On Thursday, the leader of the United Kingdom’s fourth-largest political party, Tim Farron of the center-left Liberal Democrat Party, made headlines by resigning from his party’s leadership. In the aftermath of a fraught election cycle, which resulted in the Liberal Democrats falling short of expectations and gaining just four seats in Parliament, resignations are hardly unexpected.
But the stated reason for Farron’s resignation was somewhat less predictable: his Christian faith. Farron, who is an evangelical Christian, said in a statement that he has found himself “torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader,” and that he found the demand to be a “political leader — especially of a progressive liberal party in 2017 … to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me.”
His statement referenced recent journalistic furor over his personal views on LGBTQ sexuality, which have been scrutinized repeatedly in the press since Farron became party leader in 2015: “I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in ... in which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.”
The Liberal Democratic Party’s official platform on LGBTQ issues has been consistently among the most supportive in the UK. Its manifesto includes the intention to introduce a non-binary “X” gender option on public documentation, and to reinforce the granting of asylum to LGBTQ refugees, for example.
Farron himself has been vocally supportive of most LGBTQ issues, but speculation on his personal views has dogged him in the UK press. When asked by the UK Channel Four in 2015 whether he thought homosexuality was a sin, he replied, “We are all sinners” (although, following a media backlash, he later clarified matters to say he did not, in fact, think gay sex was sinful). In April, Farron saw another wave of media scrutiny after avoiding the same question several times during a week of interviews with Channel Four and others.
Critics pointed out that Farron’s voting record on LGBTQ issues hasn’t always been stellar: He voted against the 2007 Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, which would have mandated that businesses like wedding cake bakers and B&B operators not discriminate against same-sex couples. He also abstained on the 2013 equal marriage act on procedural grounds. Both were decisions he told the LGBTQ site Pink News he now regrets. Soon enough, the controversy affected the party’s ranks. This week, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, Brian Paddick — an out gay man — resigned in protest at Farron’s perceived beliefs, prompting Farron’s own resignation.
Farron’s resignation — and the sharp words of his statement — has brought into relief debate over the role of religious belief in public life that’s been raging on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, during a June hearing of President Trump’s nominee for deputy director for Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, Sen. Bernie Sanders attacked what he understood to be Vought’s stance on the salvation of non-Christians, particularly Muslims, calling it “indefensible.” Sanders also prompted criticism that his questions could violate the Constitution’s Article VI by putting a “religious test” to a candidate.
The problem is that Vought’s perceived beliefs — despite Sanders’s criticism — are perfectly in line with mainline Christian theology: the salvific nature of grace through Christ is the foundational cornerstone of Christian theology, even if the way in which that grace potentially finds its way to nonbelievers is up for debate. Likewise, Farron’s infamous sidestep — “we are all sinners” — is, to nearly all practicing Christians, a pretty obvious statement. That’s where, theologically speaking, the idea of “grace” comes in.
To an outsider, Farron’s implication that the UK is not a “tolerant, liberal” society for practicing Christians may seem off base. After all, the UK is technically, unlike the US, a Christian theocracy. The queen is technically the head of both church and state.
But he’s not altogether wrong, either. Public discourse in both the US and the UK has often relegated religious belief to a curiously ambiguous place in public life. It, or its absence, often functions as a kind of effective virtue signaler on both sides of the political aisle — an identity marker that renders even the theologically illiterate Donald Trump an attractive choice for many evangelicals who saw in his crusade against leftism a sign that he was “like us.”
Now, the political-religious climate in the UK — whether in spite of, or because of, the country’s established church — is far more secular than that of the US. It’s unlikely Farron would ever face such a backlash in the political climate of the US, where even politicians on the left are encouraged to pepper their discourse with the rhetoric of faith.
But in the US and UK alike, we’ve never fully come to terms as a society with the paradox of faith in public, increasingly secular, society: Is faith a private affair — as Farron himself has suggested; he’s actually in favor of disestablishing the state church — or a political one? Can we fairly expect our politicians to let their religious stances influence their policy in some arenas (social justice, say, or a commitment to helping the poor) and not others (LGBTQ rights, abortion policy)? Do we want those in public office to have the courage of their convictions — but only when their convictions aren’t too theologically uncomfortable — on whatever side of the political spectrum?
It’s disingenuous to assume both that faith must always find its expression in specific stances on public policy and that it never can — there isn’t a human being, let alone a politician, whose public attitudes aren’t informed by their private worldview (of which religion is, at least, necessarily part).
And yet it would be no less ridiculous (not to mention morally indefensible, and unconstitutional) to enforce, whether legally or through the court of public opinion, a system by which those of faith, or “too much” of the wrong kind of faith, are barred from public life, as Sanders seemed to imply.
As progressive Christian author and thinking Jim Wallis noted in a Washington Post editorial, a “tolerant, liberal” society should fairly ask pressing, even harsh questions about how a candidate’s faith would inform their public behavior; it would be the rare person of any faith who would argue it should have no effect. But if society is unwilling to accept the answer, we run the risk of undermining the very equality we are trying so hard to preserve.
