BBC News - Will Christians swing the 2010 UK election?

Interesting article on the BBC News - Will Christians swing the 2010 UK election? - there is definitely a far more high-profile mobilisation of the Christian electorate this year than I can ever previously recall, and all the major parties (and not a few of the minor ones) seem to be playing up the Christian vote.

Wonder why the sudden sea-change? Is it because we are becoming more political as British Christians, or is because we tend to vote more than the general population, so in a close contest the parties need to court us? No easy conclusions, but perhaps both are true.

I see two dangers - firstly that we end up like the US Evangelicals and become too wedded or identified to one set of political issues and one party, or secondly that we end up being useful idiots to parties that dump us once it is more more politically expedient to do so, as the Republicans did evangelicals in the last US election. Either way, the temptations of power and empire are the ones we must abjure as followers of the King whose Kingdom was not of this world, whilst engaging with the political world in a constructive and Godly manner. Not an easy tightrope to walk, but one we should not avoid.