Divine Election: A Christian Guide to Irish Politics
Welcome to Divine Election, a podcast from the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, exploring what it might mean to approach elections from a Christian perspective. I am Cherise McClean. I direct Communications for the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. And as the Republic of Ireland goes to the polls in a General Election on November 29, we thought it was a good time to think theologically about the opportunities and obligations that fall to us as Christians in a democracy. While these issues are especially timely for Irish people, we hope that this series will be of general interest even after the election is completed and a new government is formed and that while it has Ireland as its context, it will be relevant for Christians anywhere.
Over the course of the series we pair big theological ideas with questions of applied public policy. We speak to experts in their fields to inform our reflection on a Christian approach to political life. And we argue that regardless of your particular political persuasion, there are common - and exciting! - commitments that Christians across the spectrum share around what it means to seek the common good. The Christian faith is about love and justice is what love looks like in public. So join us as we invite you to think deeper about these issues
Divine Election: A Christian Guide to Irish Politics
Keith Adams - Justice | Divine Election: A Christian Guide to Irish Politics
Welcome to Divine Election.
It might be common enough for political discussion to focus on crime, but the details of punishment are obscure to most people. How many times have we heard some version of the "what we need to do is be tough on crime" conversation? We might have recited that script ourselves.
But Christians have a reason to dispute the standard, so-called commonsense approach to justice. A fundamental reason for Christians to be concerned with who we put in prison: Jesus.
Christians are those people who believe that God became a man and spent his last night before his death in custody. "Christian" names that group of people who follow a Messiah whose final parable teaches that when you visit a prisoner, you visit him. The prisoner in Jesus' day was the most marginalised and alienated of figures. The prisoner in our day remains marginalised, alienated, and deeply vulnerable. It is no disrespect to the victims of crime to insist that the dignity of the criminal remains intact and to recognise that our dignity is exposed when we fail to show regard for someone who bears the image of God.
In Catholic Social Teaching we encounter a principle called "the preferential option for the poor" which is a technical way of summarising one of the major themes of the biblical narrative - God turns his eyes first to those who are in the margins. The prisoner is literally pushed off the page of our society, behind a wall, out of sight, so easily out of mind. Hoisting ourselves over that wall to consider the prisoner can be a profound expression of faith in the Christian belief that no one is beyond redemption and everyone is worthy of respect because we are all creatures of a loving and good God.
Keith Adams is the Penal Policy Advocate at JCFJ. It is not too much to say that he is becoming a world expert on the intersection between criminal justice, penal policy, and Christian thinking. In episode 4, our Director Kevin discusses with Keith some ways we can think distinctively as Christians about the plight of the prisoner.
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