Is PM Brown a Religious Fundamentalist?

27.11.07

I see British PM Gordon Brown intends to push through highly controversial new legislation on embryology and human fertilisation despite public unease. Not only that, but it also transpires leading professional and academic voices who (inconveniently) questioned aspects of the Bill were not given a fair hearing before the relevant House of Commons Select Committee. Brown now plans to employ a three-line whip to push the legislation through, thereby denying his own MPs a free vote (unlike MPs from other political parties who are allowed to vote according to their conscience). So much, then, for Brown’s much vaunted new politics, his desire to listen to the people, or his aim to capture all opinion in his so-called “government of all the talents” (only, of course, if they agree with him). Oh, and I nearly forgot… we musn’t forget to add to this list Brown’s very strong personal appeal to his own religious upbringing, his so-called “moral compass”. Quite a religious upbringing it must have been, too, that leads him to dictate to others how they must vote on an issue of conscience. This is indeed ironic, wouldn’t you say? Brown’s actions which deny his own MPs the chance to vote according to their conscience arguably smacks more of the kind of religious or moral fundamentalism pro-lifers are regularly and vociferously accused of than the Prime Minister’s very own liberal Protestant upbringing. It’s always the case, isn’t it? The liberal guardians of the “nanny state”, who know what is best for us all, are easily as intolerant, fundamentalist, and authoritarian than the most fundamentalist of Christians, in fact perhaps more so.

Dr Calvin L. Smith
Editor, Evangelical Review of Society and Politics
www.evangelicalreview.com 
Course Director and Lecturer in Theology
www.midbible.ac.uk
Blog:  http://collegeblog.midbible.ac.uk/