In The Firing Line

IN THE FIRING LINE
By Brian Mawhinney
HarperCollins. 262 pages. £16.99 (hardback)
ISBN 0 00 274062 1

This is far from the usual boring self-justifying political memoir; Brian Mawhinney is a man with a message. He is the first evangelical in living memory to hold cabinet office and he wants to put us right about our attitude to politics and politicians.

He certainly seems to have a case. The reaction of 'George', a member of his boyhood Open Brethren Assembly, to his selection as Tory candidate for Peterborough accused him of 'glory seeking, arrogance, wanting political power, neglecting the faith and becoming worldly'. He should put all this foolishness behind him.

Not many put it as bluntly as that, but he found the view widespread. So he devotes a whole chapter to government as a God-ordained institution, starting from Paul in Romans 13: 'The powers that be are ordained of God.' He follows this, helpfully, with a chapter on 'compromise and confrontation'. Our faith tells us to stick to our principles, but politics is different. There has to be compromise within national parties. 'This fundamental truth used to lie at the heart of the Conservative Party, though recently and temporarily it seems to have been mislaid.' And the law of the land is a compromise between the law of God and what can be enforced in civil law.

In the chapter 'Christians, a mixed bunch', he laments the lack of support he had from fellow Christians, swift to criticise him for failure to win the Commons, but slow to act locally to oppose a Christian view to the one-issue secular groups. 'The Christian view will prevail only when we persuade our communities that there is a better way.'

After five years on the General Synod, he does not have much time for bishops, who 'have confused their fundamental spiritual responsibilities with their personal political views' and would clearly like to see them out of the Lords, which gives them an undue level of influence and Christian authority.
This unusual and pugnacious book is a good read!

Fred Catherwood

© Evangelicals Now - November 1999
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Main Articles

• When a good man falls
• The Commentary
  Roy Clements
• Do you believe this?
  One man's story of his pilgrimage out of Catholicism
• The people of the Book
  The importance of regular reading and study of the Bible Scriptures
• Love's argument
  What is love and what is the point of love?
• Go on - indulge yourself
  A papal pronouncement on indulgences sparks a new controversy (reprinted from World Magazine)

Other articles

• Roy Clements walks out
• Jesus 2000
• A Return To Modesty
• Looking Into Light - CD review
• Why Y2K?
• The Church That Went Under - The story of the parish church St Nicholas in Sevenoaks who built an undercroft - an extract from the book The Church That Went Under
• The Story of Christian Theology - 20 Centuries of Tradition and Reform
• A Midsummer Night's Dream - Film review
• The New Man - An extract from the book The New Man on Romans 6
• Conversations on Christian Feminism - Speaking Heart to Heart
• The Church That Went Under
• In The Firing Line
• Are We Getting Through?
• Soul Friendship - Celtic Insights into Spiritual Mentoring
• Conflict and Triumph - The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded
• The Bible Made Plain and Simple
• Witness to the World
• Slandering The Angels - The Message of Jude (Welwyn Commentary Series)
• The Last Pope - The Decline and Fall of the Church of Rome