The backlash against the church’s intervention in our current political culture (Politicians fail our democracy, warn bishops, 18 February) typically criticises it for intervening in politics rather than doing its job as a moral arbiter. The same narrow view of politics infects our teaching profession, which is increasingly nervous of tackling political issues even though it is expected to do so in the statutory subject of citizenship at schools.
As a result we have falsely circumscribed “politics” as the domain of politicians, and managed to portray the nation as individuals under the thumb of these chosen rulers. Until we reposition citizens and their choices as the governors of our country we will not escape the growing perception among the young that politics and its financially driven imperatives have a right to rule over the populace. On the contrary, it is right that teachers are empowered to build the capacity of citizens to make pragmatic choices and also to scrutinise government to see that their choices are being carried out.
Instead we have a government fashioning itself in the form of the crown, leaving citizens afraid to question its dominion – paradoxical in the year we celebrate Magna Carta.
Andy Thornton
CEO, Citizenship Foundation
Securing minimum human needs for those in work and unemployment is the responsibility of the state
• The idea that the Church of England is “the Tory party at prayer” has been nonsense since the 1940s, since when its displeasure has been reserved for Tory-led administrations. The bishops have written a 52-page diatribe about the election to their fast-diminishing flock that is both partisan and disingenuous – which they cynically call a “pastoral letter”. More than any other missive in my lifetime, this tract identifies the church with the left and in many key areas its statements are hypocritical, unbalanced, misleading or just plain wrong.
Unemployment and in-work poverty have not risen in the past five years, they have fallen; it is not true that the poor and vulnerable are treated as “unwanted, unvalued and unnoticed”. The coalition has done vital work to reform a dysfunctional welfare system and the church is in no position to lecture the government on equality, given its deplorable treatment of gays.
Finally, there is the usual verbiage about Trident and those left behind by globalisation, but it has nothing to say about globalisation’s success in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Rev Dr John Cameron
St Andrews, Fife
• Last week, the BBC Today programme, as always, had a section on “what the papers say”, as if they’re reporting a wide selection of independent opinion. In fact, they (a few media barons) were almost unanimous in attacking the Anglican bishops’ comments on the coming election. There was the Times (Murdoch) – “Bishops’ blunder” and a cartoon showing an archbishop peering at a closed room labelled “Politics” and saying “Let us pry”; the Mail (Rothermere) – “Meddling bishops’ leftwing manifesto”; the Sun (Murdoch) – “Holy biased”; the Telegraph (Barclay brothers) – “Church gives a pulpit to political prejudices”; and the lonely Guardian (no owner baron) – “The bishops have risen to the occasion”.
And we have an attack on Justin Welby, thought to have been disloyal to UK interests regarding the anniversary of Dresden, when 1,249 planes bombed the city resulting in a firestorm that killed about 24,000 people. It’s OK to burn alive civilians if they are enemies. As an agnostic, I applaud the bishops and I applaud the lonely Guardian.
Professor Michael RW Brown
London
• Finally, religious leaders make a contribution to the debate on the failing of UK democracy. For far too long they have sat on the sidelines while callous politicians, in order to get our votes, issue soundbites and commitments they cannot fulfil or have no intention of doing so.
Long gone are the days when politicians stood up for the local electorate who voted for them. Ask the 1.3 million families who were victims of the Equitable Life scandal how they feel about the politicians who’ve allowed the Treasury to rob them of their proper compensation. Nearly 1 million will receive only 22% of their losses, yet their elected MPs simply trot out the same discredited deceptions issued by the Treasury. Why should any of us trust our MPs or save for retirement? Until more of the influential groups such as the church, the press, the police, the Institute for Fiscal Studies etc come out publicly and expose the behaviour and deceptions of our politicians when it is happening (as with suspicions of child abuse), rather then years later, our once-respected democracy will continue to collapse.
Colin Downe
Birmingham
• “Democracy is failing, bishops tell politicians.” Who elected them, pray?
