I believe that Evangelical Christians were caught unprepared for Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill currently going through parliament. It is telling first that the briefings circulating amongst Christians prior to the vote were suggesting that it would be much closer than it was. We were told that the vote was on a knife edge. I don’t think, and never did think, that it was going to be tight. There also seems to be some optimism that it is possible to turn things around, that some MPs voted to allow the bill to go to second reading but may bote it down on the third reading. I’m not convinced that this is the case either.
I believe that the warning signs were already there. Opinion polls tend to show that a vast majority of people support assisted dying. Then there has been the growing confidence of proponents in their arguments as demonstrated by the brass necked argument by Matthew Parris in the Times earlier this year that yes, the elderly and the ill would feel under pressure not to be a burden to society and that in his opinion that was a good thing. The mooted response to his article and ones that have followed from others should have warned us about where the mood of our culture is. What is concerning though was that Christian campaign groups and public leaders were also mooted in response. I’m not a go to opinion leader and yet I was one of the few people speaking and writing about the issue in response to Parris and it ended up being my response that appeared in Evangelicals Now.
So, why have we been caught napping? Well, I think there are a few reasons. First, I think there was a level of political complacency. Previous attempts to shift the law have fallen because there wasn’t a consensus in parliament. However, the 2024 General Election completely reshaped the mathematics in the House of Commons so that a lot of new MPs were elected and the make up was completely different to previously. Furthermore, strong support for the Bill has not bene limited to one party but is cross party. It’ important to note that leading figures in Reform UK supported the Bill because I think some people were distracted by the assumption that Reform might be friends of Christians or at least of a cultural and moral Christianity.
Secondly, I think there has been a misreading of the public mood and not enough attention has been paid to those numbers in support of the bill. Yes, MPs will have taken note of emails and letters coming in from opponents, but we don’t know how many were actually sent nor how many letters supporting the bill were received. Additionally, I think that Christian campaign groups are stuck with the same old tactics that bluntly don’t work now and probably never did. People were encouraged to add their names to an open letter sent into the Government. What was the point of that when it was a Private Members bill on which the government is officially neutral.
Thirdly, as is often the case, people were encouraged to use pre-wriiten/cut and paste formulaic letters for their MPs. That, frankly doesn’t cut it. Remember that MPs were reacting to heart breaking, personal stories of grief and suffering. Replica letters obviously drafted by lobby groups didn’t stand a chance. Of course, the sad reality is that there are many, many personal stories that demonstrate the flaws in Euthansia. Yet those stories weren’t heard.
Fourthly, there was a failure to appreciate that the underlying argument for a culture of life had been lost back in 1967 when “personal autonomy” won the day with the abortion act. Even the methods used to campaign against abortion fail to recognise this. In fact, I would argue that they are at times a hindrance. When we are told that abortion is worse than euthanasia, I think we might have ourselves begun to differentiate between different human beings. A lot of people were also distracted by a variety of other ethical campaigns and not spotted that these link and are all rooted in the questions of human autonomy and human value.
Personally, I expect the bill to go through and I expect the scope of assisted dying to increase significantly over time. I think this is a horrific state of affairs for our country. I do think that Christians should be concerned about issues such as abortion and euthanasia but its not going to be through raising minor objections in parliament or by shock tactic campaigns that things are going to change.
We need Christians who understand how the Gospel counters and refutes the philosophy of autonomy and offers better hope. This means we need Christians who are witnessing and discipling others so that there are growing numbers of people who believe in a culture of life. And we need to offer a radically alternative community where life is visibly chosen over death, blessing over curse. That is exactly what the early church did.
Faithroots 