Cross-check what matters when voting

Three perspectives to inform how we vote wisely.

Sam Rylands

Sam recently completed a doctorate in political theology and is the Vicar of St Andrew's, Fulham Fields.

A pen draws a cross in a box on a ballot form.

What principles will shape your vote this Thursday? What or who will primarily guide your decision in the ballot booth? Podcaster and former political advisor Alastair Campbell’s old adage “we don’t do God” suggests that religion and politics don’t mix. Yet some of the most important movements for social and political justice in modern history had Christians at their heart. Think Wilberforce, Fry, Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, or the lesser-known but worth-a-google, Melanesian Brotherhood.

What wisdom might the Christian faith have to offer when thinking, not just about this election, but how to approach politics in general? Like lions on the England football shirt, all good things come in threes– so, here are three Christian perspectives that can inform political engagement.

First, earthly kingdoms are penultimate. God’s kingdom is ultimate.

Perhaps the moment that Jesus is drawn most explicitly to comment on the politics of his day, was when he was asked about paying taxes. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Given how frustrating it can be watching politicians avoid responding directly to any question posed, we might sympathise with those who wanted a direct answer here. But for Jesus, to say yes would position him as a traitor to the Jewish people who wanted to resist and subvert the authority of the Roman Empire. To say no, however, would be to signal revolutionary intentions to lead a rebellion against the occupying Roman force.

Set within this political trap, Jesus responds by asking for a coin and turns the tables by asking, “whose face is on this coin?” “Caesar’s,” comes the reply. “Then give to the emperor what belongs to him,” says Jesus. Yet, before we allow this response to justify opting out of political practice or hallow every existing ruling power, Jesus continues: “But give to God what belongs to God.” And what belongs to God, we ask? Well, as the writer of the ancient Psalms poetry put it, “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” Nothing short of the whole universe and beyond belongs to God, the creator of heaven and earth. So, in taking the coin, Jesus is not giving a blanket affirmation of Caesar’s rule, but challenges each and every earthly kingdom by relativising it in the light of God’s eternal kingdom. What has sustained so many Christians in challenging and renewing the political context of their day is the trust that before, behind, and beyond the rising and falling of each earthly authority stands God’s eternal kingdom. This kingdom is not in competition with the kingdoms of earth, vying to secure its own territory, but is a kingdom inaugurated by a king who wears a crown of thorns, forgives his executioners, and is raised from the dead to proclaim, “peace be with you!” The call to follow Christ within the political is to retain the perspective of this eternal life.

Second, politics needs a perspective beyond personal interest.

Holding an eternal perspective, however, is not to say this world or politics does not matter. In contrast, justice, compassion, and seeking a world as God intends it to be matters precisely because of eternity. How we live here and now has eternal significance. How we treat one another and care for all of creation has eternal significance. What belongs to God? We all do. Each person is made in God’s image. As a coin bears the image of its ruler, so we are marked by the image of God. When we consider our political responsibility, therefore, we must do so not with our own cares or concerns alone, or even primarily. Rather, we should ask what political responsibility we have towards others? How do my political decisions or actions impact my neighbour, both local and global– particularly those on the underside of the political power of the day? As the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterill, recently shared, “as a Christian, I’m hoping and I’m praying, that when I vote, when you vote, we won’t be placing our vote according to what’s best for us, but for what’s going to be best for God’s world.” If God’s power is displayed most fully in Christ who came, not to be served, but to serve, giving his life for the sake of the world, then political power cannot be a means for securing our own advantage over and against others. A Christian approach to politics recognises that my flourishing is bound up and inseparable from the flourishing of all others.

Third, let’s disagree well.

However, even if we could agree on the importance of politics beyond personal interest, we won’t all agree on what this looks like in practice. For instance, whilst two people might agree on the need to ensure a welfare safety net for the most deprived in society, their perspectives on how best to achieve this might differ greatly. Christians are not immune from such disagreements and (not that you would know it from the promises of each political party) no political system can deliver heaven on earth. How then are we to reconcile our political differences?

Returning to the theme of belonging and image bearing, the church bears the image of Christ. The church is the Body of Christ, comprised of many different members yet united, as one body. One of Jesus’ final acts on earth was to pray that the church would be one in the same way that God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one. Unity in difference. This image offers a counterweight to how political differences are played out across the news and social media platforms. Here, to vote or think differently is often to become an enemy, or even to forfeit one’s belonging as a bearer of God’s image, another person worthy of inestimable dignity and value.

Belonging to Christ, however, is to know that belonging together runs deeper than divisions of race, gender, societal status, and political tribalism. It is to trust that my sister or brother in Christ, with whom I might strongly disagree politically, is a gift to me, a showing of Christ, that I would otherwise fail to see on my own. If Christ really is the way, the truth, and the life, then the truth is beyond my final possession of it. This does not mean indifference or relativism. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes, “unity is Christ-shaped, or it is empty.” But if we can recognise one another placing our penultimate political judgements under the same scrutiny of Christ’s coming kingdom, then even in our disagreements, the church, bearing together in costly communion, reveals a belonging together that anticipates the ultimate: a world where things can only get better.

Article

Creed

Politics

9 September 2025

5 min read

In praise of nuance

Life is complicated. The early Christians had a much better way than a dramatic headline

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A typewriter holds a piece or paper reading 'truth'

Markus Winkler on Unsplash.

