Why evangelicals should keep trying to enter politics

Have we reached the point where it is unlikely that an evangelical Christian will ever again hold high office in the United Kingdom?

I have two friends hoping to be parliamentary candidates for the Labour Party in the next election. Both are clear-thinking Christians with a passion for the poor. Yet, however stellar their gifts, news media will certainly drill down on only two areas: sexuality and gender. If they are selected, they will be interrogated relentlessly on those two issues. I have, I confess, been tempted to say: ‘Don’t bother!’

I know this because six years ago it happened to Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats. A journalist spotted that he was an evangelical, did a bit of digging, and put it in print. From that moment, the only thing of interest to reporters was Farron’s views on gay sex. ‘To be a political leader’, he said in his resignation speech, ‘especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017, and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me’.

Kate Forbes, SMP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, is the latest Christian to receive this treatment. Yet, despite negative press coverage, she gained 48% of the party’s vote – almost half the SNP would have been happy with a leader who was uneasy about gay marriage and her party’s position on gender. However, there was not much media recognition of this after the vote.

The gatekeepers of what the UK public are allowed to know don’t seem capable of giving that public a careful portrait of a candidate who is a Christian. I’m sure reporters ask questions like ‘Tell us what else you stand for, what else matters to you’, but we rarely find this out. The narrowness of interest on behalf of news editors feels as if it is driven by a narrow worldview.

This emboldens those who want to hit evangelicals at street level. Another friend of mine is leading a church plant in the south of England. They meet in a school. A few months ago, they got a letter from the school governors which said that the school could no longer host them because of the church’s views on gay marriage. The church fought back, pointing out that these views are a ‘protected characteristic’, and it would be illegal to turf them out on that basis. The school governors backed down, for the moment.

Protected characteristics preserve a public space for minorities to operate and shelters them from this kind of discrimination. Every church, especially ones that are dependent on the goodwill of a public body, should know about them. But these protections are not immutable, activists are relentless and we may expect these protections to weaken in the years ahead. The space in which churches can operate will get smaller. For Christians in public life, it is already as small as it can get.

Have we reached the point when an evangelical Christian cannot reach high office? Perhaps, but we must not stop trying. Jesus told us to be salt and light (Matt.5:13-17) and some Christians should aim for the very top. So, I haven’t told my two friends not to bother; I am encouraging them to seek selection and praying that they get onto the ballot. Gifted evangelicals need to keep trying.

One last thing: contrary to public belief, most evangelicals are progressive in the sense that we would love to see a free and fair society where minorities are protected. Pagans didn’t give us these ideas, Christians did. And Christian thinking is not unattractive to those who don’t believe. Just think, almost half the SNP membership voted for someone who follows Jesus faithfully.