Radix Big Tent CE Ben Rich featured in the Religious Media Centre’s briefing on how far religious belief has a role in modern politics.
Read the full report here
The video of the briefing can be viewed here.
The podcast can be heard here.
Almost two weeks ago now, Kate Forbes gave an interview to Sky News when she said she believed sex should take place between a man and a woman and she would have voted against same-sex marriage. It opened an aggressive debate into whether this should bar her from leading a party that allowed same-sex marriage and thousands of words on whether a person with conservative Christian views could stand for public office, when society had moved on.
The issue of personal conscience versus public office is not new. The former Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, resigned saying that to be a political leader, especially for progressive liberal party, and to be a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching “has felt impossible for me”.
His campaign manager Ben Rich, now CEO of Radix, said his decision was inevitable. But he drew the distinction that Tim Farron, while believing that gay sex was a sin, had nonetheless voted in favour of same-sex marriage. That was the difference between Mr Farron and Kate Forbes, because she said she would have voted against.
Asked whether political views should influence religious ideas, Ben Rich said: “I think that Tim Farron actually did find this conflict quite difficult to manage personally. It was a conflict between what his church was telling him, which was his community, and what his press team and parliamentary colleagues were telling him, which was his other community. And he did struggle with this conflict. And one of the things you aren’t allowed to do in politics is have a public struggle”.
Read the full report here
The video of the briefing can be viewed here.
The podcast can be heard here.
