I don’t often on this blog clearly endorse one side of a political debate. But I have already nailed my colours to the mast on tomorrow’s UK referendum on the Alternative Vote. See my argument from Christian principles for a Yes! vote; my endorsement of Ekklesia’s Yes! campaign; and, most explicitly, my response to Doug Chaplin’s No! arguments.

I have nothing more to add to the debate except to express my disappointment that the campaign has been so focused on personalities, and often so negative. While the principles I put forward in my post Touch not the Lord’s anointed apply in detail only to Christians, I wish they could be applied also to political leaders. Or perhaps they can, as we are talking about ministers and Privy Councillors of a queen who was anointed in God’s name at her coronation. But there are some complex theological and political issues there which I don’t want to go into now.

So let me simply urge my UK readers to go out and vote, at any time from 7.00 am to 10.00 pm tomorrow, and to vote Yes! to fairer votes.

Clayboy, otherwise known as Doug Chaplin, is a priest in the Church of England. So I was interested to see that he had put together a list of five reasons to say No! in the forthcoming Alternative Vote referendum.

I’m glad to see for once someone trying to find substantive arguments on the No! side. I hoped that in Doug’s list I might find some real Christian arguments on this issue, perhaps in response to my post Towards a Christian view on the Alternative Vote, or to what Ekklesia and some bishops have had to say on this subject.

So I was a little disappointed that the Clayboy arguments are mostly not about the ethical issues involved, but instead are speculation about the consequences of a Yes! vote. But, following his five reasons, he does write the following:

the most moral system of voting in a democracy is the one most understandable to and accessible by the most people.

Well, he may be right here. But is he really suggesting that listing candidates in order of preference is not understandable or not accessible by people? If there is an issue here, then it needs to be addressed by proper voter education. If he wants to rule this out on principle, then of course the best understood system will be the current one. That makes his argument into one for maintaining the status quo however bad that might be – and I cannot accept that that is a good moral argument.

Now I’m sure Clayboy is correct that adoption of AV will not on its own be “all that is needed” “to reconnect people and politicians”. But surely it is a step, if only a small one, in that direction. Let’s indeed make the politicians “do some real work to connect to the electorate”. But first let’s show that we care about this work by voting Yes!

Last week I wrote Towards a Christian view on the Alternative Vote not least because I had not seen any other argument on this matter from a Christian perspective. But perhaps that is because I hadn’t been looking far enough. I have now discovered that the Christian think-tank Ekklesia is committed to the cause of electoral reform, to the extent that their co-director Jonathan Bartley has been seconded to be one of the main leaders of the Yes! To Fairer Votes campaign.

Bartley’s co-director Simon Barrow has outlined Ekklesia’s position, and Bartley’s role, in an article Supporting the case for Fairer Votes. This article goes into theological issues only where it quotes a more detailed paper by Barrow from 2009, The state of independents: alternative politics. Most of this paper is not directly relevant to the Alternative Vote referendum this May. But it does offer some significant insights, such as:

Ekklesia is a Christian-based think-tank and believes strongly that the challenge for Christians is to find a new way of engaging with people and with power which will change the rules of the game – from self-interest to concern for our neighbours; from organised hatred to enemy-loving; from punitive to restorative action; from trying to ‘be in control’ of others to seeking the invitation of persuasive example, and so on. …A healthy democratic system – one that is open to change, criticism, renewal and a wide base of participation and decision-making – is positive for all of us. Of course, it will not resolve our differences nor will it alone produce the change of hearts, minds and lives which Christians (and others) argue is what real transformation in the public and inter-personal realm requires. Something more is needed for that. But it does give us a framework in which to ‘do business’.

Christian hope and commitment points towards the creation of public places where political competition is displaced by neighbourly affection, based on the voluntary but deeply-rooted commitments of ‘communities of principle’ (ekklesia).

The paper is not specifically referring to the Alternative Vote, but it could have been, when it concludes:

Here is a chance to do things differently, to challenge what St Paul once condemned as ‘party spirit’ and listed as a destructive impulse alongside ‘selfish ambition’. He was thinking of factionalism within the church. But this is a shared human failing. What we need instead is a shared human opportunity to take our politics, our participation and ourselves in a fresh direction.

