The Church of England has, for the last 40 years, been in the grip of ‘revolutionary Marxist thinking’. I know this to be true, because I read it on the front page of the Daily Mail this morning.
Heck, I must have missed that meeting. Let’s just say that if the local vicar has been sneakily slipping a few transitional demands onto the end of his sermons each Sunday, it’s a new one on me. Funny, you never see any paper sellers at the end of the service. Still, anything’s possible in Stoke Newington.
The occasion for such a surprising claim is a magazine article by the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali – pictured - in which the Bishop of Rochester pronounces that the collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society.
Family life has been destroyed! The country is defenceless against the rise of radical Islam in a moral and spiritual vacuum! Unless we turn back to the Christian values of humility, service and sacrifice, all is lost!
Church of England office politics is a closed book to me, of course. But as an ex-Trotskyist, I recognise a down and dirty faction fight when I see one. This seems a rather crude boot aimed between the legs of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. To what end, I’ll leave those in the know to say.
But to carry much weight with the rest of us, the Right Reverend really does need to get his facts straight. For a start, it is difficult to argue that Christianity is ‘marginalised’ in Britain today. After all, if it were, no one would give a toss about Nazir-Ali’s opinions on anything in particular.
Indeed, the bishop’s own denomination of choice - the Church of England - enjoys all the prerogatives of an established state religion. Nazir-Ali is one of 26 of Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords as so-called Lords Spiritual.
No other religion - or even any other denomination within Christianity - benefits from such anachronistic privilege. Surely it will have occurred to him to ask why he is an unelected legislator? It’s not a bad little perk simply for holding down a job with a supposedly marginalised entity.
Church of England schools, and education establishments of other faiths, enjoy huge subsidies from the state, effectively enabling them to propagate their doctrine at the expense of taxpayers, atheists and agnostics included. Anybody got any stats for the extent of the handout?
And even if the outlook were as Nazir-Ali describes, what does he expect anyone else to do about it? Religions – like political parties – have to secure their own support base in the marketplace for ideas.
It is not the role of a democratic government to manipulate the intellectual climate in the interests of any given faith. The state should limit itself to holding the ring. Christians should favour the separation of church and state, an arrangement that is fair to all religions and none; after all, contrast the state of Christianity in the US, where it is implemented, with the state of Christianity in Britain, where it is not.
Nazir-Ali is also wrong on the big picture. The authority of all organised religions is in longstanding decline. If it is the case that a minority of youth of Muslim extraction are moving towards radical forms of Islam, it is equally true that the majority are only nominally observant. Let’s put it like this; I live in a predominantly Muslim area, and there are no shortage of Turkish bars that will serve you a bevvy.
Before I get written off as an ‘atheist fundamentalist’, let me stress how strongly I believe in freedom of religion, including the right to proselytise. But judging by his intemperate and implicitly authoritarian outburst, I suspect that if Nazir-Ali had his way, he would not be nearly so tolerant of the beliefs of others.
UPDATE: Bishop N-A does seem to have explicitly aligned himself with the Conservative hard right. Details in rather a good post here.
Posted at 14:05, 29 May 2008
Comments (8)
Seems women are again to blame :
"quoted an academic who blames the loss of 'faith and piety among women' for the steep decline in Christian worship. "
Sounds good news to me, less pious women :-)
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, who earlier this year caused anger by suggesting that some Muslim communities were ‘no go areas’, has created a fresh argument by claiming that the collapse of a ‘Christian nation’ has left Britain in a moral vacuum.
The comments come in an article for the debut issue of the new political magazine Standpoint – which has a very small circulation, but has been projected into the headlines by front-page stories in the right-of-centre Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers, and coverage on the BBC.
The bishop says that the marginalisation of Christianity as the recognised rudder for British life has created a loss of sustainable moral values, and that a that radical form of Islam is threatening to fill the gap.
Last week he said that respect for Islam in Britain “may have gone too far” and backed a hard-line evangelical resolution for the Church of England’s General Synod (its ruling assembly of bishops, clergy and lay people) calling for more overt attempts to promote the Christian message among Muslims.
His article criticises “multiculturalism” and says that historic Christianity knitted together a "rabble of mutually hostile tribes" to generate a British identity which was able to create a global empire.
But now, he believes, the trajectory produced by the "social and sexual" revolution of the 1960s has led to a steep decline in the influence of Christianity over society which church leaders have failed to resist.
The nation is now gripped by the doctrine of "endless self-indulgence" which has led to rising crime and the decline of the traditional family, he says.
The bishop argues that the government has been able to come up only with “thin” values - such as tolerance, decency and fairness – which are not “freestanding” but rely on a particular belief system rooted in Judaeo-Christian thought. More substantial resources are needed, he suggests, for an “ideological battle” against radical Islam, which he likens to the Western struggle against Marxism.
Dr Nazir Ali’s comments have produced sharply diverging responses, with strong endorsement from internet readers of the newspapers that have publicised them, and disagreement or dismay from others.
Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation said that it was wrong and misleading to characterise Islam in terms of its wilder fringes, and that together people in Britain could build a common future.
