Christians urged to pray as party leaders consult

No party has secured an overall majority in Parliament and Christians have been urged to pray for the party leaders as they enter into negotiations in a bid to form a Government.

It is the first hung parliament since 1974, meaning no one party will be able to win votes to pass laws without the support of members of other parties.

Two of the three main parties may try to form a formal coalition Government. This would involve negotiating a ‘shopping list’ of policies beforehand.

Horse trading

If a coalition Government cannot be formed, the Tories – as the party with the most seats – could try to lead a minority government, negotiating with other parties on a case-by-case basis to get laws passed.

Both scenarios involve horse trading behind the scenes between the parties.

The Christian Institute’s Humphrey Dobson said: “We would encourage Christians everywhere to pray for the party leaders as they enter negotiations to form a Government.

Pray

“We would also urge Christians to pray for our Queen as she exercises her constitutional duties at this time.”

In the run-up to the General Election tens of thousands of Christians used https://www.christian.org.uk to gather information about the election ahead of casting their vote.

There was a huge surge in traffic compared to the 2005 election, suggesting that Christians have become far more engaged.

Reach

Since the beginning of April our website has been visited 170,000 times – more than a five-fold jump compared to the 2005 election, when the site had 30,000 visits.

Over 600,000 pages of news and resources have been read. In the month before the 2005 election that figure was 186,000 pages.

And our online database of MPs’ Votes – which shows how MPs have voted on a range of moral issues – has been accessed more than 114,000 times. Ahead of the last election it was used 53,000 times during April 2005.

Our manifesto-crunching election guide has been downloaded 30,000 times. Together with the 37,000 mailed out nationwide, this means the briefing has reached over one per cent of Britain’s six million regular churchgoers.