And where has the Primate of All England been as the slow- and not-so-slow moral collapse of Britain has been unfolding? Occupying his left-wing Islamophilic eyrie and assuring his flock that Sharia law was inevitable in Britain. It took the prime minister to do his job of reminding Britons that Christian values are central to British life and deserve to be “treasured.” Mr. Cameron left the theological values largely to one side and concentrated on the pragmatic side of the religious compact: “responsibility, hard work, compassion, and humility.” Those are, Mr. Cameron said, “values that speak to us all — to people of every faith and none. Those who oppose this usually make the case for secular neutrality. They argue that by saying we are a Christian country and standing up for Christian values we are somehow doing down other faiths. I think these arguments are profoundly wrong.”
Quite right. In another time, you might have expected this message to emerge from Lambeth Palace instead of 10 Downing Street. But it’s part of what Trollope called “they way we live now” that many historical institutions and those who lead them have joined the forces of opposition. Instead of preserving and transmitting the values they were created to cherish, they undermine them. Rowan Williams is a case in point. The very least we ought to be able to expect from the Archbishop of Canterbury is public support for the traditional values of the Church he leads. But no, Rowan Williams has thrown his lot in with what the American critic Lionel Trilling called “the adversary culture of the intellectuals,” leaving it to the prime minister to stand up for the moral values that made England England.
As primate the Archbishop has the job of holding the Anglican communion together by trying to wear off the edges of theological conflict. Maintaining the organization is one of the burdens of organized religion.
Finding that he has no influence on the spiritual life of Great Britain he apparently regards his job to be the support and shill of the Welfare State. It won’t pay the bill falling do and it won’t shore up the dying church, but it’s a job.
Cameron, let us notice, is vindicating Baroness Thatcher’s position.
Speaking as an American Anglican, I believe it is Archbishop Williams who has made himself spiritually irrelevant. For most of it’s life, the Anglican Communion was dominated by its white, English speaking churches. But as these became dominated by leftist, semi-secular clergy, membership fell off. In the meantime, faithful Third World Anglicanism was growing by leaps and bounds. When Williams became Archbishop, he had to choose between dancing to the tune of the very rich, but very small Episcopal Church in the USA, or joining his African and Asian peers in upholding the ancient faith. He went for the money, and has drifted further and further from Christianity ever since.
Ironically, when choosing the ABC, Tony Blair had to choose between Williams, and Bishop Nazir-Ali, then Bishop of Rochester. Nazir-Ali, a Pakistani Muslim who converted to Christianity, is one Britain’s firmest supporters of Western, Christian values. Having actually lived with Sharia, he would never entertain its spread to Britain.
Yes, what a shame about the passed over Bishop Nazir-Ali of Rochester. He would have been a MUCH better choice than Williams.
I used to be an Anglican, but because it’s full of Rowan Williams—left-wing Pollyannas rather than “muscular Christians”—I’ve decamped to the Roman Catholic Church. It has its problems, but the Anglican Church’s moonbat, secular theology—an oxymoron, for sure—is not one of them. E.g., A Canadian archbishop called Colin (fittingly, pronounced “Colon”) has recently ordained to the priest[ess]hood a radical, pro-abortion, lesbian ex nun.
IMO, the Anglican Church, with its progressive, secular leadership, is past saving. (Well, who knows, as all things are possible with God. . . ). This institution, founded on a rejection of authority, is not only fraying at the edges these days, it’s having a major internal meltdown. Kyrie eleison.
And BRAVO, Mr. Cameron!
Now we shall see who is Defender of the Faith in a “constitutional” monarchy.
Nicely laid, Mr. Kimball. It was fantastic watching Mr. Cameron find his footing amid the slippery pitch, striding forward powerfully to strike the pudding fleshed monster of diversity politics. We have seen the counter blow. Now will we see the coup de grace?
I agree. It is like he just woke up, looked around and is seeing things more clearly now that the dream world is fading. I do not think he will lay down again quickly.
Surprising Cameron! The first upper I’ve had since the dead-downer of watching the last “debate” among Republican candidates (if you can call them that). And a strong and simple opinion piece, Roger. I go forth slightly more upright this Sunday, to visit my wife in hospital, and to tell her of a delightful affront to an Archbishop — by a PM no less.
As an American living in London it may be presumptious of me but I believe the cricket phrase most like ‘he hit a home run’ is ‘he hit it for six’ since both mean he hit it out of the park or over the boundary (and thus scoring six runs in cricket). Batting a century, one hundred runs, is wonderful but takes time: a day, more or less, in cricket; rather longer in politics. But sixes are spectacular and, I think, rarer than home runs. One hopes that Cameron keeps on hitting them in the current climate.
From here in Deepest Central Maryland, I’d like to see that PM Cameron start a whole series of “Hundreds”, however long it takes, against the creeping sharia and Muslim/Islamic this, Muslim/Islamic that…….play their own “Time” card against these encroaching, infiltrating, contaminating Muslims/Islamists themselves, already entrenched in Britan-istan.
Islam’s insidious strategy of socio-religio-gradualism seems to know no time constraints. They’re doing very well, so far, by all appearences. They lost out the first time around, only getting as far as Vienna, Tours/Poitiers after chewing their way into all of North Africa and upwards through the Balkans and the Iberian Peninsula using active, very bloody “kinetic”, (…is it?…) warfare.
Only a “few centuries” means little to our Muslim/Islamic penetrators. Let’s the rest of us start our realization of this threat right now.
This, of course, means forgetting “diversity” for diversity’s sake, and “ecumenism” simply for the sake of ecumenism. Our….our….Islamist adversary is playing for keeps…not for mere transient political “points”.
We must realize this now.
Let’s hope Williams doesn’t respond by bowling a googly.
Or maybe WIlliams will bowl a maiden over….
The century is a mirage, nay, a lie. He didn’t veto anything as there was nothing to veto. The French President Sarkozy just ignored him. Cameron is lieing and the press in the UK are perpetrating the lie. He didn’t stand up for Britain, nothing at all. I suggest you check out http://eureferendum.blogspot.com for some truth about the matter. Admittedly, he has gained in public support because folks in the UK are fed up with the EU, rising electricity bills, etc. so his “veto” is seen as a good thing. Britain has no influence with Germany and France (Merkozy) and why would they want any? The UK does not belong in the EU, its success has been to avoid the problems of Europe, and look abroad.
Yes, the continent is indeed cut off by a heavy fog, but the fog is in Cameron’s mind and a compliant press.
Cameron was widely recognized as coming from the malleable part of the Tory continuum coming in to his life as leader. He is starting to surprise and not in a bad way. One deed does not reverse a trend but it needs encouragement and careful watching so that the one good deed is joined by others. In denying the use of EU institutions for the new euro plus pact, Cameron has struck well and has followed up with his foray into defending the faith, another good blow. The UK’s survival depends on him continuing this surprising new tack. May he be rewarded electorally if he continues on this new road and may he gain legions of imitators.
I think you could take anything in EUReferendum with a certain quantity of salt. An excellent fellow no doubt, but with a certain fixity of opinion on some matters.
It is possible that the other leaders ignored Cameron, but their plans for a highly suspect tax on bank transactions will fail very badly if all activities in London are not included. The remaining 20% of such activities that has not yet migrated to London will almost certainly do so if said tax is placed on European based transactions only. And why the EU wants this tax isn’t clear, their own advisers agree that it will reduce economic activity and reduce the overall tax take as a result. I suppose though, the bank tax will flow straight to the EU rather than to national governments and that’s the attraction; the various National governments will be the ones with less tax income. And of course it would have hit the UK disproportionately hard, so perhaps that’s the other attraction from an EU (and Franco/German) point of view. A nice piece of “beggar my neighbour”, all neatly undermined by Cameron refusing to be part of it.
He may be a political jelly on legs most of the time (and I for one have little respect for his policies to date), but on this one he just might have hit the right choice, even if by accident.
Robert of Ottawa: Since when did the British press comply with a Prime Minister’s wishes/utterances? In days of yore you had The Times and The Observer – mealy-moutpieces though they were – holding the fort as defined by the 1922 Committee, cfr. the Tory Party.. Nowadays there is the Daily Mail and The Sun left to battle intellectuals gone astray – perhaps chipping in The Independent on a good day..
Your image of Fog and Channel is, I am afraid, skewered..
The current malaise of Britain, indeed most of Europe, will not be laid to rest until moral necessities are given a new lease on life..
The welfare state is going down and is taking many of us with it..
The guilty party is to be found between blairites and majors*!!
*Frm. PM John Major
The Primate has been acting like a primate for far too long.
As the American son of an Englishman I say to you Roger: “Hear, hear!”
When I was stationed in The Netherlands (Note: Holland is a province, not the country) my dad visited us by way of London from his home in the States (he was naturalized in 1942 so that he could join the US Army in WW II). He didn’t recognize his home country and it broke my heart to hear him rail about the loss of what made Britain great.
I suspect Cameron will be more successful politically than expected, especially if he sticks to his guns and expresses himself in public and argues for the right course the way his most successful Tory predecessors did in years past.
I too lament the long, slow slide into self-denegration, self-flagellation and self-destruction that our intellectual, “elite,” and professional entertainment class insist we engage in and hope we arrest it before it’s too late. The first step is recognizing that it’s OUR responsibility to do so, by not rewarding our political class with re-election among those who insist we engage in it. We the People are ultimately responsible for our fate…and we need to support those who speak for Western Civilization in our representative Republic, not those who champion Occupy Wall Street and all the other political pygmies that seem to dominate the narrative in our public discourse.
