EU Referendum: the 'Outers' can win with i-Democracy

This is not so much a guest post: it has been penned by Brother Ivo, who has joined His Grace's emerging Ministry Team. This blog has been going now for nigh-on seven years, and most of you cannot imagine (let alone appreciate) the sheer effort and thousands of ash-hours that have been poured into bringing the world a daily homily just about every morning. Brother Ivo has come to His Grace's assistance, and to bring a little more Anglican scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner. He begins by taking up yesterday's important theme:

His Grace has posed the question 'Who is to lead the “No Campaign” in the EU Referendum?' and that remains an important question for the years ahead. Politics will still need its big beasts in the time leading up to that final vote, and for now, we can only trust that a David will be found amongst us to slay the Goliath that is the EU Establishment.

We have however moved on from the days of the Wilson Referendum, and just as David triumphed over the fully-armoured giant using skill, intelligence, fleetness of foot and quick thinking, it is worth reminding ourselves just how well the under-resourced end of the spectrum has performed in making the recently unthinkable happen.

When Britons were last offered a choice in this matter, the entire debate was focused through a limited number of media outlets. There were only three television channels; two of them run by the State. A dozen Fleet Street editors of newspapers and magazines set the agenda and few of them broke ranks against the joint view of the Two-Party Establishment.

It is a scant 18 months since the Prime Minister was declaring the need for his party to 'stop banging on about Europe', and even though the Conservative Party has become more centrally controlled, the earth under the PM’s feet has moved seismically and he could no longer maintain the fiction that people did not see the need for EU reform.

'We the people' saw and understood the issue better than he and the party spin doctors gave us credit. We joined up the dots and detected the relevance of the European monolith across a raft of policy areas from Justice and Immigration to De-regulation and crony Capitalism.

In his book The End of Politics and the birth of i-Democracy Douglas Carswell links chronic national debt to the failure of democracy, a breakdown which exists at both a national and trans-national/EU level.

“The West is in debt because Western Democracy has not been alive to the task of keeping Government small. It has failed to rein in officialdom allowing limited government to give way to Leviathan.”

Yet as he identifies the threat, he draws attention to the weapons of mass destruction in our hands, the very pebbles by which Cameron’s initial disinterest was disturbed and which render the old advantages of the Big Government obsolete.

The critique of the EU developed under the radar in countless discussions, on websites, news feeds, Facebook pages, radio phone-ins, and tweets. None of these existed in 1975. Such technological changes underpinned the Arab Spring and the effects in sophisticated economies will be no less potent.

The People’s Pledge is an organisation that has brought together people from across the political and social spectrum; people as disparate as Bob Crow, Charles Moore, Jenny Jones, and Ian Dale. There were such odd alliances last time with Peter Shore, Tony Benn and Enoch Powell all working together, but the scale of the communications revolution over the next four years is not to be underestimated.

The power of grassroots communication is much greater than it was in the Wilson years: then ordinary folk might have had a typewriter; but only a few even had access to a Roneo machine.

Now we all have mobile phones with the capacity to turn us into instant worldwide journalists via email and YouTube.

Given the pace of technological change hitherto, there is no reason to believe that that is about to slow even as the debate intensifies.

Carswell envisages a future in which more is done by the choice of the individual because the current mechanisms are simply unaffordable. He predicts that 'the digital revolution will do to the grand planners of the West what the collapse of Communism did to the Soviet planners in the Soviet bloc'.

On this blog we are aware of today but we also remember yesterday. The Duke of Wellington remarked that battles are won by the led, but victories are conceived in the minds of leaders. We should not denigrate great leadership if it should come our way, but we need not assume that the power of change will look like it did in the past. We may indeed find ourselves surprised as David himself was surprised.

His motto for success might have been that of the Alabama State American Football Team which worked on the premise that they must all take responsibility for success.

If no leader emerges quickly it will serve as a rallying cry.

To succeed, their coach used to tell them they must be 'Lean, Mean, Mobile, Agile, and Hostile'.

EU Referendum: who will speak officially for 'Out'?

As might have been expected, the reaction to the Prime Minister's announcement of an In/Out referendum on UK membership of the EU has divided opinion - among both sceptics and philes; politicians, economists, journalists and bloggers. Some say it is a watershed moment in British political history; others that it's a ruse, a sham, a bribe simply to increase David Cameron's chances of re-election in 2015 (not to mention a complete deflection from the whole 'gay marriage' saga about to be unleashed upon Parliament).

All of this was entirely predictable: we've been lied to for 40 years, so it's really no surprise that the Father of Lies should be aroused to crush the glimmer of national salvation. But let us be clear about one thing: UK membership of the EEC was ratified by referendum of the people in 1975: it can only be undone by a further referendum. David Cameron has now promised that referendum, and only he is ever likely to be in a position to deliver on that promise.

You may not trust him because of his previous 'cast iron guarantee' on the Lisbon Treaty, but there were complex reasons for that U-turn, not least the post-ratification context of the 2010 general election. Do not forget that he pledged to take his MEPs out of the federalist EPP grouping in the European Parliament, and he delivered on that. A bit later than promised, certainly, but he delivered. Nigel Farage will not be prime minister in 2015. Neither will Nick Clegg. The choice will be between the Conservatives - who will bring draft legislation to re-negotiate with the EU, and a manifesto commitment to a referendum - and Labour, who yesterday appeared to rule out both.

