The Bishop of Durham is criticising the Labour government. Well, I’ve no problem with that; join the queue. Except…
A senior Church of England bishop has condemned the Labour Government for forcing God out of politics.
God has no place in politics. God, and the worship thereof, is a personal and private matter and nothing to do with the state or government.
In a public lecture during synod, he will call for God to be put back into government and criticise Labour for creating a “Heath Robinson mess” of British systems of government.
Absolutely not to the first point. Government should be secular and those who wish to, be able to worship whatever gods they choose without hindrance. As for the second point; quite true.
“The Enlightenment kicked God upstairs like the elderly relative in the attic,” he said. This meant rulers felt free to do what they wanted and they had forgotten they were answerable to God.
They are not answerable to God, they are answerable to the electorate. It’s a pity that while the general thrust of his comment is sound, it is spoiled by a desire to drag us back to a dark ages theocracy. The enlightenment was a good thing, not a bad one.
I agree with what you say.
The problem for the Church of England is that it is the established church, so it is forever caught up in the system of government and with the monarchy. The Catholic Church stands alone, independent and can say and do what it likes. The other churches likewise are independent, but the C of E has a large question mark hanging over itself with regard to its legitimacy.
.-= My last blog ..One to watch =-.
Perhaps it’s time for disestablishment? The pity of it is, I agree with most of what he says. I suppose it’s too much to ask a priest to leave God out of it?
God to an atheist means a big man in the sky who doesn’t exist, so when someone says ‘answerable to God’, they hear answerable to an imaginary being, and therefore, because the being is imaginary, answerable to no one or nothing.
You will accept, I hope, that this is opposite of what the bishop means to say, which is that we are all very much responsible for everything we do, and the rules upon which we can be judged by our fellow man are well known by all in their general thrust, if the details be ever disputed.
Dis-establishment should have been done years ago, but I don’t trust those in charge now to change a lightbulb, let alone rewrite the constitution. They’d probably substitute something even worse in its place.
.-= My last blog ..One to watch =-.
Actually, I was taking him at face value. When churchmen talk about God, that is precisely what I expect them to be talking about. At least, I should hope that is what they are talking about. I certainly don’t interpret it as meaning “responsible to nothing”.
While I agree with just about everything he says regarding the political class, I cannot ever accept the idea that God – or more specifically, religion – has any place whatsoever in the legislative process. If he’d confined his remarks the the mess made of our society by the political class and left God out of it, this post would have been very different. But, he’s a priest, so hoping that God would be left at home for the day was too much to expect 😉