An election dominated by holy rows? (UK Election looms)

[_TJ_]

An election dominated by holy rows? May the good Lord spare us . . .
Simon Jenkins

ACTORS SHOULD NEVER appear with dogs or children. Politicians should never appear with God. Such props are notoriously unpredictable. Yet God has elbowed his way into the election campaign. Yesterday Tony Blair felt obliged to pay obeisance to His evangelical wing, the Faithworks Movement. Its leader, Steve Chalke, wants religion to be “hotly contested” in the election. Let’s contest it.

I have long assumed that British politics “does not do God”, in Alastair Campbell’s celebrated phrase, and for good reason. Fewer Britons profess an active interest in religion, barely 10 per cent, than anywhere in the Western world. Of those who do, it is hard to ascribe belief to party loyalty. Activating the church vote, as the Republicans did in America last November, would not benefit any one British party. The message from the focus groups is thus to stick to schools and hospitals, crime and taxes.

Why then have the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster been hard at work this past week? The answer is that Michael Howard dipped his toe in abortion law reform in Cosmopolitan magazine. The Church suddenly saw leverage. The media is full of euthanasia, hate speech, faith academies and stem-cell research. All are alive with ethical controversy. Where ethics breaks cover, the flapping surplices and dented mitres of religion are never far behind.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1059-1537389,00.html