FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Canterbury Cant

Rant Number 514        13 November 2012

The Church’s most awful, infinite sin has been to make it virtually impossible for good people to tell real Christianity from its counterfeit’, raged Kierkegaard in his awesomeAttack on Christendom. The great Dane also quoted Christ’s warning to his disciples: salt that has lost its flavour is good for nothing but for being thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. (St Matthew 5:13)

Justin Welby’s Episcopal pronouncements lack saltiness. The next Archbishop of Canterbury is a safe pair of hands. His words are measured, moderate and cautious. Unlike a previous evangelical archbishop, the clumsy and foolish George Carey, he will not regularly put his foot in it. Justin speaks of real excitement, renewal, of having fun ‘hanging out with people’, does not wish to sound ‘super-pious’, and the like. Could any reasonable person disagree? No. In fact, almost anyone could say things like that. Because they are bland. (‘The bland leading the bland’, Oscar Wilde might have quipped about the Church of England.) Reassuring but also a bit soporific. And insipid. No salt. No spice. Middle of the road Anglican. Boring. Cant. Utterly unlike the Gospel: a tremendous proclamation of Good News. ‘Go and set fire to the earth’, says Jesus.

Bishop Welby says the right things. He believes in the Virgin Birth and in the physical resurrection of Christ. So he is doctrinally orthodox. That is good – especially as he will lead a church in which a substantial number of priests doubt or disbelieve those truths. The Anglican Church has spawned plenty of mitred heretics: Colenso, Barnes, Pike, Jenkins, Spong...Naturally, I am happy the next Archbishop of Canterbury does not join that dismal brigade. Yet, like Kierkegaard, I confess to a grudging admiration for supreme heresiarchs like Marcion, Montanus, Arius, Basilides and Eutyches. They erred but their errors were great ones. They sinned in a big way. (Chesterton says that most heresies grasp at least one little bit of truth.) False teachers they were, yes, but mediocre? No! Nor were the saints and theologians who refuted them – St Athanasius, St Irenaeus, St Augustine – they were not paltry minds, spiritual nonentities. They were giants.

Instead, the comfortable, dog-collared civil servants of the established church who call themselves ‘priests’ play the game safely, even skilfully. They deny no dogma. They challenge no one. They run no risk. They may play at being radicals but they are pleasing, trendy drones, well-ensconced in their vicarages and canonries. And they talk twaddle. They are twats. They mouth insipid clichés, banal commonplaces and pious platitudes. They relentlessly plug cultural and secular pieties like ‘community’, ‘inclusiveness’, ‘social cohesion’, ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ and some such cant. Thus, they are more harmful than the heretics of old. They do deeply mislead and corrupt. Because they are likely to seduce good people into taking their ephemeral catchwords, their ludicrous, bourgeois twaddle for the real McCoy, for Christianity. For the faith of that shocking, divine symbol of outrage and contradiction: the Cross. Does it ring a bell?

Of course, not everyone likes his religion hot, salty and spicy. Many prefer a mild, tasteless fare. Twaddle too appeals to many spiritless men. Imagine Jesus of Nazareth walking into that relatively cosy, tepid, decaying little club, the parish church, on Sunday morning, in the middle of the Vicar’s dreary sermon. Wallahi! Impossible to visualise it, is it? Would people be scared to death? More likely, they would stare at the returned Lord, uncomprehending. ‘Who’s this wild guy? What does he want?’ Too dramatic? But that is the point. Christ and the Church have become antithetical. Opposites. Because the twaddle that passes for Christianity today makes it well-nigh impossible for good people to recognise Christ when he comes.

Consider Welby’s maiden speech in the House of Lords as bishop of Durham. Not that his words are not sensible or meaningful. This former oil executive knows about business, sure. This is a man of industrial competence and ability.North East regeneration, innovation, car plants, VAT, manufacturing, company liquidities, President Obama (?), GDP, jobs, Hitachi, Nissan...you get the drift. It reads a bit like an averagely dreary CEO’s annual company report. The chap’s managerial expertise is real. The C of E has got herself a manager OK but, to vary the metaphor, where is the beef? The priest’s fear and loathing of economism prejudices him here but... this pabulum is neither spicy nor tasty. It is twaddle.

Justin Welby originates from the evangelic wing of Anglicanism. A churchmanship based on the Bible, as opposed to sacred tradition. But evangelicals are not uniform. They divide into liberal, conservatives and ‘modern’ - the wishy-washy middle. Whatever Welby’s strand, his interviews evince a familiar pattern. Men who are bishoped are always careful to sound ‘inclusive’. Thus Welby boasts of his monastic likes, Franciscan and Benedictine, praises the social teaching of the Popes and speaks fairly positively about Islam. In dialogue with the odious, bogus radical Giles Fraser, another twaddle merchant and BBC darling, the new ABC touches all the right buttons. He avers Occupy was right, alludes to bad Western habits in Nigeria and to corporate sin. Sounds salty at first but don’t buy it. It is standard Episcopal con: a dash of safe verbal daring, a few nudges towards Rome, a bit of Leftish rhetoric, the right mixture of moderation and sensible radicalism. Actually, twaddle, twaddle and more twaddle.

On gay marriage Welby was supposed to be ‘conservative’ but now he says he wants to ‘listen’ to gays, lesbians, transsexuals, etcetera. Why can’t he say he is pro? Or against? Why the fudge? More twaddle ahoy, bank on that.

‘You are setting the standard of being a Christian, a bishop, too high’ a Danish prelate complained to Kierkegaard. Like the bloated, smug Anglican bishops offended by Newman’s claim that they should aspire to martyrdom. They would be shocked, wouldn’t they? Christ summoned his followers to oppose the world. He invited them to struggle, to suffering, to fight the world, to the Cross. The standard should be high. Because it is the standard of Jesus Christ.

Anglican salt has definitely lost its taste. Thus, it is only fit to be thrown out and to be trampled underfoot by men.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli