What struck me was that he was basically talking in political language, talking about how he hopes everybody in the city can get along with each other. There wasn’t really a hint in what he said or how he said it that he was talking to an audience of Christians. It reminded me of a talk I heard by Stephen Timms, a noted Christian politician, and then a minister, at the conference of a Christian debt counselling organization. Again, the speech was almost entirely a political one, with little religious content or context.

On both occasions, what was said left me somewhat uninspired and hoping for something which was explicitly Christian. They are also somewhat in contrast to how I approached specifically religious questions when I was doing hustings during the election. When asked, at a hustings hosted by a Catholic church, what inspiration I drew from the person of Jesus I basically talked about my own faith, and how the godly desire to speak up for the weak and the poor was a key factor in my decision to get into politics. And giving that answer was, in fact, my favourite moment of the campaign.

If my political involvement ultimately leads to me speaking to Christian audiences, I hope that both my content and my style are more like my answer to that hustings question than they are to what I heard from those other politicians. It seems strange to me that, even in a specifically Christian context, Christian politicians are often reluctant to put their faith to the forefront. If we are truly obeying the Biblical call to follow Christ, we should not be shy in talking about it, or in bringing specifically Christian perspectives when talking to other believers.

And whilst it’s right in a multi-cultural society that our faith should not be centre-stage when debating policy issues (as we would then never convince those of other faiths or none of our point of view), it should surely be a good idea to talk about it when engaging, as politicians, with communities from other faiths. Whilst there are clear differences between Christianity and other religions, there are certainly perspectives that we hold in common with other faiths that are not shared by those with no faith. And talking about those perspectives would surely enable our message to be heard more effectively.

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Nationally, the big three parties all lost. Labour lost a lot of seats, the Lib Dem surge lost them seats, and the Tories frittered away what had been a massive poll lead, and didn’t get enough seats for a majority. The only parties who won in terms of the voting were us Greens, getting our first MP, the Northern Ireland Alliance Party, who also got their first MP, and Plaid Cymru, who picked up a seat.

In the local elections, Labour were the big winners.The big three parties all benefited from the locals being held alongside the general, and Labour was the party which, as a result, gained seats. In fact, in some wards in London, this led to paper candidates tripling their vote, and shooting past parties who campaigned hard to double theirs.

For some good analysis of the national picture, take a look at Jim Jepps’ blog

Anyway, we now have a Lib-Con coalition. On the upside there are some signs that the deal has reigned in some of the Tories’ pro-rich policies, and we’ve got nice-looking things like the new Freedom Bill, which will revoke most, if not all, of Labour’s attacks on civil liberties. On the downside, are the savage cuts they’ll be making to public services. If you’re a Lib Dem member or voter who is unhappy about this new alliance, The Greens will happily offer you a new political home.

One more piece of post-election analysis that’s worth pointing to is from The Jubilee Centre, who reminds Christians why we’ve no need to panic about how bad the new government might turn out,
and that we still have a duty to pray for the the new government.

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Firstly, there’s the Vote for Policies site, which allows you to find out which party reflects your views on a range of policy issues. The Green Party is the most popular party on this measure (at 26.47% as I write this), so it’s a shame that the actual election result is very unlikely to reflect that.

Then there’s the Green Party’s make your own election video, based on our party election broadcast:

If you’re a Christian wondering whether or not you should bother with the election, then here’s 10 reasons for Christians to vote and a whole host of resources aimed at Catholics explaining why bother to vote.

There are a whole host of websites offering summaries and analysis of the different parties’ policies on various issues. However, I really don’t have the time to try to compile a useful list of them, so you’ll just have to go hunting.

And, finally, something amusing I stumbled across this morning is that, according to this article, the Tories apparently think that promising to give us “the power to plant trees” gives them some kind of credibility on environmental issues.

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The reason I’ve been wondering this is that, as somebody who travels everywhere by foot or by bus, I’ve barely had any trouble. My bus journey to work is almost entirely unaffected. It’s been a little bit slower, allowing me the time to finish the Metro (the free paper they give out on public transport) by the time I get to my stop, but still on time. On foot, the main difference is that I’ve had an excuse to wear my walking boots. When I have slipped, it’s mostly been on water in a subway – the exceptions being when I’ve been out late in the evening, it’s been dark enough that I have trouble watching my footing, and the snow is in the process of freezing. Meanwhile, my colleagues who drive to work have had all sorts of complaints.

Now, obviously it is possible to have a car culture in a permanently snowy place – that’s what snow tyres and snow chains exist for. But such adaptations aren’t worth it where snow only happens for a week or two each year. Also, the snow and ice does cause problems getting around on foot for the disabled and elderly. But for those of us who are able-bodied, I think we’d suffer far less disruption from the snow if we were less dependent on our cars to get us around.

