Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Preface to Christianity and Conservatism

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Source: Christianity and Conservatism , ed. Michael Alison and David L. Edwards (London 1990)
Editorial comments:

Listed by date of publication.

Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 646
Themes: Society, Conservatism, Religion & morality

Not for two thousand years has it been possible for society to exclude or eliminate Christ from its social and political life without a terrible consequence. God is not easily mocked. And it is one of history’s ironies that the first political conspiracy to make the attempt saw instead the very foundation of the Christian religion, leading on to the flowering of Christian civilisation.

Thus we are told in the Gospels that the Herodians and the Pharisees conspired together to trap Jesus in his words, so as to secure his arrest and execution. So great was the imagined political threat which Christ represented, that two groups – not normally on the same side – made common cause to try to do away with him. For they perceived in Christ an authority which, threatening the authority of Rome and Jerusalem alike, transcended their own precious partisanships. So, burying their differences, they came together to Christ with the famous trick question about paying tribute to Caesar.

They got the famous answer: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God, the things that are God’s.” It did nothing to assuage their fears; rather the reverse. So they pressed ahead with Christ’s arrest and execution. Yet their fears were well-founded. Something – somebody – transcendent had burst in upon their light and times, and the very plot and deed of crucifixion started an irreversible growth.

Today the very memory of the Pharisees and the Herodians, even of Imperial Rome itself, has fled away into the mists of history. Yet that ancient encounter between the founder of Christianity and his opponents was only lately brought back vividly to my mind, and to that of millions of others, by Vaclav Havel in his first speech as the new President of Czechoslovakia. Havel reminded the world that the great Jan Masaryk had written that “Jesus, not Caesar … ” should be the lode star. And he added, on his own account: “Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of spirit and ideas.” What a glorious vision the new President expressed, after the long night of totalitarian secular tyranny which had, until so recently, engulfed Czechoslovakia and its neighbours! It was the Christian faith which kept alight the flickering flame of hope in those societies, and which now sheds its rays on their various national pathways to the future.

It is against this background that I contribute with enthusiasm this short Preface to the present collection of diverse essays under the broad title of Christianity and Conservatism. It will be apparent from what I have written that my very last intention is to support any project which might belittle Christianity by partisanship, or exalt Conservatism by some whisper of the transcendent. But, as a number of the essays make clear, a historical turning-point has been reached for our nation, and the way ahead must be carefully and judiciously charted. For many centuries Christianity, here focused in Anglicanism, was part of the very woof and warp of our society and its institutions. Indeed Anglican clergy held the top offices of state long before the Tory Party came into existence. This intimate association between Church and State was profoundly creative in the advance to national consciousness. In our own age new freedoms have come with growth and maturity; old associations have been left behind. Christianity has indeed done much to promote this evolution. But paradoxically, it has become vulnerable to the risk that it might itself be marginalised. For from freedom has flowed pluralism. Can Havel’s vision of a secular world transformed by the power of the spirit, and of Christian ideas, be realised in today’s world? That is the question which these essays set out to answer, from the perspective of one of the great political traditions of our society.