Take the Wilberforce seat

Romans 13:3-4 · Psalm 82:3-4 · Proverbs 24:11-12

DRAFT — awaiting editorial review.

The civil ruler, Paul says, “is God’s servant for your good”, carrying the sword “to carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). That is the job. A state that turns the sword on the innocent and shields the one who kills them has not become neutral; it has deserted its post. “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; rescue the weak and the needy” (Psalm 82:3-4) is addressed to rulers, and in a democracy that includes everyone who can write, vote, draft or stand.

William Wilberforce sat in the Commons for over forty years and brought the abolition bill back session after session, through defeat after defeat, until the trade was ended and, at the very end of his life, slavery itself. He did not do it alone, and he was not the first; but he took the seat, and he did not leave it. There is a seat like that in every council chamber, every chambers, every party association and every civil-service desk in Britain, and most of them are empty.

“If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?” (Proverbs 24:12). Those who make and apply the law cannot plead ignorance; they are the people the statute names. The task is not to regulate the killing more carefully but to extend to the unborn child the one protection every other human being already has. That is equal protection, and it is the only thing worth asking a Parliament for.

Take the seat. Start with your own MP.

First, as everyone

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Then, your part

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Know the law as it stands
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