Articles - From the Vicar

The complexities, inconsistencies and hypocrisies of international politics are bewildering. How can one reconcile, for instance, the refusal of the British Government to consider talks with Argentina on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands with its willingness to negotiate with equanimity over the future status of Gibraltar? Or by what right does the wealthy developed world use its superior voting power in the World Trade Organisation to ensure that poorer developing nations are at a continual disadvantage in trade negotiations. Or how does the United States government justify its apparent support for military action to topple Saddam Hussein when, at the same time, it continues to grant 'most-favoured-nation' trading status to China, a country whose government executes more of its citizens each year than the rest of the world's nations put together?

The answer to all of these questions, of course, lies in the words 'self-interest'. No government has an interest in acting altruistically because altruism is the least likely way to ensure continued power or privilege. For elected governments the threat of being rebuffed at the next election is enough to ensure that nothing much will change unless there is a perceptible economic advantage; for non-elected governments the comfortable lifestyle that comes with a place in a small and wealthy élite is enough to ensure collusion with fundamentally unfair economic and social structures. To be more precise, Spain (and the rest of the EU) matters more to the UK than Argentina; China, with its huge consumer markets, matters more to the USA than Iraq (at least while there are other sources of oil); and very few of the developing nations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, matter very much at all to the northern hemisphere now that the Cold War is over.

It would be tempting (and understandable) for Christians to walk away from these issues and to maintain a separated and parallel existence. Tempting, but wrong. Christians pray regularly that God's Kingdom will come 'on earth as in heaven'. That prayer can only be fulfilled if we are willing to get involved in the building of the Kingdom ourselves and to embrace joyfully the needs of the world into which Jesus Christ was born and for which he died. Religion and politics do - and must - mix.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay