Posted on 02/16/2008 3:32:49 AM PST by Clive
Rowan's Laugh-In
Archbishop demonstrates why liberal Christianity is a joke
By MICHAEL COREN
A friend of mine went to high school with Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
"He was a nice enough fellow," the friend told me in his lyrical Welsh tones. "But whenever we had rugby or gym he seemed to have a note from his mother saying that he was ill and couldn't do sport."
Never trust a man who won't show his knees or run around a field. And never trust an arrogant liberal, especially one who makes a public statement that the British should introduce a form of Sharia law to their country.
The comments, made a week ago, outraged the nation and were condemned by the leaders of all of the major political parties, most of Williams' own senior bishops, Catholic and Jewish leaders, editors and commentators and even many influential Muslims.
The archbishop made the usual semi-apology that wasn't really an apology at all and then went on to explain how clever he was and how everyone else was taking him out of context.
The real tragedy here though, good sir, is not your tedious remark but the fact that it doesn't actually matter.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglicans, the United church and liberal Christianity all over the western world have become largely irrelevant.
These denominations still have some money of course and will continue to sell off empty churches to pay bills. But members have hemorrhaged and the old establishment simply is dying off.
DYING DENOMINATIONS
Put directly, within a generation in North America and Europe these denominations will cease to exist in any meaningful manner.
But the damage they have done is incalculable, and in some ways it has little to do with religion. Even people who had no belief system and no time for organized faith saw the church as a representation of the absolute.
Certain acts, attitudes and actions were wrong and while we might fail and fall, they thought, the church was somewhere out there to remind us what was right.
Whether it was theft, dishonesty, cruelty, infidelity, greed, perversion, promiscuity, selfishness, vulgarity or plain old general sin -- a word largely expunged from the liberal theological lexicon -- it was obvious where the good guys stood.
This didn't guarantee a perfect world, but it did oblige us to try a little harder and to resist rather than surrender.
Once the church gave up the fight and said that almost anything was okay if it made you feel good, the door was wide open. Rather like the alcoholic who is told that a drink doesn't matter or the diabetic instructed that candy does no harm.
At the very time when we most needed an unchanging and sometimes annoying principal to tell us there were limits and that we shouldn't cross them, we were instead given a substitute teacher. Rather than a strong voice we had a weak accent.
Within us all there is a God-shaped vacuum. Now it's filled by Oprah, celebrity, sound bite morality and the latest guru with comforting words. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms will save us and the state will pay for the new road to happiness. What a mess!
Roman Catholicism and the evangelical church stand firm and, no surprise at all, Islamic and Jewish orthodoxy are growing steadily. As for the archbishop and his kind, perhaps they can bring an excuse note from their moms. It better be convincing.
And whom does the Anglican Church influence? They do not preach morality, but diversity. They do not teach justice, but whatever feels good. They do not teach G-d, but the anglican church. At best, they have buildings where people can get out of the rain and feel holy....but it is not just the Anglican church, but many other useless buildings.
BRILLIANT!
Excellent article, especially the part that starts with: “Certain acts, attitudes and actions were wrong and while we might fail and fall, they thought, the church was somewhere out there to remind us what was right.”
Too many churches are conforming to culture, instead of teaching that we are to conform to what God has to say on certain matters. With these compromised teachings, liberals churches are aiding and abetting people to commit sin.
Isn’t it? My seventh grade teacher introduced us to Chaucer back in the 1960s. He even made us memorize the introduction to the Canterbury Tales. I suppose that isn’t taught any more...
I love Christianity, but find very little of it in today’s liberal denominations.
Maybe that’s because the libs have the attitude that the organization/government is to be supported and loved to the detriment or destruction of the faith or precepts that brought it into existence.
...and since the libs control the church, then they get to play at god while they defame the real thing. Same thing applies to governments that they control.
Even without a formally organized church, I’m doing a lot of praying about where these turkeys are trying to take us. Especially for the sake of my children and grandkids.
Archbishop Langton was a devoted Scriptural scholar (the first person to divide the Bible into defined chapters), and his Magna Carta showed the impact of a Judeo-Christian sense of justice.
This document marked a turning point in English history, and ultimately formed a foundation for American Constitutional law. The Magna Carta stated, "No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised [property taken] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimized, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."
So: nobody is above the law, not even the King; and the traditional liberties of Britons are never to be abrogated, not even by the King's men.
Britain must not yield one inch to Shari'a, but on the contrary, any immigrant from India or Pakistan who wishes to remain in Britain, must learn to love, embrace, and defend the British heritage of the rule of law.
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