Tony Blair has been taken to task for comments he made in a TV chat show.
“When you’re faced with a decision like that, some of those decisions have been very, very difficult, most of all because you know… these are people’s lives and, in some case, their deaths,” he said.
“The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing according to your conscience.”
He said: “I think if you have faith about these things, then you realise that that judgement is made by other people… and if you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.”
When asked if he had prayed to God on the matter, he replied: “I don’t want to get into that…but yeah, of course, you struggle with your own conscience about it… in the end, you do what you think is the right thing.”
It is out of character for British politicians to “do God”. While many MP’s and government ministers are well known to have deeply held Christian convictions, the convention in British politics is not to parade these convictions too publicly. Broadly speaking, I’m sure that this is a good thing. It avoids, for example, the appropriation of the “Christian” label by one or other of the political factions. Christians are to be found in all political parties and while all would, I’m sure, say that their political convictions flow from their religious commitment, none would claim to have a monopoly on God in the way that seems to happen in US political life.
Even so, if a poltician who is known to have a Christian faith is asked a direct question which relates to that faith, it seems a bit much to catigate him for answering it. Blair is known to be a Christian. Why should it be surprising to learn that he believes his decisions will be judged by God? I kind of assumed that would be part of his faith. There is all the difference in the world between trying to appropriate God on the hustings and being open about the role that faith has in one’s life.
[tags]Blair, politics, faith, judgement, Iraq, war[/tags]
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Kim 03.04.06 at 5:00 pm
Yes, Richard, at the very least this episode exposes (yet again) the astonishing theological ignorance of the secular press. I mean - the press presumptuously assumes - it’s all very well for a Muslim, or even a Jew, but fancy a Christian who takes his faith seriously, for whom it is the axis around which his life and work turns. The media constantly pontificate about the absurdities of religious beliefs - without making the slightest effort to ascertain exactly what these beliefs are and what they entail (hence - another example - the absurd Dawkins phenomenon).
In the case of the Prime Minister’s “doing God”, the ultimate irony is surely this: the problem with Tony Blair’s political ethics is not that they are theological, it is that they are not theological enough!
Godfrey 03.05.06 at 4:49 pm
My goodness, England and America are so different in some ways!
I don’t think anyone on the Right could even get elected these days, at least in certain parts of America, without making a big deal about how Christian and righteous they are. (Or how Mormon they are, in Utah.)
I suppose England doesn’t even have a National Day of Prayer, where people all over the country go out and pray on street corners, or have people driving around with bumper stickers which proclaim “In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned”?