Church and state...?

Yesterday evening saw the main 3 parliamentary candidates for Dartford taking part in a hustings organised by the local churches. It was a very good event, well supported, and all the candidates will have done their chances no harm, it seems to me. They all came across as genuine, passionate about the area, committed to public service and prepared to give honest answers to questions even when they knew they might not be saying what their audience wanted to hear. Which I suppose brings it back to a choice about policies, which isn't a bad place to be.











The questions (that had been submitted in advance) were interesting. They focussed for the most part on issues that aren't party political; issues, that you could say cynically, are stereotypical issues of concern for Christians - life issues, conscience issues (wearing a cross to work etc), social disorder issues (alcohol, prostitution). In one way that was disappointing, particularly as there were no questions around global poverty and justice (the, admittedly unscientific, very small sample poll on the WCF website makes this Christians' number 1 concern). The answers were interesting, too, and underlined that Christians' views on many of these issues are simply out of step with the rest of society nowadays. Maybe now, more Christians will realise that, and we can begin to order our lives as an alternative society, rather than trying (unsuccessfully) to impose our way of living on everyone else. That doesn't mean we give up on the rest of society, as if God's ways are only relevant for those who profess to know Him. But it probably means that our primary means of persuasion needs to be the quality of our life together. Now there's a challenge for post-christendom.