You may loathe Cameron and despise the Conservatives. You may not trust or believe either, with very good reason. But if you really want to act in the national interest in order to have a hope of restoring national sovereignty and our ancient liberties, you will need to hold your nose in 2015 and vote Tory.

The Prime Minister has made it clear that he will campaign for the 'In' side. And that is an entirely honourable position, notwithstanding that his 'In' appears not to be contingent on the success or otherwise of his re-negotiated settlement. But let us be clear, if that settlement does not include - as a minimum - repatriated control over borders, fishing, employment, welfare and social policy, justice and human rights, then there cannot be the 'flexibility' he demands. And that will mean that David Cameron will have failed in his negotiations. And that will be more likely to incline the people to vote 'Out'.

Except that the Government, Church, Crown, BBC, Guardian, FT and the entire Establishment will be pouring their time, money and concerted effort into the 'In' campaign. They will be slick, organised and professional. The Prime Minister will campaign alongside the Leader of the Opposition (and the 'third party' LibDems), and the media will fawn at their statesmanlike feet, lapping up every word of their economic obfuscation and political lies. But at least their campaign of deception will be united, and the BBC will know whom to call when they want a spokesperson to argue passionately, intelligently an knowledgeably for the 'In' side.

But who will speak for 'Outers'? Seriously, who will answer the phone for the 'Out' campaign? UKIP? The Democracy Movement? Nigel Farage MEP? The Freedom Association? Dan Hannan MEP? Douglas Carswell MP? The European Foundation? Bill Cash MP? Dr Richard North? Open Europe? Better Off Out? The Bruges Group? The Express? The People's Pledge? Conservatives Against a Federal Europe? Global Vision? The Campaign for an Independent Britain? Peter Bone MP? Mrs Bone?

You see the problem. While the 'Inners' will be disciplined, coordinated and united in their quest, the 'Outers' consist of a ragbag of 'swivel-eyed nutters', 'right-wing xenophobes', 'eccentric little-Englanders', not to mention the 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists'. And (here's the important point) most of them simply can't stand the sight of each other. There's backbiting, distrust and an entire dung-heap of mutual loathing.

If the 'Outers' are to have any chance of winning in 2017, there needs to be cohesive planning and preparation for victory. But even UKIP can’t coalesce around a single political strategy, with its own (few) elected politicians resigning, defecting and demanding a change of leader. The anti-EU movement is defined by that to which it is antithetical: there is no unifying movement towards any positive vision, and that includes even the idea of a referendum. In truth, there are some very prominent individuals who are so unyielding in their infallible opinions and uncompromising in their dispositions that unity of purpose is an impossible ask: the contempt they have for others is palpable. Even the arch-Eurosceptic Bill Cash MP has been heard to criticise the arch proponent of 'Better Off Out' Douglas Carswell MP - for having 'extreme views' on the EU. And His Grace won't go into what Dr North thinks of Dan Hannan, or speculate on what Mrs Bone dreams about Nigel Farage. 

As far as the 'Outers' are concerned, we not only have the People's Front of Judaea and the Judaean People's front, but the Front and Rear of the People Faffing Around about Semantics in Samaria while the occupation and destruction of Judaea continues apace. The BBC simply won't have a clue whom to phone at which legally-constituted organisation to ensure that the contrary view is expressed fairly and impartially.

We've seen it all before, and very recently. We were told time and again before the AV referendum that there was a ‘progressive majority’ in favour of electoral reform; that the people wanted change, a different politics, a fairer system, a more democratic method of electing their representatives. After decades of wailing and wandering in the wilderness, the Liberal Democrats got their manna and quail.

But they blew the holy grail.

The pro-AV campaign was disunited, poorly articulated, badly led, painfully patronised and hopelessly disorganised. Against all that, its generous and credible funding went absolutely nowhere.

Similarly, on the matter of an EU referendum, we are told time and again that in excess of 50 per cent of the nation would vote to leave the EU tomorrow. And so those who yearn for liberation have demanded a referendum, which has now been proposed. Despite the chronic divisions in the ‘Out’ camp, the demand is still for this strategy – the success of which would be wholly contingent upon unity, charismatic leadership, creative strategy, credible patronage and very generous funding.

And Sir James Goldsmith is, very sadly, no longer with us.

Let us not forget that the 1975 referendum on the UK’s continuing membership of the EEC was held at a time when previous polls had suggested a clear majority in favour of withdrawal. That poll was overturned by charismatic politicians, cross-party consensus, an unequally-funded campaign, clever marketing and the erosion of reason by omnipotent pro-EEC forces. We saw it again (and again) in Denmark over the Maastricht Treaty; in France over the Constitution for Europe; and in Ireland over the Lisbon Treaty: if ‘No’ is not an option, ‘Out’ becomes be an unthinkable heresy.

His Grace despairs, and cannot for the life of him work out why those who have long demanded a referendum are not already planning, plotting, scheming, strategising and preparing for victory. Instead, as seen on this blog yesterday, there is cynicism, apathy, contempt and distrust. Where is the media onslaught of the beneficial consequences of our leaving the EU? Let us hear of falling taxes, reduced burdens on business, rising employment, increased standards of living, and a prosperous UK as part of EFTA, the Commonwealth and the free-trade world. Instead of deploying the language of defeat, let us hear talk of ‘Freedom’, 'Democracy', ‘Prosperity’ and ‘Britain in the World’.