Indeed! This material from Ekklesia is still not really a theological defence of the Yes! to Fairer Votes campaign. But it does provide a strong basis on which such a defence could be based.

I would expect to find more relevant material in Jonathan Bartley’s books The Subversive Manifesto: Lifting the Lid on God’s Political Agenda (2003) and Faith and Politics After Christendom: The Church as a Movement for Anarchy (2006). But I have not read these books. (At the Ekklesia site the link to the former is uninformative and the link to the latter gives a message “You are not authorized to access this page”, so I have linked instead to their pages at amazon.co.uk.) Sadly Jonathan seems to have been too busy with the Yes! campaign to write anything more recent from an explicitly Christian perspective. But his role within the campaign should ensure that this Christian viewpoint is not ignored or lost.

UPDATE less than an hour after posting: Jonathan Bartley replied quickly to my e-mail linking to this post. He included a reminder that ten Church of England bishops have come out in support of the Alternative Vote, as reported by The Guardian. Among the bishops quoted is the blogger Alan Wilson. While Bartley is quoted as saying that the bishops were backing change on moral and ethical grounds, sadly there is nothing more in the article that goes beyond the standard politicians’ arguments. The next day Bishop Alan blogged on Are voting systems moral?, which he concluded with:

So by all means let’s have a discussion about voting systems. I wonder what general moral principles we will be using as we take our positions. The answer “None, because this is about politics” strikes me as distinctly weedy, nasty people would suggest “sub-Christian.”

Indeed. But it would have been nice to see Bishop Alan starting that discussion by properly explaining his own position.

More than three years ago I expressed some concern here that a US arms manufacturer was about to be selected to run the 2011 UK census. Despite the campaign I reported on, Lockheed Martin was indeed selected for the contract.

I should clarify that the Lockheed Martin contract was never for the whole census, but only for data processing and storage. Assurances have been given that this foreign company will not have access to personal data. The British company Capita has been contracted to recruit and train the 35,000 staff who are collecting the data.

Census day is now nearly upon us (Sunday 27th March, in case anyone has forgotten), and the census forms have been distributed – and there is a convenient option to fill in the census forms online. And I had almost forgotten this controversy until I saw a report at the BBC website that a Coventry “peace worker” has burnt her census form

in protest at a weapons firm helping to run the Office for National Statistics’s (ONS) census. … She faces a fine for failing to return her census form and said she was prepared to go to prison for the sake of her conscience.

So how widespread is this boycott campaign? Wikipedia reports that the Christian thinktank Ekklesia has called for a boycott, but there is nothing at their website to suggest this – only an article reporting that the Green Party has decided against a boycott. Wikipedia also names Stop the War Coalition as calling for a boycott, but the article on their website this month, while urging rather too late that Lockheed Martin’s contract be cancelled, falls short of a call for a boycott. Time to edit the Wikipedia article, I think.

So it seems that there are no organised groups calling for a boycott of the census. It rather looks as if Ms Walker of Coventry will be one of a small band of individuals who refuse to fill in their forms because of the Lockheed Martin connection – probably far fewer than refuse simply to be difficult.

And that is for the best. Although I do not support Lockheed Martin’s arms trade activities, I agree with the Green Party’s position as quoted by Ekklesia, that “the census is extremely important and needs to be accurate”. So, whatever our reservations, let’s all do our duty to our country by filling in our forms, accurately and on time.

Phil Zuckerman and Dan Cady explain in the Huffington Post Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus. Their perspectives on American Christianity, apparently as outsiders and unbelievers, are shocking:

The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus.

Of course this doesn’t exactly mean that they hate Jesus:

Evangelicals don’t exactly hate Jesus — as we’ve provocatively asserted in the title of this piece. They do love him dearly. But not because of what he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what he does for them. … And yet, as for Jesus himself — his core values of peace, his core teachings of social justice, his core commandments of goodwill — most Evangelicals seem to have nothing but disdain.

Now I’m sure the response of many politically (and perhaps also theologically) conservative Christians would be that the listed “policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus” are not in fact Christian policies at all. Indeed some of them are highly debatable, although others are not, such as supporting “punitive punishment over rehabilitation” and rejecting “anything that might dare to help out those in need”. And the article doesn’t mention another whole category of “policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus”, concerning family life, which are strongly supported by evangelicals but not so much by the liberal left which the writers seem to represent.

