One of the few things of which Bishops and Archbishops can be sure in this fleeting and fitful world is that if they comment on its affairs they will be criticised, and if they don’t, they will also be criticised. Thus, when the Archbishop of Canterbury intervened in the ongoing Brexit saga to protest against the idea that the Government was willing to abrogate international law, there were the usual cries for the Church to stay out of politics, intermingled with the usual “whabouttery” to the effect that how could a church where a recent investigation into child abuse had revealed real failures, comment on politics. The latter reaction, which we get in the Catholic Church too, would puzzle me if it were not so obviously the product of an inability to think. People who engage in that line of casuistry are best left to wallow in their own vomit.
The first cry, “stay out of politics” is odd in a country with an Established Church where the Archbishops and some Bishops have seats in the House of Lord. The Archbishop has responded with robustness: “Christians and people of all faiths take part in the national debate. This is democracy and freedom. I have seen the opposite. Treasure what we have.” He spoke a truth of which we stand in sore need of hearing on both sides of the Atlantic:
Politics, if it is to draw out the best of us, must be more than just the exercise of binaries, of raw majority power unleashed. It exists to seek truth, to bring diverse peoples together in healthy relationships.
If anyone is authorised to speak about morality in politics it is an Archbishop. The binary approach to politics which we have seen growing across the past decade is destructive of the body politic itself. If we cannot disagree civilly with those who have views different from our own then democracy is going to die. In this country at the last general election we had a choice between a communist and a clown, whilst the USA has one between an egotistical braggart and a man slipping into dementia, and neither of their financial affairs bears close scrutiny. Where a system offers people this sort of “choice” whilst failing to deliver on the first duty of government – public safety – then that system is on borrowed time.
We have already seen, with the growth of populist movements, where this could lead, and it is to be hoped that one of the few positives of the current debacle in the UK is that it will provide an object lesson in the consequences of entrusting government to those who make promises which they knew they cannot not keep. The Archbishop is right, if a government admits that it is willing to break international agreements in order to get its way, that needs calling out and condemning, and if it takes a Church to do it, so be it. Sometimes what Caesar needs is reminding that morality plays a part in his world too.
We have created an economic system which lacks any sense of an objective moral order – what Aquinas called natural law. We are stewards of this earth, not its owners. Our leaders are stewards, not absolute monarchs. When they, or we, put power, technology or money above the health and welfare of people, we makes them idols, and we frustrate God’s purpose for mankind. We cannot serve God and Mammon, and it is the duty of Church leaders to call our leaders to account.
*And to help those who wonder why the ABC does not talk about other things, he does, as with this about the situation in Nigeria.
All Along the Watchtower 
Chalcedon – well, we should perhaps be careful about assigning too much moral value to an international law, simply because it is an international law. The international law in question had only been put together a few months earlier, so it is difficult to see how it embodied any deep moral truth.
I think I’d appreciate the Archbishop’s intervention much better if he were more consistent – for example, if he had spoken out against the UK providing Saudi Arabia with huge quantities of arms for their ongoing war against Yemen. If he did speak out about this, then I never heard it.
Of course, it may have been perfectly legal for the UK to supply huge quantities of military hardware, which have killed a far greater number of people in the Yemen than the Covid virus will ever kill in the whole world.
With the `Brexit’ issue, the `international law’ in question was cooked up to preserve something known as the `Good Friday Agreement’ which, in my view, is also very questionable. because it sets in blocks of stone the idea that Northern Ireland has two distinct `communities’, each of which have to get their fair share of the goodies, rather than what they should be doing, which is to show that these `communities’ are actually illusory, the good people of Northern Ireland have more in common than they have dividing them and perpetuating these `communities’ perpetuates false division.
(My own view, incidentally, is that the island of Ireland really should be a single country, but I digress to far from the post and the issues).
I think we should be clear on what is meant by `law’, before we decide on whether or not the Archbishop, by virtue of being a church man, should be getting involved in these arguments.
Karl Barth takes law to mean `religion’. I ploughed through the whole of his commentary on Romans (I don’t recommend this. It has some beautiful nuggets which made it worth while – but these are few and far between and most of it is pretentious language which seems meaningless) and I was surprised in Romans 7, that on a verse connected with the law (the verse that says that the law brought death), he immediately took `law’ to mean `religion’ and started commenting on it as such.
Later on (note that he explained this *later* in the commentary), he goes back to the garden of Eden to see what actually brought `death’. It was not the `righteous requirement of the law’ (i.e. the command not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree); it was Eve’s religious act, listening to a sermon on communion with God, given by the Serpent which did it. This is the first recorded act of religion; before that, they were in the garden of Eden, quite happily fulfilling the `righteous requirement of the law’, until Eve started looking for a greater level of Communion with God and started listening to preachers who had the answers.
