I have been thinking about Tim Farron’s assertion that he feels it ‘impossible’ to be leader of the Liberal Democrats while living as a faithful Christian. So he has stopped doing that (being leader of the Lib Dems, I mean). I’m not all that sympathetic to Mr Farron, for reasons explained below. People who profess Christian belief must expect to be reviled a bit, and even take it as a compliment. As Christ himself said (Matthew 5, 11-12) ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

‘Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.’

I should be clear that it’s reviling I’m speaking about here. What happened to Tim Farron certainly wasn’t persecution, a serious word too often misused.

Mr Farron said (you can hear it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHhPUmlJDik, key part begins about one minute in…)

‘Journalists have got absolutely every right to ask whatever they see fit. The consequences of the focus on my faith is that I have found myself torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader.

‘A better, wiser person than me may have been able to deal with this more successfully, to have remained faithful to Christ while leading a political party in the current environment.

‘To be a political leader - especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me. Now I am a liberal to my fingertips. That liberalism means that I am passionate about defending the rights and liberties of people who believe very different things to me. …

There are Christians in politics who take the view that they should impose the tenets of their faith on society. But I have not taken that approach because I fundamentally disagree with it. It is not liberal and actually it is counterproductive when it comes to advancing the gospel. Even so I seem to have been the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in, in which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant liberal society... '

He closes with a quotation from the last verse of Isaac Watts’s great Good Friday hymn ‘When I survey the Wondrous Cross’. I urge you to look up the whole thing. On one famous occasion, an Anglican Bishop pointed out to an Oxford congregation that the words of the last verse….

‘Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.’

…. taken literally, demanded a commitment so great that very few who sang them could possibly mean them. He said that if they felt that at least they *partly* meant them, they could at least sing them in a whisper, and they duly did so, a moment everyone present remembered ever afterwards.

The bit in Mr Farron’s apologia that strikes me as most interesting is this part ‘There are Christians in politics who take the view that they should impose the tenets of their faith on society. But I have not taken that approach because I fundamentally disagree with it. It is not liberal and actually it is counterproductive when it comes to advancing the gospel.’ I am not sure I can wholly agree with that.

The issue over which Mr Farron was tripped up was, of course, homosexuality, the great loyalty test of the modern liberal state. I long ago gave up discussing this in public, as it was quite pointless, nobody who pursued me on the subject was interested in what I really thought (indeed, the harder they pursued me, the less interested they were, it was a just a thought-police interrogation) , and it was simply an elephant trap.

Here’s an example of what happens, from the ‘Metro’ newspaper : ‘Conservative MP Nigel Evans used the election debate to throw down the gauntlet to Mr Farron, saying: ‘He was asked one question which he refused to give an answer to and I’d be interested if he could today – does he think being gay is a sin?’ Mr Farron responded: ‘I do not. And I am very proud to have gone through the lobby behind him in the coalition government where the Liberal Democrats introduced gay marriage, equal marriage, and indeed did not go as far as it should have done in terms of recognising transgender rights.’ Earlier he told reporters: ‘As a liberal I believe in human rights, in equality for every single person, and LGBT rights are absolutely central to those.’ In his TV interview, Mr Farron evaded answering whether he thought homosexuality is a sin, instead saying: ‘We are all sinners.’ Labour MP Ben Bradshaw called his position ‘incredibly illiberal’ while former Great British Bake-Off presenter Sue Perkins wrote on Twitter: ‘Tim Farron on C4 news failing to clarify his views on the gay community.’ Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams tweeted: ‘Tim Farron you are definitely a sinner for your continued intolerance and prejudice.’

See how it ends up with the Twitter jury pronouncing him guilty, which is a bit like being set upon in the street by a gang of cartoon characters, being held down by Daffy Duck and Popeye as Minnie Mouse publicly spanks your bottom. There’s no coming back from a humiliation of that kind. Nor, in the end, did he survive it. Much more interesting, as too few people pointed out at the time, was Mr Farron’s support for Donald Trump’s illegal bombing of Syria after the alleged and unproven use of poison gas by the Syria state.

I don’t recall Mr Farron’s Christianity being called into question over that episode, though his liberalism certainly was.

He wasn't in quite as much trouble, either, when he said that he believed in ‘access to abortion that is legal and is safe’ (in an awkward TV interview with Sophy Ridge). This is a very odd position, one that makes mine (see below) look toughly principled.

But what about this bit about ‘imposing’ the tenets of the faith? What does that mean? Who's imposing what on whom?

Having a correct opinion on a big issue is , in the left wing world, a morally good act. So, supporting abortion or easy divorce , whether you procure an abortion or get divorced, or don’t, is itself a worthy deed. But of course this influences the legal system and the culture, and makes such things more likely, with consequences for innocent and defenceless persons. So it is , in a way, an imposition of views.

