Church must call politicians to account - Bishop of Durham

The Church has a role to play in calling human rulers to account, the Bishop of Durham has said, as he accused successive governments of ignoring parliamentary process and “ramming” legislation through Parliament.

Speaking in the Houses of Parliament last night, the Rt Rev Tom Wright said the expenses scandal was only the “tip of the iceberg of a disillusionment” with the political process, and warned that the Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war had done nothing to decrease the disillusionment.

He said: “Ever since the massive majorities of Margaret Thatcher, for most of the last generation we have had governments that could, and did, effectively ignore parliamentary process, with a very small number of people, sometimes only one, taking key decisions which nobody dared to oppose and which were rammed through Parliament with scant regard for proper debate.”

The bishop went on to criticise the “ad hoc” nature of attempts at constitutional reform, which he said had been carried through without any consideration of the larger issues involved, such as the ongoing debate over the composition of the House of Lords.

“Constitutional reform seems to be being done on a wing and a prayer, and that
while we on the bishops’ benches are happy to supply the prayer, we do want to be assured of the quality of the wing,” he said.

Bishop Wright stated he would rather have a wholly appointed House of Lords from which bishops were excluded, unless appointed, rather than have an almost entirely elected House in which bishops were still included.

“We have some excellent MPs, but many observers think that to fill another chamber with more of the same, whipped to the will of the government, would be worse than pointless,” he said.

“If we are to make changes, elected politicians are the very last people who ought to be in charge of that process.”

The bishop anticipates a record low turnout at the forthcoming General Election, expected to coincide with local elections on May 6.

He said the election was only likely to increase “crisis of legitimacy” facing the next Government.

“Faced with this situation, anyone who supposes either that we can just rumble on and hope for the best, or that our present elected politicians are just the people to reorganise our constitution, is putting their head in the sand. And anyone who supposes that the question of God and government is irrelevant to these questions is omitting one of the vital ingredients we need for any wise solution,” he said.

Bishop Wright said human rulers were called to bring God’s order to the world, as he accused the present Government of “anti-clericalism”.

He said the cross was a “redefinition of power” based on the premise of serving rather than being served. The church’s role, he added, was to remind rulers of that vocation.

“It isn’t just the case – this is the key move here – that Jesus’ followers are to form a parallel society, a holy family who live in a new way and thus implicitly put the world to shame,” he said.

“They are indeed to do that, but they are to do it not as a quasi-monastic community hidden away from the rest of the world, leaving rulers and governments to their wicked ways and denouncing them from a safe distance, but as a community which bears cheerful public witness to the fact that there is a different way to be genuinely human, and calling people, particularly rulers, to account before God.”