CARE enters fifth decade

Why does CARE engage with politicians and bring a Biblical perspective to laws and legislation?

There is one reason among many that stands out to me. As the mission agency to UK politics, we believe that Biblical principles for human flourishing are good for all in society. Respecting the building blocks of society that God has created is the first step towards a fairer and more just society. And if we don’t bring these values into the corridors of power, how will politicians ever hear them?

The need for this as we enter 2023 has never been greater. Confusion around human identity lies at the root of so many of the social challenges we are facing. Because our society has believed the lie that we are simply evolved apes, it has also bought into the idea of the fact/value split.

This whole philosophy came to prominence because of the Enlightenment, the age of reason. Francis Schaeffer used the picture of a two-storey house to describe many people’s contemporary mindset. On the lower level you had facts – these were things that could be proved by science as empirically ‘true’. The human body as a mass of chemicals was placed here. In the upper story, you had values. Whatever your religious beliefs were, they belonged in the private sphere, while facts belonged in the public sphere.

This rejection of a public role for Christianity was at the root of the unravelling of Christianity’s influence in our nation. For generations, Christianity was tolerated, but pushed to the margins of society. Science and ‘facts’ became the new creed.

But as this descent away from Biblical teaching has accelerated, and as the wider church has surrendered to the spirit of the age, today Christianity is not just viewed as weird. It is actively viewed as harmful, especially when it comes to debates about sexuality and gender. Our evangelical, Biblically-shaped belief that sex is between one man and one woman, within marriage, and that it is never right for someone to transition from their birth gender, is being called out as damaging and wrong.

That’s because people have believed another lie. It is the idea that we can choose for ourselves who we love and who we are. We actively tell young people, sometimes as young as eight years old: you can choose who you want to be. It is an unspeakable cruelty.

We were not made by God to make such decisions. It is not our call to make. God, the giver of life, is our Maker, our Creator, our Sustainer, and all life belongs to Him. We were made to find our identity in Him, in relationship with the One who formed us and knit us together in the mother’s womb. As the psalmist says, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

If we do not witness to these truths in the corridors of power and if we are not the salt of the earth and the light of the world in Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff Bay, and Stormont – then who’s to say how much worse things would be?

I often think CARE and other similar groups are like the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem that Isaiah speaks of in chapter 62. We keep a close eye on what’s happening, and we work to prevent legislation passing that would undermine human dignity, while promoting laws that promote God’s image in every person He has made. As we enter our fifth decade of work in the public square, our greatest need is for God’s help and for courage. The days are darkening and may get darker still. But our hope is in the simply, but wonderful truth: ‘Light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.’