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The Bible talks a lot about money, and the main thrust of what it says is that, although money and possessions are good things, loving either is both sinful and bad for us. Hebrews 13:5 says this:

Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.

Loving money gets in the way of our relationship with God and our ability to enjoy the good things in life.

So what does this have to do with Capitalism? Well, one of the most fundamental problems I have with Capitalism is that it both encourages and depends on this particular form of idol worship.

Capitalism Depends on the Love of Money

Whilst it is possible to imagine a free-market economy which does not depend on people wanting more and more stuff they don’t need, such a system is not the one we have. Capitalism is built on the idea that people acting in their individual economic best interest (i.e. doing as much as possible to increase the amount of money and stuff they have) is in the best interests of society. This is the core of the neoliberal approach to economics which dominates policymaking in the modern world, and can also be found in Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations – the book that, essentially, created the Capitalist approach to economics.

In addition to this, Capitalism depends on economic growth in order to survive. Economic growth basically means that there is more money being spent than there was this time last year. I’ll come back to the problems with economic growth later in the series, but for now we just need to note that – except in the poorest societies – economic growth can only happen when either people or businesses spend more money on nonessentials. In other words, if people aren’t chasing after the latest fashion or the newest gadget, then everything grinds to a halt.

When a Capitalist economy isn’t growing, then it enters a recession or a depression. People lose their jobs, otherwise healthy businesses go bust, and people get far more anxious. This is, in fact, built into the structure of capitalism in the form of the boom and bust cycle. In the boom portion of the cycle, the economy is growing, and people start saying that something is a sure investment that will keep growing in value. As a result, lots of greedy people put their money in, and then eventually everything goes pear shaped, the value collapses in a very short period of time, and the economy starts shrinking again. This, in turn, leads to ordinary people who had nothing to do with it suffering.

Capitalism Encourages the Love of Money

Under a Capitalist system, businesses that make less profit than their competitors are frequently bought up by their competitors, or can be undermined by them. This means that every business has an incentive to make as much profit as they can. Which, in turn, means that they are committed to promoting consumerism, As a result, millions, if not billions, of pounds are spent on advertising that tries to convince us that our lives will be complete if only we had whatever product they happen to be selling. And over time this message becomes ubiquitous. It’s there on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and buses, and of course it’s all over the internet.

Now there are ways to ditch advertising and other incitements to consumerism without ditching the Capitalist system, but instead of just banning advertising, society may well be better off reforming or replacing the system that both relies on and encourages us to covet things we don’t need and chase after riches in the vain hope that they will miraculously make us happy and fulfilled.

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Whilst I sympathise with Mr Johnson – having your advisers criticise your policy in public does make it a lot harder to work with them – I think firstly that Mr Johnson appears to have handled this situation very badly (sacking Professor Nutt has simply highlighted that drugs policy is not based on scientific evidence), and secondly that Professor Nutt is, on balance, in the right. Here are two reasons why.

The Nature of Science

If you want good scientific advice, then you need to choose advisers who are active in a relevant field. And that means that your advisers must be free to publish papers and deliver lectures in that field without interference from the government. If, as a government, you consistently ignore the advice you are given, then you must expect that these papers and lectures will reflect the advice rather than your policies.

In his lecture, Professor Nutt pointed out that Cannabis is much less dangerous than alcohol, and that government policy is not formed solely on the basis of scientific evidence. As a scientific opinion, this is not remarkable and had Professor Nutt not been on the advisory council, nobody would have batted an eyelid. It would appear, therefore, that Mr Johnson believes that advising the government means that scientists are not allowed to advise the government and also continue doing science independently of government policy. Which is presumably the reason that the rest of the council are very concerned and either have resigned or are thinking of doing so.

The Misuse of Drugs Act

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs was set up by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. That act has been amended a number of times, and I haven’t been able to easily find the text of the act as amended. However, the original text says this about the purpose of the council:

(d) for educating the public (and in particular the young) in the dangers of misusing such drugs, and for giving publicity to those dangers; and

So Professor Nutt’s remit as part of this council is to educate people about the dangers of drugs (assuming that this clause was not removed in any of the later amendments). Which is precisely what he was doing in the lecture which got him sacked.

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Capitalism (which, for the uninformed, is the economic system in which we live) has recently been described as “anti-Jesus” by campaigner Michael Moore. Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to say that living in and contributing to a Capitalist economy is incompatible with Christianity, I do think that the system itself has some serious flaws, that it actively encourages some sins, and that Capitalism – at least as currently set up – has some “institutional sin” – it embeds certain sinful activity into the way our economy works.

But before we launch into this series of critiques, I want to start by offering some definitions, because before discussing the problems with a system, it is vital to ensure that you actually understand the basic nature of what you are criticising. I shall define not just Capitalism, but some of the beliefs and processes that go hand-in-hand with it in the 21st Century.

Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system with the following characteristics:

• The means of production are owned by individuals or companies
• The workforce, goods, and the means of production are traded in free markets
• Profits are either distributed to the owners or invested in technology and industry
• The workforce are wage labourers

“Free” markets, private property rights, and power relationships between the owners of industry and the workers within it are the features that distinguish Capitalism from alternative economic systems.

Consumerism
Closely related to Capitalism is the mindset of consumerism. This is the belief that we obtain happiness or value through consumption – buying and using goods and services that we don’t need. Consumerism often means that we define ourselves in relation to the things we own, and makes us value things that cannot be bought and sold (like friendship) less.

Globalisation
Economic globalisation is the process by which local, national, and regional economies become more integrated into one big global economy. This happens as barriers to trade are removed, allowing local economies to be more dependent on imports, exports, and the activities of big business (in the form of trans-national corporations).

Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is, essentially, Capitalism turned into an ideology. It describes the economic policies of Thatcher and Reagan, which have been adopted by all subsequent UK and US Governments to date. Basically, the theory is that by deregulating markets and privatising anything that can be privatised, you increase the rate of economic growth. Although this initially benefits the rich and not the poor, the theory is that this wealth will “trickle down” and everybody will, ultimately, be better off.

Markets
The concept of the “free market” is probably the most important in capitalist thought. It basically means that people and companies are free to buy and sell without interference from government. Advocates of capitalism believe that free markets are more “efficient” than the alternatives – that they naturally end up with goods being sold at the right price to balance out supply and demand for goods and services.

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My response is that GM crops are highly unlikely to be a useful tool in fighting hunger, even in a world with a growing population and a changing climate. Here are a few reasons why.

The first reason is that hunger today is caused primarily by economic factors. There is more than enough food to feed the world’s population. However, the world’s poor do not have access to their fair share of it. Furthermore, in many poor countries the best agricultural land is dedicated to cash crops such as opium, tobacco, or coffee rather than to actual edible foods. Therefore, the most effective way to ensure that everybody gets enough food is to deal with economic inequality and use the prime agricultural land to grow food, and this factor will not change with a growing world population and changes in climate.

A variation on this theme is the issue of meat. It takes several times more land to produce meat and dairy products than it does to produce the equivalent amount of nutrition in other foods. Now, obviously not all the land used for animal grazing is suitable for growing crops but we could feed considerably more people if we reduced the amount of meat in our diet.

The second reason is that there are many effective ways of increasing food yields by simply changing agricultural methods. Programmes such as Foundations for Farming (previously known as “Farming God’s Way”) have massively increased both crop yields and sustainability in the areas where they have been tried (in this case, Southern Africa), and haven’t needed any new crop varieties. By using better crop management techniques such as this one, you can feed far more people without the need for expensive research.

The third reason is that GM crops are heavily tied into conventional Western agricultural methods. The model of having massive fields filled with a single variety of a single crop (the technical term is a monoculture) is very efficient in terms of manpower (as you can mechanise more of the process). However, it is not a very efficient use of land. Multicropping and approaches have been shown to produce greater yields than monocultures. They also have the advantages of needing less fertiliser, and being more resistant to diseases, requiring fewer pesticides. And small farms tend to produce greater yields per acre than large ones.

GM technology also runs the risk of reducing our ability to keep up with a changing climate. By replacing local seed varieties with seeds from a single source, we reduce biodiversity and lose varieties of crops which might actually be better suited to changed conditions without the need for expensive bioengineering techniques.

In addition to this, there is still no actual evidence that GM crops offer increased yields, despite claims by GM companies and advocates that it can “feed the world”. Now, I’m open to the possibility that this is because of the way the technology has been used by biotech companies, rather than being something inherent to the technology. But until evidence for increased yields emerges, claims that GM crops can play any role in feeding an increasing population, or in adapting to a changed climate remains speculative at best.

Finally, if it turns out that I’m wrong and that GM crops can be used as part of the solution, some things need to change. In particular, the technology needs to be in the hands of governments or charities who are intent on creating varieties that meet the needs of poor farmers, rather than in the hands of big businesses, for whom meeting those needs is simply not profitable. Current uses of GM crops require farmers to buy a new set of seeds every year, whilst poor farmers – who are an essential part of feeding the hungry – need to be able to keep back some of their harvest and sow it in the following year. Producing crop varieties like this would be suicidal for a business.

Of course, even if the technology does end up in the right hands, it is at best an expensive and uncertain way to help farmers, and should be a far lower priority than proven methods of better agricultural techniques and attempts to ensure that the best agricultural land is used for food rather than cash crops.

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I’m going to pull together a number of the policy announcements (yes, the Tories have policies for the first time since the last election) they made that show that the failed economics of the Thatcher/Major years are back at the heart of Tory thought. This post is intended as an overview of the whole thing, with links to more specific commentary elsewhere.

