MPs motivated to serve might restore trust in Government, says bishop

The Bishop of Wolverhampton has said that the MPs' expenses scandal only served to reveal the dedication of honourable politicians.

In a pastoral letter published in the May edition of parish magazines across the Diocese of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Clive Gregory said the disclosure of questionable expenses claims had revealed "something of a halo" around those MPs who desired to serve their constituents and country.

He advised voters to ask themselves who among the candidates could demonstrate the strongest vocation to serve the interests of their constituency "without fear or favour".

“A House of Commons full of members motivated primarily by a vocation to public service rather than political partisanship, and enshrining the highest ethical standards, might go a long way to restoring trust in our system of Government, and it might just be the best outcome for those of us whose greatest desire is not to see a particular party elected, but the dawning of the Kingdom of God," he said.

Bishop Gregory said the question ‘Should I bother voting?’ sounded “almost irresponsible to the solid tranche of, mainly, older people for whom voting is, if not a sacred duty then at least an ingrained habit.”

He said that MPs caught up in the expenses scandal had brought "disrespect" upon politics and that people were questioning whether British democracy had become "too sullied to justify our active participation through the ballot box".

"Christians will be well represented among the sceptics as, according to a recent in depth survey by ComRes, religious people are no more likely to vote than the wider population,” he said.

The bishop said that if people believed in democracy, they had a responsibility to support it.

"An ‘x’ on the ballot paper is a vote for a way of life that many people in the world (eg in Burma) would willingly die for," he wrote.

“Our biblical tradition witnesses powerfully to God’s concern for the right ordering of society. The prophets of the Old Testament would not have been nearly such angry men were they not convinced that God required them to speak out against unjust social and economic relationships," he said.

"The greatest theme of Jesus’ preaching was the Kingdom of God and he left no doubt that the Kingdom implied the transformation of the whole of human society.

"For centuries Christians have understood the Kingdom not as something to passively wait for but as a work in progress and have identified social evils (eg slavery/child labour) as obstacles to be removed through political engagement.

"It would be hard to argue that our present society does not have Kingdom–obstacles that need to be removed!”