We need to get as serious as Starmer
We need to get as serious as Starmer
Our churches must be in public service, writes George Pitcher
A first trope of our new Labour government is that it is serious. It’s said the adults are back in the room, led in by the calm and sensible Keir Starmer, “unburdened by doctrine”, he claims, treading lightly on our lives and always putting the country before party interests.
The purpose of this piety, which doesn’t actually mean anything when you poke it, is to put clear blue water between the new administration and the past 14 years of Tory “chaos”, a slogan that saw Labour through its election campaign to victory.
Like Tony Blair before him, Starmer is spinning an air of serious competence, in contrast to what Labour would like us to see as an essentially trivial and childish Conservative regime. That isn’t fair, not least because Rishi Sunak is a serious and substantial person. It was really “prime ministers” Boris Johnson and Liz Truss who trashed the Tory reputation for seriousness with performances straight out of the panto tradition (commedia del arte’s Pantalone and Columbina respectively).
As with Blair, the image of being serious can be made to stick. And if it sticks long enough it can become the zeitgeist. Cultural history may well come to record that chaotic and clowning Conservatives were succeeded by serious and stable socialists.
Climate of our times
The climate of our times, perhaps from now until the mid-2030s – and maybe even beyond if we don’t send in the clowns again – could be defined by the single word “serious”. It may not be much fun, but then neither were Partygate nor the mini-budget unless you were hosting them.
A question arises over how seriousness might affect other areas of our lives beyond the political. I have a particular interest in our national religious life, with specific reference to our established Anglican Church and other Christian denominations.
Starmer says he’s an atheist. Presumably a serious one (imagine him saying he hasn’t really thought about it – no, me neither). But he’s said in interview that he wants to co-opt churches in his mission of national renewal.
Church? You cannot be serious…
If that is to be so, then our Church must get serious too. Isn’t it so already? No, not really. Way too much time and attention invested in whether same-sex unions can be blessed at church; far too little expended on how the economy fails to serve the poor and on how we love our neighbours.
If we’re to be taken seriously, to be serious enough to play a serious role in Starmer’s serious age, then we’re going to have to step up to the plate. That will mean emerging from an era of grotesque abuse of the vulnerable, with a sense of public service that this new government has claimed as its own, with crystal clear social and economic priorities.
Anglicans and Roman Catholics should have all that in abundance. Again, too many of us have not. The fault line, one is sorry to say, is a liberalism into which faith trickles away into meaninglessness.
I confess I’m liberal catholic
It’s sorry to say, because I would count myself a liberal catholic (Anglo-Catholic, that is). Subject to reason and the “assured results” of higher criticism, I’d want to witness to the social gospel that emerged from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Lux Mundi, archbishops Gore and Temple et al.
The trouble is that theological liberalism has come to mean, well, anything that you want it to mean, beyond any critical reason. It’s now become little more than trying to be a bit nice. It’s a shock to wake up and realise, as I did, that you’re socially conservative – for family as socially foundational; against assisted suicide and euthanasia and resistant to biological gender becoming socially meaningless – but supportive of a social-market economy. I’d be a Christian Democrat on the model of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship in a heartbeat.
There is both political and religious orthodoxy here. Political because Christian Democracy, unlike Starmer, is burdened by doctrine. And religious orthodoxy too because it’s rooted in the scriptural law of the Beatitudes and the revolution in human worth that they heralded.
Tradition a dirty word
Like orthodoxy, tradition has come to be a dirty word in a liberal hegemony, associated with liturgical obsessions. These eclipse the accrued and lived experience of those of faith over the past two millennia. The idea that what we think now is all that matters is a consequence of the assault on tradition, which might celebrate a social gospel and servant ministry as traditional over arcane vestments and orders of service.
Ultimately, it will be a question of who we are as Church. The choice is between a dwindling social function and a cohesive people that speaks truth to power, enables service and counts the vulnerable as of as much value as the rich and powerful.
If that’s a manifesto that matches Starmer’s, then count me in. But if today’s disciples are to stand up to be counted, then it’s not a case of simply demanding to be taken seriously, any more than that would work for our new government. We must also offer a serious vision of the future to which people of faith can contribute.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest
A version of this column first appeared on PremierChristianity