Christian democracy in Europe has ‘run out of new ideas’, resulting in voters increasingly supporting far-right populist parties, the director of a Christian political foundation has said.
Announcing the launch of new research into how the Bible impacts society, Johannes de Jong, head of the European Christian Political Movement’s research unit Sallux, said: ‘The idea of Christian democracy is failing.’
Sallux has commissioned Cambridge-based The Jubilee Centre for Biblical Thinking for Public Life to look into how the Bible relates to today’s economic, social and political challenges.
De Jong complained that political parties are ‘more interested in maintaining vested interests than in drawing on Christian faith and the Scriptures to develop creative responses to challenges like migration, debt, human trafficking and social care’.
‘Now is the time to go back to the Biblical faith and wisdom which inspired Christian democracy in the first place,’ he added.
The research will involve consulting with politicians and thinkers from different denominations across Europe. The aim is to create practical resources for Christian politicians and practitioners.
Jonathan Tame of the Jubilee Centre said: ‘The output will be a practical resource pack for Christian politicians and practitioners who want to move beyond the old, worn-out policies. It will help them tap into the rich seams of Scripture to develop for their own contexts a new set of compassionate, coherent responses to the social and political challenges they face.’
• The case of an evangelical Christian politician in Finland demonstrates the risks to those in politics of speaking out against liberal values and espousing Scriptural values.
Finnish prosecutors have charged Päivi Räsänen, former chair of the Christian Democrat Party of Finland and former Minister of the Interior of Finland, with ‘hate speech’ against homosexuals.
If convicted, Mrs Räsänen faces up to six years in jail. In a statement issued after she was charged, the International Lutheran Council called the decision to prosecute unjust and ‘egregious’, and said it was effectively ‘an attack on all citizens’.