Firstly, Cameron said today that “more government got us into this mess”. He seems to have forgotten that “this mess” is a recession caused by banks exploiting a reduction in government regulation. The Tories also seem to have forgotten that the hole in the public finances is primarily due to the recession and can be solved by encouraging economic growth And shadow business secretary, Ken Clarke, wants to reduce regulation on business.

George Osborne seems to have adopted an economic theory apparently at odds with reality. He believes that high government debt levels are causing overseas investors to lose faith in the UK, when actually it seems as if investors are happy to back Britain. In any case, Britain’s level of public debt isn’t as high, in historical terms, as the big three parties are making out. Furthermore, talking about cutting public spending in the middle of a recession is somewhat at odds with what reputable economists will tell you. It took massive government spending to end the Great Depression of the 1930s, and attempts to curb it by cutting spending early on simply made things much much worse.

In the detail of his speech, Osbourne proposed reforms of the welfare system which would most likely harm the poorest. He wants to shift people from incapacity deficit to jobseeker’s allowance – thus cutting their income, but proposed nothing that would significantly increase their chances of getting a job. In fact, their proposals seem to be mostly a rehash of what already exists, plus an incentive to new small businesses that would disadvantage existing companies, hence undermining the goal of job creation. Given that there are already people who are unfit to work who have been refused incapacity benefit this comes across as somewhat heartless. And when you consider that, in the same speech, he effectively said that he would like to cut the new top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000 as soon as he possibly can, it seems even more so.

Another thing that seems to indicate that the Tories are only considering the rich is their council tax pledge – saying that the average family will save £200 on their council tax bill by imposing a council tax freeze means that the Tory definition of average is the richest 20%.

This last point, however, offers a ray of hope that they don’t mean all of what they say. If you’re trying to reduce a government deficit, then you don’t promise a de facto tax cut. In fact, if you’re serious about reducing the deficit then you should be proposing tax increases.

It’s also worth noting that many Tories on a local level seem to be taking the opposite track to those in Whitehall. Here in Coventry, for example, the Tory council are planning to waste one billion pounds on an incinerator that nobody wants. We can but hope that the Tories aren’t as committed to overly harsh cuts as they are trying to make out.

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Part 1: Environment: Who Cares?
Part 2: Environment: Who Owns it?
Part 3: Environment: It is Good
Part 4:Environment: The Ball’s in Our Court

Today, we deal with two doctrines that are absolutely at the core of Christianity – the doctrines of the fall and the end times – and show that a good understanding of how these two doctrines interact can be a spur to care of creation.

In Genesis Chapter 3, humanity rebels against God. One of the consequences of this is that creation is affected by humanity’s sin. In Genesis 3:17-19, God says that creation will bring forth thorns and thistles, and that working to produce food will, from this point onwards, be hard work – rather than just work. In short, creation is no longer unambiguously good. However, this spoiling of creation is only temporary. Ultimately, when Jesus returns, the Earth will be reborn as God creates new Heavens and a new Earth (Revelation 21-22).

This latter point is a matter of some controversy – the language used in various Bible passages could be interpreted either to mean that the Earth will be completely destroyed and replaced with a new model, or that it will be renewed and transformed into a state that is better than it was in the beginning. There isn’t space to go into the evidence here, but my understanding is that renewal does better justice to the overall teaching of scripture than does replacement.

So how does this understanding that creation has been corrupted and will either be renewed or replaced impact our relationship with the environment?

Firstly, we need to understand that Christians are as much a new creation as the New Earth will be (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). We are called to pray and work towards seeing God’s kingdom (or rule) on Earth (see, for example, the Lord’s Prayer – Matthew 6:9-13). If our approach to doing so is to ruin, rather than care for, creation, then we are not reflecting God’s ultimate plan for the universe. We are, instead, reinforcing the curse that came with the Fall.

Secondly, it means that we have a model to look forward to. Yes, there are indications that the New Earth will be very different to the current one in ways that we cannot entirely understand – Revelation 21:4 says that death, mourning, crying, and pain will be things of the past. But it won’t be entirely dissimilar. There are several references to eating and drinking there, for example. Although the Bible does not elaborate on the details, it is fair to say that CS Lewis’s conception of heaven/the new Earth in his Narnia books – that the real world is like a shadow of heaven – is a good illustration.

Thirdly, it means that Christians do not need to worry about environmental destruction. I have demonstrated in this blog series that Christians do have many reasons to take action to preserve the environment, and to encourage others to do so, and I stand by that. But knowing that the planet will either be restored or replaced means that we need not feel worried or depressed when we discover the level of damage that humanity has done to the planet. We can rest assured that the Earth will be restored to its full glory, even if our attempts to, for example, prevent climate change ultimately fail.

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