Yet getting even that unified message out of anti-EU organisations is like herding cats. The Europhile Establishment is vastly more experienced and far more advanced in strategic thinking. The 'Outers' need to meet immediately, bury their differences, swallow their pride and dispense with their egos. God forbid that a self-appointed elite might already have conspired in secret to determine the future course, and presumed to decide among themselves who will speak officially on behalf of all 'Outers'. Such unilateralism can only serve to entrench obstinate positions and perpetuate the chronic divisions. If the Church of England has to step in to chair a summit of peace, reconciliation and cooperation, His Grace is ready and willing.

Cameron nails his 95 Theses to the door of Europe

David Cameron's speech on Britain's future in the EU is a game-changer: vote Conservative in 2015 and you will get an In/Out referendum within two years. This is contingent on nothing but his premiership: whether he wins the election outright or leads another coalition, the Prime Minister will attempt to re-negotiate a path of subsidiarity with our EU partners, in which he may or may not be successful. But whatever the outcome, he will be put it to the people, and the choice will be In or Out.

This is seismic. Really, truly momentous. For the first time since 1962, the British leader of a major political party talked in terms of the geography that has shaped our national psyche; of our island history being antithetical to the continental drive for 'ever closer union'. It was exactly 50 years ago that Hugh Gaitskell talked of discarding 1000 years of history, when he warned: ‘You may say, “All right, Let it end!” But, my goodness, it’s a decision which needs a little care and thought.’

And David Cameron has clearly been applying some thought:

From Caesar’s legions to the Napoleonic Wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution to the defeat of Nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

But England and the UK has always faced out to the high seas, not gazed longingly at European empires. The Prime Minister is 'not a British isolationist' because Britain never has been isolationist. But he is concerned with the 'lack of democratic accountability and consent' in the EU, which, he says, is 'felt particularly acutely in Britain'. And taking up his Reformation theme:

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

Casting himself as Luther, Calvin or His Grace, he called for 'fundamental, far-reaching change' to the Europe steeped in Roman Catholic Social Teaching. He demanded more competitiveness - a healthy dose of the Protestant work ethic supported by the Anglo-Saxon drive for free trade. This is his 'driving mission' - to prioritise 'the tasks that get European officials up in the morning – and keep them working late into the night'. The alternative is 'sclerotic, ineffective decision making that is holding us back'.

Then he talks of flexibility; a kind of evangelical alliance 'that can accommodate the diversity of its members'. There must be, he said, 'a common set of rules and a way of enforcing them'. But he insisted that 'we also need to be able to respond quickly to the latest developments and trends'.

Eschewing rigid catholicity, he expounded: 'We must not be weighed down by an insistence on a one size fits all approach which implies that all countries want the same level of integration. The fact is that they don’t and we shouldn’t assert that they do.'

And striking at the heart of temporal power, he made a momentous 'heretical proposition':

The European Treaty commits the Member States to “lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”.

This has been consistently interpreted as applying not to the peoples but rather to the states and institutions compounded by a European Court of Justice that has consistently supported greater centralisation.

We understand and respect the right of others to maintain their commitment to this goal. But for Britain – and perhaps for others – it is not the objective.

And we would be much more comfortable if the Treaty specifically said so freeing those who want to go further, faster, to do so, without being held back by the others.

Welcome to the new EEC - the Eurosceptic Eurovision of Cameron. It has vision, but no mechanism for ensuring it. Power must flow back to Member States, but not an inch of subsidiarity has ever been achieved by any British prime minister. He is about to implement a complete audit of EU competences (which is, in itself, a seismic development). This will reveal 'where the EU helps and where it hampers'.

An in this great new Reformation, 'nothing should be off the table'. There must be 'a bigger and more significant role for national parliaments' because 'there is not...a single European demos'.

At last, the truth has been articulated. We are not European citizens, but diverse peoples across many nations, with different histories, traditions and values.

It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.

Power should flow up from the people. He is right to point out that 'people feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to'; that they 'resent the interference in our national life by what they see as unnecessary rules and regulation'; and that they 'wonder what the point of it all is'.

He is even more right to observe that many 'feel that the EU is now heading for a level of political integration that is far outside Britain’s comfort zone'.

And he admits the reality of 'referendums promised – but not delivered'.

And so, for the first time since 1975, we are to have a referendum. He will campaign for an 'In', based on the success of his renegotiations. But the inference is clear: if he is not successful, he can conceive of a UK exit from the EU. And there is a simple reason for a post-election referendum:

The European Union that emerges from the Eurozone crisis is going to be a very different body. It will be transformed perhaps beyond recognition by the measures needed to save the Eurozone. We need to allow some time for that to happen – and help to shape the future of the European Union, so that when the choice comes it will be a real one.

Of course the referendum is contingent on a Tory victory. But he was adamant that should another coalition be the result, as long as he remains Prime Minister 'this will happen'.

So, there you have it: a real choice; deep blue water. 'The next Conservative Manifesto in 2015 will ask for a mandate from the British people for a Conservative Government to negotiate a new settlement with our European partners in the next Parliament.' After that, there will be an In/Out referendum. And the Prime Minister made it clear: 'Of course Britain could make her own way in the world, outside the EU, if we chose to do so.' David Cameron has given eurosceptics (and democratic europhiles) every reason to vote Conservative in the General Election of 2015.

