For Christians western-style national elections raise huge issues for they are dominated by Party Politics and not the issues themselves.
Political parties are a construct that brings good as well as bad. Whether or not you think well of her, if Theresa May were the same person with the same ideals but an Independent she would not get an ounce of weight in a General Election campaign.
Yet if there are no political parties that does not make all things well. One ward in the recent local elections had fielded an independent councillor for several years but when she stepped down nobody took her place - so there is now no councillor at all.
Human beings, on the whole, are part of constructs of many kinds. If the UK (a construct) has a hard Brexit from the EU (a construct) it might have to trade with the EU under WTO (a construct) trading rules.
Something in many a human spirit longs to be free. In London we have people who live rough deliberately to be outside the borders of society - no National Insurance number, no tax office, no address, no vote, no debt letters, no loyalty cards, no PPI . . .
And many a soul regards church in a similar way. From the outset it has had expressions of party spirit and it is perhaps no coincidence that UK party politics owes something of a debt to the voluntary structures of churches a couple of hundred years ago.
Yet for all the elements of human construct it has contained, the church of Jesus is primarily a construct of his. The person who wearily wants to go it alone spiritually is not so much striking a blow at the institutions of religion as at the plan of God. Which is not such a wise blow to strike.
When, after all, did you last see an independent sheep?
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