I, inevitably, listened to more of the Today programme than usual this morning as I was on it. In the process I heard the Bishop of Buckingham debate with the Tory MP Nadine Dorries on whether or not the Church of England had a right to suggest people should vote, be concerned about poverty and nuclear power.
Dorries's view was clear. The Church, she said, should stick to those issues where people turned to it for guidance. Apparently in her opinion, because it was the only example she gave, this is about late stage abortion. She made the point twice if I recall correctly.
I have to say that I have never once thought about turning to the Church for advice on this issue, and never expect to do so. Nor, I suspect, would the vast majority do so, but it does definitely conform to the right-wing view that the Church should be primarily concerned with suppressing women's rights, condemning sex, and imposing control.
On the other hand, I would have hoped that the Bishop might have referred to what Jesus said his mission was, which was stated in Luke 4 where it is recorded that he said in his first reported public commentary that:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.
The third line is significant. Dorries accused the Church of being left wing. Maybe she should note that it has a built in bias to the poor by design.
And she also claimed the Bible is full of reports of the dangers of debt, which she sought to use to justify the Coalition's policies, by implication. She ignored the fact that the warnings also carry with them a very clear message on the solution which is that Jubilee - or release from debt - should occur. That is what setting the oppressed free in the year of the Lord's favour means - it is about declaring Jubilee, but it seems very unlikely she knew that.
As an exercise in missing the point it was spectacular.
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Nadine Dorries is with the Pharisees and money lenders. They thought they knew best and who should be silenced.
Going by what you have just recounted, this is not just missing the point Richard – it also shows a complete decoupling from reality that people like Dorries carry around with them all of the time.
For example, she talks about the Bible warning about debt – yet debt has risen because the economimcs of her party can only ever ensure that it does – via not enforcing a living wage, making people unemployed (cuts in the public sector also harmimg the private sector) and cutting benefits.
This is just ignorance – pure and simple.
On a more religious note, I feel that Jesus is too often overlooked these days by people who call themselves Christians. They will refer to God, because God in my opinion is harder more nebulous to pin down as an exemplar of the way to live a good life and therefore easier to follow. This is why I beleive Jesus was created.
The more I think about it, the J-Man seems to cause a lot of problems for the church because he stood up for the poor. I see him as quite a radical – and I think that religious hierarchies actually have a lot of problems balancing him with say their role in the hierarchies of modern state politics which are meant to reinforce certain government policies and outlooks on the poor.
The fact that we have working poor today is totally unaccpetable.
If Jesus was alive today, I would vote for him based on the stories told about him through the Bible that I read in RE as a child.
I am an atheist by the way………….
If I was given the choice of most churches I would undoubtedly be an atheist
Richard- William Penn said the same in the 17th Century (If I’m not mistaken in his book: ‘No Cross, No Crown’). You’re on good Quaker ground here!
Ms Dorries should think that we are lucky that the Church does not enjoy the power that it has had in times past when it more than matched itself against kings and queens and behaved in a less than Christian manner. Now we have a queen who is not allowed to speak (or would that be purr?) openly on political matters and a king in waiting who is allowed to speak but only in private to Government.
I have no affiliation to any religion but I have no objection any religious order stating their views about the state of the world as we are constantly informed by journalists that free speech matters and in that at least they are transparent unlike the Prince of Wales. At least you know where they, the church, are coming from which is more you can say about a lot of politicians.
Don’t shoot the messengers but read the message(s) carefully!
Dorries and Conservatives live in screaming defiance of reality. Jesus’ “good news to the poor” mission statement and myriad others historical figures agreed that reality has a left wing twist to it that is hard baked into the human society and is the principal reason all things Tory are so repugnant to most, and why the Tories passionately hate the church speaking up outside of things between waist and knee – as if God was some sort of sex pervert – and uninterested in anything else.
The end point of history, according to my Bible, isn’t the Tory idyll of rich man in his castle, poor man at his gate, rather, the exclusion of all things Tories hold dear.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”. JK Galbraith
The worst decision (if it was such) Labour made (and continues to make) is ditching it’s Christian left wing roots.
Thanks for your work.
I love that quote
Right on Jk, right on!
“Maybe she should note that it has a built in bias to the poor by design”
Richard, I assume you mean the ‘Church’ in the wider sense than the CoE? The CoE has certainly not been a consistent supporter of the poor as the words of the hymn, still sung today and quoted above indicate (the rich man in his castle, poor man at his gate). I imagine Marx’s atheism must have been reinforced by the way the CoE provided ‘moral’ scaffolding for the iniquities of Capitalism.
I do mean the wider church, yes
Certainly not the many hideous institutional forms it has taken on occassion
Has Nadine Dorries never heard of Bruce Kent?
” the right-wing view that the Church should be primarily concerned with suppressing women’s rights, condemning sex …”
As Nadine Dorries will clearly get no support from you or any of your left wing and atheist followers on here, then please allow me to defend her. If by “suppressing women’s rights”, you actually mean the right of women to abort their unborn children, then I suggest that you refer back again to your Bible to see what Jesus thought of killing an innocent life.
And the Church has never condemned sex in the proper place, that is within marriage. Perhaps you should also refer back to what is said in your Bible about sex outside of marriage,ie. adultery, fornication, etc.
And do please stop referring to the C of E as “The Church”. There was only One Church founded by Jesus, and it most certainly was not those protesting churches started by Henry V111,or any other church that was started by ordinary men in the 16th Century or later, Quakers included.
Jesus did not found a church
His followers did
It’s a human construct full of all the fallacies humans have to offer
I will offer you soem advice from Quaker Faith and Practice – imagine you are wrong. I do quite often. All us humans can be, even (maybe especially) when we are certain
You said that “Jesus did not found a church”
Well Pope Francis and about one billion Roman Catholics would disagree with this statement.
I suggest that you read some Church History. As Cardinal Newman famously said, “To be deep in Church History is to cease to be protestant.”
Your advice is also not complete. Imagine you are wrong. Then enquire everything, read everything, and study everything.
Then ask yourself why there are over 40,000 protestant denomination churches in existence today. Churches that were started by ordinary men since the 16th Century.
And why there is today One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, that has been in existence for over 2000 years.
I respect people of all faiths, and none
It is my belief that there is that of God in everyone, and that faith is not needed to reveal it
You are welcome to your private beliefs but I will not be permitting you to share them again here as such statements have in the past all too often been made as incitements to unrest, and that is contrary to all Biblical teaching
Thank you. I had no thought of causing any unrest. It is simply that many people in the media constantly use the term “The Church” instead of saying The C of E. They speak as if The C of E represents all Christian people, while it of course represents only a tiny minority of Christians in the world.