Is there space for faith in politics?

Alicia Edmund is head of public policy at the Evangelical Alliance. She spoke with Jemimah Wright about her journey to faith and her passion for seeing God’s values outworked within the political arena and society at large  

Tell us about your background – where you were born and brought up. 

My mum was born in Trinidad and Tobago. She came to England in the 1970s when she was studying to be a nurse and midwife. I was born in 1986 and I would say my background is black British Caribbean. I own the phrase Essex Girl, because I was born and raised in Barking and still live in the county. I predominantly grew up in a white, working-class community. My last memory of seeing my father was probably when I was about four, but he was never involved in my life on a day-to-day basis. My mum had a 40-minute commute to work so I went to a childminder. She played a very prominent role in my life because I was with her early mornings, weekends and sometimes part of the school holidays. I knew I was loved by my mum, but the idea of being loved by my father was very challenging to accept. God the Father wasn’t a concept I would talk about. To pray the Lord’s Prayer jarred emotionally, as I thought: “I’ve known an imperfect earthly father; how could God be a perfect heavenly Father?” In my mid-20s I went on a long journey of forgiveness, releasing all that hurt and disappointment that my dad didn’t know about my life or my interests. That opened the door for me to encounter the heavenly Father’s love personally.