Brexit: Time for radical change in the Church?
I find it ironic that the only issue in 40 years being able to vote I was not allowed to vote on the only issue that has potentially direct, immediate and significant impact on my life, the life of my children and my grandchildren. My faith in Christ affects my life deeply, it affects my Christian community, my decision making, my profession and my patriotism. The last was something I didn't know I even had till June 24th.
There is a Christianity Today article entitled 'Brexit: Time for the Church to stop doing politics and start doing faith' which completely misses the point and makes assumptions about those of us who are Europeans (as contrasted with Brits), about our faith, about our Christian communities, our decision making and our patriotism. There are a few valid points in that article, but on the whole it completely misunderstands a whole sector of the body of Christ, demeaning it in the process.
For that reason I start with personal issues with the referendum and the good things it has brought. I then move onto theological issues before going to the political ones. I end with my fear from the referendum based on my Christian faith.
Some of those who believe that Brexit is the right direction do not even begin to understand that grief. Whether as a consequence or not, they are making completely unhelpful comments.
These comments fall into two broad groups: Firstly those who just don’t understand the mourning and loss being experienced by those of us who feel ourselves to be Europeans, and I mean by this that their sense of identity is primarily European rather than British. Secondly, a failure by Brexiters to appreciate the fact that telling us that it was the right decision doesn’t help: it’s like telling a man whose wife has just died in an accident at the traffic lights that it’s okay, because installing the traffic lights was a decision supported by the local residents’ association.
They say there are four stages to mourning: Numbness, Yearning and searching, Disorganisation and despair and finally Reorganisation. I’m not sure that the stages are directly sequential, and in experiencing the grief over this I can definitely sense a passing of the initial numbness and at times moves towards the final reorganisation stage. However, there are times - days and hours - when the grief is still overwhelming.
Because I didn’t expect to feel this, the lack of support from those who are not experiencing it, indeed their celebratory tone, is definitely making it worse. I'm not sure if they had lost whether they would have experienced this sense of loss, for them the status quo would have continued and some of them would have continued the battle.
The initial numbness comes as a shock, it seems impossible to accept what has happened and though some days I might appear normal on the outside I am nevertheless grieving inwardly. I have lost the life I envisioned with all the expectations I had seen ahead, and I don’t know what to do with the void created by that loss. Though irrational I feel angry; because life seems unfair and feel somewhat like people mourning that 'nothing will ever be good again'. Finally you begin to adapt and rebuild your inner and outer world.
A post Brexit survey says 10% of young people are actively looking for jobs outside the UK so abandoning ship, with Canada receiving over 325% more on the day the results were announced. No doubt people will criticise them but this is not the same as those who of the political elite who were campaigning for Brexit and appear now to have abandoned ship also! For some Remainers it is an expression of their identity.
The horrendous xenophobic reactions against some non-British people expressed as ‘get out of our country’ is what some of those looking for jobs in other countries are feeling… they are feeling ‘this is not our country, we should leave’. The key to this is the word ‘our’, it’s about identity.
For some of us, it is not looking for another country; indeed some of us already live in another country. For us it is looking for an structure to express our identity. So we are looking for citizenship of other countries which are part of the European Union to continue our already held internal identity.
This will be incomprehensible to some people and I have personally had one relative who has expressed that it is a fallacy to feel European. I’m sure some will feel ‘good riddance’ that we are going. So be it, everyone is entitled to their opinion; but so are we and really wish there had been a less painful way of it happening.
The referendum doesn’t cut the countries and church two ways, but three ways: Just over one third voted to leave, just about one third voted to remain and just under a third didn’t vote. It was split by country, by age and but social class.
Maggie Thatcher talked of a classless society. I did not believe her and I do not believe her now. The problem with class is an implicit assumption that each class is above or better that another. My understanding of ‘classes’ is more along the lines of tribes, each of which holds to a particular set of values.
Some years back I made a film for the UK Evangelical Alliance on Radical Evangelicalism. As a movement it brought together leaders like Jim Wallis, Desmund Tutu and, in the UK, Dave Cave. While filming in the Anfield Road in Liverpool I was touched by the need to express Christian love in that area and asked Dave about the possibility of Christians moving there to help. Because of the tribal/class divide he felt it would be counterproductive and not help at all.
When doing cross-cultural mission the ‘otherness’ is frequently obvious - with sides see the missionary as different and that can actually be part of the interest to find out what they have to say. Within a class/tribe divide that otherness is simultaneously obvious and hidden in a way that is unhelpful. There are people who bridge the divide, and I’m sure that people who understand how to do so will express it. What I learned from the filming with Dave Cave was that was not my calling.
As well as the divided church there is the divisions within the group of countries we call the United Kingdom.
I find it ironic that whilst some Brexiters wish to be separated from the group of countries called the European Union they still wish the group of countries called the United Kingdom to remain as a structure.
The EEC which became the EU was established in 1957, the year I was born. It has been something I have known all my life. I watched the struggles to enter the EEC as a child, when Charles de Gaulle repeatedly used his national veto to stop UK entry. But I ever so was thankful when the did UK enter the EEC when I was 16 years old for selfish reasons, though a long way off, I longed to retire to a warm country.
