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.