Throw out Williams, throw out all the Williams types

It seems that even in deeply sick contemporary Britain there are lines of madness that cannot be crossed with impunity. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, set off a much bigger row than he expected when he said that some aspects of Islamic sharia law should be officially recognized in Britain. Many people in the Church of England and out of it are calling for his resignation, and Williams is said to be shocked and overwhelmed by the furious reaction against him. Of course he should resign—this ridiculous left-wing hippie intellectual should never have been appointed in the first place. However, I think it would much be better if the Queen, the head of the Church, fired him. And she shouldn’t stop there. It’s time to clean house. Here’s where to start (you could call this my Modest Proposal, except that I mean it):

The Queen should require that all priests and bishops in the Church of England resign unless they actually believe in the Nicene Creed—for example, that they believe, without any mental reservations or refined agonizing from the pulpit, in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ. No more homilies in which the priest or bishop discusses the Resurrection as though it were some weird and embarrassing idea that sophisticated modern people like us could not possibly accept, and then proceeds to provide a symbolic or psychological account of it that may render it assimilable to modern liberal ears but strips away its plain Gospel meaning. This is not a hard condition. The four Gospel accounts, while differing in secondary details, complement each other and powerfully convey the sense that this really happened. In any case, no one is required to be a Christian or a cleric, and someone who does not believe that the Resurrection is simply true (though of course requiring explanation) does not belong in clerical robes.

Also, the Queen should require that homilies only relate to the matters of Christianity, namely the Gospels, salvation, the nature of God and Christ, and personal behavior and morality. All politics must be removed from the pulpit. Nothing about inequality, discrimination, diversity, disenfranchised groups, or the eternal stain of imperialism. The Church exists to serve Jesus Christ in his eternal work of salvation, not to advance political and secular values.

These rules would probably result in large numbers of the clergy, certainly the upper clergy, leaving their posts. Fine. The Church could find devout and able priests to be made bishops. Also there may be quiet believers here and there in Britain who avoid the Church in its present decadence, but who might be drawn back to it, and even be drawn to the priesthood, when they saw the Church becoming a believing Christian body again instead of an extension of the nihilist liberal culture. Better for the Church to be cut back to a devout core, from which it could rebuild itself again on firmer foundations, than to continue in its current state.

- end of initial entry -

James M. writes:

I think there’s as much chance of the Queen sacking the Archbishop of Canterbury and cleaning up the Church of England as there is of the Statue of Liberty marching to the White House and kicking Bush out. She said in a recent Xmas speech that “diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat” (the very wording reveals the lie) and has never uttered a syllable against what’s happening to her subjects and nation, let alone her church. Prince Charles, meanwhile, has said that he would prefer to be called Defender of the Faiths, rather than Defender of the Faith, if he ever succeeds. The royal family, at best, is not actively treacherous, but is definitely complicit in others’ treachery.

LA replies:

I entirely agree with James M. I made my suggestion, not because I think it will happen, but to say what, in a rational world, would happen. Politics begins with the thought, “Here—based on the nature of man, the nature and needs of our own society, and right reason—is the way things ought to be.” Without that starting point, we have no basis for understanding and opposing what actually is. It is only by envisioning things outside the present liberal order, things that are (as James correctly points out) impossible within the present liberal order, that there is any possibility of going beyond the present liberal order.

In fact, a VFR reader in Canada has just sent an e-mail to a large list of recipients, mainly in Britain, in which he copies this present blog entry and writes this cover note:

“See the below post from Lawrence Auster on your current church crisis—maybe this can be made into a petition to be delivered to the Queen. With a few hundred thousand signatories she may take notice.”

Imagine that! Imagine a petition signed by hundreds of thousands of people demanding that non-believing and barely believing Anglican clerics be removed from their posts, that all political messages be banned in the Church, and that the Church become a Christian body again!

Luke P. writes:

“Better for the Church to be cut back to a devout core, from which it could rebuild itself again on firmer foundations, than to continue in its current state.”

I could hardly imagine the Anglican Church possessing the resources necessary for such a fundamental reconstruction of itself. Were the drastic measures that you suggest are necessary actually taken, I would expect the Anglican Church as it is to effectively collapse, with more converts drifting towards Rome, as tends to happen following crises within Anglicanism.

You may disagree with me. As a Catholic, I place little hope in the ability of the Anglican Church to “regenerate” itself, mindful of the words of St Cyprian in the mid-third Century treatise “De Unitate Ecclesiae Catholicae”: “Nothing that is separated from the parent stock can ever live or breathe apart; all hope of its salvation is lost.” (c.f. De Unit., 23)

Another issue—I am quite surprised at this statement:

“Also, the Queen should require that homilies only relate to the matters of Christianity, namely the Gospels, salvation, the nature of God and Christ, and personal behavior and morality. All politics must be removed from the pulpit. Nothing about inequality, discrimination, diversity, disenfranchised groups, or the eternal stain of imperialism. The Church exists to serve Jesus Christ in his eternal work of salvation, not to advance political and secular values.”

I understand the force of your argument—the link between Christianity and liberalism must be severed and to work towards this aim you propose that religion ought to separate itself from modern politics. But you state it as a universal norm—how is a truly Christian society to exist if the Church is to sever itself completely from politics? Wouldn’t a Church that is actively conscious of the need for Christianity to influence all spheres of human life and activity, including the political, be a potent force against liberalism, working towards a society that is ordered towards the good and founded firmly upon tradition and faith? Conversely, wouldn’t a Church which shuts itself off from the political sphere aid the rise of laicism/radical secularism, i.e. the separation of religious influence from wider society and the compartmentalisation of religion into its own isolated sphere? In any case, “politics” can hardly be abstracted from issues affecting all areas of human social life; I am sure you would agree with me on this. One of the reasons that VFR so appeals to me is that you do not take a narrow view of politics, as so many political commentators do, but connect political issues to the wider context of human existence. Considering this, the above statement surprises me, but perhaps I have read too much into it.

LA replies:

Excellent points by Luke P.

On the first point, the Anglican Church is already a dead or dying thing, yet I believe there is a living core. Wouldn’t it be better to cut away the dead and anti-Christian parts now, in the hope (obviously not the certainty) that the living parts can regenerate, than to allow the dead and sick parts to continue consuming the whole until nothing is left?

On his second point, in fact I did realize when writing the blog entry that I was implying a complete separation between the Church and the affairs of society, and I didn’t want to suggest that. My own ideal is the Christian society. However, in the present situation, the only politics in the Anglican Church are sick and deranged liberal politics. In the present situation, it’s too much to say, “Let’s get rid of liberal politics in the Church, and replace them with some traditionalist politics.” No. The thing is to remove the present liberal politics, to purify the Church, so that it can return to its core mission which is communicating the teaching and the person of Jesus Christ. On that basis, a new social tradition could be built.

Kristor writes:

Where do I sign that petition? Lawrence, this was a great entry. Williams’ idiocy depressed me far, far more than Super Tuesday. I have since I heard that news been for the first time in my life seriously considering leaving the Anglican Communion for the Roman. But as I turn this over in my mind, my confidence that Rome will stand firm against the tide begins to waver. Where is one to turn? Serb Orthodoxy, perhaps?

If anyone is alive to our world historical predicament vis a vis Islam, it’s the Serbs.

Kilroy M. writes from Australia:

There is a far simpler way to fix this problem: renounce heresy and rejoin the communion of the Rock of Saint Peter. Apart from the occasional deluded “Catholic” priest here and there, I find it difficult to believe that these Canterburian idiocies would emanate from the Holy See under the stewardship of Benedict XVI, especially after reading his following work: Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (Ignatius, 2005); Values in a Time of Upheaval (Ignatius Crossroad, 2006); Without Roots—The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam (Basic Books, 2006). English Protestantism is putting itself to death.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 09, 2008 01:22 AM | Send