When Cyprus entered the EU on 1st May 2004, the whole family went to the sea front for the celebrations. There were fireworks, music and a wild celebration.
As my wife put it in her blog ‘We went home elated. Not just because life would become so much easier for us: now we had the right of abode in Cyprus, whereas previously we had to spend many hours applying for visas, supplying different paperwork every year. Not just because it meant the start of better relations with other European countries; not just because it would help Cyprus economically, and improve the standard of living (or so everyone had been told...).
No, there was a sense of rightness about it. At last we could feel that Cyprus was truly 'home', part of what we - in our forties at the time - saw as our cultural and ethnic heritage.’
This sense of rightness, this sense of home is what many people describe patriotism. It embodies the Latin etymology of 'from our father', our fatherland if you like. So understanding the feelings has really helped. However, it has also divided us rather than united us.
So when I looked at the way forward during the referendum campaign I saw it in a similar way to the people of God in the Old Testament asking for a King, for a figurehead that would give them separateness and identity. God’s reaction was that they would not like it but He would, however, allow them if that is what they really wanted. There is no record of a sizeable minority rising up and saying ‘No, this is the wrong direction, we should not go this way’ but knowing human nature I’m pretty sure there were at least some.
So I don’t believe it was in the prescriptive will of God that the UK should be in the EU nor do I believe it is in the prescriptive will of God that the UK should not be in the EU. When people express either of those two I get angry. Neither is correct. There are guiding principles, which I will come on to.
Christians don’t have a common mind on this boundary free earth, as a friend of mine put it ‘Whether or not national boundaries are God's idea or not, I'm not sure. But they're a necessity in a fallen world, and clearly God did have in mind cultural diversity. The church is a prophetic witness to a coming world where diversity isn't a threat, but a blessing. Unfortunately, many churches today simply sanctify the cultural divisions that exist in the world rather than overcoming them through the gospel.’
However, I do believe all Christians should be working with the premise of ‘that which unites us is greater than that which divides us’. It is a quote from Jo Cox who was the British MP shot dead in the campaign. She was in fact paraphrasing JF Kennedy who used that phrase two years before he too was shot. In that, I long for and work towards a globalised community of people in communion with God as our Father.
Working with people in a globalised community is not the Tower of Babel revisited but God's intention for the world. Scripture starts in a garden and ends in a city. It starts with creation and ends with community. We, as the followers of the Messiah, are the agents for Him in building that community and as such we strive for a social revolution.
We do recognise that it will not happen till Jesus returns, nevertheless that is the ‘end game’ we strive towards. In doing so we therefore see the fixed boundary nation state as an inhibitor of that goal. Some people, will dismiss this as unrealistic utopia. It is, if by man’s invention. But in God all things are possible and we know it is what will be our eternal home even if we don’t see it in our lifetime.
Jesus didn't send his disciples out merely to their own community, but to their locality (Judea) the wider surrounding province (Samaria) and then the rest of the world. As members of the European Union we gain the same advantages to sharing the Gospel that the early Christian Church had through the Roman Empire. The ability to live and work with freedom and protection to share the Gospel throughout this Union, and so we should desire it to be larger, not smaller, in keeping with a larger desire to share the Gospel. Some people I know voted Remain--despite a dislike of many aspects of European government--purely on the basis of the opportunities to share the Gospel.
To paraphrase Scott McKnight, in Fellowship of Differents, ‘The Christian community should be a social revolution.’
In the same way God never intended the modern nation state we now assume to be normal. I don’t believe he intended the modern institutional church we now assume to be normal! Scott McKnight again: ’God designed the church to make the previously invisible people visible to God and to one another in a new kind of fellowship that the Roman Empire and the Jewish world had never seen before.’ As salt and light within the community that visibility should change things.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a statement that included: ‘As citizens of the United Kingdom, whatever our views during the referendum campaign, we must now unite in a common task to build a generous and forward looking country, contributing to human flourishing around the world.’
I have a great deal of respect for both Archbishops but there is a problem with that statement in it makes two assumptions: Firstly that our identity is that of citizen of the United Kingdom, but for some of those holding EU passports issued by the United Kingdom we see our citizenship as European not British. Secondly that the role of the church is to build up structures that I believe not to be what God intended.
Scripture enjoins us to pray our leaders, both spiritual and temporal, but when we believe that they are leading us astray we pray for a change of direction not for them to continue in the same direction.
The church is in an interesting position as a demonstrator of this new kind of fellowship. It is salt and light within the community wishing to change it while at the same time being in the world yet not off the world.
So what do I mean by church if not an institution or organisation? I mean a relational body more like a family than a company. If a family meets for a meal it needs organising not institutionalising!
Now some people will be confused, if I am a strong proponent of small is beautiful, why on earth do I support the EU? Because in my experience with the EU I see it as more concomitant than controlling, more community than combative, more commercial than congressional. This is not to say that the EU is perfect, far from it, I agree with some of the criticisms raised by the 'Leave' campaign. I do however see it as the best way to foster interconnectedness across ethnic and tribal borders.
