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Written by Kate Heywood
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Monday, 30 April 2007 |
LDCF Vice-Chair Kate Heywood is also one of the Forum's representatives on CiP.
Christians in Politics (CiP) is formed from the Christian groups in the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative parties. The aim of the group is to 'do what it says on the tin'… that is, to encourage more Christians to become involved in politics, in three main ways:
1 - Encouraging Christians to join and become active in the political parties. This can be as members, candidates, agents, deliverers, canvassers, encouragers... the list goes on.
2 - Providing resource packs for churches to run a 'Politics Sunday'. These can be obtained from Esther Philips, our Project Manager, at
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or Christians in Politics, PO Box 38539, London, SW1H 0WX. We also send representatives to speak at church events.
3 - Working with fellow Christian groups working in Parliament, in Whitehall and other areas of government. Recently we went to the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (www.licc.org.uk).
We are encouraged bythe emerging consensus among many Christian organisations, as they begin prioritising the work of encouraging individual Christians to get more involved in politics. This offers great opportunities to develop our links with groups across the spectrum, including Bible Society, Theos and CARE. With these developments and opportunities throughout the Christian community, there are also challenges. Developing relationships means learning to trust and work with people with whom we have very different viewpoints. This takes time, but working on common projects helps this process develop. Prayer would be most welcome for these developments, particularly:
- Thanking God for the opportunities and open doors that are appearing;
- Wisdom to know which opportunities we should pursue;
- Praying for unity between the different Christian groups in the common goals we share;
- Resources for the work.
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