Church to advise Christians again on who to vote for

THE Church of England is to intervene in a general election for the second time.

Church leaders plan to publish their advice to Christians on how they should vote over the next few days, in advance of the appearance of the main party manifestos.

The initiative comes after the CofE tried to influence voting in 2015.

Then, it published a ‘letter from the House of Bishops to the people and parishes’ three months before polling day – a 53-page document perceived as so biased towards Labour that it provoked an angry and personal response from then Prime Minister David Cameron.

This time, guidance to the faithful on how to vote will appear only a month before polling and at the time when parties will be working up their campaigns to full pitch.

Senior Church figures are understood to be still debating the nature of the advice they will offer.

There is agreement that it will contain an appeal for recognition of the place of religious faith in national life, together with a call for reconciliation between Brexit supporters and Remainers, and between those with entrenched and opposing political views.

But there is also pressure for the Church’s paper to contain detailed views on some political controversies. Any advice seen as steering voters towards or away from any of the main parties is likely to invite criticism from those who believe it could lose them support.

The Church has not shied away from giving political advice since the Most Reverend Justin Welby became Archbishop of Canterbury four years ago. He approved the bishops’ guidance before the 2015 poll and made it known before the EU referendum last summer that he would be voting to stay in the EU.

An election guidance document that avoids political con- troversy would be widely seen as a climbdown by the Archbishop and his senior colleagues.

Their election document two years ago committed the Church to a series of radical ideas, some of them recognisably close to current positions adopted by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Among these was the CofE’s call for a national debate on the future of the Trident nuclear deterrent. The 2015 advice said that ‘traditional arguments for nuclear deterrence need reexamining’ and accused politicians of failing to trust the public enough to have a serious debate about defence needs.

At the time, when the main parties were committed to Trident, the Church was effectively calling on all party leaders to move away from support for nuclear weapons. Repeated today, the advice would be taken as a straightforward call for support for Mr Corbyn.

So would another of the Church’s 2015 points of guidance, which warned against military intervention in the Middle East on the grounds that it would ‘ risk generating new resentments which intensify the threat to our own way of life’.

The CofE’s 2015 advice to voters that they should ‘ halt and reverse the accumulation of power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, whether those of the state, corporations or individuals’ would also be seen now as uncomfortably close to Mr Corbyn’s thinking.

Any repeat would be likely to play badly with Theresa May. The Prime Minister is a vicar’s daughter who worships regularly at an Anglican church near her Berkshire home.

Mr Cameron reacted sharply to the Church’s intervention in early 2015, suggesting to the that it had ignored rising employment under the Coalition.

‘I would say to the bishops, I hope they would welcome that because it does bring dignity, it does bring self-reliance, it does enable people to provide for their families, it creates a stronger society as well as a stronger economy,’ he said.

‘Uncomfortably close to Corbyn’