Therein rests the divide. Some Christians see the direct opposite of the EU. And I admit the perception of the EU is a political rather than a theological issue. So in that sense as a European I agree with those who are British. We both seek small interconnectedness. Where we don't agree is what the political structures should be to support it.
The referendum was to be a simple single choice would be put to the majority, but not all, British citizens (passport holders) and some EU citizens residing in the UK, and some non-EU citizens also residing in the UK. Implicitly that will be divisive. Winners and losers. In a game of sport though emotions run high being sporting is about winning and losing. When the issue is losing citizenship of an entity you feel is your home the stakes are way higher with potentially devastating results. In a war there are no winners and losers, only losers.
So this referendum made me think a lot about democracy and referenda as a method of determining the will of the people. Contrary to what at least one British politician said the earliest democracy was in Greece. The male citizens came together (only men sadly), debated and then decided on the way forward. Frequently this was not by secret ballot but by ‘Aye’s and ‘No’s. This is where British parliamentary procedure gets it from.
In the House of Commons, the Speaker says "The Question is that…", then states the question. Next, he/she says, "As many as are of that opinion say Aye." Then, following shouts of "Aye", he says, "of the contrary, No," and similar shouts of "No" may follow. If one side clearly has more support, the Speaker then announces his/her opinion as to the winner, stating, for example, "I think the Ayes have it". Otherwise, the Speaker declares a division.
What we see there is a clear will of the people, not a minimal majority. The aim should not be a division but to build consensus. Unless there is consensus a referendum with a close result will not facilitate community building but divisiveness.
Expecting a minimal Remain vote, I had been planning the article and Facebook post for Friday 24th June. It was based on the petition started on 25 May 2016. ‘We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.’ What this was saying was there should be a clear consensus not a simple majority. Even though had the option I believed was right ‘won’ I believed the referendum to be fatally flawed. Unless of course there had been an overwhelming majority, hopefully two thirds or more that had expressed their opinion.
This same principle applies to councils like church councils, and was in fact what happened in the early international church councils. I believe any board, any council must be an even number of people. So even with, for instance, a church council of 12 people then it must be a minimum of a 7:5 vote. a council of 13 carries too great a risk of being swung by one person. As the size of the body gets greater so the necessity to build consensus means that structures should be employed to ensure that it is never a simple majority.
Though that shocked and horrified me, what shocked me more was the baseline. In UK Parliament when admitting the 58% increase they said that was above the 50,000 incidents in 2015. 50,000 incidents in 2015. That is shocking and horrifying. It’s totally and completely unacceptable. The problem is there were no sanctions possible against those in the Brexit campaign who were making claims that fed this attitude.
During the referendum I was horrified by a campaign poster produced by the United Kingdom Independence Party that suggested that membership of the European Union was causing mass immigration of undesirable people of different non-white racial backgrounds. Even the official 'Leave' campaign considered it completely unacceptable. Many compared this unfavourably to some of the propaganda from Nazi Germany.
I firmly believe that, even apart from my Christian faith, as a wealthy country that the UK has a duty and a responsibility to take these people in. If for no other reason than the western world is, in significant part, a cause of the issues that are making these people flee their homes as the Chilcot report implies. And in my experience, those who have experienced real suffering are keen to work and create jobs wherever they find a refuge.
The British Home Office had also been using a publicity campaign that, though
possibly legal and acceptable, also fed that attitude. The Advertising Standards Authority upheld the view that the figures used were misleading and told the Home Office to use figures that could be substantiated in any further advertising. In a media sensitive world I am sure that these adverts created part of the atmosphere that is fueling these attacks.
There is a problem with immigration. A big problem. The problem is not what many people think though. The problem is that for the UK to be able to fund the pensions of the net number of retirees within the next decade it needs 1 million more immigrants above and beyond current levels. I checked the figures myself. You just need to look at what is called the ‘population pyramid’ and it’s visually obvious. All the numbers are available so you can do the calculations yourself too.
The political compass has taken it to two dimensions and this goes a long way to helping though I think three or four or more may be closer to reality. We do have to reduce complex complex issues to be able to deal with them, but I feel strongly what we have done is actually ’reductio ad absurdum’!
So looking at the political compass what can we see about there referendum?
The political compass also notes ‘The referendum also served as a vehicle for expressing discontent — or plain contempt — for the spiralling rich-poor gap, out-of-touch politicians and self-serving bureaucrats, and general anger among those alienated and left behind.’ This is the real problem and that which I address in the section ‘Two alternative status quo - one in and one out of the EU’. In light of the series of books by Tim LeHaye and Jerry B Jenkins I find that an interesting statement!
So because of the referendum we have shone light on two opposing perceptions. I believe Remaining in the EU is right and that my heart, mind and spirit tells me that. Some Christians believe it is wrong and their heart, mind and spirit tells them that.
