It is time for the faith community to take a firm stance in politics and not just warm-hearted rhetoric at Christmas

It is time for the faith community to take a firm stance in politics and not become a ‘once a year’ issuing of warm-hearted rhetoric.

Christmas will once more come and go and it seems the various faith communities for whom Jesus Christ is a key figure will pack away their sermons which will not be dusted off until Easter when the death and resurrection of Christ are traditionally celebrated.

But after their respective ‘five minutes of fame’ on the media, it seems the Christian faith in particular is retreating back into the safety of the Vatican for Pope Francis and Lambeth Palace for Archbishop Justin Welby to sit out the winter until the Easter festivities begin.

However, both Christian leaders could have been more forceful in their messages given the situation in Ukraine in urging the Russian Orthodox Church to do more to stop the killing.

They could have used their Christmas messages to unveil a strategy to allow the Christian faith community to take a more direct role in the political life of society - including more Christian denominations allowing their clergy to run for elected office.

And when we talk about the faith community, we are not solely limiting this to the Christian community. The death of Jesus Christ is also to a lesser degree a part of the Jewish and Islamic faith communities where he is seen as an influential prophet, but not to the same degree as he is regarded in Christianity.

And as an aside, for the non faith community, especially those who would classify themselves as agnostic or atheist or would be lapsed in their religion or do not designate as having a faith or spiritual belief system, Christmas would be regarded as a time to consider their moral compasses.

For me personally as a born again Christian by faith and the son of an Irish Presbyterian minister, I see this Christmas as a chance for the entire nations of the world to ponder the concept of Christ’s teachings to ‘love one another’.

While there would be a body of opinion which maintains the sectarian conflict in Ireland has been fuelled by the faith community and by specific clerics, we also cannot underestimate the quiet behind the scenes roles which various clerics played in bringing about the peace process.

And while we are being constantly bombarded with the view that Ireland is becoming an increasingly secular, pluralist and liberal society and the faith communities should keep their noses out of politics, it cannot be disputed that a lot of people on this island still designate as having a faith or believing in a deity.

Whilst there have been many cross-community forums within the Christian faith over the decades and the development of inter-faith forums to include non-Christian denominations, the broad faith community in Ireland needs to take a firm stand on politics - and get directly involved in the democratic process.

In the past, I have explored the notion that if existing political parties become too liberal and secular in their policies and agendas, is it time for evangelical and fundamentalist Christians to bond together and launch an Irish Christian Party which has an overtly Salvationist ethos?

However, could this see a reigniting of the perceptions that the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster (founded by the late Rev Ian Paisley in 1951) is the Democratic Unionist Party at prayer and perhaps that some evangelical Pentecostal places of worship could become the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice party at prayer, and indeed, some Roman Catholic chapels gaining the perception they are the staunchly pro-life Aontu Irish republican party at prayer?

To keep the concept of faith on the political radar, what is needed after the May 2023 local government elections is for the various faiths on this island to form a pressure group known as the Irish Inter-Faith Coalition to ensure that elected representatives of whatever political persuasion keep their moral compasses in check.

Given the crisis caused by the various Partygate scandals and allegations of breaches of Covid restrictions across the entire British Isles, perhaps such a Coalition is urgently needed to keep us all in check?

On paper, my call for an Irish Inter-Faith Coalition would work wonders for the faith community’s influence on political life; in practice, how long would it be before the various fundamentalist factions of the faiths represented on this Coalition fall out among themselves?

Dr John Coulter has been a journalist since 1978, including with this newspaper.