Unfortunately, he has given absolutely no reason not to vote UKIP in the Euro elections next year.

The Act of Settlement and constitutional terrorism

Today, an amendment to the Act of Settlement is being rushed through the House of Commons by means usually reserved for emergency terrorism legislation. The imminent royal baby appears to represent a threat to the Coalition's equality agenda every bit as serious as that posed by al-Qaeda to the safety and security of the free world. There will be minimal debate and negligible scrutiny; a Commons guillotine and wave at a committee.

It is, in fact, a constitutional stitch-up between Cameron and Clegg; No10 and Buckingham Palace; the Government and the Crown, with the connivance of the Heads of Commonwealth.

His Grace has written on this matter so many times that it feel like Groundhog Day (eg here, here and here).

It is not simply a matter of ending male primogeniture or permitting the Monarch to marry a Roman Catholic: the constitutional ripples will be felt for decades to come. Indeed, today's apparently trivial 'modernising' amendments could lead to the disestablishment of the Church of England, the end of the Union, and even the demise of the Monarchy itself.

What Cameron and Clegg fail to realise (if, indeed they understand anything of the Constitution at all), is that those who campaign to end the ban on a Roman Catholic monarchy by focusing on the Act of Settlement are on a wild goose chase. That Act was passed by the old English parliament, which ceased to exist in 1707. The Act was also arguably incompetent, since the English parliament could not unilaterally decide on the British Regal Union of 1603-1707. The Scottish parliament recognised this fact, and deliberately countered the Act of Settlement with a Scottish settlement Act - the Act of Security of 1704.

The Act of Settlement 1701 was superseded by the Treaty of Union 1707, which, in Article 2, also prohibits Roman Catholics 'and persons marrying Papists' from ascending the Throne of the United Kingdom. The Treaty of Union 1707 is the founding charter of the United Kingdom. Tamper with this, and the Union itself is imperilled.

It has been observed that Scottish unionist politicians do not want this truth out. They fear making Scots aware that the United Kingdom is the creature of a treaty between two equal parliaments: a living, legal document, capable of amendment and adjustment to contemporary needs.

These are the unspoken ‘constitutional ripples’ so feared by Donald Dewar. This is why successive prime ministers of the United Kingdom and unionist Scottish secretaries of state had no intention of ending the ban on the Monarch either being a Roman Catholic or married to one, and why they were quite happy to let historically-ignorant and politically-ill-informed people continue harping on about the Act of Settlement 1701.

Until Cameron and Clegg came to power..

"Why," muses Alex Salmond, "should we bother amending the Act of Union this year when the whole thing might be abolished in the next? Indeed, while we're looking at this trivial equality amendment, let's remind ourselves that the Scottish Parliament is not subject to Westminster: it is equal.."

Obama, Lincoln, Martin Luther King and the Liberal false narrative

This is a guest post by Martin Sewell:

Yesterday, His Grace wrote about the inappropriate adulation for President Obama exhibited by those once twin pillars of the British Establishment, the BBC and the Church of England.

Both in secular and religious British terms, it is indeed intellectually offensive to see such over enthusiastic embracing of a foreign leader of modest achievement - re-election and a Peace prize bestowed for no greater merit than that of not being his predecessor.

His Grace identified the liberal narrative as morphing this President with Abraham Lincoln, and the coinciding release of Stephen Spielberg’s film will no doubt be spawning many more such comparisons as President Obama takes his second Oath of Office.

Mr Spielberg’s political sympathies are well known and it is no accident that his film presents a liberal view of history intended to shape and inform the historical narrative for many on both sides of the Atlantic. It is happening to Lincoln as it has happened to Martin Luther King, so that few will actually know the inconvenient truth, not least that both assassinated heroes were Republicans.

The television trailers for Spielberg’s film presents a montage of high flown passionate anti-slavery rhetoric, with scant regard for the history. This is what Spielberg thinks Lincoln should have been like, though the record is significantly more nuanced.

Nobody can seriously read of the man and consider his words without appreciating that Lincoln was a sincere and life-long Abolitionist. He perhaps put it best in homespun wisdom rather than public oratory. "Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

His first and primary loyalty was however to the Republican form of Government and the Constitution adopted only 23 years before his birth.

Few of those seeing Spielberg’s film will have the historical knowledge and perspective to appreciate how novel and fragile the idea of democracy was in the middle of the 19th Century. The French Revolution had collapsed back into Empire and the only other democratic republic was Switzerland. The idea of fracturing and weakening the noble American experiment in democracy was anathema to Lincoln. It is perhaps sensible to regard him as an idealistic pragmatist.

In 1860, writing to the future Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephen, Lincoln assured him: "Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears."

This same pragmatism ensured that the Emancipation Proclamation, when issued, was only directed to slaves living in the Confederate States, and the announcement itself was delayed until after the battle of Antietam had ended the occupation of border State Maryland and returned its Unionist owned slaves to the control of the North where they remained enslaved for the rest of the War.

Lest there be any doubt, consider:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forebear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

In the Gettysburg Address there is not a single direct reference to slavery or the Abolitionist cause, though his devotion to the cause of the Republic and its Constitution is embodied in its closing hope that “..this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Martin Luther King would have happily concurred, not least with that important “under God” proviso which plainly offends many secular activists in the modern Democratic Camp.

MLK was brought up in a middle class educated Christian household; his Pastor father was a lifelong Republican and his son followed and was so registered throughout his life.

