Last week, firebrand politician George Galloway was elected back to parliament in the Rochdale by-election. The election campaign had been marred by controversy with the Labour Party withdrawing support for their own candidate after he made antisemitic comments.
My friend Steve Kneale has written here about the result and lessons that the church might want to learn. Steve lives and serves in a neighbouring community and his church recently planted a new church into Rochdale, so he knows the local situation well. I agree with what Steve has written and so rather than adding my own comments, my original intent was simply to share his article on social media. However, I noted some pushback against what Steve was saying and so I wanted to pick up on a couple of points here.
What can we learn about the political situation from a by-election
One response was to suggest that these kinds of elections act as protest votes and so don’t tend to tell us what will happen in a General Election. Indeed, it was suggested that the low turnout meant we could not even extrapolate much about local views.
It is true that we should be cautious about predicting the General Election result from one by-election. George Galloway is very unlikely to be our next Prime Minister. It is not even certain that Galloway will be the Rochdale MP next year. By election victors often do not hold their seats and the unique circumstances of Labour’s withdrawal need to be considered here. However, this card can be overplayed and tends to be by those who don’t like the result. The losing parties will normally argue that by-elections do not tell you much about the General Election just as they respond to poor polling by arguing that opinion polls don’t tell you anything.
In fact, when you have had a few by-elections and alongside that you have opinion polls, you can start to build a picture of what is happening. If the Governing party are well behind in the polls and losing by-elections, then a change of government looks to be on the cards once you move into the last year of the parliament (as opposed to mid-term unpopularity). If the main opposition are struggling to win by-elections and votes are going to minor parties, then this may bring into question their ability to win a General Election outright. In this case though, I think Rochdale is more of a one off and it does look like, barring £vents” that Keir Starmer is on track for quite a healthy majority. However, that protest parties are picking up votes and even winning elections in places like Rochdale do indicate that Labour still have some problems.
The main reason why such votes are not treated as General Election predictors is that any poll will only tell you how people voted on that day. We cannot predict a General Election on the basis of Rochdale because other events may affect how people will vote.
However, we can begin to work out how people are thinking, feeling and acting in that area. Whilst turnout may have been low, it still reflects 40% of the electorate and that’s a sizeable number. Furthermore, the consensus is that those who decide to stay at home may be less motivated to turnout but the same opinions are reflected among them. Finally, we might observe that Galloway’s message was enough to motivate many people to turn out and vote for him whilst those who did not turnout were not motivated to vote against him.
What does it tell us about the church?
The second bit of pushback was based on a misunderstanding. Steve suggested that there were lessons for the church to learn from what had happened in Rochdale. Some people have argued that a by-election result and the choices political parties make about candidates have nothing to teach us. The argument is that poverty and social deprivation as experience din places like Rochdale are not indicators of spiritual health. People living in middle class areas can be disinterested in religion and the Gospel, people in deprived areas can be deeply interested in the good news.
I think this reaction was based on a misunderstanding of Steve’s point. The point is not that our socially deprived areas are less open to the good news. Rather, the problem has been twofold. First, there has been a general reluctance on the part of the church to go into such areas. We have deserted large parts of our towns and cities and for many years the focus has been on a trickle down effect evangelism that doesn’t seem to do much trickling down. Add to that, the problem that when we do seek to reach our inner cities and estates that often our approach simply is insensitive and out of touch with the people we are seeking to reach and you can see how Steve’s observations ring true. A church that either neglects a community or is unable to engage meaningfully because in effect it shoots itself in the foot should not be surprised when an area appears hard to reach.
And that is, in my opinion, the point. Top often we have described areas as hard, closed to the Gospel and what we really mean is that for long periods of time, it was the church that shut its doors. We shouldn’t be surprised if people gave up knocking. Does this mean that people lack spiritual hunger? No! However, if the church isn’t seen to be able to meet that need with healthy spiritual food then people will look elsewhere and in spiritual terms that’s even more disastrous than when they look to the political extremes. Although I’m tempted to add that people can sometimes look to political extremes to meet spiritual hunger.
This may sound bleak but there is hope because in my experience, the spiritual hunger is there in our inner city communities and on our estates. That’s why a major aspect of Faithroots is to try and find, equip and support people who are ready to serve the Gospel in needy communities, places like Rochdale, especially here in the West Midlands.
If you would like to talk more about the need and the opportunities, please get in touch.
Faithroots 