Last Sunday I preached on "Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another", asking people to hold in mind "who should I vote for?" as I talked about loving one another. This wasn't an attempt to sway them to any particular party - more a case of challenging them to ask themselves which party best does it (and there will be arguments on this for all the main parties).
I have heard people talking about engagement as one of the necessary prerequisites for love. If we do not engage with people then we can't love them - and it is so much easier to demonise people we don't know (something that I used to minimise customer complaints in my previous job).
The one plea that I would make is that we all vote (I might let off those in the Buckingham constituency who have the speaker as a candidate!), for two reasons: firstly that if we don't vote we are refusing to take responsibility for the future of the country, particularly this election, where if it is a hung parliament the votes cast for each party may be relevant in the forming of a coalition; and secondly because there are parties which do not by any stretch of the imagination deal in love and engagement, and the way to deal with them is at the ballot box, and a large turnout is bad for them!
Having written the above I am now fuming. I have just read that a group of Christians are promoting 192 Conservatives (and a few of other parties) on the basis that:
as UK citizens having a vote they would prefer to be governed by representatives who are committed to protecting life, marriage, conscience and fundamental freedomsNow that is one view, but the Bible has rather a lot about orphans, widows and resident aliens. This strikes me as Christians wanting what is best for them - not what is best for others - and what is potentially worse for others. No wonder people don't like us L
Ruth Gledhill
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