This is one of the most basic differences between the modern left and what is left of modern conservatism. I simply don’t regard my opinions as virtues, or those of my opponents as vices. They do not return the favour. They think my opinions are definitely vices. They think the less of me for holding them. They are uncomfortable in my company and would seldom if ever wish to have any kind of contact with me that wasn’t professionally necessary. Some are charming when this happens. Some radiate discomfort and dislike.

It’s a sort of extreme ( and God-free) version of the Protestant belief in justification (that is to say salvation) through faith alone. Your works and deeds don’t matter. It is what you think that saves you. I don’t quite believe this, being a soppy Anglican rather than a pure, continental-style Protestant, and I am heavily influenced by the beautiful arguments put in the haunting and lovely Epistle of James (Luther hated it. Please read it in the Authorised Version).…

What you think and what you do are hopelessly entangled with each other. Good works strengthen faith, and faith strengthens good works. Faith without any attempt to live well and do good would be no faith at all. Whereas a man without faith who deliberately does good at cost or pain to himself has demonstrated faith, in my view. But there. If I’m not careful the Evangelicals will come after me now.

The point is that when political activism meets Christianity, there are some tenets which the Christian *does* inevitably seek to impose on any society in which he or she lives. For if he does not seek to impose them, other beliefs, opposite to and hostile to Christianity, will be imposed in their place by others. It is not good saying ‘Don’t like abortion. Don’t have one’. Abortion isn’t just something *you* have. Someone else, namely the baby which is violently extinguished, has it too.

Here are a few examples. The defence of innocent life, made in the image of God and our most fundamental duty, is one of these.

I favour deterrent laws against murder. For these to be effcetive, the convicted murderer must suffer, so that others do not become victims.

By exactly the same token, I believe the state should refrain from wars in which innocents will die, and men are compelled to kill them, except when the need for such a war is beyond all doubt. If the Christian state does make war it must do all it possibly can to avoid the deaths of innocents and certainly not use methods which are intended to cause this. This can be a severe restraint on some forms of foreign policy.

And on the same grounds (the protection of the innocent) I think abortion should be illegal. I add that, if I am discussing this as a political position I must add a caveat. This is based on the 1938 Aleck Bourne case which shaped our law before 1967. I think the law can recognise rare mitigating circumstances so strong that a jury might reasonably acquit on the grounds of tempering justice with mercy. The particular circumstances of the Bourne case were that an under-age girl (I believe she was 14 at the time) had been gang-raped by a group of soldiers, and had become pregnant as a result.

Dr Bourne (who turned himself in, refused ever afterwards to perform another abortion and campaigned *against* the 1967 Abortion Bill on which our current law is still based) sincerely and unfeignedly believed after meeting her that the victim would have gone irreversibly mad if compelled to carry the baby to term. He was acquitted in this case and I cannot find it in myself to object to this verdict, though I know that the aborted baby was innocent, and wish that it had not been killed. It may be that in this I am just doing what Tim Farron is doing, further down the road. I realise that I open myself to this charge. But I do not actually think so. Pro-abortion liberals, who often cite the issue of rape victims, hate the Bourne case and disliked the state of the law which resulted from it. That suggests to me that it may in fact be sound.

On a separate issue, while I think lifelong marriage is a voluntary act freely entered into, I think it is prescribed for Christians and beneficial for all, especially children, and that the law and the culture should sustain it rather than undermine it. I do not think the law should take the side of divorce against marriage, as it does now. I think it should do the opposite. That's an imposition, for sure. A society in which divorce is harder than it is now would impose constraints on others.

I think a common Sabbath day, observed by almost all, is essential for family and private life and a great benefit to any society which observes it. I remember when we had such a day. When I visit countries in the Middle East which still observe such things, I am moved and impressed, and rather envious. So I would defend its observance with the law. That would impose restraints on others.

Likewise the state, supported by all of us, has an absolute duty to support the destitute, most especially widows and orphans.That means taxes, imposed on others.

And thieves and perjurers should be severely punished, so as to deter false witness and theft.

A careful study of these examples (and a full list would take pages) reveals that some of them involve policies generally viewed as ‘right-wing’ and others involve policies generally viewed as ‘left-wing’.

It is (in theory) perfectly possible for Christians to engage in any sort of politics, provided it is not the Utopian type involving the remaking of mankind in the image of a dogma, such as National Socialism or Communism. The idea of human malleability is generally said to have originated with the French thinker Claude Helvetius in the final years of the French old regime, which reacted against his ideas with prescient fury.

If man is made in the image of God, as Christians are supposed to believe, such a remaking is not possible, and certainly not right. It is this disagreement that places enmity between worldly utopians and Christian believers, unavoidably.

These utopian beliefs are fundamentally hostile to Christianity or any of the monotheisms (though they may make cynical use of religions when it suits them). Christians can be and are socialists, liberals or conservatives. The gospels cannot prescribe a political position, not least because the borders and shape of the secular world don’t match those of eternity.