Just calling for healing in such a situation is naive in the extreme I believe. For many of us that feels like putting sellotape (USA scotch tape) over a festering wound. It might appear to hold things together but in reality would make things worse. There is need to clean the wound before dressing it. When we say ‘what unites us is far greater than what divides us’, as Christians, one realises that our humanity does, our faith in God does, but politically we can be separated by a million miles and end up not coming to consensus but foisting our way on others.
I realise that our European (EU) approach has been foisted on other nationalist (UK) approaches to their dismay. Now they get to foist their way on us to our dismay.
Just calling for healing when the one group feels that the direction is completely wrong and will lead to destruction of the economy and damage to the already disenfranchised population is actually impossible. One group are saying ‘the people have spoken, this is the new direction’ the other group saying ‘a minority of the people (38%) have spoken, I cannot let this happen’.
That didn’t surprise me at all. I have read many of the EU directives, I’m familiar with the working of the EU and fairly regularly use the Europa database. I have dealt directly with officials in Brussels and I cannot in any way accept the lies told by the Brexit campaign about the EU. After the results were announced some of the lies were even admitted to. This led to a significant number of examples of people regretting their vote.
There were counter claims that the Remain campaign were using propaganda. This is true. As Dougan puts it they didn’t cover themselves in glory!
The problem is that propaganda based on truth cannot be equated with lies on an industrial scale. Lies come from the father of lies. And that echoes into my conscience why I can never accept that Brexit is right. It might happen, but if it does it will be wrong and taking people towards the evil one.
What has surprised me is how much the effects predicted by the Remain propaganda have started to happen. Why do I say that? Well, because Brexit hasn't happened. What has happened is a referendum that has a very small majority of those who voted in favour of Brexit. If Brexit will have those results then we will see when Brexit happens, the timing of which is at the moment undetermined. So if this is what has happened prior to Brexit happening, what on earth will happen when it does?
Brexit isn't when the UK officially starts Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Brexit actually happens when those negotiations are either completed or the EU loses patience and the negotiations time out two years after the start.
The WTO through its Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedure meet in private session are obscured from public scrutiny and allows companies to sue governments for laws that they perceive to be detrimental.
One I believe to be the way God intended, the other not. When he called us to be light in the darkness, open, transparent courts are part of that.
Even with that option I would still pursue EU citizenship through another country because being European is so much a part of me, but at least that option would not, I believe, further damage the disenfranchised people in the UK.
One of the problems of post-modernism is relative truth. It is a move away from evidence based decision making to feeling based decision making. As a personality type I understand that. As an upbringing it is a total anathema. It brings huge dangers. For instance, Michael Gove, repeatedly rubbished experts. When challenged on the lack of international leaders and organisations backing his side, he said the public had "had enough of experts... getting it consistently wrong".
Sadly he was wrong, though it was true some experts had failed to predict the Financial Crisis of 2007/2008. Not all had by a long way. For instance, William White then head economist for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and now the chief economist for OECD predicted it accurately, as did a number of others. The problem in this post-modern world is that we don't want to believe the experts so ignore them following spin-doctors instead.
So what of the problems with post-industrialisation? Historically we needed loads and loads of people to work the land. People had a place in society. They may not have liked their lot, and for sure as a serf I would have hated it, but they did have work to do and that gave them value. I’m fairly sure God always intended us to work. Even in the garden of Eden, they tended the garden.
Then came industrialisation. We started manufacturing on a large scale. This needed loads and loads of people to work the factories. Even simple jobs gave people work. And at the end of the week they knew they had screwed doors on cars and helped make those cars, or mined coal and helped fuel the houses and factories. They may not have liked their lot, and for sure as a factory worker I would have hated it, but they did have work to do and that gave them value.
Now robots and computers have radically reduced the number of people needed for this. 10% of UK workforce now work in the Creative Arts Industry. In one sense, as a media professional, I love that. Creative Arts is what I long to see expand. There is a huge skills shortage in the UK in that industry. But these are very different to the agricultural or industrial jobs lost. They require at least as much academic knowledge as manual dexterity.
So the problem is, what should we do with people who not only do not, but cannot reach the intellectual levels needed for the new economy? How do we give them value? That is a question I don’t know the answer to, but it is the question every follower of Christ should be grappling with. My fear and expectation is that Brexit will replace one status quo with a similar but significantly worse status quo that will neither solve not address that question.
There is a Christianity Today article entitled 'Brexit: Time for the Church to stop doing politics and start doing faith' which completely misses the point and makes assumptions about those of us who are Europeans (as contrasted with Brits), about our faith, about our Christian communities, our decision making and our patriotism. There are a few valid points in that article, but on the whole it completely misunderstands a whole sector of the body of Christ, demeaning it in the process.
For that reason I start with personal issues with the referendum and the good things it has brought. I then move onto theological issues before going to the political ones. I end with my fear from the referendum based on my Christian faith.
Personal Issues with the Referendum
- Mourning: Healing the grief
Some of those who believe that Brexit is the right direction do not even begin to understand that grief. Whether as a consequence or not, they are making completely unhelpful comments.
