The American screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is best known for his seven series American political drama The West Wing, which was first aired between 1999 and 2006, and is generally regarded as the best TV political drama ever produced. What is not well known is that The West Wing was a spin off from ideas which Sorkin first developed when he wrote the script for a movie called The American President which came out in 1995.
This film is about a fictional American President called Andrew Shepherd (played by Michael Douglas). Shepherd, a Democrat, is a widower who begins a romantic relationship with Sydney Ellen Wade (played by Anette Benning) who is a lobbyist for an environmental campaign group which wants the Shepherd administration to introduce legislation to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Shepherd is running for re-election and his Republican opponent, Senator Bob Rumson, uses Shepherd’s relationship with Wade to attack Shepherd, arguing that she is a dangerous left-wing political activist who burned the American flag during an anti-apartheid demonstration, and is a member of the left-wing campaign organisation the ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union).
The climax of the film comes when Shepherd gives an impromptu press conference at the White House after Wade has broken off their relationship because she feels he puts political expediency before his principles.
In this press conference Shepherd gives a barn storming defence of his beliefs, his actions and his relationship with Wade. Addressing the question of his own membership of the ACLU (something on which he has previously refused to comment) he responds to Rumson with some of the best lines in the film:
‘For the record: Yes, I am a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U. But the more important question is why aren’t you, Bob? This is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the questions. Why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for president, choose to reject upholding the Constitution?’
I have recently been thinking about these lines from The American President, and particularly Shepherd’s question ‘why aren’t you, Bob?,’ in connection with the issue of why there has been disappointingly little support from Christians in this country to the ‘2025 Westminster Declaration on Faith, Freedom and Public Life’ which was launched in September last year.
In 2010 a Christian manifesto entitled ‘Westminster 2010: Declaration of Christian Conscience’ was published with a list of signatories including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, Cardinal Keith O’Brien of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Mgr Michael Nazir-Ali, and the campaigner for religious freedom Baroness Caroline Cox, as well as other senior clerics, the principals of three theological colleges, and the leaders of several Christian organisations like the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Medical Fellowship.
The manifesto was a statement of Christian values which called on politicians to ‘protect the right of Christians’ to hold their beliefs and ‘act according to Christian conscience’ with the issues of the protection of human life and the defence of marriage mentioned as two particular areas of concern.
The 2010 manifesto was an important and influential declaration at the time when it was issued and helped to highlight the issue of the protection of Christian values and the consciences of Christian believers in contemporary British society.
Fifteen years later, a group of Christians convened by Mgr Nazir-Ali, who were concerned by the growing erosion of Christian values and respect for the consciences of Christians in the years since 2010, decided that the time had come to produce an updated and expanded version of the 2010 manifesto and the 2025 declaration was the result.
In the words of the opening to the 2025 declaration:
‘Some of the choices made by Parliament and others in authority about the nature of human life, family relationships, sex education in schools, end-of-life care, and the use and development of new technologies are having serious consequences. By ignoring Britain’s Christian heritage we have endangered human life, weakened society, and created a fragmented nation uncoupled from its formative traditions, and without a unifying vision for its future.’
The 2025 declaration was produced as a result of input from a range of different Christian traditions, including the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Free Church and Pentecostal traditions, with the members of the steering group which oversaw its production including Mgr Nazir-Ali, Major General Tim Cross, the journalist and author Robin Aitken, the CEO of Voice for Justice UK the Rev Lynda Rose, and Dr Tony Rucinski, a researcher and campaigner on family and social issues.
The 2025 declaration covered a wider range of topics than the original 2010 version to cover ‘freedom of belief and of conscience,’ ‘the value of human life,’ ‘marriage, family and children,’ ‘parents and school education,’ ‘biological sex and gender,’ ‘the role of the university,’ ‘and AI and moral reflection.’
On ‘freedom of belief and of conscience’ the declaration states:
‘We uphold freedom of religion and belief for all, as enshrined in Human Rights law. This means the freedom to manifest and practise our faith in public and in private, and a reasonable accommodation of this in the workplace. Individuals have a right to change their faith or beliefs, freely and without coercion.’
It further adds:
‘Democracy in Britain was founded upon Christian beliefs about human dignity and equality. For that democracy to survive –– free of coercion by those now actively seeking to reframe our society and culture – and for the wellbeing of all, we urge that freedoms of belief, of conscience, and of speech, be protected through legislation and policy.’
On ‘the value of human life’ the declaration affirms that ‘All human beings are made in the divine image, and invested with dignity, equality and freedom’ and that as a consequence:
‘We oppose the termination of life in the womb, whether by pharmaceutical or surgical intervention. Accordingly, there must be freedom of conscience for medical, administrative and other staff to decline participation in any procedure relating to abortion, including handling aborted foetuses, or stem cells derived from the destruction of embryos.
