I’m scared to admit to being a Tory in today’s C of E

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[/audioplayer]I am training for ordained ministry at a Church of England theological college. I am a trainee vicar, if you will. I am also a Conservative, which puts me in an extremely small minority and quite a tricky position. At my college, there are approximately 60 ordinands in full-time residential training. Of those 60, there are no more than three or four who would describe themselves as Conservative and the overwhelming majority would call themselves (proudly) socialist. There is also a sizable minority of Marxists.

In recent weeks, our national press has seemed surprised that senior clergy in the C of E, and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, have expressed left-wing views — criticising welfare cuts and so forth. But what no one outside the church realises is that within, holding even gentle, centre-right views is strongly disapproved of.

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Any overtly Tory priest-in-training would quickly learn the error of his ways. I have not, in two years here, heard anything other than left-wing bias in preaching, either from the staff or from visiting speakers. We are fed a constant diet of propaganda which assumes that all Tories are evil and that they exist solely for the benefit of the rich.

We have had lectures in which the speaker insists that all tax avoidance is evil, while overlooking the use of Gift Aid and other tax-avoidance measures in their own churches. Other lecturers have described fund managers as being useless and immoral — never a mention of the fact that the Church of England’s considerable assets are managed by just such people.

In terms of welfare reform, the established position is to the left of Archbishop Welby’s. It is generally considered that any change to the system would be immoral; that the only Christian solution is to keep increasing spending.