Not Winterval yet

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, 19 December 2005 01:04.

I am somewhat bemused to find three men in cassocks stepping into the ring to take on the “silly bureaucrats” and the “minority in leadership who want to privatise religion”. But that’s what has happened today.

First off, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams put his name to a piece in The Mail On Sunday saying:-

What makes some people suspicious of Christmas these days is that it’s too religious. This year there seems to have been even more stories about the banning of Christian images and words by silly bureaucrats.

Right on cue the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, weighed in during GMTV’s Sunday Programme with:-

“We must avoid the kind of political correctness that is creeping in and undermining the public expression of the Christian faith.”

He said he was concerned about “a worrying hostility towards Christianity and all religions by a minority of people in leadership today who want to privatise religion, push it to the boundaries, not allow a voice in the public arena.”

Meanwhile the Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Reverend Jonathan Gledhill, declared his diocese to be fighting back against the politically correct approach to Christmas with a new poster campaign:-

“There have been reports from all over the country about local authorities, businesses, retail centres and even central government trying to take the Christ out of Christmas, claiming Christmas is offensive.

“They seem to want to make Christmas history - the Diocese of Lichfield wants to make Christmas His story”

Ordinarily, we would say these churchmen are part of the liberal problem and preside over an emotionally feminised version of Christianity. However, even they have limits. They have, it seems, noticed that the silly bureaucrats and the mysterious minority in leadership have none, and will go on chipping away at every surviving outcrop of Western culture until nothing remains.

The “hands-off” declarations of today reveal a fault-line between religious liberals and committed egalitarian activists. In essence, the former are drawing a line in the snow. They are refusing to let their faith be marxised out of existence - which is a point I have made many, many times in respect of Western Man in general. When all roads lead to extinction, resistance will be the only recourse.

Tags: Christianity

Comments:

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on Mon, 19 Dec 2005 02:00 | #

Be real; the Church of England was Marxised out of excistence decades ago, about 1963. These guys are just complaining because their gravy-train may be derailed by disestablishment and total marginalisation.

Thank god the Catholics got two decent popes in succession, John-Paul II and Benedict XVI, and so have reacted against Marxisation.

Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 19 Dec 2005 02:14 | #

I think I am perfectly realistic. The Anglican Church has, like everything else, a bottom line. It can be rendered liberal to the core. It can invite Africa into its midst. It can allow itself to be impoverished through declining numbers of worshippers and priests. But it cannot allow Christ to be removed from its profession, and that’s what is perceived to lie at the end of the marxist rainbow.

This is a good news story, pun not intended. OK, Williams and Carey are not spiritual men and natural Conservatives like the present Pope. They are creatures of our political age. But for whatever reason - and I don’t think, like you, that is was a cynical one - they have chosen spirituality over politics.

Posted by Al Ross on Mon, 19 Dec 2005 06:46 | #

Was it that drunken Irish vulgarian, Brendan Behan, who amusingly remarked : “The cornerstones of the Church of England are the bollocks of Henry the Eighth” ?

Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 19 Dec 2005 10:29 | #

<a href=“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessi>Here</a> is a more detailed article on Williams’ and Carey’s interventions.

Carey, being freer no doubt, was particularly pointed, saying “If you take the Christian faith out of British identity, what have you got left?”

“That’s not to say you can’t be British and a Jew, or British and a Muslim. Of course I’m not saying that. But we are talking about a British identity. The majority of people in this land identify themselves by a common language, by common culture and by the implicitness of the Christian faith itself. It’s a very important part of our identity.”

He spoke of “a worrying hostility towards Christianity and all religions by a minority of people in leadership who wanted to marginalise religion and create a more secular state like France.

“That would not be the Britain I know,” he said. “We can’t keep faith out of politics or out of public life. It’s part of our own identity ... I cannot understand how you can be British without having the core faith at the heart of it which is Christianity.

“To the legislators I say: Let’s apply common sense principles to all our laws and legislation but let’s be aware of the rich vein of the Christian faith which runs through our history and laws, culture, literature and so on.”

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:59 | #

nd today the Telegraph carries a longish piece by Simon Heffer which makes, among many other excellent points, the following:-

“One or two of us took a deep breath at this, for it was a rare instance in our lifetimes of the Church of England actually standing up for something, and actually being right. It was also shocking, however, that in a country with an established Christian church, and whose Muslim population (for example) is only around three per cent, such an exhortation should be felt necessary.

... It is bewildering, therefore, that there should apparently be people here who take such offence at Christmas, and against whom a brace of archbishops feel the need to take up their croziers. I suspect they are very few in number and exert an influence far in excess of their real strength. Like all extremists and bullies, they deserve no tolerance at all.

They might merit some of our pity: if they shut themselves off from the Christian culture, whether from the beauty of the liturgy, the serenity of church music, or from admiring the reticulated tracery of an east window, then their lives can only be deeply impoverished. They must also conduct a pretence that some of our most fundamental institutions are expressly Christian: notably our monarchy, and the Established Church of which our monarch is Supreme Governor. Parliament still begins each day’s deliberations with prayers.

Our oldest schools and universities have intrinsic links with the Anglican Church. Our very system of justice is implicitly Christian. Our history is Christian since the dawn of the seventh century. More to the point, it is by the will of the majority, in our democracy, that all this remains so.

Those who dislike this have, of course, every right to militate against it. They have, however, no right to impose their minority view on anyone else.”