‘Further we oppose the causing or hastening of death by pharmaceutical means or by the withdrawal of nutrition and water. This is contrary to Christian belief, and alien to a civilized society. At the end of life, while it is permissible to administer analgesics with the sole purpose of relieving pain, the intentional causing or hastening of death by any means, direct or indirect, is unacceptable to Christian consciences. We are praying that assisted suicide will not become law, but if it does, consciences of Christians and others should similarly be protected from having to take part in any procedure the intent of which is to cause or hasten death.’
On ‘marriage family and children’ the declaration states
‘We believe the normative and best expression of family is the marriage of a man and woman bound together in a lifelong union for mutual love and support and the raising of children. We are concerned at the number of children raised by couples who have not made a public lifelong commitment to one another in marriage, whether civil or religious, or raised by those who choose to be single parents. Marriage benefits husband and wife, their children, and wider society, in ways that no other arrangement can replicate.’
As a consequence, it says:
‘We call for policies and legislation which strengthen marriage and family life, and we reject ideologies which weaken family ties by falsely claiming that other types of relationship are of equivalent value to marriage. While affirming the importance of mothers and fathers jointly raising children, we also believe that those who find themselves single parents deserve society’s support.’
On ‘parents and school education’ the declaration argues that it is parents and guardian rather than the state who have:
‘… primary responsibility for their children’s education and upbringing. Parents must, therefore, have the right to withdraw children from teaching which conflicts with their beliefs and values.’
It also argues that:
‘While children need to be taught about different beliefs, values and lifestyles in our plural society, this is not the same as promoting various lifestyle and sexual ideologies, such as are being disseminated in schools. Training teachers to understand the traditional view of the family, and ensuring that view is taught in classrooms, is vital for the wellbeing of our children. This includes teaching the normative role of marriage between a man and a woman in raising and nurturing children, and in sustaining family life.’
Furthermore, because the purpose of education is to broaden the minds and enrich the lives of pupils it follows that:
‘… there should be a balance in teaching children skills needed for employment, such as IT and business studies, and a knowledge of our history, literature and art which can provide them with appreciation of our rich cultural heritage.’
On ‘biological sex and gender’ the declaration affirms ‘the givenness of biological sex’ while at the same time noting that ‘compassion for those confused about their gender’ is a ‘Christian duty.’ It adds that now that:
‘… the Supreme Court has ruled that the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in the 2010 Equality Act refer to biological sex, the Department of Education must ensure that classroom teaching reflects this ruling.’
On ‘the role of the university’ it notes that ‘universities have sprung from Christian roots,’ and emphasises ‘the need for freedom of speech and of belief among faculty and students as central to the true purpose of education’ and the threat to this posed by ‘group think’ and ‘cancel culture’ which are ‘leading to the closing of the western mind.’
Finally, on ‘AI and moral reflection’ the declaration states that AI, like other inventions, ‘arises from the creativity of human beings, made in the image of their Creator.’ It notes that although AI can bring ‘’much benefit to the practice of medical science, engineering, and many other professions’, it ‘can never attain the ability of moral discernment, nor will it ever be able to empathise or establish authentic relationships’ and concludes that ‘If we believe we are relating to a fellow person, we have become fools.’
The declaration calls on the government to establish a body to oversee the future development of AI which would ‘include Christians trained in moral thinking and decision making.’ The purpose of this body would be to ‘ensure that innovation is tested with discretion and does not take place in a moral and spiritual vacuum, especially where it affects human life, relationships, children’s education and development, and the dignity of work.’
The 2025 Westminster Declaration is a very important manifesto as it is probably the only Christian statement which covers freedom of belief, life issues, university education and the development of AI in one comprehensive document.
The declaration has been published in partnership with Citizen GO, an organisation which promotes public participation in the political process, as an online petition which can be read and signed at www.2025WestminsterDeclaration.org. If 100,000 people sign the declaration this will trigger a debate in Parliament on the issues it raises.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing it has only been signed by 3,712 people. The question this raises is why this is the case. Why has it not been promoted more widely and achieved a far larger number of signatures? The points made by the declaration are not extreme or idiosyncratic. They are a consensus, mainstream, orthodox Christian response to key issues facing contemporary British society and there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Christians who would agree with them. Why, then, the lack of signatures?
If we ask why modern British society has come to be shaped so profoundly by ‘progressive’ ideas about society and ethics with roots in Neo-Marxist ideology and by the LGBTQI+ movement, a key part of the answer is because people who hold to a progressive or LGTQI + viewpoint have been vocal in stating what they believe and active in promoting it. To use the old slogan, they have been prepared to be ‘out, loud and proud’ about their convictions. Christians need to take a leaf out of their book and do the same.
So, to return to where I began this article, my challenge to any Christian who is not yet a signatory of the declaration is ‘why aren’t you, Bob?’