These comments fall into two broad groups: Firstly those who just don’t understand the mourning and loss being experienced by those of us who feel ourselves to be Europeans, and I mean by this that their sense of identity is primarily European rather than British. Secondly, a failure by Brexiters to appreciate the fact that telling us that it was the right decision doesn’t help: it’s like telling a man whose wife has just died in an accident at the traffic lights that it’s okay, because installing the traffic lights was a decision supported by the local residents’ association.
They say there are four stages to mourning: Numbness, Yearning and searching, Disorganisation and despair and finally Reorganisation. I’m not sure that the stages are directly sequential, and in experiencing the grief over this I can definitely sense a passing of the initial numbness and at times moves towards the final reorganisation stage. However, there are times - days and hours - when the grief is still overwhelming.
Because I didn’t expect to feel this, the lack of support from those who are not experiencing it, indeed their celebratory tone, is definitely making it worse. I'm not sure if they had lost whether they would have experienced this sense of loss, for them the status quo would have continued and some of them would have continued the battle.
The initial numbness comes as a shock, it seems impossible to accept what has happened and though some days I might appear normal on the outside I am nevertheless grieving inwardly. I have lost the life I envisioned with all the expectations I had seen ahead, and I don’t know what to do with the void created by that loss. Though irrational I feel angry; because life seems unfair and feel somewhat like people mourning that 'nothing will ever be good again'. Finally you begin to adapt and rebuild your inner and outer world.
- Practical steps Remainers are looking at (‘leaving a sinking ship’)
A post Brexit survey says 10% of young people are actively looking for jobs outside the UK so abandoning ship, with Canada receiving over 325% more on the day the results were announced. No doubt people will criticise them but this is not the same as those who of the political elite who were campaigning for Brexit and appear now to have abandoned ship also! For some Remainers it is an expression of their identity.
The horrendous xenophobic reactions against some non-British people expressed as ‘get out of our country’ is what some of those looking for jobs in other countries are feeling… they are feeling ‘this is not our country, we should leave’. The key to this is the word ‘our’, it’s about identity.
For some of us, it is not looking for another country; indeed some of us already live in another country. For us it is looking for an structure to express our identity. So we are looking for citizenship of other countries which are part of the European Union to continue our already held internal identity.
This will be incomprehensible to some people and I have personally had one relative who has expressed that it is a fallacy to feel European. I’m sure some will feel ‘good riddance’ that we are going. So be it, everyone is entitled to their opinion; but so are we and really wish there had been a less painful way of it happening.
Good things that the referendum has brought
- Highlights a divided church, disconnection from the poor and a divided group of countries
The referendum doesn’t cut the countries and church two ways, but three ways: Just over one third voted to leave, just about one third voted to remain and just under a third didn’t vote. It was split by country, by age and but social class.
Maggie Thatcher talked of a classless society. I did not believe her and I do not believe her now. The problem with class is an implicit assumption that each class is above or better that another. My understanding of ‘classes’ is more along the lines of tribes, each of which holds to a particular set of values.
Some years back I made a film for the UK Evangelical Alliance on Radical Evangelicalism. As a movement it brought together leaders like Jim Wallis, Desmund Tutu and, in the UK, Dave Cave. While filming in the Anfield Road in Liverpool I was touched by the need to express Christian love in that area and asked Dave about the possibility of Christians moving there to help. Because of the tribal/class divide he felt it would be counterproductive and not help at all.
When doing cross-cultural mission the ‘otherness’ is frequently obvious - with sides see the missionary as different and that can actually be part of the interest to find out what they have to say. Within a class/tribe divide that otherness is simultaneously obvious and hidden in a way that is unhelpful. There are people who bridge the divide, and I’m sure that people who understand how to do so will express it. What I learned from the filming with Dave Cave was that was not my calling.
As well as the divided church there is the divisions within the group of countries we call the United Kingdom.
I find it ironic that whilst some Brexiters wish to be separated from the group of countries called the European Union they still wish the group of countries called the United Kingdom to remain as a structure.
- Understanding patriotism
The EEC which became the EU was established in 1957, the year I was born. It has been something I have known all my life. I watched the struggles to enter the EEC as a child, when Charles de Gaulle repeatedly used his national veto to stop UK entry. But I ever so was thankful when the did UK enter the EEC when I was 16 years old for selfish reasons, though a long way off, I longed to retire to a warm country.
When Cyprus entered the EU on 1st May 2004, the whole family went to the sea front for the celebrations. There were fireworks, music and a wild celebration.
As my wife put it in her blog ‘We went home elated. Not just because life would become so much easier for us: now we had the right of abode in Cyprus, whereas previously we had to spend many hours applying for visas, supplying different paperwork every year. Not just because it meant the start of better relations with other European countries; not just because it would help Cyprus economically, and improve the standard of living (or so everyone had been told...).
No, there was a sense of rightness about it. At last we could feel that Cyprus was truly 'home', part of what we - in our forties at the time - saw as our cultural and ethnic heritage.’
This sense of rightness, this sense of home is what many people describe patriotism. It embodies the Latin etymology of 'from our father', our fatherland if you like. So understanding the feelings has really helped. However, it has also divided us rather than united us.
