They saved the two best speeches until the end. Rishi Sunak left Downing Street speaking humbly rather than defiantly, apologising for his failings and then praising his successor, acknowledging that Sir Keir Starmer is a decent, public servant and encouraging everyone to see the new PM’s successes as “all our successes.”
Starmer on his part spoke soberly and thoughtfully. He was magnanimous towards his predecessor, though one might be left wondering how you can on the one hand praise the commitment and dedication of your predecessor whilst claiming to usher in a return to public service and an end to narrow self-interest.
However, there was one line in the speech I want to quibble with. The Prime Minister said:
“From now on. You have a government unburdened by doctrine. Guided only by a determination to serve your interests. To defy, quietly, those who have written our country off.”
The intention was clear. Starmer was painting his Tory opponents as driven by Thatcherite dogma but he was also contrasting his own approach with Jeremy Corbyn’s. This will be a pragmatic government. Ironically, his speech had more in common with traditional one nation conservatism than the socialism he has previously claimed to believe in.
My problem with his remarks is that it is simply not possible to be “unburdened by doctrine” or free from it. You see, we all have a doctrine and it shapes how we think and act. Starmer will find that instinctively, if he is a socialist, that socialist doctrines will shape and influence how he approaches the day to day problems he faces, even if the eventual solution is not a purist socialist one. Alternatively, we will discover that he sits very lightly to socialist doctrine after all. However, this does not mean his government will be doctrine free. To argue that the old political ideologies of left and right are wrong, is itself an ideology. Indeed, I suspect that we will see a continuation of the dominate doctrine of late 20th/early 21st century politics, that of managerialism, the trust in a ruling class of technocrats to make decisions efficiently.
But, I’m serving my reflections here cold, rather than offering a hot take on the day, a good while after that Friday morning. This is because I want to move away from analysis and reflections about the election itself and to focus back onto lessons for Christians about church life.
Just as it is common in modern day politics to eschew “doctrine” or “ideology”. So too, “doctrine” is often a dirty word among evangelicals. We look in suspicion on it. We want to be people of the Word and the Spirit and to have nothing to do with something that we see as an add on, more to do with tradition and reason than Scripture, often difficult to understand and more prone to causing division than unity.
However, just as with politics, the reality is that we all do have a doctrine or dogma. We all have a systematic theology. The questions are more to do with
- Is it good or bad doctrine?
- Biblical or not?
- Practically helpful or disengaged?
- Coherent and consistent or inconsistent?
- Clear and understandable or ambiguous and unintelligible.
A church cannot and should not be “unburdened by doctrine”. That’s why good doctrine matters and why I encourage all believers to spend time learning it.
Faithroots 
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