A Time to Act

It's less than a week no to the "big day" [what day do I hear you saying?]. No one, absolutely no one, has been to my house or even stopped me in the street to win my vote. Nothing new in this, I hear you say but I would have thought that every single vote in North Belfast was worth contending for. I have even sent a list of 10 questions to some of the parties and received exactly no answers, one of the parties has acknowledged the email. According to the latest email from the "Centre For Contemporary Christianity In Ireland" even Paddy Power has lost interest- the assumption is that the next government will be a new Labour administration with Tony Brown or Gordon Blair as Prime Minister [or is it Tony Blair and Gordon Brown?] The odds for this are 1-25. in Northern Ireland there is a growing belief that we are edging towards a defacto two party province and we are all helpless, like lemmings heading towards the cliff tops. as a Christian, never mind an evangelical Christian I have a vested interest in this community and refuse to believe that I am just a victim of various other forces in the community. I believe that I have a divine imperative to be involved in this world and this country and using my vote is the bottom line. Politics is too important to be left to the politicians. I agree with David Buckley as he writes in the above mentioned email. He says: "not voting is an abdication of responsibility that no amount of other public work can replace, because the act of voting is an absolutely unique participation in public life. To abstain is to use freedom as a pretext for evil, misunderstanding it as freedom from responsibility rather than freedom to be responsibile At the same time some young people, including Christian young people who are highly committed to the cause of Christ, think that they cannot take part in the process by voting because there is no one in the public square, who will be in a poisition of power, to vote for. There is no one , with any clout, who represents their view point and they feel disgusted with the stalemate of local parties who cannot get beyond the constitutional issue which means that real politics is lost. Could our parties function if they were faced with the politics of bread and butter issues and what would it do to the political alignment of the parties on both sides of the constitutional question?Where does the practice of political pragmatism when that can often mean a negative action- voting for someone to keep another candidate out? all Christians are facing the issue of holistic Christianity and mission- we sd that in the way that NGOs like Tearfund are fully behind the “makingpoveryhistory” campaign. In the past evangelicals have stayed away from social justice and the “soicial gospel” for fear of beiong unafithful to the pure gospel and loosing the edge of evangelism. We could just give up in dispair and take a fatalistic approach but I refuse to believe that we should be dictated to be circumstances- we need to take up the challenge and fight for the sake of the kingdom, be pro-active and build bridge heads into the community to challenge the assumptions that reign supreme. How can we have an effective gospel, which we surely have, if we separate it from politics and health and education etc? This is no time for swimming with the tide, its a time to be active and sieze the initiative.