Unburdened by doctrine or served by healthy doctrine?

 Parish Magazine Item for August 2024

From The Rectory

 

I won’t be saying here or from the pulpit how I voted in the general election. Perhaps there is a good case for keeping these things private. You know, discussing religion or politics might end up in an argument! And I shall certainly be praying for our new Prime Minister. I could easily have written about many things Tory or other candidates have said with which I disagree. But I would like to highlight a prominent statement by Sir Keir.

 

Standing on Downing Street, the newly electing PM has promised us "a government unburdened by doctrine." 

 

Charitably, he means he will be pragmatic and not doctrinaire or ideological. 

 

However, a government entirely without doctrine is neither possible nor desirable. 

 

We cannot imagine that, even if his Manifesto was a little thin, Sir Keir will really approach every issue entirely without beliefs and seek to work out what works. We do not believe he has a blank sheet of paper and nor should he. One only has to ask: “What works for whom? To achieve what?” We are back to doctrine. We all have and need these fundamental beliefs and guiding principles.

 

The British Army would tell him that you need your doctrine worked out, understood, shared, applied and open to revision. It is no good turning up in a battle and launching a three-year study with options for how the enemy might be defeated. You will find yourself overcome while you worry about rules of engagement or methods of attack.

 

Even if Sir Keir has a very broad and ill-defined aim such as “the flourishing of the British nation”, he will still need doctrines about what constitutes the good life, who shares in the British nation, and how advancement for many or all might be achieved by governments. Politics actually gets almost theological pretty quickly, it seems to me.

 

We do not want a government burdened by false doctrine, but served by true, good and sound or healthy doctrines, which are open to reformation if there are new arguments or evidence, and which may be adapted to changing circumstances. 

 

Likewise, Christians have sometimes used “doctrine” as a sort of boo-word. It can sound a bit boring or irrelevant. And wouldn’t love be better than dogma? But in fact this is a false dichotomy. Belief and behaviour belong together. Doctrine ought to lead to delight and duty.

 

Granted the church too could be too ideological, doctrinaire and dogmatic. The old slogan: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love” still holds good. There could be inappropriate theological hair-splitting or unreasonable degrees of intellectual enforcement, but these are unlikely to be the main dangers for most of us in the C of E.

 

Our creeds are an attempt (in response to errors of their days) to state some of the most fundamental Christian doctrines. The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed continue to provide a basis for broad Christian unity. We might want to add something about grace and salvation, the cross, the Scriptures or ethics, since these have been matters of great controversy since the early centuries when our creeds were agreed.

 

But I think we (church, army, government, individuals) can all be clear that we need a certain amount health-giving doctrine. We cannot avoid beliefs. The question is where we will get them from and how they will guide us. The church goes back to the Bible, the Word of God written, aided by her traditions and reason, as she seeks doctrines which will serve her common life afresh in this generation.

The Revd Marc Lloyd