The National Secular Society suggested that he was trying to “save Christianity” by raising the spectre of Islam – though secularists have also attacked what they see as the growing influence of the Muslim religion in British public life.
Simon Barrow, co-director of the religion and society think tank Ekklesia, said that the bishop’s comments were “misguidedly trying to defend the myth of a ‘Christian nation’ rather than looking at how Christianity has often historically lost its way by becoming a cosy part of a withering social, political and cultural order.”
He added: “There are indeed serious issues about moral cohesion in modern, plural societies. But diversity and disagreement cannot be wished away, and a vision of social justice and responsibility will not be created by lecturing people, seeking to restore Christian privilege, portraying Islam as the new threat, or bemoaning the loss of a monoculture.
"The churches need to be seen as small-scale communities of positive hope, not wounded dinosaurs complaining that people do not take them seriously any more and that the country is going to the dogs,” he concluded.
Dr Nazir-Ali is the only Church of England diocesan bishop from an Asian background. Born in Pakistan, he became an Anglican via Catholicism, and was Bishop of Raiwind and general secretary of the Church Mission Society (CMS) before moving to Rochester.
Passed over as Archbishop of Canterbury when Dr Rowan Williams was elected, Dr Nazir Ali is regarded as a senior Church of England bishop and sits as a member of the unelected House of Lords, by virtue of a privilege given to the Established Church.
Standpoint is a new monthly political comment magazine aimed at a “thinking public” and backed by shipping millionaire Alan Bekhor. It is supported by the right-of-centre Social Market Unit, a think-tank which aims at “driving its coach and horses through the liberal consensus” and which Bekhor helped establish, according to The Observer newspaper.
Other corporate backers include the John Templeton Foundation, which hands out the world's largest annual cash prize for improving the understanding between science and religion.
From http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/7202
The Mail must be referring to Rev. Ray Galton, he of Hancock, Steptoe and the CPGB(PCC)/Weekly Worker (and now, Respect Renewal). He's the BBC-CoE-Communist-Islam conspiracy all in one.
'Ex-Trotskyist' Dave?
I prefer the term 'post-Trotskyists' to describe us lot.
Bid of academic kudos.
Anyway, back to the Bish Bash Bosh: Nazir Ali's comments are aimed, I hazard a guess here, at the sentiment amongst orthodox Christians, who have forged strong alliances with the growing Afro-Caribbean Christian groups. Every word of his statements seems to me the kind of thing to resonate with me Black mates. Particularly their mums.
Dave, you may live in an area with a strong Muslim presence. I suspect - 'coz I know that area - that there is also a strong Afro-Caribbean presence. I will not tell you something you don't know, but merely remind you that relations between Muslims and Black people are not always good. In fact if you talk to Nigerian Christians you will hear stuff about living under the jackboot of the Islamist slavers in the North of the Country which would make you have some sympathy with their views. Indeed, given that black African Christians tend to have left-wing views on most (non-gay) subjects, and are staunch anti-racists and generally (I use these words with some reservations) some of the best types you could meet, you could have got the picture.
I suspect, given his background, that the Bish's bid is aimed at them. Nigerian Christians are, as we all know, the most dynamic and growing force in this
Btw: I noticed that during the Channel Four documentary
on Christian Fundamentalism the high proportion of black Christos.
BTWBTW: none of this erases the correct post-Trot line of loathing for all all of Christianity. In reality our main local struggle for secularism is against them taking control of parts of the social services. And they horpille me every time they talk of their Bible.
"Religions – like political parties – have to secure their own support base in the marketplace for ideas."
Surely his bleating is much akin to the dwindling lefties moaning about the rise of the BNP?
'Church of England schools, and education establishments of other faiths, enjoy huge subsidies from the state'
Can I very gently break the news to you that, even though I am a practising Christian as well as a post-Trot, I am not exempt from paying tax? Any more than all those non-Christian parents who are desperate to get their kids into church schools because they don't like what they see in state-subsidized schools of the secular variety.
Are you really trying to say that you don't like parents having a choice because it gets in the way of your pet social engineering projects?
And by the way, do you have any actual evidence of Nazir-Ali's intolerance, or is it just something you feel in your water? My own guess is that he experienced enough intolerance as the son of a Pakistani Christian convert to make him strongly pro-tolerance. What he doesn't like is tolerance of intolerance.
As it happens I have some sympathy with Mr Grumpy about schools, but there is good reason to question Nazir-Ali's agenda.
He is an advisor to the Centre for Social Cohesion, which, like Standpoint, is a project of the Social Affairs Unit.
The centre's director, Douglas Murray has some pretty interesting views of his own on Muslims:
"Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one. Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don't have a mosque to go to, then they'll just have to realise that they aren't owed one. Grievances become ever-more pronounced the more they are flattered and the more they are paid attention to. So don't flatter them."
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3xflla
Well, it does look like N-A has a rightwing agenda; the magazine his article appears in seems to have ambitions to be the British equivalent of Weekly Standard.
See here:
http://www.septicisle.info/2008/05/standpoint-magazine-and-marginalisation.html