TORY MP SIR JOHN BIGGS-DAVI SON (RIGHT) ARGUES THAT IT

IS POSSIBLE TO BE BOTH A GOOD CONSERVATIVE AND A GOOD CHRISTIAN
TORY CHRISTIAN
WHEN I "went over to Rome" from the Church of England, where I learnt much of my Christianity, I took as confirmation names those of St George, the Great Martyr of the East and England's Protector, and of the "mere English" More.
St Thomas More is an obvious patron of politicians. He scored the famous double of being Speaker of the House of Commons and then, as Chancellor of England, Speaker of the House of Lords. On the scaffold where he laid down his life for his faith he said that he died "The King's good servant, but God's first."
I could stop now because these words contain the whole duty of the Christian in public life.
Leftish Catholics, even priests, sometimes write to the press that to be a Christian it is necessary to be a Socialist. They do not define Socialist; and definition is all. Hitler and Stalin both called themselves Socialists of a kind. Neither Shirley Williams nor Kevin Macnamara have been perturbed by the following extract from Pope Pius XI's great social encylical, Quadragesimo Anno: "No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist."
As a Christian and a Conservative, I find the Tory philosophy of society and of its basic social unit, the family, consonant with Christian teaching. If I did not, I would reject it. Toryism is also derived from a church tradition. I would not, however, dare to say that to be a Christian one must be a Conservative. There are men and women in the Labour, Liberal and other parties who are better Christians than I am.
Good old Labour men will say that the traditional Labour Party owed much more to Methodism than to Marxism. There are still those whose Socialism is inspired by the Christian ethic. A Conservatism that denied its Judaeo-Christian inheritance would be almost a contradiction in terms. A Conservative is conservative of the values of Christian civilisation.
"Man," Disraeli said, "was made to worship and to obey." If man will not worship God, and try to obey Him, he will fall down and worship such idols as man himself, or sex, or sport, or Mammon, or the Party, or the State. Toryism rejects extremes of economic liberalism and .of State intervention. Lord Shaftesbury and other Tory social reformers of the last century were prompted by their Christian faith. Some were Evangelical, others Tractarian. Their insistence on the responsible stewardship of property was of the essence of Christian social teaching.
Marx and Engels acknowledged the Disraelian criticism of a "Two Nation" England, diVided between two mutually uncomprehending classes, the rich and the poor. There was commmon ground between Toryism and the old Christian Socialism. The analysis of Disraeli was similar to that of Marx and Engels. Their remedies were poles apart.
For me, it is both Conservative and Christian that property should be spread wide, for example through home ownership and share ownership. Many who are not supporters of my party would agree that without property and the duties it entails it is hard for men and women to be the responsible beings their Creator intended.
Original sin is a primary politicial, as well as theological fact to be reckoned with. It is common sense and conducive to the common good to work with the grain of human nature, fallen human nature, and to recognise that men do best when they do for themselves and their families. They find effort and enterprise, innovation and invention not worth while if public authority takes too much of what they earn and save. A free society, implying at least a mixed economy, will rely largely on inducement; a collectivist society and a controlled economy will need to apply coercion or even terror. It has been said that we must either revive the institution of property — Belloc was thinking of small proprietors — or the institution of slavery. He said that there was no third choice.
Christians in public life should strive for a social and economic order that makes for human dignity expressed in self-reliance and responsibility. Religion therefore cannot be kept out of politics, or business, or Trade Unionism. That would almost be to keep religion out of religion! That the Church should be confined to the sacristy has been the demand of despots, of Nazis and Communists. There will, inevitably, be friction between Church and State. The Church's halo will be the hatred of the world. The Lord said it would be so. There will be a running fire along the fuzzy frontiers between the realms of God and Caesar. There will be demarcation disputes over education, divorce, abortion. As the Bishop of London, Dr Graham Leonard, said on the 26th May: "There will always be a tension between Church and State, unless the Church has chosen to serve Caesar rather than Christ. This is evident in the Gospels and throughout the history of the Church. It is a tension which exists between Church and State as corporate bodies, for they have different purposes, different functions, different priorities.
"But I speak today more of the tension which exists within ourselves as both Churchmen and citizens. It is the Christian politican whom I have in mind, who recognises the distorted, violent, sinful nature of the world with which he or she has to deal, but who does what is politically possible to preserve men and women and enable them to be free; it is he who recognises that legislation, planning or administration will never make men good but at best make it harder for them to be bad and easier to be good but who tries as an administrator to make it easier for men as they are to live in greater harmony, justice and health.
"It is the one who seeks in industry and commerce to enable people to create the wealth which can be used to provide employment, relieve poverty and provide housing.
"All whom I have mentioned so far as they ,are Christians, know only too well how our best efforts can be corrupted; how easy it is to compromise and agonize lest, trying to work within their situations, they are failing in their allegiance to their Lord."
The Church must stand prudently but without equivocation for the moral law. Political action, however, is largely for the laity; the clergy are under strength and should be busy enough preaching and administering the Sacraments which lay folk cannot do. If clergymen publicly identify themselves with a party, it makes it harder for the brethren to dwell together in unity. There are some ministers, however, who relish the publicity and excitement of politics to the relative obscurity of pastoral foil. Churchmen in the past have fawned upon emperors, princes and dictators. Some churchmen nowadays toady to the trendies or seek to ride the wave of history in false synthesis with Marxism. They have over-reacted against a selfregarding piety and "never-onweekdays" religion that failed to prove faith by works.
Anglo-Catholic incumbents at Thaxted in Essex set a fashion in what is now called "liberation theology." But that Christ was a political and social revolutionary was the allegation of those who bore false witness against him at Pilate's judgment seat.
In fact, the artisan's son from Nazareth was not only a puzzle. He was a shocking disappointment. In the parlance of today, He was "irrelevant." His Kingdom was not of this world. During His long fast in the desert He spurned the Satanic temptation to set up His own World Government. The God-Man was no freedom fighter against Roman imperialism, no agitator against the unjust social order in Palestine. Yet He is total Liberator.
The early Christians were loyal to the Imperial power, They rendered to Caesar, as theirMaster had taught them. "Honour the King," St Peter commanded. The King was Nero! St Paul declared that "the powers that be are ordained of God."
It was the Jews who accused the Christians of having turned the world upside down. So they had. They were revolutionaries of the Spirit. They changed men, women and children, and then a. pagan empire into Christendom. Adoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary inspired a true "women's lib."
The Pope at Puebla called for "a correct Christian idea of liberation." Jesus and His Church proclaimed "liberation from everything that oppresses man but which is above all liberation from sin and the evil one . . . liberation springing from the reality of being children of God . . . liberation that, with the energy of love, urges us towards fellowship, the summit and fulness of which we find in the Lord. Liberation that in the framework of the Church's proper mission is not reduced to the simple and narrow economic, political, social or cultural dimension, and is not sacrificed to the demands of any strategy practice or short-term solution."
Heresy is exaggeration of truth. The truth is that we are both body and soul. God became flesh. We need to be fed — but not on bread alone. The Church looks to the whole man. The fashion has been for a religion that is "horizontal" reaching our fraternally to the world. But a religion of love of neighbour rather than for the love of God, is stunted and selfrighteous. At the same time, the "horizontal" and the "vertical", symbolised by the church spires that reach for Heaven, are not opposed: it took both to make the Cross.