Theological Issues
- The Permissive and Prescriptive will of God
So when I looked at the way forward during the referendum campaign I saw it in a similar way to the people of God in the Old Testament asking for a King, for a figurehead that would give them separateness and identity. God’s reaction was that they would not like it but He would, however, allow them if that is what they really wanted. There is no record of a sizeable minority rising up and saying ‘No, this is the wrong direction, we should not go this way’ but knowing human nature I’m pretty sure there were at least some.
So I don’t believe it was in the prescriptive will of God that the UK should be in the EU nor do I believe it is in the prescriptive will of God that the UK should not be in the EU. When people express either of those two I get angry. Neither is correct. There are guiding principles, which I will come on to.
- A belief that the concept of the modern nation state is not what God intended
Christians don’t have a common mind on this boundary free earth, as a friend of mine put it ‘Whether or not national boundaries are God's idea or not, I'm not sure. But they're a necessity in a fallen world, and clearly God did have in mind cultural diversity. The church is a prophetic witness to a coming world where diversity isn't a threat, but a blessing. Unfortunately, many churches today simply sanctify the cultural divisions that exist in the world rather than overcoming them through the gospel.’
However, I do believe all Christians should be working with the premise of ‘that which unites us is greater than that which divides us’. It is a quote from Jo Cox who was the British MP shot dead in the campaign. She was in fact paraphrasing JF Kennedy who used that phrase two years before he too was shot. In that, I long for and work towards a globalised community of people in communion with God as our Father.
Working with people in a globalised community is not the Tower of Babel revisited but God's intention for the world. Scripture starts in a garden and ends in a city. It starts with creation and ends with community. We, as the followers of the Messiah, are the agents for Him in building that community and as such we strive for a social revolution.
We do recognise that it will not happen till Jesus returns, nevertheless that is the ‘end game’ we strive towards. In doing so we therefore see the fixed boundary nation state as an inhibitor of that goal. Some people, will dismiss this as unrealistic utopia. It is, if by man’s invention. But in God all things are possible and we know it is what will be our eternal home even if we don’t see it in our lifetime.
Jesus didn't send his disciples out merely to their own community, but to their locality (Judea) the wider surrounding province (Samaria) and then the rest of the world. As members of the European Union we gain the same advantages to sharing the Gospel that the early Christian Church had through the Roman Empire. The ability to live and work with freedom and protection to share the Gospel throughout this Union, and so we should desire it to be larger, not smaller, in keeping with a larger desire to share the Gospel. Some people I know voted Remain--despite a dislike of many aspects of European government--purely on the basis of the opportunities to share the Gospel.
- A belief that the institutional church is not what God intended
To paraphrase Scott McKnight, in Fellowship of Differents, ‘The Christian community should be a social revolution.’
In the same way God never intended the modern nation state we now assume to be normal. I don’t believe he intended the modern institutional church we now assume to be normal! Scott McKnight again: ’God designed the church to make the previously invisible people visible to God and to one another in a new kind of fellowship that the Roman Empire and the Jewish world had never seen before.’ As salt and light within the community that visibility should change things.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a statement that included: ‘As citizens of the United Kingdom, whatever our views during the referendum campaign, we must now unite in a common task to build a generous and forward looking country, contributing to human flourishing around the world.’
I have a great deal of respect for both Archbishops but there is a problem with that statement in it makes two assumptions: Firstly that our identity is that of citizen of the United Kingdom, but for some of those holding EU passports issued by the United Kingdom we see our citizenship as European not British. Secondly that the role of the church is to build up structures that I believe not to be what God intended.
Scripture enjoins us to pray our leaders, both spiritual and temporal, but when we believe that they are leading us astray we pray for a change of direction not for them to continue in the same direction.
The church is in an interesting position as a demonstrator of this new kind of fellowship. It is salt and light within the community wishing to change it while at the same time being in the world yet not off the world.
So what do I mean by church if not an institution or organisation? I mean a relational body more like a family than a company. If a family meets for a meal it needs organising not institutionalising!
- Division to smaller units
Now some people will be confused, if I am a strong proponent of small is beautiful, why on earth do I support the EU? Because in my experience with the EU I see it as more concomitant than controlling, more community than combative, more commercial than congressional. This is not to say that the EU is perfect, far from it, I agree with some of the criticisms raised by the 'Leave' campaign. I do however see it as the best way to foster interconnectedness across ethnic and tribal borders.
Therein rests the divide. Some Christians see the direct opposite of the EU. And I admit the perception of the EU is a political rather than a theological issue. So in that sense as a European I agree with those who are British. We both seek small interconnectedness. Where we don't agree is what the political structures should be to support it.
Political Issues
- The flawed process - a referendum is never right
The referendum was to be a simple single choice would be put to the majority, but not all, British citizens (passport holders) and some EU citizens residing in the UK, and some non-EU citizens also residing in the UK. Implicitly that will be divisive. Winners and losers. In a game of sport though emotions run high being sporting is about winning and losing. When the issue is losing citizenship of an entity you feel is your home the stakes are way higher with potentially devastating results. In a war there are no winners and losers, only losers.
