*** DEBUG START ***
*** DEBUG END ***

Scripture cited for a purpose

by
06 February 2015

Nick Spencer on the politicians' use of it

Harnessing Chaos: The Bible in English political discourse since 1968
James G. Crossley
T & T Clark £70
(978-0-567-65550-9)
Church Times Bookshop £63 (Use code CT478 )

RUMOUR has it that, when they first enter Parliament, new MPs are provided with a pocket Bible rather than an old-fashioned cyanide pill, and are told to wave it about and quote from it liberally in public if they ever wish to commit career suicide. This is a caricature, perhaps, but Alastair Campbell's endlessly quoted aphorism will be chiselled on the theo-political tombstone of our age (in spite of its quite different original intention).

James Crossley's careful study of how the Bible has been used in recent English "political" discourse (I'll come back to the inverted commas) shows that modern politicians do sometimes get down and biblical, even when there is apparently so much to lose from doing so. His main focus is on the "changes in dominant politicised assumptions about what the Bible 'really means' in public presentations in English culture since the 1960s" (italics original).

His central contention is that the "radical Bible", familiar in political and public discourse for generations, gave way, like the rest of the country, to Thatcherism and its heirs, with their "liberal" and "neoliberal" assumptions, and Bibles.

He does this through some fine close readings of a range of political figures from Enoch Powell and Tony Benn, through Margaret Thatcher, to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Michael Gove, in the process making a valuable contribution to the growing literature on Christianity and contemporary politics. The book is beset by two problems, however.

The first is that the Bible isn't used that much in contemporary political discourse (Thatcher is the exception here, and even she was sparing once she was in power). As a result, Crossley includes chapters on Monty Python's Life of Brian, the independent music scene in Manchester, and Jeffrey Archer's The Gospel According to Judas, none of which fit comfortably in a book on expressly "political" discourse.

The second is related to the first. Again with the possible exception of Thatcher, none of the figures whom Crossley studies was, or ever claimed to be, theologically, let alone hermeneutically, literate. Most were political either above or before they were Christian. As such, to expect them to do anything more than baptise their existing political commitments with scripture seems a little unfair. If the Bible has drifted on the tide of late-20th-century liberalism, it is less because of what it says and more because most of the vessels in which it has travelled have, theologically speaking, often been quite shallow.

Nick Spencer is a director of the think tank Theos.

Browse Church and Charity jobs on the Church Times jobsite

Church Times Bookshop

Save money on books reviewed or featured in the Church Times. To get your reader discount:

> Click on the “Church Times Bookshop” link at the end of the review.

> Call 0845 017 6965 (Mon-Fri, 9.30am-5pm).

The reader discount is valid for two months after the review publication date. E&OE

Forthcoming Events

Women Mystics: Female Theologians through Christian History

13 January - 19 May 2025

An online evening lecture series, run jointly by Sarum College and The Church Times

tickets available

 

Festival of Faith and Literature

28 February - 2 March 2025

tickets available

 

Visit our Events page for upcoming and past events 

The Church Times Archive

Read reports from issues stretching back to 1863, search for your parish or see if any of the clergy you know get a mention.

FREE for Church Times subscribers.

Explore the archive

Welcome to the Church Times

 

To explore the Church Times website fully, please sign in or subscribe.

Non-subscribers can read four articles for free each month. (You will need to register.)