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On a battlefield contested largely by increasingly hysterical, desperate and intellectually dishonest warriors, there is most certainly space for some more considered and calm Christian reflection on the EU referendum. Andrew Goddard is to be commended in this new booklet for his attempt to lower the temperature of the debate and provide consistent and sensible Christian comment on the important issues.

The booklet is admirably succinct and clear. Its summary of the history of the European project and of the different functions of the various European institutions is one of the best for providing the facts in an easily understood manner. The middle three chapters that make up the bulk of the content deal (primarily) with migration, economics and democracy and theories of government.

In each case the debate is framed in authentically Christian language and political theology, providing a thoughtful and considered stance on issues as diverse as what the command to love your neighbour means in the context of migration, and the nature of idolatry and money. It is also scrupulously balanced – which sadly guarantees that many readers will take serious issue with at least half of the content. Both sides do, on the whole, get a fair hearing, and the attempt to deal with each issue from a Christian standpoint is serious and thorough. The criticism of the EU’s economic obsession and the dangers of falling into idolatry are, I think, particularly convincing, though it would be interesting to consider the extent to which any European state is these days culpable of the same failing (certainly austerity Britain seems to bear many of the same hallmarks).

On its own terms then, as a booklet designed to help genuinely undecided Christians navigate the issues that have dominated this debate and come to an informed voting position, I think this is a good and obviously timely piece of work. A principal criticism is that it falls into a trap that the author himself warns the readers to avoid – namely focusing only on a debate centred around the idea of the British national interest.

The three topics that are really under consideration – migration, economics and democracy – reveal that issue. Though each is dealt with from a genuinely Christian standpoint, with strong foundations in the Bible and political theology, they are not themselves particularly Christian. They simply happen to be the issues that have come to dominate the debate. To an extent this is, of course, entirely understandable. The debate has been fixated on those issues, which are perceived as being the ones that matter to the British national interest, and this booklet looks at how Christians might respond to those same issues.

However, to a point this marks a missed opportunity to elevate the debate onto other issues where Christians have much to say and comparatively little has been said. For example, the booklet deals with the cause for securing peace historically, but says less about the EU’s contested place in being a force for reconciliation and an agent for peace today. In Northern Ireland there has been considerable success in this area, in the Balkans the evidence is considerably more mixed. In terms of our global common good the environment is a growing area of moral and theological concern for Christians (as, for example, in Pope Francis’s Encyclical Laudato Si’) and the EU has been the most ambitious international body in confronting those issues – so that again is worth consideration, though it is an issue strangely absent in the UK debate.

More generally what is missing, and not only from this booklet so much as the debate as a whole, is a vision for what Europe is meant to be. This referendum will play on migration, democracy, and economics and will ultimately be a balance of what the British electorate feels it can tolerate for a perceived economic gain. The EU ought to be about more than that, it should be about dealing with big moral questions in an ever more globalized and inter–connected world.
That visionary and moral aspect has been by–and–large missing from the debate, and it is unfair to lay its absence at the door of one booklet. Goddard has chosen to address the issues that have been at the forefront of the debate; an entirely fair decision for a publication of this sort. Nonetheless I am left wishing that Christians, of all people, could want to talk a bit more about the more ethical and philosophical dimension and the underlying purpose of the EU, and a bit less about economics.

Ben Ryan is a Researcher at Theos | @BenedictWRyan

The booklet The EU Referendum: How Should We Decide?, by the Revd Canon Dr Andrew Goddard, can be found purchased from Grove Ethics here.

Image by geralt from pixabay.com available in the public domain.