A PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST on behalf of THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

“from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”  Karl  Marx 1875

“they had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need”  Acts  chapter 2

“all the believers were one in heart and mind. No-one claimed that any of their possessions were their own. They shared everything they had. God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them” Acts  chapter 4

Were the early Christians closet Communists then?

Well, whether they were or not, when I contrast these descriptions of the acts of the Apostles with what people used to say about the Church of England – that it resembles “the Conservative party at prayer” – I have to LOL (laugh out loud).

“The Conservative party at prayer” always conjures up for me an Edwardian rural scene with an old stone church, the local squire and his circle in reserved pews at the front and the respectful yokels herded at the back while the doddery vicar recited Mattins.

A recent survey indicates that, statistically, C of E members are still mostly conservatives -  not particularly active politically (apart from supporting tougher sentences for criminals and agreeing with the death penalty) and only occasional churchgoers!

So not people who besiege the church to actively promote Conservative policies then but more a keep politics out of religion and religion out of politics brigade.

“Religion is a private matter, a question of personal choice.”

Bishops  in the House of Lords (who are there because the C of E is still technically the established church of the land) should “shut up and not meddle in social or economic matters of state”. And, would you believe, one Bishop recently received a death threat because he dared to publicly criticise the moral behaviour of a notorious government adviser!

When I challenge this attitude, I often get the biblical story of Jesus and the coin with the Roman emperor’s head on it quoted back at me. “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” was the trick question. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”, Jesus replied.

And they want this answer to mean that service of God has nothing to do with rich or poor, nothing to do with politics, economics or taxation, public life or money – that’s all Caesar’s domain, nothing to do with God and our worship of Him.

I see. So we divide the world and our lives up between cosy hymn singing on Sundays and mammon for the rest of the week! How utterly ridiculous.

When Jesus says “Render unto God what is God’s, He means everything: your life, your hopes, your fears, your possessions,  your tax returns, Caesar’s stupid little coin, Caesar’s stupid great empire, the whole kitchen sink.

How can we possibly separate politics and religion?

They are both vitally and intimately concerned with the very way we live together and relate to each other. And right now, we have plenty of enforced quiet time to reflect on these things.

Be very clear. God did not “send” this pandemic. He never “makes” people suffer, and, when they do, He suffers with them.

But what I am sure He DOES want to come out of all this is a fundamental rethink on our part of how to live together.

And what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity we have!

 Caring, sharing, nursing, shopping for the vulnerable. A breather from diesel-clogged roads. A halt to the expansion of airport runways and hi-speed rail tracks despoiling the countryside. A pause in the nick of time to plant damage. The frustration of corporate greed and exploitation. Even a Tory government obliged to raise and spend unprecedented amounts of tax payers’ money on the common good.

Could we dare hope that unbridled free-market capitalism might  have lost its allure?  That might be a tad optimistic BUT the fact is THE GOSPEL IS UNCOMPROMISING.

The grotesque inequalities between rich and poor which Covid 19 has not removed and which we had already come to accept as normal, “regrettable” perhaps but normal, are actually unChristlike,  unChristian and utterly at odds with the spirit of the early Church.

I suppose the early church as portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles might be described as “ the Communist party at prayer”!

Too idealistic perhaps but that’s the whole point. Idealism. It was still a small movement encouraged by the Holy Spirit to gain strength by living together in fellowship for each other.

Inevitably as the movement grew larger, it gradually became more and more of an institution – eventually the official religion of the entire Roman empire under the emperor Constantine. Something of a spiritual death-knell.

What about the dear old C of E? It has long become an unwieldy, bureaucratic body, and has recently shown itself scared of “reputational risk”. This is sad.  It is not spiritually healthy for our Church to be conservative with a small or a large C.

If we, its members, are to live the gospel, we must allow the Holy Spirit to make us idealists. I know we can’t literally live in a commune like the early Christians – there are far too many of us! -  but there is no reason why we can’t share in their idealistic spirit.

As and when our society emerges blinking and uncertain from the present nightmare state of unnatural isolation, it is up to the Church in the power of the Holy Spirit to come out fighting against any return by default to the old unchristian ways of competition, greed and exploitation.

You see, whether the world (as in “the world, the flesh and the devil”) likes it or not, GOD LOVES THE POOR. There is a divine BIAS TO THE POOR, as the fearless former Bishop of Liverpool David Sheppard explained in his book so titled.  

OK folks, that was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Acts of the Apostles.