Seventeen hundred years ago this year, the early Christians inched their way towards a landmark statement. The Nicene Creed was the result of 300 years of wrestling with a question at the heart of this new movement: if the Jesus they worshipped was in some sense the ‘Son of God’, what did that mean? Was he a human prophet, better than most, but fundamentally just like the rest of us? Was he God in human disguise? Or a kind of half-breed, like a centaur - half human and half divine? Bishops and theologians spilt blood, sweat and tears (literally) over these questions. Simplistic answers were put forward and found wanting. Treatises were written, synods met, opponents were castigated and excommunicated. Even riots broke out as the debates waxed fiercely across the Roman world.

Eventually, in 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea issued a carefully worded and hard-won statement. It said that Jesus was ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.' Every word was carefully chosen and the fruit of long debate, deep prayer and thought. It didn’t solve all the problems, but it has stood the test of time, and is still recited in churches across the world today.

I have been pondering all this during the summer as our political debates have raged.

Take the issue of immigration. On one side, there are the ‘refugees welcome’ banners, the suspicion that fixing a flag of St George on a lamp post is a sign of incipient fascism, and that claiming we have a problem with immigration is inherently racist.

On the other side, it is ‘stop the boats’, calls for mass deportations, protests outside hostels for frightened immigrants, the implication that all immigrants are scroungers, destroying the soul of Britain (or the USA) and the need to rapidly close our borders.

But it’s complicated. There are significant differences between the claims of legal migrants, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. Most would probably agree that offering welcome to people escaping warfare, persecution and famine in their homelands is right, proper, and in line with a long tradition of wealthy countries offering a refuge for others in need. People will always be on the move, and to close all borders is unrealistic and unjust. The moderate, fertile British climate, our historic economic and political stability, our well-regulated legal system, the Christian faith which shaped our culture, even the relative tidiness of our streets and countryside, are gifts we inherit from the past and should be generous with them.

Yet these are blessings that can’t be taken for granted. They need protecting, not just for our sakes but for those with a legitimate claim to make a home here.

So, most would also agree that illegal immigration is a scourge, with the ruthless villains enticing desperate migrants to climb on their flimsy boats across the channel deserving little else but criminal sentences. Yet even mass ‘legal’ migration will change the character of the nation. In 1990, net migration was around 20,000 a year. In 2024 it was 430,000. When 40% of primary age children have at least one foreign-born parent, and for one in five, English is not their first language, that can't fail to have an impact on the character of the nation, especially in areas where housing is cheaper and newcomers to the country find it easier to find accommodation.

But this complexity gets lost in the need for a punchy headline. Neither ‘send them home’ or ‘all migrants welcome’ capture the dilemma. It needs nuance. It needs careful, patient working towards the right balance between differing claims – compassion towards the stranger and the preservation of the very things that draw the refugees and the restless here.

The same is true of Israel and Gaza. For the pro-Israel lobby, just to draw attention to the suffering in Gaza is to be anti-Semitic. To urge restraint on Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas, even if it means destroying Gaza and much of its population in the meantime is to echo the death camps and to bring down Zionist wrath. Yet for Palestine Action and its supporters, Israel’s legitimate need to live in peace without a neighbouring state dedicated to its destruction seems to count for nothing. How can it be expected to live alongside a regime that brutally murdered 1,400 of its citizens in one day?

Even assisted dying – on which I and others on Seen & Unseen take the strong view that it is a bad idea – is not simple. The cries of those facing a long and painful death need hearing and people like me, who argue against assisted dying, need to promote solutions that will alleviate such suffering without crossing the red line of encouraging a culture of death.

The truth and the resolution of our dilemmas – on immigration, or Gaza, or even assisted dying, are seldom simple. They require nuance. They need forbearance.

It’s complicated. Most important things are. Anyone who has tried to lead a large organisation will know that it’s often a delicate matter of trying to chart a path forward while keeping competing interests and perspectives on board. You lose some people along the way, but you can’t afford to lose everyone, especially if both sides of the argument have some legitimacy.

The early church’s long struggle to define orthodoxy took time, patience, careful thought and restraint – even though at times it wasn’t very good at doing it. The result was a nuanced statement that steered between one pole – that Jesus was simply a very good human being – and the other – that he was God dressed up in human clothes. The truth eventually glimpsed and embraced was not at one extreme or the other, nor even a limp compromise, but the carefully crafted, unlikely and counter-intuitive idea that held together the best insights of both sides - that he was not ‘only human’ or ‘only divine’, or 50% of each, like semi-skimmed milk, but 100% human and 100% divine, and that this (for reasons too involved to go into here) was not a contradiction in terms.

The truth and the resolution of our dilemmas – on immigration, or Gaza, or even assisted dying, are seldom simple. They require nuance. They need forbearance. They need careful attention and listening to the people you instinctively disagree with to arrive at the truth. Yet our longing for a dramatic headline, our hunger for simple solutions, our algorithms that promote the most extreme opinions, all militate against this kind of patient, watchful political and social culture that would help us arrive at better solutions.

Life is complicated. People are complicated. Solutions to vexed questions are rarely simple. We need nuance.

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