Nevertheless the way that a whole raft of right wing policies, those associated with the Tea Party, have become associated so closely with evangelicalism is a real scandal and stumbling block making it hard for unbelievers, especially those with more liberal views, to turn to Christ.

Of course the authors are right that

People look at the content of their religious tradition — its teachings, its creeds, its prophet’s proclamations — and they basically pick and choose what suits their own secular outlook.

North American evangelicals mostly support these policies because the majority of them are from socially highly conservative areas and strata of society. It would be interesting to compare the political views of evangelicals with those of their unbelieving neighbours: I suspect that there would not be very much difference. So the authors are again right when they conclude about these conservative positions:

it is just strange and contradictory when they claim these positions as somehow “Christian.” They aren’t.

John Richardson, the Ugley Vicar, asks Is there a Christian view on Alternative Voting?, and is “surprised at the overall silence on this whole topic.” This is in the context of the referendum on the Alternative Vote which will be held here in the UK on 5th May.

Personally I am a convinced supporter of a YES! vote in the AV referendum. My only concern is that this is a somewhat half-hearted measure, less satisfactory than a full system of proportional representation. On the other hand, more proportional systems have other disadvantages, for example by breaking the links between MPs and constituencies. So I judge the AV proposal to be a good compromise which should be acceptable to almost all.

Of course I understand why some MPs are strongly opposed to the change: it means that all of them will have to work hard at every general election, as there will no longer be any safe seats. From my perspective that is also one of the best arguments in favour of change. For more arguments from the official campaign, click the YES! image.

I should disclose that I am still a member of the Liberal Democrat party, which has long favoured electoral reform and strongly favours a YES! vote in the referendum – although I am currently rather disillusioned with Nick Clegg’s leadership especially on the student fees issue.

But this is all from a secular viewpoint. Is there any distinctively Christian approach to this issue? The problem is that democracy is not really a Christian institution, although it has become a presupposed good at least among more liberal Christians. So how can there be a Christian view on exactly what kind of democracy is best? I can’t presume to give a definitive answer, but I can suggest a direction from which this can be approached, in the following principle which the apostle Paul outlined to the Corinthians and the Philippians:

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

1 Corinthians 1:10 (NIV 2011)

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV 2011)

Now I accept that these appeals by Paul are primarily about relationships within the church, not in the political sphere. But surely they show God’s ideal for how all relationships should be conducted. So they can also be applied to relationships outside the church, including in the political arena – although as Christians we should not try to enforce them in a legalistic way on outsiders.

The principle Paul put forward can be summarised as that groups should seek consensus rather than divide along party lines, and should avoid pushing through decisions which might be against the interests of others, even if those others are a minority. I am sorry to say that this is very different from how political decisions have usually been made at least here in the UK. Indeed I think Paul’s words could be taken as a broad condemnation of making decisions on a majority vote, although there might be circumstances where that is unavoidable.

However, given that the UK is a democracy and no one, including myself, is seriously wanting to change that, then how can Paul’s principle best be reconciled with democracy? The ideal might be to elect MPs by a consensus of the voters in each constituency, and then for them to make decisions in Parliament by consensus. However, given the wide range of strongly held views among voters, there is no way that this could happen. Perhaps the best that could be hoped for is to find a candidate in each constituency who is acceptable, if not ideal, to 80-90% of the voters. But I don’t know how this could be put into practice.

Now the Alternative Vote is not going to deliver even this kind of partial consensus. But it will ensure that each successful candidate is acceptable to at least 50% of those voting. It will put an end to the current situation in which many MPs, and sometimes whole governments, are elected with the support of only one third of those who voted.

The Alternative Vote won’t mean the end of political parties. But it will make it in the interests of those parties to select candidates who can command broad support. Where extremists or people tainted by scandal are selected, even in apparently safe seats, they will be in danger from other parties working together against them. So AV will weaken extreme tendencies within parties and increase the number of MPs supporting moderate policies and consensus solutions. Even when there is not a hung Parliament, there will be less of the traditional rapid policy swings when new governments are formed. All in all, in Paul’s words, there should be more people “not looking to [their] own interests but … to the interests of the others.”

I hope what I have written here will help to guide Christian voters at the referendum in May. Personally I hope that you will join me in voting YES! But first you should think through the issues involved and come to your own decision.