蜜芽传媒

Good morning. Anyone who has had any experience of leadership whether running a business or a parish, a government or a youth group, knows that there is a fundamental challenge. It is getting the balance right between having a clear strategy oneself and carrying other people with you, which means listening to them and taking their views into account. At the heart of our democracy is a perpetual struggle to get that balance right. Without taking a personal view on the defeat of the government this week, we saw again that balancing act in operation. On the one hand is the government giving a lead, the so called payroll vote, those who hold government positions and who lose their jobs if they disagree with government policy. On the other hand are the members of Parliament, who in the words of the great Edmund Burke are not there are to do anyone鈥檚 bidding but who are elected to use their best judgement about what is good for the country.

This balance is the result of a long historical process but underpinning it is a profoundly Christian understanding of what it is to be a human being in society. It was given classic expression by Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian who was such an influence on top Democrat politicians and thinkers from President Carter to President Obama. As Niebuhr put it. 鈥淢an鈥檚 capacity for justice makes democracy possible. Man鈥檚 inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.鈥� Behind this is the Christian conviction that creation is fundamentally good. There is an original blessing so in each of us there is a seed of goodwill that can care for others and work for justice for all. At the same time there is what the church terms original sin, a streak of selfishness which makes us pursue our own interests at the expense of others. Democracy is made possible because of that genuine human capacity to work for the good of all. But it is made necessary by that inclination to injustice, and democracy enables the potential ruthlessness of any government to be held in check. To ensure this we have a separation of powers between judges, government and parliament. We have elections every few years so we can change governments peacefully and not by a coup d鈥櫭﹖at, and we have a system in which governments have to win support in parliament. It is a system which allows the good side of human nature to express itself and at the same time offers checks on the darker side. This means that democracy is inevitably turbulent, as we know at the moment, but it is something to be profoundly thankful for that - as Niebuhr, like Churchill put it - we have the worst system in the world-except for all the others.