Occupy London Mob Takes Aim at Mammon, hits God
Dr Fraser was followed out the door by the Dean of the Cathedral, the Right Reverend Graeme Knowles. Mr Knowles had backed the eviction plans, and fell out with officials who, spooked by Dr Fraser’s resignation, decided it might be a better idea to let the camp remain. A part-time chaplain at the cathedral has also quit. Now it appears the Occupy camp will be allowed to stay until at least Christmas, while St Paul’s, and the Church of England in general, have become a laughing stock.
What has been especially dispiriting about the episode is the willingness with which so many senior church figures have offered themselves up as useful idiots for the Occupy movement. When he resigned from St Paul’s, Dr Fraser, in what was almost a parody of “trendy liberal vicar” speak, told the media that he could imagine Jesus being born in the protest camp.
If he had, he would likely have been brought up an atheist. Those protestors who have a semblance of an ideology, as opposed to those who are just there for the party, are leftists, and it’s doubtful that more than a handful will have ever seen the inside of a church. But they’ve cleverly leveraged the moral authority of the church, such as it is these days, to lend respectability to their cause (a “What would Jesus do?” banner is prominent in every TV news report).
The media have played along, with the Guardian in particular guilty of astounding chutzpah. The bible — if you’ll excuse the expression — of Britain’s secular leftists has run a stream of patronizing opinion pieces invoking the teachings of Jesus; a favorite theme, along with WWJD? is the story of Jesus chasing the money changers from the temple, from which several columnists have extrapolated that Jesus was the first anti-capitalist, and that if he were around today he’d be bunking down with the protesters.
This from a paper that misses no opportunity to sneer at traditional values in general, and at Christianity in particular (other religions, notably Islam, are of course exempt from such mockery). It’s said there are no atheists in foxholes, and they’re equally hard to find when Christianity can be co-opted to advance a left-wing cause.
The muddled but broadly sympathetic response of cathedral officials is hardly surprising. Under the leadership of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the Church of England has been relegated from a pillar of British public life to an ineffectual advocacy group for assorted liberal causes.
Williams is Michael Moore in a dog collar. In his student days he was labeled subversive by MI5 for his links to all manner of left-wing groups, and far from mellowing with age he’s brought every foolish idea with him to the church’s highest office. Two years after 9/11 Williams declared that terrorists “can have serious moral goals,” and in 2008 he called for elements of sharia law to be adopted in Britain; more recently he called the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government’s relatively timid and eminently sensible austerity policies “frightening” in an article for a left-wing magazine.
“a favorite theme.. is the story of Jesus chasing the money changers from the temple”
Given the loss of income these modern day pharisees are inflicting on themselves, maybe God IS chasing the money changers from the temple. He does work in mysterious ways
Didn’t Jesus convince Matthew to quit his job as tax collector to follow him? Didn’t Jesus refer “calling to the sinners” in reference to the tax collectors at Matthew’s feast? IMO, it doesn’t appear that Jesus was a tax and spend Democrat, either.
I can tell you what Jesus DIDN’T do. He didn’t go out and force others to give up their loaves and fishes to feed the 5,000.
…or tell his disciples to render unto Ceasar more than Ceasar needs…or everything they earn.
Just who IS Caesar? Per the Scriptures, Caesar was NOT the Jewish government, but rather the Roman forces occupying and governing Israel. America has no Caesars. This Scripture does not therefore apply. When America has enemy tanks in the streets and a foreign government occupying the White House and running the country, then we will render to Caesar what is rightfully his.
‘What do we want’ ‘We dont really know’ ‘When do we want’ ‘We’re not really sure’ ‘Who is going to give it to us” TAXPAYERS OF COURSE
‘What do we want’ ‘We dont really know’ ‘When do we want it’ ‘We’re not really sure’ ‘Who is going to give it to us” TAXPAYERS OF COURSE
The Church of England used to be known as the Conservative Party at prayer. But now they are the Socialist left wing moonbats on parade. Come to think of it so are today’s Conservatives . LOL
Well, if you look at history, the Pilgrims, Puritans, Methodists, and many others all left the Church of England because they could now longer stomach it.
So this it is nothing new for the Church of England not to follow the teachings of Jesus in Scripture.
“The leadership of the Church of England are making fools of themselves”
And for the first time, too, I’ll bet. Oh, wait.
No, they are not. They already are fools. They are exhibiting themselves.
The CoE became a pack of fools when they abandoned Biblical truth for humanistic error.
Things necessarily become messy when, yourself becomes the basis for your beliefs.
In case anyone missed it, here’s Iowahawk’s version on the Canterbury Tales:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/02/heere-bigynneth.html
The Church of England has always been an adjunct of the English Monarchy.
Williams would not be the Archbishop were his world views not exactly aligned with those of Elizabeth II Battenburg nee’ Mountbatten nee’ Windsor.
Britain, and all of her institutions, has been subject to what appears to be a counter revolution by the monarchy to repudiate Magna Carta and to restore the royal peraogative. The current monarch has presided over the virtual dissolution of empire since she ascended to the throne. It is possible that the outcome is not what was expected, but the gutting of British liberty was always the primary tactic employed.
Perfidious Albion? Perfidious monarchy.
“The Occupy crowd took up residence outside St Paul’s Cathedral almost three weeks ago after police stopped them setting up camp outside the nearby London Stock Exchange. The protest forced St Paul’s to close its doors to the public for the first time since World War Two, causing splits among church officials which have led to the resignations of three members of the clergy.”