They both knew that every advance for the African American in both Civil Rights and Education had been built on Republican initiatives in the teeth of Democrat opposition. They would have appreciated that the earliest gun control measures had been enacted in the South to prevent the poor black man from exercising his Constitutional right to bear arms and be disabled from fighting back against the Democratic dominated Ku Klux Klan.

MLK possessed guns for his family’s protection and applied for a concealed carry permit.

You do not hear much about this from the Hollywood crowd.

The advice to his son from “Daddy King” - in many ways an even better man than his more celebrated son - was to secure for himself “an education, a job, and a mortgage”. That is a severely discordant to the current idealisation of the entitlement society.

He did not seek to fundamentally change the principles of the Constitution but rather to secure justice for all by making the USA live up to its plainly declared principles.

Nowhere did that ideal show itself better than in his “I have a dream” speech where he envisioned a society in which a person would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

That phrase bears some consideration.

It is plain that Martin Luther King saw himself first as a Christian, second as US citizen and only then as African American. He could express the latter thanks to the empowerments of the former.

Both of those pre-conditions are under threat from the current President, his supporters and his judicial nominees.

MLK would have appreciated the view of the Founding Father John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

President Obama appears to regard American Society and its Constitution as deficient; he might usefully consider with his Hollywood friends whether it is not the Constitution that needs changing but rather the undermining of that moral and religious character.

If he wishes to make the Constitution of Lincoln and MLK function as designed, he could do no better than build up that moral character by following the wisdom of another African American who shares much of President Obama’s academic history.

I speak of the eminent Conservative Academic Thomas Sowell, who is heir to the Lincoln/MLK tradition which believes that there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be solved by what is right with America.

I am sure that MLK would have understood Sowell’s perspective that “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”

I cannot see Lincoln disagreeing with: “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”

Or: “One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”

Both would surely have assented to the proposition that “Intellect is not wisdom.”

I cannot see any founding father dissenting from the idea that: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

The inauguration will be a time for rhetoric and hope. My hope is that the President changes and instead of following the dreams of his father he follows the dream of the Founding Fathers.

Martin Sewell can be followeed on Twitter: @martindsewell

BBC and CofE unite in worship of President Obama

His Grace is all for praying for those in authority - in whatever country, under whatever form of government, of whatever faith. But the Church of England in conjunction with the BBC have gone a little far with the Obamafest broadcast this morning on Radio 4.

Divine Worship came from St Martin-in-the-Fields, and the theme was 'Learning to Dream Again', in celebration of President Obama's second inauguration. Did they ever do this for President Bush? Margaret Thatcher? Or even David Cameron? Is it only Socialist-Democrats who are deemed worthy of a national BBC broadcast in the context of prayer and divine worship? Was there a 'Songs of Praise' comparing the 'troubled times' of the Coalition with those faced by Winston Churchill? Will there be one thanking God for the life of Margaret Thatcher?

The answer, of course, is foregone. Yet the BBC and the CofE unite to worship Barack Obama as Abraham Lincoln reincarnate. The service explored 'the connections between Lincoln's 1865 speech, delivered during the civil war, and the situation facing the world today'. It included 'lively American music and an anthem specially written for this service'.

Would they be talking about 'the souls of the righteous' or 'America’s special vocation', or singing that 'It is well with my soul' if Mitt Romney had won? Would thay have commissioned a special anthem (at what cost and met by whom?) if we now had a Republican back in the White House? Is 'Learning to Dream Again' a purposeful allusion to Martin Luther King? What, in the Name of God, is Obama's dream? And as for ending with 'Come thou fount of every blessing' - was this an appeal to the Lord, or to Obama as Messiah, come to free the captives, heal the sick and proclaim the day of salvation?

The address was given by the Revd Prof Mark McIntosh, Van Mildert Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, who previously served as a chaplain to the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, and as canon theologian to the 25th Presiding Bishop and Primate. It was led by the Rev'd Dr Samuel Wells (Vicar). His Grace reproduces the entire Order of Service below, for it goes slightly beyond praying for those in authority: indeed, it is verging on idolatry and blasphemy (score - Obama: 8; Jesus 8):

St Martin-in-the-Fields
Sunday Worship
19th January, 2013
St Martin-in-the-Fields

Please note:

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

Radio 4 Opening Announcement:
BBC Radio 4. And time now for Sunday Worship which today comes from St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. The design for the building was so influential in eighteenth-century America that several hundred churches in the New World were modelled on it and today countless Americans make their way to it as home from home. In honour of these links with the United States, today’s service reflects on the second inauguration of President Barak Obama. The vicar of St Martin’s, the Reverend Dr Sam Wells, leads the service which begins with the hymn, Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace

Sam Wells - Introduction/Prayer
Good morning and welcome to St Martin-in-the-Fields. Today and tomorrow, in Washington DC, Barack Obama will take the oath of office for his second term as President of the United States, rather poignantly on Martin Luther King Day itself. President Obama carries the expectations and good will of so many people across the world, but also the burden of discouraged hopes and broken hearts, from the impasse on Capitol Hill to the massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

148 years ago Abraham Lincoln took the oath for his second term as American President. The Civil War between the northern and southern states was nearly over, but already by that day in 1865, a million people had died in the conflict. Lincoln knew it would take amazing grace to release America not just from the slavery of bonded labour, but also from the slavery of profound social divisions and bitterness. Today we look back at the chaos that Lincoln faced and the grace that he sought, and in his words and his vision find wisdom and strength for the challenges facing America and our world. We’ve all heard of the American Dream – that everyone, regardless of background, can make their life better or richer or fuller. The challenge for President Obama and for us, as it was for Lincoln, is to learn to dream again.