So this referendum made me think a lot about democracy and referenda as a method of determining the will of the people. Contrary to what at least one British politician said the earliest democracy was in Greece. The male citizens came together (only men sadly), debated and then decided on the way forward. Frequently this was not by secret ballot but by ‘Aye’s and ‘No’s. This is where British parliamentary procedure gets it from.
In the House of Commons, the Speaker says "The Question is that…", then states the question. Next, he/she says, "As many as are of that opinion say Aye." Then, following shouts of "Aye", he says, "of the contrary, No," and similar shouts of "No" may follow. If one side clearly has more support, the Speaker then announces his/her opinion as to the winner, stating, for example, "I think the Ayes have it". Otherwise, the Speaker declares a division.
What we see there is a clear will of the people, not a minimal majority. The aim should not be a division but to build consensus. Unless there is consensus a referendum with a close result will not facilitate community building but divisiveness.
Expecting a minimal Remain vote, I had been planning the article and Facebook post for Friday 24th June. It was based on the petition started on 25 May 2016. ‘We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.’ What this was saying was there should be a clear consensus not a simple majority. Even though had the option I believed was right ‘won’ I believed the referendum to be fatally flawed. Unless of course there had been an overwhelming majority, hopefully two thirds or more that had expressed their opinion.
This same principle applies to councils like church councils, and was in fact what happened in the early international church councils. I believe any board, any council must be an even number of people. So even with, for instance, a church council of 12 people then it must be a minimum of a 7:5 vote. a council of 13 carries too great a risk of being swung by one person. As the size of the body gets greater so the necessity to build consensus means that structures should be employed to ensure that it is never a simple majority.
- Xenophobia and Immigration
Though that shocked and horrified me, what shocked me more was the baseline. In UK Parliament when admitting the 58% increase they said that was above the 50,000 incidents in 2015. 50,000 incidents in 2015. That is shocking and horrifying. It’s totally and completely unacceptable. The problem is there were no sanctions possible against those in the Brexit campaign who were making claims that fed this attitude.
During the referendum I was horrified by a campaign poster produced by the United Kingdom Independence Party that suggested that membership of the European Union was causing mass immigration of undesirable people of different non-white racial backgrounds. Even the official 'Leave' campaign considered it completely unacceptable. Many compared this unfavourably to some of the propaganda from Nazi Germany.
I firmly believe that, even apart from my Christian faith, as a wealthy country that the UK has a duty and a responsibility to take these people in. If for no other reason than the western world is, in significant part, a cause of the issues that are making these people flee their homes as the Chilcot report implies. And in my experience, those who have experienced real suffering are keen to work and create jobs wherever they find a refuge.
The British Home Office had also been using a publicity campaign that, though
possibly legal and acceptable, also fed that attitude. The Advertising Standards Authority upheld the view that the figures used were misleading and told the Home Office to use figures that could be substantiated in any further advertising. In a media sensitive world I am sure that these adverts created part of the atmosphere that is fueling these attacks.
There is a problem with immigration. A big problem. The problem is not what many people think though. The problem is that for the UK to be able to fund the pensions of the net number of retirees within the next decade it needs 1 million more immigrants above and beyond current levels. I checked the figures myself. You just need to look at what is called the ‘population pyramid’ and it’s visually obvious. All the numbers are available so you can do the calculations yourself too.
- Political Compass
The political compass has taken it to two dimensions and this goes a long way to helping though I think three or four or more may be closer to reality. We do have to reduce complex complex issues to be able to deal with them, but I feel strongly what we have done is actually ’reductio ad absurdum’!
So looking at the political compass what can we see about there referendum?
The EU comprises a social dimension and an economic dimension.
Remain voters were themselves divided between:
A. Those enthusiastically embracing the EU's prevailing economics (neoliberal/free trade) but unhappy with the Social Charter and Chapter — especially on migration. This is a position held by many Conservatives.
B. Those happy with both the economic and social provisions, which includes many people on the centre/right of the Labour Party, almost all Lib Dems and some wet Tories
C. Those enthused by at least most of the EU's social provisions, but rejecting corporate values and neoliberal economics (left-of-centre social liberals eg Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn).
Brexit voters were similarly divided between:
D. Those rejecting the EU's prevailing economics but accepting, at least to some extent, the social dimension (many Labour supporters)
E. Those rejecting both (quintessentially UKIP)
F. Those comfortable with many of the EU's economic provisions, if only they could easily exit the Social Chapter (Conservative)
The attitudes of C and D, and also those of A and F, are similar; though because of contrasting degrees of feeling they resulted in a different vote.I personally think groups B, C and D could probably have come to consensus and decided to Remain. E and F are clearly in agreement for Brexit, leaving A standing alone as an isolated Remainer.
The political compass also notes ‘The referendum also served as a vehicle for expressing discontent — or plain contempt — for the spiralling rich-poor gap, out-of-touch politicians and self-serving bureaucrats, and general anger among those alienated and left behind.’ This is the real problem and that which I address in the section ‘Two alternative status quo - one in and one out of the EU’. In light of the series of books by Tim LeHaye and Jerry B Jenkins I find that an interesting statement!
