The Party Isn’t Over...

by Andrew Bradstock

Christianity has had its fair share of visionaries, men and women with a clear idea of how the world could be a better, fairer and more peaceful place. And we Christian Socialists are the present-day bearers of their torch.

Chris Bryant discusses these ‘posthumous comrades’ in his aptly titled Possible Dreams, and Chris Rowland and I tried to bring them to a wider audience in our Radical Christian Writings. People like John Ball, who saw the rich exploiting the poor and preached that all things should be held in common; John Lilburne and the Levellers who wanted greater democracy to reflect the inherent equality of all people; Margaret Fell, Priscilla Cotton and Mary Cole, who called for women to be treated as equals with men; Gerrard Winstanley, who saw the land as a ‘common treasury’ and wanted all to share its fruits; William Blake, who despaired of the material and spiritual poverty of his day and envisioned a new ‘Jerusalem’.

What united all these was not just their faith – which took many different forms: they saw in Scripture an imperative to make society ‘godly’ and committed themselves to work for the change they wanted. Not content with just a dream, they acted to see it realised, often at huge personal cost. Winstanley expressed this when he said in 1649 that ‘action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing.’ ‘Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand’ as Blake put it.

How do we make our vision of a better world count today? I find the inclusiveness of the gospel, its vision of a radically different way to live, inspiring – but what does it mean to work for a social order in which the ‘first’ really are ‘last’ and the last first, the mighty removed from their thrones and the humble lifted up, the hungry fed and the rich turned away? What does it mean to see swords turned into ploughshares, all dwelling safely under their own vine, the modern equivalent of the leper, tax-collector and Samaritan as welcome at the banquet as anyone else? We know the ‘kingdom’ is a present as well as future reality: how do we turn from ‘vision’ to ‘action’?

I believe that engaging in party politics is part of what it means to ‘build the kingdom’ today. Just as our radical forebears found ways to turn their visions into reality, so we have to discover how to give the gospel message of social justice traction today. And this will embrace the political realm.

As Christians we are great at campaigning: it’s a cliché to ask where Jubilee 2000 or Make Poverty History would be without the churches. But when that’s said and done, it’s at the political level that action on debt, trade and other issues is ultimately taken, and we need to be involved there as well as on the street. No area of life is outside God’s concern, including politics, and if we are not in there affecting decisions, others who aren’t ‘seeking first the kingdom’ will be.

I didn’t join the Labour party for many years because I thought that, since its platform wasn’t fully in line with mine, I’d have to water down my vision and go along with ‘political compromises’. But while listening to a Radio 4 debate (yes really, I remember it well!) the futility of having a vision but doing nothing to make it happen hit me with great force. Surely it was a more responsible Christian witness to do something to improve society than keep my ideas intact but disengage them from the real world. Surely compromise is not all bad and sometimes even essential for change to happen. None of us will ever to find a party that reflects our views in every regard (just as we’ll never find the ‘perfect church’), but better to join the one nearest to our views and seek to influence it than not get involved at all.

As I leave this chair may I appeal to you, if you are not in the Party, to consider getting involved? Whatever your misgivings – you might have even been a member and left over Iraq or another issue – I do believe we need to get serious if we want to see our values make a difference today. To return to our heroic forebears: as Chris Bryant has put it, ‘so many of [their] “impossible” dreams… have now come to pass that it must be incumbent upon [us] both to dream and to make their dreams, and those of others, possible.’

To return to our heroic forebears: as Chris Bryant has put it, ‘so many of [their] “impossible” dreams… have now come to pass that it must be incumbent upon [us] both to dream and to make their dreams, and those of others, possible.’

Dr Andrew Bradstock was the Director of the Christian Socialist Movement from 2004 until 2008.

Andrew Bradstock, 05/02/2009