Let us pray.
God of each new dawn, you have anointed prophets and priests and leaders of your people. Look with mercy on the suffering of your children in economic distress, in the aftermath of violence, and in the dearth of hope. Raise us up this morning as a people who look to your new day, that we may each find our vocation in your kingdom – and, in your service, perfect freedom. Amen.

The St Martin-in-the-Fields High School Gospel Choir express the hope of this new day in the spiritual, ‘My Lord, what a morning.’

My Lord what a morning/Burleigh/3 verses - High School Choir

Sam Wells
Dan Kaszeta worked for 12 years in the White House. Here he reads from the Wisdom of Solomon, chapter 3.

Dan Kaszeta - Reading
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt-offering he accepted them.

Sam Wells
The Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields sing verses from Psalm 19.

Choir - Psalm 19:7-13 (sung)

Katherine Hedderly - Matthew 18:2-7
A reading from Matthew chapter 18. Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!’

Sam Wells
The people who founded the United States had in many cases fled from oppression elsewhere. They saw the new nation as having a unique destiny in the world. That vision of freedom wasn’t always consistent, as slaves and Native Americans knew all too well. This hymn balances the sense of America’s special vocation with a recognition of God’s call to all the people of the earth.

This is my song/Finlandia/Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness/3 verses

Sam Wells - Introduction to Lincoln
The release of Stephen Spielberg’s film has brought the figure of Abraham Lincoln back to the centre of international consciousness. With the Civil War all but won, Lincoln reflected in his second inaugural address on the mystery of divine providence. He wondered why God had let the war come, and had let it rage so terribly; and how both sides could pray to the same God. And yet he had no doubt about the evils of the slavery that had precipitated the war. Roger Shaljean now reads from this remarkably short address, recently described as ‘one of the most overwhelming pieces of political prose ever crafted in any language.’ Here Lincoln speaks, as he himself puts it, ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all.’

Roger Shaljean - Excerpt from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
Both [sides in the war] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

High School Choir - Precious Lord, take my hand

Sam Wells
Our preacher is Mark McIntosh, Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University and canon of Durham Cathedral.

Mark McIntosh Sermon
At the heart of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address, often thought of as a kind of American testament, is the passage from Matthew’s Gospel we’ve just heard read. There Jesus counsels his agonizing and contentious disciples. He holds before them, and before us all, the image of children, these little ones, whose hopefulness and vulnerability we can hardly bear to look upon sometimes (shaming us by their trust in us as they do) – these little ones, who are, says Jesus, most especially at home in the Kingdom of God. With tenderness and a strong grieving love, Jesus adds, yes, offences and terrible things may come in this world. But woe to those who bring them about, woe to those who cause even one of these little ones to stumble, to lose their way, lose faith, lose hope. ‘Woe unto the world because of offences!’ echoes Lincoln. And the greatest offence would be if, because of the evils that have come, goodness should lose heart, or that the very aspiration for goodness and compassion should come to seem in vain.

What can cause us to stumble most deeply is unclarity about our own faith, about the true foundations of our belief in God. Sometimes our faith and hope are shaken either because God seems apparently unwilling to answer our prayers or those of others. Sometimes because we are scandalized by the dreadful thought that we and others may be praying to the same God for diametrically opposed things. As Lincoln noted with sorrow about his fellow citizens in the North and the South: ‘Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.’

In the mouth of anyone but Lincoln ‘the Almighty has his own purposes’ could seem like an atrocious dodge. But if anything might be bequeathed to his grateful nation down the years, and indeed to President Obama on his inauguration day, it is surely Lincoln’s indomitable hope. Lincoln’s hope was that beyond the brittle certainties of this group or that, and beyond the appalling evidence of our capacity for inhumanity, there shines a great goodness – a goodness mysteriously working out its purposes in this world. Our faith in God’s goodness cannot be shaken when our own idols of certitude are wrenched from us. Nor need we lose faith even when God’s purposes seem too large for us to hold within the current reach of our desire.

We can see that this was indeed Lincoln’s meaning from words he wrote three years before his Second Inaugural, in a letter to the American Quaker Eliza Gurney: ‘The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail,’ wrote the President, ‘though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile, we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.’

Jesus drew the eyes of his disciples to the children in their midst. Here was a faith that, though vulnerable in its trust, was yet dauntless and endlessly renewing in its great openness. Precisely because children trust in a goodness far greater than the measure of our own minds, these little ones leave themselves open to the greater good that God always intends. They show us how to make ourselves the more available to work with countless others – though we may disagree with them about much – for sake of a goodness that far exceeds the more limited views of us all.

So we may wish to ask that some share in this trusting openness to God’s goodness might be granted to President Obama and to all people. This is, of course, a risky sort of prayer, a dangerous thing to ask for, and we might well not recognize the answer God gives to each of us. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked that he might be spared the cup of his suffering and death. It seemed to him, as so often to most of us, that his prayer was left terribly unanswered. But the Father’s answer to his beloved child, to this little one whose trust and hope he would never allow to stumble, was not a longer life-span but the resurrection of Easter Day. Not less than Jesus asked for, but infinitely more. And that is often, it seems, how God does answer prayer: not by giving us the smaller thing we can see far enough to want at any given time in our own lives or in the history of the world, but by leading us onwards into that greater goodness which is the true source of all our desires, that goodness which is simply God. And Christ himself is the sure foundation that no child, nowhere on God’s good earth, need ever hold this hope in vain.

