“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
Martin Luther
Next week is the UK launch of my book Faith, Politics & Belonging. The book is a collection of essays written as I processed what it means to be an evangelical Christian on the ‘Left’ and how theology has helped me navigate my vocation.
The Christian life is a journey, as the Martin Luther quote alludes to. This is a cliché, I know, and all metaphors for the Christian life have limits. Yet, we are on a journey to a real destination and my journey has involved work in politics, specifically in the Labour Party and trade union movement. These essays are the journal of my journey.
Below are two excerpts from the book:
What is the good life?
What is the good life? What is human flourishing? One might argue that at the heart of political debate is a deep, searching existential question: what is the good life? What are the conditions for human flourishing? I doubt that everyone involved in politics would argue it this way.
They might infer it is ‘left versus right’, about abstract notions like ‘fairness’ or ‘the sovereignty of the nation’ or focus on procedure or constitutional matters. Fair enough. Yet, it is a clear and profound question that if posed is difficult to provide a glib answer to.
In his book “Is Democracy capable of cultivating a good life? What Liberals should learn from the Shepherds,” Stanley Hauerwas identifies the centrality of the debate and more pertinently, the contemporary crisis about what is the good life. It is worth quoting extensively from his reference to James Rebank’s memoir:
“In the last paragraphs Rebanks—who has been a shepherd for many years—reports on a moment in his busy life. It is in the late spring, and he is in the process of returning his flock to the craggy hills. These sheep had been bred to fend for themselves in rocky terrain. He enjoys watching the sheep find their way in the rough fields because they are evidently happy to be home. Rebanks imitates his flock’s sense that all is as it should be, by lying down in the grass to drink sweet and pure water from the nearby stream. He rolls on his back and watches the clouds racing by. His well-trained sheep dogs Floss and Tan—who had never seen him so relaxed—come and lay next to him. He breathes in the cool mountain air; he listens to the ewes calling to the lambs to follow them through the rocky crags, and he thinks: “This is my life. I want no other.”
“This is my life. I want no other” is an extraordinary declaration that one rarely hears today. As odd as it may seem, I want to suggest that the loss of our ability to have such lives, the absence of the conditions that make such a declaration possible in contemporary life, is a clue for understanding our current cultural moment and corresponding politic.”
What happens when the culture and its politics loses its roots and telos? When does it becomes divisive, agonistic, and ultimately unproductive? More specifically, what happens when politics becomes a space populated by disparate campaigns and causes that appear well meaning but are disconnected from a deep and rational sense of the good and serve to become a negative phenomenon?
I submit that the woke phenomenon is a feature of that seemingly inability to articulate the vision of the good life in an agreeable manner.
Where history is heading
My belief is in a hope rooted in God’s inaugurated kingdom, which was ushered in by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. One day this kingdom will be realized forever. That is where history, I believe, is heading.
God is concerned in this real hope, found in Christ transforming and shaping people’s lives, their families and communities. So true progress can only be linked to an understanding and belief in God’s purposes for mankind.
We are called not to be gloomy and defeatist but to work with this God of hope that his purposes may be established. Yet, this is different from an abstract ideology looking for secular humanistic solutions to the intractable problems faced by the human race.
To find out more about the themes of the book and the motivations behind it, the following events are happening next week:
- Sunday 27 October 7.00pm: Launch of Faith, Politics & Belonging, St John the Evangelist, Cambridge, CB25 9HT. Host: Reverend Paul Butler
- Tuesday 29 October 7.30pm-9.30pm: Launch of Faith, Politics & Belonging, City Hope Church, London SE16 2JY. Host: Paul Brown
- Thurs 31 October 3pm -5pm, What now for the Christian tradition in the Labour Party? House of Commons. Host: Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms MP
Contact Ian Geary for more details & discounted book. Visit Faith, Politics and Belonging
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