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? “
I knew Thomas Becket, Archbishop Williams and you are no Thomas Becket.
I believe he’s quoting Henry II and not Becket.
But it’s still really funny.
1. If it holds up, this backbone of Cameron’s is a pleasant surprise indeed. I had placed him in the same category as John Lindsay.
2. During their bleating about what Jesus would do, the usual suspects should ask themselves what the founder of the Church of England would do. I’m not sure where I’d want to be less if Henry returned: in the shoes of the St. Paul occupiers, or in the shoes of the Anglican “clergy” who coddle them.
Whoda thunk that hiding deeply inside just another mediocre upper class squish was a Churchillian lion’s heart?
While even a broken clock can be right twice daily, considering how debauched and misbegotten our leadership has become, it is nice to, once every blue moon or so, contemplate eventual return to normalcy. Even when all seems hopeless, always remember all the times in history when it was way bleaker, yet we survived. And even prospered.
Good show, Mr. Cameron.
My thoughts exactly: Cameron has learned (or is learning) how to channel his inner Churchill. This could be good for him and good for the UK.
The speech is excellent and well worth reading in its entirety.
It was actually queen Elizabeth who restored the church of England and was responsible for the direction it took.
I assume the primate is also a tinkerbell.
If Rowan Williams is holding himself forth as a Druid, he ought to either be censured by the Druids- they have a registered church- or bounced from the Anglican communion for holding to another faith. Which, btw, he has sworn to forsake, on a regular basis, every time an infant gets baptized, among other times.
The Anglicans have to clean house every so often, and I don’t know why. They had to bounce out an Episcopal priest who declared herself a Muslim. They had a trial, with formal charges and everything. Maybe someone in England could look up the transcript for notes on how it’s done. I don’t know that Baptists go haywire quite like this, for comparison.
To reiterate: the Druids formed up a church, registered it in the USA. It has a formal structure, it has officers, it has festival days, it has a book of faith and prayers. If Mr Williams is claiming to be a member of this church, he ought to either show his papers and prove it, or be considered a right old fraud. And, if he can show papers- he ought to be read out- bell,book, and candled out- of the church that is his first home.
He might be a pompous jackass, but certain foolish boasts do have consequences.
It must be acknowledged that Archbishop Williams is frequently very silly, and addicted to the stroking the left intelligentsia.
However, on the Druid issue, I’ll have to plead his case.
There are the neo-pagan druids (origins in the 1900′s but only became more than a few fringe eccentrics in the 1960′s); but the druids Williams is associated with are a different bunch, the National Eisteddfod of Wales and Gorsedd of Bards among whom ‘druid’ is an honorary rank.
Their origins were with the revival of Welsh music, literature and culture from the early 19th century, and Rowan Williams is Welsh.
In Wales the eisteddfod druids are entirely respectable and pretty much uncontroversial.
IIRC the Queen is an honorary druid as well, not mention a whole bunch of Welsh speaking politicians, actors, rugby football players etc.
There’s an Episcopal church in our area that, when we first moved here, was being looked on with great suspicion because its rector and associate (or rector and wife, or perhaps wife=associate rector too – reports varied) were performing Druid rituals in the Mass. We were church-shopping at the time; we decided that the LAST thing we needed was to embroil ourselves in that kind of thing, so we kept shopping until we found the place where we landed.
I love my church. I don’t always love my Church.
It is now Mr. Cameron’s privilege to give the roar of the British lion. While it may not have been the full-throated version of Sir Winston or Lady Margaret, it was still a roar nonetheless. It is to be as devoutly hoped that Mr. Cameron continues to develop his voice as it is that the degenerate Mr. Williams will discover the virtues of silence.
Aslan returns.
My impression from deep in the dark heart of fly-over country is that the Church of England, presided over by Rowan Williams, is in an advanced state of moral and spiritual decay.
Rowan reminds me of the clergyman who married Princess Buttercup to Humperdinck in “The Princess Bride”…the one who said “Wen wuv, twoo wuv, wiw fowwow you fowwevow…”
Good to read an article which references both Trollope and a “shape”.
Hurrah for Cameron! Forget about Obama: American people love you guys!
OK, I have a question from flyover country here in the States. How the he*% is this Looney Tune the Arch Bishop of Canterbury????? Someone earlier mentioned Thomas Becket and I’m fairly confident that Becket is looking down from the Heaven going ” Really?!?? This is the guy?”
