I was a little taken aback this morning to read of a couple of posts about the deselection of a Methodist lay pastor as a councillor in Tooting on the grounds of his Christian faith. The posts, both from Christian bloggers, make the point that this is Labour's anti-Christian, secularist agenda.
The original blogs are here (Archbishop Cranmer) and here (Peter Ould). Peter's headline says "You can't make this stuff up" - well in fact you can and it seems it is all made up! Cranmer's vituperation is pretty blunt and completely WRONG!
“Siobhain McDonagh is the immanent incarnation of the imminent persecution of all believers."
“This is one of the most outrageous anti-Christian manifestations of this appallingly oppressive and illiberal Labour Government.”
“In the pursuit of her rabid secularisation agenda desperate attempt to be re-elected, it is the traditional Christian Sabbath which has to be defiled; it is Christian devotion which is subsumed; it is Christian ministry which is considered expendable.”
Jonathan Bartley has blogged at Ekklesia on whether this can really be true.
So how do the allegations stand - a Methodist lay pastor is deselected for refusing to canvas on a Sunday morning because a Labour MP is following a secularist agenda?
First Jonathan quotes from someone (and I have heard it from the same source) who spoke to George Reynolds this morning. Jonathan quotes from this source:
"Although he was a Methodist lay pastor and a local preacher, he has recently been ordained as a minister of the AME Church of Zion and no longer holds any office with the Methodist Church. In his opinion this is why he was deselected – he refuses to canvass at all on a Sunday – but no one has directly told him that this is the reason."
Secondly, Jonathan also points to Siobhan McDonald's own pedigree:
Siobhain McDonagh is a Catholic. She has been a longstanding member of the Christian Socialist Movement (which she links to from her website describing it as a "site for Labour supporters who are also Christians, believing that Christian teaching should be reflected in social laws and institutions".
She has employed former Roman Catholic Priest, and Director of the Christian Social Movement, David Cairns (now an MP) in her own office.
Before becoming an MP, she worked for Battersea Churches Housing Trust from 1988-97.
Jane Savill, Religious Education Adviser at the Diocese of London, has described Siobhain's faith on the website of the Christian Evidence Society in the following terms:
"Siobhain was elected to represent Mitcham and Morden in 1997. Siobhain grew up in the area and has always lived in the Constituency. Siobhain is a practising Catholic. Her faith and politics are both very important to her.
"For Siobhain, being a Christian is looking outwards on a personal level. She believes that Christianity explains the reason for our very existence and gives us the opportunity to realise that there is something beyond our own selves."
"Siobhain hopes that through her daily life as well as in her work as a politician she can serve the community in which she lives and help society in the way that Jesus taught."
But perhaps the most interesting thing is that she has actively pursued the removal of legal discrimination against Christians. She introduced the Clergy Disqualification Ten Minute Rule Bill seeking to remove prohibitions on clergy standing for Parliament. In her speech she urged the Government to “tidy up blatantly discriminatory measures in its ancient law” which discriminated against priests and clergy. The law was subsequently changed.
I decided to phone Ms McDonagh's office at Westminster and managed to speak to the MP herself who was somewhat taken aback that the allegations were even considered as being serious. Ms McDonagh made a few points:
- She can't deselect anyone - in a democratic party, a selection committee makes the decisions and has to weigh up the pros and cons of a list of candidates. The meeting that made the decision was well attended and, apparently, did not make the decision on George's availability for canvassing or on his faith. In fact, the Labour party welcomes peoples involvement in faith communities and there are active members of the Church of England, Catholic Church, Muslims and Buddhists in the local party as well as people who are not members of any faith community.
- No decision was made to deselect George on faith grounds - such a move would evidently be discriminatory.
We had a long conversation and Ms McDonagh was glad to speak of her faith and the importance of faith communities - as well as the importance of those outside of faith communities. She was adamant that the allegations just could not be true and that the story was simply electioneering. She's a good person trying to do a good job. She is manifestly not a secularist!
How do the allegations stand now? Completely shot through surely. How can people call Siobhan McDonagh "the immanent incarnation of the imminent persecution of all believers." It is blatantly false.
I think that there is a lot of misrepresentation going on here.
Misunderstandings on the bloggers parts - they don't seem to have got their facts sorted.
Misunderstandings on communication within the local labour party perhaps who need to make sure George Reynolds is informed properly why his selection did not go through as he expected it to (apparently it may be that he wasn't at the meeting).
But also misunderstandings of the morality of Christian blogging.
I do think that, especially during an election campaign, people need to make sure that their facts are absolutely solid - especially when you smear someone. In this case, an MP who is a practising Catholic, who has supported moves to bring faith involvement into politics and who is clearly nothing like a rampant secularist has been smeared terribly. The local party has too. That is just plain wrong and it would be good for Archbishop Cranmer and Peter Ould to publically apologise on their blogs, I'd suggest.
What makes this even worse is that we are constantly striving to make others (NSS for example) stick to the facts. A project is being developed to look into this and try to promote a better understanding of how the facts can be assessed and confirmed before we go shooting from the hip! - see factsaresacred.org.uk - and lets get it up and running for goodness sake!
Of course, I may be totally wrong. There may be some machiavellian plot here. But I think not! I think it's just a good old fashioned cock-up. I hope that George Reynolds will continue to work for the Labour Party and express his Christian faith in his politics. I hope Siobhan McDonagh does the same (for many years to come). We need Christians in politics not Christians attacking one another and smearing one another on blogs.
Pete
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