Politics and religion
I am most interested in the motivation, history and present practices of religious people who get involved in politics, especially those who get involved in ways that alarm the fellow-citizens of their democracy! Maybe my experience in the UK might throw some light on this issue and encourage those of all religious persuasions in Bangladesh who are sincere about bringing into their national life the goodness, honesty and desire to help the needy that the theory and practice of any good religion should teach us. It cannot be a bad thing for keenly religious people to want to participate in the political processes but it is how they do it that brings either good or bad consequences.
For me, in the UK, it began during the 1970s. Many keen Christians began to emerge from the Pietistic burrow they had been down for many decades. (Although at the time of my Reverend grandfather, whose diaries I have for his first year in the Christian ministry in the slums of Merseyside, 1884-5, there was no such timidity!) In the USA, unfortunately, the majority of Christians of my generation and below ended up in the Republican Party, with some disastrous results.
In some countries, there were usually a few keen Christians who wanted to form their own political party called 'The Christian….' something-or-other - indeed, there is a very small group who has formed such a party recently in the UK - but most of us are grateful that such efforts are usually short-lived. In Europe, there are a few political parties with the word 'Christian' attached but these have a mixed history.
Thank God, in the UK, most Christians followed the guidance of some excellent Christian organisations that were wise in matters of the faith and academically skilled in sociology, economics etc - I think of the Jubilee Centre, Cambridge. Such groups were researching various moral issues by drawing on the wisdom of Christians from a wide spectrum of church denominations and political affiliations and some non-Christians also. They strongly recommended that keen Christians join the political party of their choice and be active in it and this is what has generally happened. It was very wise advice as there was an active minority of Christians (and, indeed, those of other faiths) in every political party. Thus we have avoided the twin dangers of Pietism (i.e. refusing to get involved in the 'wicked world' of politics and just sitting passively on the sidelines) or, on the other hand, forming a 'religious' political party and becoming a narrow band of people who begin to define what religion-influenced politics actually is and may intimidate the remaining religious people into joining them or remaining in silence and inactivity (or even worse shame and apology).
Interestingly enough, the poor may take to such participation more easily than the rich. A friend of mine returned to Bangladesh and decided to look up a previous project he had been involved in, about 15 years before - putting a pump into a slum in Tongi, where the homes used to be flooded after every rainstorm. Oxfam paid for it. He wondered whether it would still be working. It was - but a local official standing nearby shook his head when asked how the pump was. “It's awful,” he said, “AWFUL! We have to raise so much money to keep it repaired! The local people say that, if we don't, they won't vote for us!” Hurray! True democracy can work, here in Bangladesh!
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