Well Baptists tend to split into factions over time. The different factions will form a conference. Of course they also form up different conferences. The question of why a Calvary Non-lying Missionary Baptist Church belonging to the Middle, Middle, Atlantic States Conference was formed is oft a complete mystery to its members and sometimes the pastor has to look it up. A common patter is a group will split off because the parent church has gotten to “lax, liberal, and wealthy” and wants to get “back to basics.”
You’ll have to excuse me I belong to a “Lying Baptists” sect and I have to prepare for the Men’s Club Poker Night.
Well Baptists tend to split into factions over time. The different factions will form a conference. Of course they also form up different conferences. The question of why a Calvary Non-lying Missionary Baptist Church belonging to the Middle, Middle, Atlantic States Conference was formed is oft a complete mystery to its members and sometimes the pastor has to look it up. A common patter is a group will split off because the parent church has gotten to “lax, liberal, and wealthy” and wants to get “back to basics.”
You’ll have to excuse me I belong to a “Lying Baptists” sect and I have to prepare for our Secret Men’s Club Poker Night. All winnings got to the Church of course but we keep having to move it to keep those so called “submissive” women from finding it.
The Church of England is politically subordinate to the British Crown. Which in practice means the civil government. 26 bishops and archbishops have seats in the House of Lords, though I suspect they don’t actually attend sessions or vote any more.
Traditionally, Bishops were appointed by the Crown; since the 1700s, de facto by the Prime Minister, often as patronage plums. In recent years only the Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is named by the Prime Minister.
Williams was appointed in 2003, by Tony Blair. Need more be said?
So is there any recent precedent for a Prime Minister tossing an Archbishop out on his arse? Or would that make the office too much of a political football?
There should be some rule somewhere about Canterbury “upholding the dignity of his office.” Letting his freak flag fly should be grounds for dismissal.
And Tony Blair has since converted to Catholicism. It really makes you wonder what he was thinking when he chose Williams.
“Just a week or so back, Mr. Cameron demonstrated that he was not, as many of us believed, a sort of blancmange with legs.”
Sir, have you confirmed this with Angus Podgorny?
the tennis-playing Angus Podgorny?
What seems to be missing from both this article and the comments is any appreciation of the context of Cameron’s veto. In fact it would take a deal more courage for him to have gone ahead and signed the treaty.In doing so he would have lost support from his own backbenchers and failed to show a clear seperation from his coalition partners. So,in a way he had little choice. It plays well because he looks “alpha” and has forced Clegg to look weak and unable to get his way.
Thank goodness for the Tory backbenchers and the Tea Party Patriots, I say.
Silly old Rowan Williams, the head of my communion, whose specialities are nursery moralizing, groteque oversimplification and vapid platitudes.
The long, melancholy, withdrawing roar of the sea of faith.
By the way, vulgar antipodeans refer to scoring centuries as “cracking a ton”. So far, I think Mr Cameron has only hit a six, and not yet cracked a ton.
In Sunday’s on-line NY Post there was a photo of the retired Episcopal archbishop of New York, in full clerical regalia, scaling a fence at Duarte Square in NYC, the idea being, of course, to “occupy” the place. The article mentioned that Jesse Jackson and Desmond Tutu were also supporting the “movement”. So this is not just a British phenomenon.
I have noticed the church of england has been declining in england for quite awhile. seeing a leftist toad like this as archbishop of canterbury it is easy to see why.
Excellent commentary by Mr. Kimball.
But it’s too bad that in this day and age having a “backbone” isn’t the minimum requirement for being considered a man, let alone a political leader. When did we start lionizing politicians for standing up for what they say they believe in?
Shouldn’t standing up for what you believe in be a given? A successful statesman should also be capable of achieving his stated goals.
By that measure all conservatives are complete failures.
Thank you Roger, your articles are always an enlightenment and a joy to read. You and a few others balance out the war mongering for wars paid for with negative funds, outings we wish not to attend and similar busy work that detracts from recognition of the current state of Nation (and the West) and what corrections need to be made. Do you think that Britain may be turning around and beginning to lead alone, until we can find a leader?
PJM should also be commended for their through coverage of the Fast and Furious scandal. It was reported today that the Attorney General believes the immense reverse fury is coming from people who don’t like African-Americans. Wow he didn’t even try patriotism before jumping into the one-past-last refuge, racism. I think it is probably because he is much more versed in one than the other.
I think someone asked that since Fast and Furious seemed designed to kill Mexicans, what the Administration would think if it had been designed to kill African-Americans instead? Perhaps the Administration is filled with closet Hispanic-haters. (There is reported great animosity between African-Americans and Hispanics in the Barry-O’s of L.A.)
But the bottom line is, all involved are responsible for aiding in the death of reportedly 200 law enforcement, and other Mexicans, as well as at least two Americans. As a Law-abiding Nation we must make all responsible pay for these deaths, after we discover all the associated loose gun-giving. Then do whatever is necessary to stop any repeats in the future.