The Church of England and the Tory Party are on a collision course over a “left leaning” letter being sent out today by the bishops to their parishes suggesting what good Christians should consider before voting in the general election.
The Church is insisting that the letter is not party political - yet it raises questions about the coalition’s policies on unemployment, poverty, Europe and the replacement of the Trident nuclear missile that have left Tory MPs hopping mad.
On Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid Bedfordshire, accused the bishops of “left-wing leaning” and attacked one of its authors, the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson for “glaring inaccuracies".
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“It [the letter] states that unemployment has not risen as high as predicted,” said Dorries, “but unemployment has fallen continually since 2010. It also says we have seen the burgeoning of families in poverty when the Office for National Statistics figures show there has been a fall of 3,000.
“I would much rather the Church stuck to issues where people are seeking [its] voice… such as gender abortion, late-term abortion, issues to do with the Human Tissue and Embryology Bill. The Church is always silent when people are seeking its voice and very keen to dive in on political issues when no-one is asking it to.”
Alan Wilson stood by the letter, saying about poverty in Britain: “Notoriously, when you go to a food bank you see hard-working people who are in waged employment but not able to make ends meet.”
The bishop also stood by earlier comments by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that entire cities were being “cast aside”.
Wilson said: “I think it’s quite frightening when you go out of London that so much of our wealth is concentrated in the bottom right-hand corner of our country. I think that is something we all ought to care about and to leave it to the politicians is an abdication of responsibility we all have.”
Another Tory MP Conor Burns, said: "It is deeply disturbing that the Church appears to be entering the political arena based on a series of clear misrepresentations of facts.”
The Daily Mail reports that one of the most controversial aspects of the bishops' letter is the issue of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Trident, which the Tories say they want to retain but which the resurgent Scottish Nationalists want scrapped.
The letter says: “The sheer scale of indiscriminate destructive power represented by nuclear weapons such as Trident was only justifiable, if at all, by appeal to the principle of mutually assured destruction. Shifts in the global strategic realities mean that the traditional arguments for nuclear deterrence need re-examining.”
The letter also proposes further European integration, says the Mail, in line with SNP and Labour thinking.
“After the Second World War, the nations of Europe sought to rebuild for prosperity through a shared determination that never again would global neighbours resort to mass slaughter,” the letter says.
“English churchmen worked tirelessly to promote understanding and cooperation … That history is not an argument for the structures and institutions of the EU as they now exist. But it is an enduring argument for continuing to build structures of trust and cooperation between the nations of Europe.”
Lady Thatcher - to many Tories, the patron saint of the Conservative Party - regularly clashed with the Church of England during her term in power and lectured the bishops on the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan helping a poor man by the roadside. According to Thatcher, the real message was that the Samaritan had created enough wealth to be able to help the poor man.
David Cameron appears not to be worried about the bishops – or the general public, for that matter – casting the Tories once again as the “nasty party”.
Today the PM is announcing reforms which will mean people aged between 18 and 21 having to do 30 hours of community work each week and 10 hours of job-hunting in order to qualify for benefits. The work will begin from day one of their claim. It could involve preparing meals for elderly people or working at charities.
Cameron says the reforms seek to end long-term youth unemployment and help youngsters understand that "welfare is not a one-way street”. Sadly, the bishops wrote their letter before the PM snuck this one in.