So, to understand the matters on which an Archbishop should be pronouncing in matters of `law’, we need a biblical understanding of `law’ and this is basically religion.
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The problem here Jock is that whatever he had said, someone would have said “what about x?” And if he’d mentioned the whole alphabet, someone would still have said “that’s rich coming from a church where sexual abuse is happening.”
In terms of international law, it’s clear from the debate in the House of Lords that some very distinguished lawyers don’t agree with you. The ABC is commenting on the general idea, and surely it’s hard to dissent from the view that it’s generally a good idea to abide by international law, not least since, whether it came in yesterday or 200 years ago, Governments should generally try to keep their word internationally, even if they break it to the electorate on a daily basis?
I think on this one, the Aquinas link to natural law is where the ABC was heading, though I am not sure he knew it.
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Well, you are of course right about the way in which governments should conduct their business; don’t agree that something should be a piece of international law one day and then unilaterally dump it nine months later when it no longer suits.
This principle is very important, but the issue at stake here is quite trivial on the large scale of things (this particular law was intended to protect something known as the `Good Friday Agreement’ – an `Agreement’ between two sects, which encourages sectarianism and does nothing to solve the fundamental problem that, in this setting, there shouldn’t actually be these sects, euphemistically called `communities’).
The UK has broken international law on much worse matters recently – c/f the Chagos Islands (treated absolutely shamefully, because the USA wanted an air base there) and also another example – the seizure of the Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar, which was also clearly illegal under international law. Here is an account, which gives a copy of the UN Convention on these matters, showing that the UK government’s actions were illegal pure and simple.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/07/tanker-seizures-and-the-threat-to-the-global-economy-from-resurgent-imperialism/
It seems that our Archbishop is good at `sound bites’ and jumping on the bandwagon when something closer to home crops up.
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I have added a note Jock to show he does talk about other things too. The point here is the wider one, the duty of Archbishops to speak out on issues.
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Gosh – he’s on twitter. How down-market! I think we already knew that he didn’t approve of the Nigerian shootings before he tweeted it.
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The same might be said, of course, of other things 🙂
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Chalcedon – I am wondering what the division-of-labour is here. It is (of course) the duty of all of us, as Christians, to speak out against wrong things.
I see, though, that it was John the Baptist who spoke out against Herod (and was beheaded for his troubles) while Caiaphas (the high priest) doesn’t seem to think it was his job to speak out against the governing authorities.
In the Old Testament, it was Elijah who spoke out against Ahab. I didn’t see anything suggesting that Elijah was the high priest at the time and I don’t see much evidence that speaking against abuse of power by the governing authorities was part of the role that the Aaronic priesthood was supposed to have.
So yes – Christians have to speak out on issues, but is this really the job of the Archbishop? Isn’t he supposed to be speaking to *his* people (and in the case of Boris Johnson, who is a serial adulterer and a total charlatan it is very difficult to see how he is one of this number) so that Christians are spiritually nourished in the right way so that they can see clearly and have the courage to speak sense?
It’s not clear to me that this should be within an Archbishop’s remit.
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In a country with an Established Church, everyone is ‘his people’, the CoE is there for all who want it. That is one reason he has a seat in the Lords.
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It’s quite possible to find plenty to quibble about here, and in fact, there’s quite a lot I would and could, in a different setting. It would be a very interesting evening down at the local.
But I’m not going to because while I disagree on a fair number of the thesis, and anyone you reads me will know which, C arrives at the correct destination going the correct way.
His last paragraph is spot on, and while there are a few exceptions, which Aquinas allowed for, he is spot on correct.
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Thank you, Neo. You correctly see that this is about the wider issue, not the specifics of Brexit.
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Indeed so. Brexit, and our Presidential election are things that go into the makeup, but they are not really the problem.
John Adams said it as well as any when he said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
And he said that about a government specifically designed to counter ambition with ambition and power with power.
It’s actually worked pretty well, as has the mor ad hoc British equivalent, But as we see Adam’s last sentence become visible, we also see the fraying and tattering of our systems.
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That is, alas, both very true and extremely apposite in timing. It is a worry for us all.
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It is that,
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One of the things which one notices if one lives long enough is the way in which so much of the public discourse which pretends to be about principle is really about expediency. For example, many of those ‘keep your rosaries of our ovaries” advocates who insist that Catholic morality should have nothing to do with Law or policy were absolutely insistent that Presidents and Prime Ministers should have followed the lead given by the Pope at the time of the Iraq war.