Shameful, just shameful. And it seems appropriate that the communists protesting in London have achieved what the Germans could not during World War II, which is close St. Paul’s Cathedral. I think that says something about the British people and how far they have fallen over the years since World War II. To let these communists and anarchists do whatever they want only leads to more violence and destruction, which was seen in the London riots a few months ago. I guess the British, and now local American governments (such as in Oakland, California), have not learned anything about what these people are capable of.
Stop them now before people start to get killed. And if they do, then we will have nobody to blame but our own governments.
On the whole I agree with you, especially about the silly weak Archbishop. The story of the protest at St. Paul’s is a farce.
But It isn’t true that morality derives from religion. Did you ever stop to think how much misery and suffering, how many wars, how much persecution and terror religion has CAUSED?
Old history, and a tired old talking point. Line up the pros and cons item by item and convince me you’re right, or come up with a newer, more plausible argument.
Have you ever considered how much art, music, literature and education the Judeo-Christian tradition has engendered? I thought not.
Have you ever considered how much suffering and death communism has caused in the last 100 years? Yeah, I thought not.
The tired reasoning about religion being the CAUSE of war and misery is a misdirection. People make war! People oppress people! Using religion to obtain and wield power goes back to prehistory. Blaming religion is the same as blaming the hammer when you hit your thumb. That said, there is a religion that lends itself more readily to such use.
You mean FALSE religion my dear. Scripturally based religion has never caused these things.
Right.
Like in northern Europe from Luther in the early 1500′s to Westphalia in, what, 1643 or thereabouts? Or the Civil wars in England? Remember Cromwell?
It is not that religion, even Christianity, has not caused wars, but rather that religious wars are an abuse of Christianity and most other religions.
Yes, I know there is one notable exception.
Jillian, Jillian, Jillian,
“Religion has caused more deaths in history than all the wars combined”.
That smugly pretentious, but inaccurate, statement was already completely discredited by the time I was a freshman in college.
But why let statistics get in the way of a pithy catchphrase? I know, it makes a wonderful slogan, which seems really important to liberals, like “We are the 99%”
That’s rather like blaming a gun for shooting violence, isn’t it? The gun has to be taken into someone’s hand and the trigger pulled to fire.
The Christian religion on its own does no harm until man decides to use it for his own purposes.
Jillian, you’re speaking about the “religions” of Marxism, Facism and collectivism, right?
Because they’ve caused far more misery than any other religion in the 20th-21st Centuries—with the exception of Islam, of course. Although the latter could be described as less of a religion, and more of a totalitarian scam perpetrated by Mohammed’s tribe of Arabs to justify their conquests, rise to power and overweening sense of their own superiority.
Eventually, the Church of England will be so undermined by its traitorous heirarchy that it will either be decoupled from Britain and disappear, or it will be swept clean by those determined to save it as a moral force. Either way, the British people benefit. Be glad that the likes of Rowan Williams are too short-sighted to see that.
…the Church of England’s desperately trendy ‘social justice’ faction
I was shocked when I first read of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s (“Michael Moore in a dog collar”) remarks on the upside of sharia law, his observations as to how it would be/should be integrated into English law.
Then I read the Archbishop, Rowan Williams, presided at the marriage of Kate & William.
I hope he didn’t sing any praises to sharia during the wedding ceremony.
I realize that the system of local government in the UK may differ somewhat from that of the US. You don’t have a Tea Party movement in the UK (of course not, given that it uses imagery from the US War of Independence from Britain), but you do have the EDL. This was written for US audiences, but you might glean something useful from it in the UK:
Who’s your mayor?
What Jesus Would Not Do
The Left and the underlying philosophical structure of the West has become so buffoonish that one might accurately portray it as one would the Bizarro Supermen from the old DC comics.
The most scientific way to discover the extent of hunger is to check out the fast food dumpster at KFC. I do this quite often and find i am the only one present. But this is not a total waste because I love the coleslaw and mash potato`s.
Everything the OWS occupiers believe in is the cause of everything they are protesting.
Dr. Giles Fraser sounds rather like the Anglican Church’s answer to Father Guido Sarducci, except not as funny, or well grounded in moral and ethical thinking.
($.35 and $.35 and $.35…. it starts to add up)
A tip-o-the-hat to Don Novello
NEWSFLASH!!
The Church of England is making a fool of itself!
Really?
Being a C of E clergyman has long been the comfortable hidey-hole of soft-lefty academics who are unable (i.e. too stupid) to land an academic post but fond of an institutionalised stipend with almost zero real workload. This enables them to pursue their soft-lefty causes almost unhindered by work (or belief in God or the Church which employs them).
Guy Fawkes for Archbishop of Canterbury!
Be careful while lighting the candles, though.
– the film Bertie and Elizabeth in which King George V warns the Prince of Wales that when he addresses the working men he is making an ass of himself as neither the King or Prince know anything about the lot of the workers.
The Franchise Affair – an early prophecy by Josephine Tey.
I had always wondered what was wrong with my ears that the archbishop sounded like such a dip. it turns out, he is. How did they let him in? There are remarkable episcopalian priests outside of england. Will they return,in the way that the papacy takes in non- Italians?
these are serious questions. I don’t know the answers. I’m not episcopalian, so I don’t know how they work.