May we all be given grace so to live that no deeds of ours may ever cause one of God’s children to lose this hope. By grace may we each in some small way be a sign and pledge of that greater goodness which is the hope of all the human family.

Sam Wells
In 1873 Chicago lawyer Horatio Spafford sent his wife and four daughters to England for a holiday and went New York to wave them off. Nine days later he received a telegram from his wife with the unimaginably horrifying words, ‘Saved alone.’ He got the next boat to England, and when the ship passed the point of the tragedy that had claimed his four daughters and 222 others, he went to his cabin and wrote this extraordinary hymn.

It is well with my soul/Spafford/Clausen

Sam Wells - Prayers

Let us pray.
God of incarnation, when we struggle with ourselves, with one another, and with you, you come to meet us in your Son. Be close today to all who feel like they are drowning amid the storms of life. Show your face to those who feel they can strive no further. And restore them in your glory.
Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our Prayer.

God of the cross, look with mercy on the American people today. Bless President Obama, the Congress, and all who seek justice, prosperity, understanding and freedom for all in the land. Encourage those who have no taste of the wealth of the nation, any who live in prison or in ghetto or in daily fear, and all who have more to give than society wants to receive. Turn their sadness into joy. Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our Prayer.

God of resurrection, you give us not less than we ask, but more. Take our failures and turn them into wisdom; take our regrets and turn them into insight; take our hurts and turn them into compassion. Inaugurate in us a pledge of allegiance to your kingdom, your gospel, and your grace, that we may look back on this day, and name it as the day we learnt to dream again. Amen.

In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we ask God’s forgiveness, seek God’s kingdom, and look for the day when we shall gather together around God’s table in glory, in the words Jesus taught us.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Sam Wells
The anthem has been specially written for this service, to coincide with President Obama’s second inauguration. It’s called ‘Learning to Dream Again.’

Learning to Dream Again/Simple Gifts/Appalachian Spring/Copland/Wells

Sam Wells - Blessing
God the Holy Trinity give you a faith of innocence and trust, yet dauntless and endlessly renewing openness. And may the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you now and always. Amen.

Come thou fount of every blessing/Nettleton/Robertson

Organ Voluntary

Radio 4 Closing Announcement:
Sunday Worship came live from St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. The service was led by the vicar, the Reverend Dr Sam Wells and the preacher was the Reverend Prof Mark McIntosh, Van Mildert Professor of Divinity from Durham University. The choir of St Martin’s High School was directed by Clinton Jordan. Andrew Earis directed the church choir and the organist was Nicholas Wearne. The producer was Clair Jaquiss.

Next week, Sunday Worship comes from the Metropolitan Cathedral of St David in Cardiff. That’s at the usual time of 10 past 8, here on BBC Radio 4. [Sunday Worship during Lent takes the theme ‘This is our story’, linking stories of faith from the bible with life today. Resource materials from Churches Together in Britain and Ireland for groups or individuals can be found on the Sunday Worship web page.

The End of Papal Primacy and the Restoration of Accountability

His Grace has been asked to reproduce this article from 'Christian Catholicism - the Blog of Jerry Slevin' (a lifelong Roman Catholic and a retired Wall Street lawyer):

Will the Next Pope Become the Vatican’s Last Pope?

The next pope, expected soon by many, will apparently be the last imperial pope elected. Thereafter, the Catholic hierarchy will likely be compelled to adopt power-sharing reforms under accelerating pressure, including from political leaders in Australia, Ireland, Germany and soon likely the USA, as well. The percentage of voting Cardinals in the Vatican, mostly Italians, has increased considerably during Benedict XVI’s short tenure. This has fortified the Vatican Cardinal clique’s veto grip on the next papal election, which likely will be of an initially younger, longer serving, but similarly imperial, pope.

Benedict XVI’s evident enhancement of the papal election veto threat by his selection of new voting Cardinals helps explain in retrospect the apparent support of long time Vatican powers, Cardinal Sodano, et al., for the elderly current German pope’s election in 2005. This support had been surprising to some, given the earlier reported disputes between them over investigating Cardinal Groer and Father Maciel, two notorious sexual predators. Groer and Maciel had also been strongly supported by Pope John Paul II. The Vatican clique’s enhanced veto power tends to assure that their next hand-picked pope can be expected to continue to run the Catholic Church dictatorially, mainly to maximize the wealth and power of Vatican Cardinals and their subservient, but well rewarded, Cardinal accomplices worldwide.

Italian Cardinals in 1870 lost to a nationalist army their political control over the lucrative Papal States. But these Cardinals and their carefully chosen Italian successors, including Cardinals Ottaviani and Sodano for much of the last half century, have shrewdly managed to recover and even expand their power and wealth since 1870. The Vatican clique has significantly strengthened its already tight grip on the worldwide Roman Holy Empire, with its considerable wealth and political influence, so far at least. In the process, the clique has also succeeded in helping to undermine the overwhelming approvals of the 1966 papal birth control commission of contraception and of the 2,500+ Vatican II bishops of effective power-sharing among the pope and bishops and also to undercut the strong support for making celibacy optional for priests. Very significantly, however, the Vatican clique also has failed to curtail effectively the massive worldwide scandal of priest sexual assaults on trusting children.

