The Chief Executive of Christian Concern, Andrea Williams explains that as we approach the 2024 general election, the answers our society needs are different from what it thinks
Election season is underway and what issues are dominating the news?
Scroll through most news websites and you’ll see the same topics, again and again: the economy, healthcare, immigration, the environment.
But you probably won’t see any obvious coverage of the four areas we are focusing on at Christian Concern: our Christian foundations, the value of life, the goodness of family and the importance of freedom.
Why should Christians focus on these issues? Why should we vote, campaign and pray on these points?
Some people label them as Christian interest issues – things that only Christians really care about. They suggest that they are peripheral areas of debate, conscience issues that are not particularly urgent or important.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to say that the challenges our society faces today stem from our wholesale rejection of Jesus Christ and his pattern for our society.
Jesus is Lord over everything. We should be seeking his wisdom and will in every area of life, including those that politicians focus on. But our neglect for our country’s Christian foundations – for life, family and freedom – is itself the cause of many other problems.
These areas are built into God’s design for humanity and can be traced all the way back to Genesis 1. They are at the heart of who we are. By paying attention to these areas we will find beautiful and surprising solutions to our crumbling society.
Over the weeks heading into the election, Christian Concern will be unpacking these crucial themes.
Foundations
We’ll be sharing how Christ alone is the Rock on which our nation can be built.
Liberal secular humanism has failed. A society built on sand cannot stand. ‘Human rights’ mean nothing if they are not granted and maintained by an all-wise, all-loving God. Laws that enshrine and celebrate evil are lawless. A society that claims all ideas are equal will dissolve into postmodern chaos.
None of its rivals will fare better. Islam, libertarianism, communism, fascism – each of these is another form of slavery, a different flavour of rebellion and oppression.
Only under Jesus can we flourish.
Life
We will be making the case that our failure to value human life is at the root of many of our problems
We are taking more than 250,000 innocent human lives every year through abortion alone. We ignore that they are made in God’s image, worthy of protection and then act surprised when everyone else feels valueless and purposeless. If they are just blobs of human tissue, what are we?
When campaigners and politicians push for euthanasia, they make this even worse. They compare humans to other animals. They claim that some people are better off dead, as if we have the right to take people’s lives; put people down.
If we are meaningless, highly evolved bits of matter, rather than treasured God’s-image-bearers, we are all disposable. Everything becomes a power struggle. Trust and respect for others breaks down and crime rises.
How will that affect our mental health? How many other areas are made worse simply because we don’t cherish the gift of life?
