This is a fresh attempt to come to grips with the question of Christian involvement in politics. The object will be to decide if possible what involvement Christians ought to have with politics in virtue of their commitment to Christianity. I do not expect the conclusions to apply to all Christians, whatever their stage of life or position in society. I expect to come to general conclusions which will have to be separately applied by individuals to their own lives, as one would expect in an ethical enquiry of this sort, which intends to use the gospel as a source. The political context of this enquiry is that of Britain in the 1970s rather than say, Latin America or Southern Africa, though our very political relationships with those parts of the world will not be forgotten.

One of the difficulties of the discussion is the ambiguity of the notion of politics. In a general sense politics has to do with the distribution and use of power in society. So politics in one sense is simply a matter of engaging in the operation of the accepted institutions of society which are to do with the distribution and use of power. Here conflicts are institutionalised, as in the two-party system of British politics or the union/management structure of industry. The institutionalisation of conflict is typical of Western liberal democracies, which owe their continued existence to the successful achievement of it. It is politics in this sense that Catholic laymen of the recent past were urged to take part in, i.e. to play their part in the institutions of democracy such as the political party or the trades union.