{"id":48443,"date":"2015-02-17T18:14:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/c_of_e_house_of_bishops_pastoral_letter_on_the_2015_general_election\/"},"modified":"2015-02-17T18:14:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:14:32","slug":"c_of_e_house_of_bishops_pastoral_letter_on_the_2015_general_election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=48443","title":{"rendered":"C of E House of Bishops&#39; Pastoral Letter on the 2015 General Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Bishops of the Church of England have today expressed the hope for political parties to discern &#8220;a fresh moral vision of the kind of country we want to be&#8221; ahead of the General Election in May of this year.<\/p>\n<p>In a pastoral letter from the House of Bishops to the people and parishes of the Church of England, the Bishops urge Christians to consider the question how can we &#8220;build the kind of society which many people say they want but which is not yet being expressed in the vision of any of the parties?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The letter also encourages church members to engage in the political process ahead of the General Election and to put aside self-interest and vote for &#8216;the common good&#8217;: &#8220;The privileges of living in a democracy mean that we should use our votes thoughtfully, prayerfully and with the good of others in mind, not just our own interests.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The letter also states that: &#8220;In Britain, we have become so used to believing that self-interest drives every decision, that it takes a leap of imagination to argue that there should be stronger institutions for those we disagree with as well as for those &#8216;on our side.&#8217; Breaking free of self-interest and welcoming our opponents as well as our supporters into a messy, noisy, yet rich and creative community of communities is, perhaps, the only way we will enrich our almost-moribund political culture.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/churchofengland.org\/media-centre\/news\/2015\/02\/house-of-bishops%27-pastoral-letter-on-the-2015-general-election.aspx\">Read it all<\/a> and please follow the link to the full letter <a href=\"https:\/\/churchofengland.org\/media\/2170230\/whoismyneighbour-pages.pdf\">there<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Bishops of the Church of England have today expressed the hope for political parties to discern &#8220;a fresh moral vision of the kind of country we want to be&#8221; ahead of the General Election in May of<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=48443\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,40,74,389,635,168,151,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-episcopal","category-economics-politics","category-anglican-provinces","category-church-of-england-coe","category-coe-bishops","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-politics-in-general","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}