The daughter of a High Anglican vicar, Theresa May describes herself as a “practising Christian”. In an edited extract from The Mighty and the Almighty: How Political Leaders Do God, Nick Spencer examines what we can glean about the influence of her Christianity on May’s politics

Spencer, Nick

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By Democratic Audit UK 2017-4-21She does God: Theresa May, a PM with strong views butlittle ideologydemocraticaudit.com /2017/04/21/she-does-god-theresa-may-a-pm-with-strong-views-but-little-ideology/The daughter of a High Anglican vicar, Theresa May describes herself as a “practising Christian”. In an editedextract from The Mighty and the Almighty: How Political Leaders Do God, Nick Spencer examines what we canglean about the influence of her Christianity on May’s politics. Theresa May arrives at Westminster Abbey, March 2017. Photo: Number 10 via a CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 licenceMargaret Thatcher was unashamedly public about her faith, rooting her political outlook in her religious one, andunafraid to assume the pulpit when the occasion demanded, or even when it didn’t. Theresa May, on the other hand,is rather more circumspect, not only about her faith but also her personal life.May has said on several occasions – although admittedly not as many as Margaret Thatcher – that she owed a lotto her father.  Hubert Brasier was Chaplain of All Saints’ Hospital, Eastbourne, when May was born. The familysubsequently moved so that he could take up the post of Vicar of Enstone with Heythrop, and then moved again toSt Mary the Virgin in Wheatley, Oxfordshire in 1970. According to the Financial Times, parish records and interviewswith former members of his congregation reveal an image of “a local vicar whose seriousness, conservatism, HighAnglican beliefs and steadfast devotion to duty left an indelible imprint on his only child.”May’s early life naturally revolved around the parish. She attended her father’s church and taught some Sundayschool classes there, even going back to attend the annual meeting of the parochial church council when she hadleft for Oxford (which was, admittedly, not far away). She insisted that her father never “imposed” his Christianity onher as a child and her parents “always said to me, that obviously they would very much like it if I were a regularchurchgoer and so forth but they weren’t going to force me to go.”As a consequence of this parental latitude, she attended “of my own choosing”, the result being that, unlike somefriends who were clergy daughters but who felt under more compulsion and therefore “kicked over the traces”, sheremained and remains a practicing Anglican. “I do call myself a Christian, and I am still a practising member of theChurch of England,” she told Desert Island Discs. It was a faith that she grew into. There was never any “blindingflash” or “point in time at which I can say I decided to be a Christian.” Rather, there was “a positive process” in“accepting” the strong, family “Christian faith” within which she grew up. The Christian faith is “part of who I am andtherefore how I approach things…[it] helps to frame my thinking and my approach.”1/3She cited her father  for the fact that “his job wasn’t just doing services on Sunday mornings” but for being “verygood at visiting people in the village.”Such a model might have led her politically left or right, but May has indicated how her Christianity in fact led her toConservatism. Reaching political maturity in the 1970s, she was faced with “a clear-cut choice betweenConservatism and Socialism”, and although there were plenty at the time who put forward a forceful “Christian moralargument” for socialism, she felt that the left and, in particular, “its extreme form, communism” denied the value ofthe individual and was therefore less consonant with Christian beliefs: “it actually isn’t based on what I would call‘Christianity’.” By contrast, she believed that Conservatism offered a better recognition of “the value of the individual”but also of “their relationship with others in society and their need to contribute to a society, to be part of that greaterthing.”This second, corrective point seems important to May because she acknowledged that the back end of the Thatcher/Major years – being the time when she twice failed in her attempt at getting a seat, partly on account of Toryunpopularity – was a difficult time in which the value of the individual as individual had been taken too far.“The central tenet of my belief is that there is more to life than individualism and self-interest”, she told herConference audience in 2016. “We applaud success…but we also value something else: the spirit of citizenship…We form families, communities, towns, cities, counties and nations [and] have a responsibility to one another”, shesaid, a responsibility that government also shares.Without ever abandoning the core creeds of individual worth and opportunity, which May had stressed had broughther into politics, it was a speech located in a clear commitment to relationally-rooted individuals, served by apositive vision of “the good that government can do”, and all framed as a rejection of “the ideological templatesprovided by the socialist left and the libertarian right”, without every daring to utter a phrase like the middle or thirdway.How far is any of what we see in Prime Minister May traceable to her Christian convictions? The apparentconsonance between the two, in as far as we can accurately identify it, suggests the answer might be a great deal,but that is liable to get Theresa May wrong, just as it is liable to get the relationship between the Almighty and Mightywrong. Politicians, not least leading ones in modern, plural democracies, tend not to construct their political edificessimply according to their spiritual blueprints.May is a politician with strong views rather than a strong ideology, and those views were seemingly shaped by herChristian upbringing and faith. That Christianity gives her, in her own words, “a moral backing to what I do and Iwould hope that the decisions I take are taken on the basis of my faith.” It is a faith, she went on to say in interview,that “‘informs’ those decisions”, a phrase that she immediately went on to apologies for, for being “terriblyjargonistic”. Christianity “helps to frame my thinking and my approach” she told Desert Island Discs, before going onto say that it is “right that we don’t flaunt these things here in British politics”. In this regard at very least, Maypractices what she preaches.This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. It is an edited and condensedextract from The Mighty and the Almighty: How Political Leaders Do God, published by Biteback Press. Reproducedwith permission.2/3Nick Spencer is Research Director of the religion and society thinktank Theos. Also by Nick:‘They shall reap the whirlwind: how Churchill harnessed Christianity in the service of war.3/3

She does God: Theresa May, a PM with strong views but little ideology

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