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Labour urged to reconnect to faith

27 September 2013

PA

"Positive influence"? Ed Miliband at his party conference on Tuesday

"Positive influence"? Ed Miliband at his party conference on Tuesday

THE Labour Party needs to reconnect with faith groups, if it is to secure an electoral mandate for a progressive programme. This is the premise of a new essay by Stephen Timms MP, Shadow Minister for Employment and the "faith envoy" of the Labour Party, and Paul Bickley, a senior researcher at the think tank Theos.

Launched at the Labour Party's conference in Brighton this week, the essay precedes two reports published previously, Faithful Citizens (Comment, 27 April 2012) and Faithful Providers (News, 15 February), which have now been brought together as the final report of the Demos Inquiry into Faith, Community and Society.

Last year, Faithful Citizens suggested that religious people in the UK were more likely to place themselves on the Left of the political spectrum than the Right. Earlier this year, Faithful Providers argued that faith-based providers were "highly motivated and particularly effective".

Noting that there are three times as many people in church in London on Sunday than there are members of the Labour Party nationally, the authors warn against a "peculiarly Western European blindspot" to the resilience of religion in public life: "Religion is not going away."

They argue that the Labour Party must not make it harder for people of faith to get involved with progressive politics, warning that it risks "the alienation of sources of support that Labour can not afford to lose". Churches have a "vital practical connection . . . with the lived experience of people".

The essay also suggests that Labour must not only "do God", but claim the themes of faith, family, responsibility, and relationship that it has allowed to be "owned" by the Conservative Party.

On Sunday, the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, spoke at a service held at One Church Baptist church. On Tuesday, its Minister, Dave Steell, said that Mr Miliband had said that "any people-movement that is positively influencing our society should be encouraged." It was "unfortunate", however, that he was "less positive about the motivation behind the churches' work".

On Monday, Jim Murphy, the Shadow Defence Secretary, listed those who go to church among a list of voters at risk of alienation by the Labour Party: "There needs to be a new language about respecting diversity that is about some of those voters who live their lives in a way that is entirely straightforward. They go to church on Sunday, and they have an immeasurable sense of patriotism . . ."

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