In politics and in life very few people will stick by a principle if it harms their perceived short-term interests. And yet the building blocks of many constitutions, legal systems and thriving civil societies is the assumption that people with power will tend to do the right thing because it is right. Or, to put it the other way round, a virtuous people is the necessary foundation for a successful commonwealth. If neither the people nor the powerful put any sort of premium on consistent virtue then the prospects for societal flourishing are not great.
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Those are excellent points, and we begin to see where a want of virtue is leading to us. At least in the past we saw hypocrisy, which is, after all, the tax vice pays to virtue.
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Stimulating and interesting – both the article and the comments.
I think in the States you’ll find evangelical churches will discuss the issues of the day from the pulpits; Anglican churches across the board do not. To my mind, in this instance, the Anglican is the better way. We are taught Jesus, the Gospel, the 10 Commandments, the history of the Church and its tenets. From that we are to make the best choices we possibly can. Our Presiding Bishop (the equivalent to the Archbishop of Canterbury) issues no statements on topical issues.
While I fully understand your description of President Trump, I think you fail to see what he has accomplished. The most pro-life President we’ve ever had. President Obama made the most alarming statement when he said, very loud, that America is not a Christian country. We are, indeed, a Christian country and all of our founding documents suggest this is true. Even the signers who weren’t believers believed that the Judeo-Christian frame was the best construction for this new country.
As always, the Bible is quite right, Jesus is quite right, in that we can’t serve two masters. I will follow the person who most closely follows the will of God.
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Audre – the problem with politicians is that they aren’t very good and that anybody who would be good at politics simply doesn’t want to do the job.
Here is a video of our Prime Minister. At least, he was Prime Minister for approximately 10 months in 1919.
While he plays the piano rather nicely, I’m afraid you’ll need a sick bag if you want to watch the movie. It is one of the most cringe-worthy boy-meets-girl movies ever made, but the piano playing makes it worthwhile.
He basically resigned from politics and went back to what he enjoyed most of all, playing the piano. He gave a come-back concert in Carnegie Hall in 1922, which apparently went on for almost 5 hours, most of which was encores (apparently he played the entire Sonata Appassionata as one of his encores).
I think that the moral of the story is that decent people don’t really like doing politics very much. They’ll do it if they have to, but they’d prefer to be doing other things (such as playing the piano).
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I think your last paragraph says it – of late, President Trump has been saying he had a great life but then realized he had to run for President.
Thanks for the video, by the way!
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Yes – well, I’m sure that Donald Trump is a fine Christian gentleman ……
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…. I tentatively thought of pointing out that, for Donald Trump, Dudley Moore’s version of the Moonlight Sonata from `Derek and Clive get the horn’ would be more appropriate.
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Chalcedon – I do get the point, but at the same time find myself very uneasy.
I can give one example of where I did hear a church man talking about politics in a sermon and where he made a very good point, very well and (in my opinion) correctly within the context of his remit.
The minister was working through Genesis for his Sunday evening sermons and he had reached Genesis 2 and the creation ordinances. He pointed out that, while a day of rest was a creation ordinance, work was also a creation ordinance (just as marriage was a creation ordinance) and – this is where he came in with the politics – if people could not work due to some government policy, then the policy was highly questionable.
With a few brief remarks, the political point had been made and he then continued with the meat-and-potatoes of his sermon, which was about the creation.
He had spoken to those who had chosen to come along to listen to him and, to these people, he had imparted some very important Scriptural principles which should inform us when we go to the polling station to vote.
I think he was probably conservative by instinct, but this was in the mid 1980’s and the soaring unemployment clearly bothered him quite a lot, as it should.
With Justin Wellby, something looks decidedly odd about his interventions and statements, which I cannot quite put my finger on.
Perhaps if he had also spoken up when the government actually agreed to these international laws which it wanted to break only 9 months later, it might have looked more convincing – it was completely clear that it would be very difficult to properly honour the result of the democratic vote (which was `leave’) with such statutes in place in international law – because without having intervened when the international law was agreed to, it looks as if he isn’t so serious about the principle that international laws should be good laws; he looks like one of the `sore loser’ remainers.
So I think my basic problem with this is the consistency – or lack thereof. If the sanctity of international law is so important to him, then there were other much more serious examples of where the UK government broke international law (the Chagos Islands, the Iranian oil tanker) where he was absolutely quiet – and he didn’t speak out when the UK government agreed to an international law which would seriously hamper its commitment to delivering on the result of a democratic referendum.
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I appreciate where you are coming fgrom Jock. For me there’s a difference between my vicar and the ABC. The latter has a seat in the Lords and is there to represent the Established Church and therefore has not only the right, but the duty to speak where the Spirit moves him.
If you wanted to argue that the Spirit in this case moves in a mysterious way, I suspect I should not disagree!
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