Christianity<\/a> isn\u2019t the same as America.<\/p>\n\u201cThose hot-potato [culture war] issues are not necessarily the things that drive people. That\u2019s not to say Christians in this country don\u2019t have strong opinions on those issues, in both directions. But they\u2019re not as unifying a political force for the church in this country as they seem to be culturally and politically in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham has long joked that three institutions shaped him: Everton football club, the Catholic church and the Labour party.<\/p>\n
The church and party have long been intertwined for him. When he was an altar boy in the 1980s, Liverpool\u2019s archbishop, Derek Worlock, was one of Margaret Thatcher\u2019s fiercest critics and urged Catholics to fight poverty and inequality. Worlock recorded messages on cassette tapes that were sent to every parish.<\/p>\n
Prof Francis Davis, an expert on religion and public policy, said: \u201cThe young Andy Burnham was the boy on the altar who would have to press the button to turn the cassette on that was then played to the 800 people in the church.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Burnham became Labour MP for Leigh, he formed a close relationship with the Catholic Labour minister Paul Goggins. \u201cGoggins would say: \u2018Don\u2019t get distracted by all the arguments about sexual morality. The key thing in Catholic social thought is putting the poor first,\u2019\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
Mike Kane, the Labour MP who founded Catholics for Labour, said he saw the principles of Catholic social teaching, such as dignity and solidarity, reflected in Burnham\u2019s style of politics. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t actually claw his opponent\u2019s eyes out,\u201d he said. \u201cI think his politics is ultimately very hopeful and optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the thinktank Theos, said he believed there were many reasons why we were seeing such different expressions of Christian politics in the UK and US. \u201cCulture war politics really thrives on a narrative of exclusion,\u201d he said. \u201cBut its much harder to argue that you are being socially, culturally and politically marginalised as a Christian in this country. If you crown the head of state, if you have 26 bishops in the Lords, you are already quite close to the heart of power.\u201d In the US, he said, pastors were able to take their congregations in different political directions because the church landscape was much more fragmented.<\/p>\n
The US vice-president, JD Vance, with Pope Leo at the Vatican last year. Photograph: Simone Risoluti\/Reuters<\/p>\n
So far, Catholic and other organised religious pressure on Burnham has come largely from groups on the left. Almost 40 senior Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders, coordinated by the charity HIAS+JCORE, have written to him urging him to rethink Britain\u2019s asylum policy.<\/p>\n
Dr David Ryall, the director of the Jesuit Refugee Service UK and a signatory to the letter, said there was a summer campaign defending the right to asylum. \u201cIt\u2019s been amazing to see so many Catholic parishes, groups and families, driven by their faith, taking up this call with their local politicians and now with the new prime minister,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Britain\u2019s growing religious pluralism sits uneasily alongside the constitution. Prof Russell Sandberg, an expert in law and religion, said legislation still prevents practising Catholics and Jews from advising the crown on Church of England appointments.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn practice, the role of the prime minister in appointing bishops has declined,\u201d Sandberg said. \u201cThat said, even the presentation of one name by Burnham would breach the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.\u201d Those responsibilities could be delegated to another minister, he added.<\/p>\n
While rightwing Christian nationalist politics does not have the same influence in Britain as in the US, Sandberg said rightwing populists could, in government, \u201cuse and abuse the legal framework that favours Christianity to roll back the clock on our legal rights\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the appointment of Britain\u2019s first lifelong Roman Catholic prime minister, the faith is now in a prominent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}