* The Kingdom of God is no more or less than an example of the life of the Church. * Creation order is the basis of state order, and is expressed most cogently in the law of God.
Although I appreciate the attempts which Griffiths has made to create a Christian context for the operation of the present Government's policies, it is open to criticism for narrowing the relationship between faith and politics. The points of entry in the Griffiths critique are God as law-giver and creator. This is an Old Testament God, not the Christian one. While the Conservative Party has become increasingly secular and the thinking of the New Right has tried to side-line religion into a purely private affair, British Evangelicals and Catholics have been travelling in a different direction. The Evangelical Alliance has been discovering a diversity of approaches, whilst simultaneously crusading on a whole range of social and ethical questions. In so doing it has avoided the American evangelical caricature - whose politics are largely 'New Right' - and has been true to its roots. The Alliance, under Clive Calver, has seen substantial growth, with the 419 churches affiliated in 1980 increasing to 1429 by 1989. In rediscovering their highly influential political role, Evangelicals have come into conflict with the political parties. When EA and CARE (Christian Action, Research and Education), led by Charles Colchester and the Reverend Lyndon Bowring, mounted campaigns against the legalisation of experimentation on human embryos, their principal opponents in the Conservative Party were New Right MPs such as Teresa Gorman and Andrew Mackay. They found themselves pitted against the free choice arguments of New Right MPs who advocate abortion on demand. During the debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill Teresa Gorman mounted what one national newspaper described as the most extraordinary attack ever made on Christianity in the House of Commons. The MP for Maidstone, Ann Widdecombe, a committed Christian and Conservative, complained after the division was taken on that Bill that other MPs - from the Hard Left and the New Right - were trying to deter Members from supporting pro-life lobby amendments by standing at the door to the division lobby scornfully making the sign of the cross and telling them, 'The Pope says this way'. The debate on the secularisation of Sunday was no less fierce and hard fought. Classical Conservatives such as Sir Bernard Braine and Michael Alison, both Anglicans, were to the fore in opposing the Sunday Trading Bill. It would have