- A belief that the EU, flawed though it is, is ‘right’
So because of the referendum we have shone light on two opposing perceptions. I believe Remaining in the EU is right and that my heart, mind and spirit tells me that. Some Christians believe it is wrong and their heart, mind and spirit tells them that.
Just calling for healing in such a situation is naive in the extreme I believe. For many of us that feels like putting sellotape (USA scotch tape) over a festering wound. It might appear to hold things together but in reality would make things worse. There is need to clean the wound before dressing it. When we say ‘what unites us is far greater than what divides us’, as Christians, one realises that our humanity does, our faith in God does, but politically we can be separated by a million miles and end up not coming to consensus but foisting our way on others.
I realise that our European (EU) approach has been foisted on other nationalist (UK) approaches to their dismay. Now they get to foist their way on us to our dismay.
Just calling for healing when the one group feels that the direction is completely wrong and will lead to destruction of the economy and damage to the already disenfranchised population is actually impossible. One group are saying ‘the people have spoken, this is the new direction’ the other group saying ‘a minority of the people (38%) have spoken, I cannot let this happen’.
- The campaign of wholesale lies ‘on an industrial scale’ coming from the father of lies and the problem of propaganda
That didn’t surprise me at all. I have read many of the EU directives, I’m familiar with the working of the EU and fairly regularly use the Europa database. I have dealt directly with officials in Brussels and I cannot in any way accept the lies told by the Brexit campaign about the EU. After the results were announced some of the lies were even admitted to. This led to a significant number of examples of people regretting their vote.
There were counter claims that the Remain campaign were using propaganda. This is true. As Dougan puts it they didn’t cover themselves in glory!
The problem is that propaganda based on truth cannot be equated with lies on an industrial scale. Lies come from the father of lies. And that echoes into my conscience why I can never accept that Brexit is right. It might happen, but if it does it will be wrong and taking people towards the evil one.
What has surprised me is how much the effects predicted by the Remain propaganda have started to happen. Why do I say that? Well, because Brexit hasn't happened. What has happened is a referendum that has a very small majority of those who voted in favour of Brexit. If Brexit will have those results then we will see when Brexit happens, the timing of which is at the moment undetermined. So if this is what has happened prior to Brexit happening, what on earth will happen when it does?
Brexit isn't when the UK officially starts Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Brexit actually happens when those negotiations are either completed or the EU loses patience and the negotiations time out two years after the start.
- Problems with the WTO as an alternative
The WTO through its Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedure meet in private session are obscured from public scrutiny and allows companies to sue governments for laws that they perceive to be detrimental.
One I believe to be the way God intended, the other not. When he called us to be light in the darkness, open, transparent courts are part of that.
- The only 'nearly right' option out of the EU would be EU membership without a voice to influence
Even with that option I would still pursue EU citizenship through another country because being European is so much a part of me, but at least that option would not, I believe, further damage the disenfranchised people in the UK.
Fear from the Referendum based on my Christian faith
- Two alternative status quos - one in and one out of the EU
One of the problems of post-modernism is relative truth. It is a move away from evidence based decision making to feeling based decision making. As a personality type I understand that. As an upbringing it is a total anathema. It brings huge dangers. For instance, Michael Gove, repeatedly rubbished experts. When challenged on the lack of international leaders and organisations backing his side, he said the public had "had enough of experts... getting it consistently wrong".
Sadly he was wrong, though it was true some experts had failed to predict the Financial Crisis of 2007/2008. Not all had by a long way. For instance, William White then head economist for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and now the chief economist for OECD predicted it accurately, as did a number of others. The problem in this post-modern world is that we don't want to believe the experts so ignore them following spin-doctors instead.
So what of the problems with post-industrialisation? Historically we needed loads and loads of people to work the land. People had a place in society. They may not have liked their lot, and for sure as a serf I would have hated it, but they did have work to do and that gave them value. I’m fairly sure God always intended us to work. Even in the garden of Eden, they tended the garden.
Then came industrialisation. We started manufacturing on a large scale. This needed loads and loads of people to work the factories. Even simple jobs gave people work. And at the end of the week they knew they had screwed doors on cars and helped make those cars, or mined coal and helped fuel the houses and factories. They may not have liked their lot, and for sure as a factory worker I would have hated it, but they did have work to do and that gave them value.
Now robots and computers have radically reduced the number of people needed for this. 10% of UK workforce now work in the Creative Arts Industry. In one sense, as a media professional, I love that. Creative Arts is what I long to see expand. There is a huge skills shortage in the UK in that industry. But these are very different to the agricultural or industrial jobs lost. They require at least as much academic knowledge as manual dexterity.
So the problem is, what should we do with people who not only do not, but cannot reach the intellectual levels needed for the new economy? How do we give them value? That is a question I don’t know the answer to, but it is the question every follower of Christ should be grappling with. My fear and expectation is that Brexit will replace one status quo with a similar but significantly worse status quo that will neither solve not address that question.
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