The race marked out for us

Here is the main pack of the Tour de Yorkshire passing the end of our road yesterday.  Their much prepared for and welcome but fleeting passage through the parish has been a disproportionately dominant feature of our lives – and happened to make our morning service at Haworth inaccessible to the less determined on just this one Sunday in the year.

Meanwhile, I’ve been dipping into the public conservative Bible Study material prepared for American legislators, praised by the President and supported by the Vice President.  Influential campaigners for the election of Christian representatives expressed their disappointment that such elections did not make the difference anticipated and have consciously moved into the work of strengthening the biblical understanding of those in danger of being liberalised by the arguments and the give and take  of the legislative process.

The authorship of the first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses (because otherwise Jesus would have been lying in his references to them).  The possibility of human influence on ecosystems is dismissed (because God is sovereign in creation).  America’s prosperity is explicitly linked with its unconditional support for the policies of the government of the present day State of Israel (because the flourishing of God’ s chosen people and its supporters is so characterised in biblical material).  The validity of State support for the vulnerable in society is rejected (because no such structures are characterised in biblical material). 

Perhaps there is a helpful clarity in seeing (at least a major important element of) the fundamental difference between right wing reasoning in Britain and in America as being these theological starting points.   Policies which (to take the obvious but very disparate examples) bring wealth at the risk of polluting the environment, affirm Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and reduce state support for affordable medical care for the poorest, are consistent and predictable - and are certainly so based as not to be vulnerable to secular argumentation.