Margaret Thatcher's Christianity: if only the Churches had reached out to her

By Damian Thompson      
    

St Paul's fills up for the funeral

We'll no doubt see the Church of England at its best this morning: the grandeur of the funeral will be tempered by the stiff upper lip and lack of sentimentality that make these occasions doubly moving. But I can't help thinking: if only the Church of England had paid Mrs Thatcher the courtesy of taking her Christianity seriously when she was in power. The Iron Lady came from nonconformist stock; she later embraced Anglicanism because she wanted a little more formality in worship, but it was the Methodists who taught he to express her faith by rolling up her sleeves. There are countless stories of little acts of kindness to her staff which offset the ferocity of her treatment of lazy colleagues. Didn't it occur to anyone that those acts of kindness were expressions of her Christian conviction that charity is the responsibility of us all, not of "society"? Here's an extract from a remarkable interview she gave to The Catholic Herald:

Christianity is about more than doing good works. It is a deep faith which expresses itself in your relationship to God. It is a sanctity, and no politician is entitled to take that away from you or to have what I call corporate State activities which only look at interests as a whole.
So, you’ve got this double thing which you must aim for in religion, to work to really know your faith and to work it out in everyday life. You can’t separate one from the other. Good works are not enough because it would be like trying to cut a flower from its root; the flower would soon die because there would be nothing to revive it.

Mrs Thatcher pushed through policies that caused suffering; many Christian leaders shunned her, out of a mixture of genuine horror and empty grandstanding. At no stage did it occur to the Church of England to debate Christian ethics with the then Prime Minister, who would have been more than happy to do so. Perhaps some policy mistakes could have been avoided if the bishops were prepared to engage with Thatcherism instead of winning cheap applause by misrepresenting it. As I say, the C of E will give Mrs T a good send-off today; but it's too late, alas, to do her real justice.