Vicar and Archbishops’ Letter June 2017

Dear Friends, Archbishops Justin and John have written to all parishes about our forthcoming General Election:

 

The season of Easter invites us to celebrate and to renew our love of God and our love of neighbour, our trust and hope in God and in each other. In the midst of a frantic and sometimes fraught election campaign, our first obligation as Christians is to pray for those standing for office, and to continue to pray for those who are elected. We recognise the enormous responsibilities and the vast complexity of the issues that our political leaders face. We are constantly reminded of the personal costs and burdens carried by those in political life and by their families.

Our second obligation as Christians at these times is to set aside apathy and cynicism and to participate, and encourage others to do the same. At a practical level that could mean going to a hustings, volunteering for a candidate, or simply making sure to vote on Thursday 8th June.

The Christian virtues of love, trust and hope should guide and judge our actions, as well as the actions and policies of all those who are seeking election. This election is being contested against the backdrop of deep and profound questions of identity.

Opportunities to renew and re-imagine our shared values as a country and a United Kingdom only come around every few generations. We are in such a time. Our Christian heritage, our current choices and our obligations to future generations and to God’s world will all play a shaping role.

If our shared British values are to carry the weight of where we now stand and the challenges ahead of us, they must have at their core cohesion, courage and stability.

Cohesion is what holds us together. The United Kingdom, when at its best, has been represented by a sense not only of living for ourselves, but by a deeper concern for the weak, poor and marginalized, and for the common good.

Courage, which includes aspiration, competition and ambition, should guide us into trading agreements that, if they are effective and just, will also reduce the drivers for mass movements of peoples. We must affirm our capacity to be an outward looking and generous country, with distinctive contributions to peace building, development, the environment and welcoming the stranger in need.

Stability, an ancient and Benedictine virtue, is about living well with change. Stable communities will be skilled in reconciliation, resilient in setbacks and diligent in sustainability, particularly in relation to the environment. They will be ones in which we can be collectively a nation of ‘glad and generous hearts’.

So let us keep in our prayers all those who are standing in this election and be grateful for their commitment to public service. All of us as Christians, in holding fast to the vision of abundant life, should be open to the call to renounce cynicism, to engage prayerfully with the candidates and issues in this election and by doing so to participate together fully in the life of our wider community.

 

I do commend the Archbishops’ letter to you.

Peter Chantry

About Stephen

Lay Chair of All Saints' Church Council and Treasurer. Retired Head of University Secretariat at Keele, Secretary of North Staffs Classical Association, Secretary of North Shropshire CLP, former Woore Parish Councillor & Vice-Chairman of Woore Neighbourhood Plan Team, now complete. Chairman of Sir John Offley's Almshouse Trust, Madeley.
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