Pete Bibby
Sheffield
• The open letter from Church of England bishops rightly criticises politicians for promoting a divided society. A high percentage of bishops are still drawn from the small elite who attended public school or Oxbridge. Surely this reinforces a divided society.
Bob Holman
Glasgow
As to the contents of the bishops’ letter, there is nothing in it that is not based on scripture
• The bishops’ open letter is actually quite tame. Before the Dutch general election in May 1977, many church leaders and ministers were co-signatories to a statement (De PvdA is niet heilig – the Labour party is not holy) urging people to vote for the Dutch Labour party, and not the rightwing Christian Democrats. They were in no way suggesting that the Labour party had all the answers, but were clear that for the Labour party concerns for social justice and peace stood out, in contrast to parties of the right.
Peter Kaan
Exeter
• The bishops have cited the views of Beveridge on voluntarism. They raise the important debate about the relationship between civil society and the state. They tell us “the state, given too much power to shape society, will stifle the very voluntarism that prevents the state from being hopelessly overburdened by human need”. Taking hunger as an example of human need, where does the state’s responsibility to prevent it stop and civil society’s begin?
The voluntary sector is now hopelessly overburdened by the human needs of the people we serve. Among thousands of volunteers UK-wide, I am helping people in Tottenham overburdened by unmanageable debt created when adult unemployment benefits of £72.40 are reduced by rent and council tax arrears due to benefit cuts since April 2013. Buying a healthy diet is beyond their means. Many have been arbitrarily sanctioned for up to three months; a punishment leaving them with no income introduced by Labour and continued by the coalition. Several have been referred to the local NHS psychiatric clinic for therapy.
Securing minimum human needs for those in work and unemployment is the responsibility of the state; picking up the casualties in that, currently non-existent, context is the responsibility of volunteers. Our vision is no British citizen without an affordable home and an adequate income, with those accused of abusing the taxpayers’ funding of minimum human needs given a fair trial.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty
• The bishops’ observation that “most politicians and pundits are happy enough for the churches to speak on political issues so long as the church agrees with their particular line” has, it seems been borne out by the reaction of Conservative politicians and their party’s supporters in the press.
Moreover, the tone of their comments seems to me if anything to go to prove the points the bishops were seeking to make about the way much of today’s political debate is conducted. Rather than engage with what is written, the arguments (and those who make them) are rubbished. Proving, I suggest, both that these commentators know arguments have force (and are consequently a threat) and that they really have no proper vision of the future to offer us.
As to the contents of the bishops’ letter, there is nothing in it that is not based on scripture. It may come as an unwelcome surprise to some but there are repeated exhortations in the Bible that we look after the less fortunate members of society and condemnations of the exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful. Matters, stating the obvious, no less relevant today than when the scriptures were written.
Some of the bishops’ critics may wish to ignore this or wish that the church would not be so inconsiderate as to remind us this is the case. They may even disagree with what the Bible says and the church teaches. If so, they should come out and say so plainly; preferably before the forthcoming election. To expect that, however, shows that I really am a naive clergyman.
Rev David Hadfield
Forest Row, East Sussex
• To say that the bishops’ letter is leftwing, as reported in your editorial, is the same as saying that no Conservative voters worry about the rise in use of food banks or the indiscriminate sanctioning of welfare benefits. If a label were attached it would be “compassionate conservatism”. While appreciating many of the sentiments, we have to stomach the “big society”, admittedly the version once suggested by David Cameron, which has morphed into a kind of Bible-class searching for verses that criticise the poor and needy as scroungers and layabouts, and dividing the big society into “hard workers” and ne’er-do-wells, including the disabled.
The C of E’s intervention on democracy is welcome, but ambiguous, like the Queen asking Scots to “think very carefully about the future” when voting in the Scottish referendum.
Dr Graham Ullathorne
Chesterfield
