The power structures within society are all wrong – and no one is saying so

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As I write this I should be listening to Kemi Badenoch on the BBC's Today Programme, but she appears to have nothing to say of any consequence - and is actually making a virtue of that fact -  so I thought I would wrote about an earlier part of the same programme.

A vicar - Rev Jane Manfredi - celebrated the practice of charitable giving at Christmas, whilst noting that Justin Welby had his gift to the Childrens' Society returned.

She talked about the merits of giving to food banks, to relieve poverty, to children in care, and more. And of course there is merit in doing that.

But whilst she acknowledged the pressure from advertisers to spend on other things, what she never asked is why food banks are necessary, why there is poverty and why children are in care?

There was no hint of questioning the system that we live in.

She said alms-giving was a fundamental part of Christianity.

If she's read the Gospels (and I have, many times, without claiming to be a Christian in any conventional sense as a result) she'd have realised that questioning the power structures within society is much more fundamental to Christianity than alms giving ever was, or should be.

Why did she so fundamentally miss the point? Could it be that she is missing the point that Welby's downfall hints at, which is that the power structures in society are all wrong?


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