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Labour Continues to Do God

Hazel Blears is the latest cabinet minister to speak up about Christian issues. She even gave her thoughts on how Jesus would react to the recession.

Six years after Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin chief, declared that “we don’t do God,” Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, has delivered a speech which unashamedly combines religion and politics.

Her address, to the Evangelical Alliance, included detailed references to the Christian scriptures – and even raised the prospect of what Jesus’ view of the current economic downturn would be.

It has led the National Secular Society to accuse the Labour leadership of seeking to reposition the party as a Christian Socialist movement.

In her speech, to an invited audience of faith groups and representatives from the voluntary sector, Mrs Blears said: “Jesus knew exactly the kind of challenges people are facing today. (read more)

This follows up comments from Stephen Timms last week.

2 replies on “Labour Continues to Do God”

See also this report from the EA, which has a link to the full text of the speech. I note that Blears started by quoting from Isaiah “beat our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into pruning hooks.” She also quotes “faith without works is dead.”

The EA seems critical of her for saying “The charter would mean faith groups who are paid public money to provide services … promising not to use public money to proselytise.” But this seems fair enough to me. This kind of separation doesn’t require completely separate charities, just separately accounted for funds like the building funds in many churches.

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