The point is that you cannot, in my view, subscribe to the Christian religion and engage in politics without being pretty committed to such objectives. You’d have to want laws that encouraged the things you supported, and oppose and vote against laws that undermined or attacked them, or your public life would be an utter contradiction of your inmost faith. You can't, in my view, try to be a Christian at home, while failing to do so in your public acts.

For instance you cannot, in my view, seriously believe in protecting the innocent from attack unless you make laws and take decisions (say, on not bombing Syria) which deter such attacks. And that *must* involve some measure of what Tim Farron calls ‘imposition’.

In any case, modern secular politics have their own rival impositions, which their supporters must seek. They place human pleasure, disguised as personal autonomy, higher than anything else. They transfer moral feeling to remote idealistic actions, such as the bombing of Syria, Libya or whichever distant playground they have chosen to exercise the consciences they have expelled from the personal sphere of life.

They find it very hard these days to tolerate Christianity, as they are tending increasingly back towards the utopianism which ruined European civilisation in the 1917-1989 period. The difference is that this Utopianism is not now held to by Lenin’s Bolsheviks (desiring a hellish classless egalitarian utopia) or Hitler’s SS (desiring a hellish racial utopia) . They are extinct, and good riddance.

It is desired by re-engineered self-righteous radicals, who quite like the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks, greatly enjoy the unhindered personal autonomy given to them by the cultural revolution, but genuinely don’t wish to resort to guillotine or gulag to get their way. This does not mean they are any less relentless.

This is why they operate through a modern form of loyalty oaths. To be accepted in public life as a good person, any man or woman must publicly accede to certain pillars of secular faith, above all personal autonomy in matters of sex and cohabitation, (and drugs). These pillars of secular virtue are completely hostile to, and incompatible with, the ‘impositions’ discussed above. Mr Farron learned you can have one, but not the other. I think it would be the same with any party. Mr Blair and Mrs May are both churchgoers, but to the sort of church which often makes its peace with the secular age, not Mr Farron’s embarrassingly candid form of evangelical faith. I have not observed Mr Blair or Mrs May allowing their faiths to get in the way of their governments’ promotion of personal autonomy( or foreign bombing).

This article http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448659/tim-farron-resignation-liberal-christianity-liberal-democrat-party-leader-resigns

by Michael Brendan Dougherty in the US conservative magazine National Review makes a good stab at explaining this, and makes an interesting point about the dominant faith of our society, which masquerades as a neutral, indifferent secularism but is in fact highly prescriptive:

‘The entire elite culture and much of the popular culture is secular in a quite specific way. It is not a secularism that encourages public neutrality while maintaining a generous social pluralism. It’s a secularism that demands the humiliation of religion, specifically Christianity. And in Britain it has a decidedly classist flavor, one that holds it impossible for an Evangelical like Farron — one of those people — to represent the better sort of person.’

I don’t wholly agree with Mr Dougherty about the free pass he claims is given to Islam. The Left, as my late brother Christopher exemplifies, are divided about the issue of Islam, and are often ready to criticise it. The trouble is that this does not in any way prevent them from being just as hostile to Christianity. And in practice, since Christianity is still technically the public religion of our culture, this takes up a lot more of their time and effort than occasional squibs against the Mullahs and Ayatollahs.

But I do think he is more or less right when he says ‘We live in an age in which our liberal media elite and most people who call themselves Christian in social surveys treat liberalism and Christianity as strangers to themselves and each other. Farron sought relief from his public trial by recalling the proud history of his faith in the reformation of British politics. No one wanted to hear it. He called upon the decency and forbearance that are supposed to mark British society. There is none left.’

Why is this? Because Antonio Gramsci’s advice (first offered to the revolutionary left almost a century ago but only really grasped and understood in the late 1960s) has been taken. Because those who want to begin the world over again now understand that you sort out the culture first and the barracks (and the banks) later rather than the other way round. The political party, the charity, the research body, the think tank, the pressure group or membership organisation, the university, the TV station, the newspaper, the primary school, even the church itself, must be quietly turned to the purposes of the utopians. Then the rest will follow.

So utopian revolutionary views, once confined to openly totalitarian and violent factions in Western politics, have now become the apparently respectable ‘centrist’ aims of ‘mainstream’ politics, culture, media and education. And, while they have not adopted and will not ( I hope and trust) adopt the secret police and gulag methods of their 20th century forerunners, they have discovered many almost equally effective weapons for crushing Christianity or any other force which stands against worldly utopianism. In these times, soft power threats to promotion, employment and status, backed up by the public shaming which social media can visit on any target at any time, does the job pretty well. Whether it will be enough, in the end, I don’t know. I rather hope I won’t live long enough to find out.