Cameron’s Christian values are devoid of liberty, spirit and truth
by Archbishop Cranmer:
At least No10 bothered to issue an Easter greeting this year. Last year they omitted to do so, and then refused to reply to a number of the politest enquiries as to why the Prime Minister’s website greets Jews during Passover and Rosh Hashanah; and Muslims during Ramadan and Eid (both of them); and Sikhs and Hindus during Vaisakhi and Diwali, but not a word to Christians at Easter. To omit the most important festival in the Church’s calendar seemed odd – especially during a general election year.
This year, however, No10 did Easter. The Prime Minister didn’t mention Jesus or the Resurrection, preferring instead to tell us about Christian values – or, rather, his apprehension of them. Christianity was distilled to “responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion and pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities”. These, David Cameron says, are “Christian values and they should give us the confidence to say yes, we are a Christian country and we are proud of it”.
It’s probably just coincidence that they also happen to be Jewish values, and Muslim Values, and Hindu values, and Sikh values, and Buddhist values, and, indeed, the values of atheists, agnostics and the UK’s 176,000 Jedi. They are also fundamentally Conservative values. They might even be Labour ones, and even Liberal Democrat ones. Convenient, isn’t it, when Christian values happen to cohere with those of every constituency: either Christianity has triumphed in the secular sphere of ‘core British values’, or it has been syncretised to the point of negation.
One no longer expects a British prime minister to talk of Christus Victor or of resurrection power: to expound how the Bible informs political policy is to invite allegations of “nutter”, as Tony Blair once observed. So Easter is “a message of hope”, and Christianity becomes an expression of notions of responsibility, fairness, tolerance and respect. Jesus is reduced to a Citizenship lesson: we must emulate his good manners, his community participation, and his stiff-upper-lip approach to crucifixion.
Read also: David Cameron’s shallow, clichéd Easter message shows why politicians really shouldn’t do God by Tom Harris, Telegraph
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