Faith in European Politics

One hundred and twenty-five million Europeans claim that their religious convictions influence their political choices (if an eight-nation study by the Bertelsmann Foundation in 2008 is representative of the rest of the Europe Union).

Reporting on the survey, EUObserver claimed ‘Europeans keep faith out of politics’, presumably on the basis that just over 250 million had claimed that religious convictions played only minimal or no influence. But the 125 million who say it is important cannot be ignored and, avoiding the tabloid headlines, the report’s authors suggest that ‘The role which [religion] plays in tying together the countries of the European Union should not be underestimated.’

One of the founders of the European Union, Robert Shuman, was a man of deep Christian conviction, who in 1958 called for a democratic model of European governance built on post-war national reconciliation which would ‘develop into a community of peoples in freedom, equality, solidarity and peace… deeply rooted in Christian values.’

In 2010, according to the UK Evangelical Alliance, 98% of UK evangelicals claimed to have voted in General election. According to a British Electoral Survey in 2010, 92.4% of Christians of all denominations voted, compared with 89% of people of no religious affiliation. However, these figures do not readily translate into an obligation for voting in Euro-elections with significantly lower voter turnouts. When Christians read the New Testament with its exhortations to pray for and obey the authorities, they presumably forget that Paul was addressing Christians who were ruled from far-off Rome by an Emperor who had little sympathy for their religious convictions.

“One of the founders of the European Union, Robert Shuman, was a man of deep Christian conviction”

The prayers of most Protestants, if offered for their politicians at all, are typically for their national leaders; the Premier, Prime Minister, President or Sovereign. I’ve yet to hear a protestant pastor pray for any European leader, EU Commissioner, President, or MEP. Is it any wonder that Christians remain remote from decisions made in Brussels and Strasbourg by their elected representatives and yet which potentially impact their daily lives in significant ways? If European politics are increasingly secular, the churches must shoulder more than their fair share of the blame.

Prayer can be a way of engaging in the mission of Christ. It’s one way of taking seriously the radical political vision of the New Testament that there is no area of life over which we cannot extend the claim that ‘Jesus is Lord!’ For Christians, disengagement with European politics is not an option!

In the previously mentioned 2010 EA study, whilst 93% of UK evangelicals claim that it is important for Christians to engage with the Westminster and Scottish Parliaments as well as the Welsh assembly, no information was solicited about engagement with the European Parliament. Does the EA-UK feel that Europe is unimportant or insignificant?

A Theos report in 2008 examined the references to faith in the speeches of politicians such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. They concluded that 69% of the rhetoric was overwhelmingly positive and only 13% was negative. The director of Theos, Paul Woolley, said ‘The increase in references to religious faith reflects an increased awareness of, and interest in, religious groups in our society.’

Of course, some European churches have historically been much closer to state power than others. Research conducted by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (2009) showed that the more right-wing the Spanish voter, the more likely they were to attend mass regularly: 33% of the extreme right, 25% of the mainstream right-wing, 10% of those who are in the political centre, 7% of the Left, and 4% of the extreme Left go to mass regularly.

The correlation between religious and national/political identity is frequently close in other countries. On the 2nd February 2011, the Russian Orthodox Church ruled that clergy and leaders were eligible to run for public office (though not to join political parties) where it was necessary to combat blasphemy, slander of the Church, moral relativism, family values, and destruction of historical monuments and the environment. Potential opponents might include ‘schismatics and other religions’, frequently code for minority Christian groups.

Europe’s political liberals frequently make equally heavy weather of responding to God’s appearances. In many of the debates about head coverings or the wearing of crucifixes there are liberal answers on both sides. How liberal is it to ban a BA check-in attendant from wearing a cross? Whose rights are infringed when a woman freely chooses to wear a veil? I’m not suggesting that the answers are at all obvious or easy but, as Rowan Williams suggested in a 2005 speech in Brussels, ‘Unless the liberal state is engaged in a continuing dialogue with the religious community, it loses its essential liberalism. It becomes simply dogmatically secular, insisting that religious faith be publicly invisible.

The space created within the Lisbon Treaty for transparent and regular consultation with Europe’s religious communities is there for a purpose. Europe’s churches must learn to use it or lose it and risk the lurch of the European project further into ideological secularism.

Darrell Jackson