti-abortion party.
The Pro-Life Alliance has put up 56 candidates running on the single issue of repealing the 1967 Abortion Act. The high number of candidates qualifies the party to make a political broadcast transmitted on all national networks.
But while the Catholic Church has repeatedly stressed its adamant opposition to abortion during the campaign, the bishops have not encouraged their flocks to make abortion the single issue that decides their votes.
Indeed, the English and Welsh bishops specifically warn against single-issue voting, while for their part the Scottish bishops, though they stress that a Christian’s first priority should be to uphold the right to life, go into greater detail on such questions as education, health, unemployment, poverty, law and order, the family, the environment, and the Third World.
MJP END NOWELL