Ironically, by the end of World War I in 1918 after a half-century “voluntary imprisonment’ in Vatican City, these Cardinals were finally free of all effective European monarchical controls that had restrained papal power often over a millennium and a half. Beginning in the late 1920′s, the Vatican clique began to expand its political influence and wealth by trading “spiritual” electoral support for local privileges, powers and subsidies, beginning with European facist leaders like Mussolini, Hitler and Franco, right up to the recent effort to dump President Obama to elect a “papally friendlier” Mitt Romney. No longer after 1918 did the Vatican clique regularly have to bend to foreign rulers on bishops’ appointments or to accept related foreign interference in Vatican matters, making the Vatican clique’s power almost unprecedented in Catholic Church history. This may dramatically change soon.

Ongoing developments indicate that electing a new pope now, who would appear to be just another puppet of the imperial Vatican clique, would likely lead rapidly to the end of the Roman Holy Empire. These ongoing developments include: (A) the continuing disclosures of the Catholic hierarchy’s worldwide criminal conspiracies, (B) the imminent end of papal primacy and the return of accountability, (C) the steady restoration of scriptural primacy and simple Gospel values, and (D) the increasing loss of effective Vatican political power worldwide.
_____________________________________________________ —————————————————————————————–
(A) The Disclosures of the Catholic Hierarchy’s Criminal Conspiracies

International prosecutors, government investigators and/or abuse survivors’ lawyers will likely continue their relentless pursuit of key Cardinals, including perhaps the pope, for child endangerment abuse cover-up practices and for bank money laundering and other financial crimes.

Pressure will continue to mount from:

(1) the ongoing revelations from the major governmental investigation commission in Australia (and probably soon in the USA as well), which will override non-disclosure agreements and compel testimony, including about the details of communications between the local hierarchy and Vatican officials;

(2) the Los Angeles Archdiocesan file revelations underlying the $660 million abuse settlement and including hundreds of previously secret and unredacted abuse related files;

(3) the award winning HBO documentary (“Mea Maxima Culpa”) about over 200 deaf Milwaukee boys sexually abused by a single priest that will begin airing internationally on February 4, which includes details of the failure of the current pope’s former CDF department to deal effectively and expeditiously with the evident predator, as well as the clip of the pope earlier slapping an ABC-TV reporter for daring to press him on the status of Father Maciel’s almost fifty-year old investigation;

(4) the seemingly unending bizarre saga of Cardinal Rigali’s former Philly Archdiocesean priests’ ongoing child sexual abuse and/or child endangerment criminal trials, and the related blatant perjury and document destruction admissions;

(5) the ongoing stonewalling by German bishops apparently to keep independent investigators like Professor Pfeiffer from getting to the Munich and Regensburg files of the Ratzinger brothers;

(6) New York Cardinal Dolan’s shameful and failed effort to try illegally to keep millions of dollars of Milwaukee funds from abuse survivors, including some of the 200 deaf boys mentioned above;

(7) the continuation in office of Kansas City Bishop Finn after his conviction for a child endangerment related crime, despite the demands of many local Catholics that he be removed;

(8) the arrest of Cardinal Egan’s and Archbishop Lori’s former Bridgeport top aide, Monsignor Wallin, reportedly a cross dressing, porn distributing, alleged drug dealer;

(9) the appointment of one of disgraced Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyers as the new chief Vatican prosecutor of predatory priests; and

(10) inevitably more obscene revelations related to the foregoing, that will just add more fuel to the demand for more and stronger prosecutorial efforts worldwide against the Catholic hierarchy.

(B) The End of Papal Primacy and the Restoration of Accountability

Anticipated disclosures from these prosecutorial proceedings from previously secret Vatican documents and likely sworn testimony from Vatican employees, such as the papal butler who can be expected to reveal more especially after Gorgeous Georg’s surprising promotion to Archbishop, and notwithstanding the apparent effort to buy the butler’s silence with a new Catholic hospital position in Rome, appear likely to raise more issues of greater papal culpability.

These issues will then serve to buttress the increasingly widely disseminated historical and scriptural evidence that shows clearly that “divine origin” claims for papal authority are mainly unsupportable. The imminent collapse of papal credibility and authority will likely lead more Catholics to revisit and to seek to restore the structure that Jesus and his first disciples left behind intentionally, where local church gatherings were overseen by locally selected and accountable leaders, both male and female.

The weaknesses of the papal primacy claims, both scripturally and historically, have recently been very effectively summarized in the outstanding new book by a promising young theologian, entitled,”Democracy in the Christian Church: An Historical, Theological and Political Case”, accessible for free in part at http://amzn.com/0567449521

(C) The Restoration of Scriptural Primacy and Simple Gospel Values

Catholicism is based mainly on the reported history in the New Testament of a unique person, Jesus, and his early disciples. No pope or hierarchy can change or override that, even if they too often try to avoid or misapply the New Testament. The words of the New Testament are there for all to read.

Having despaired of the loss of papal credibility, more Catholics will now acknowledge the increasingly significant historical and scriptural evidence concerning the Eucharist. This evidence makes clear that for Jesus and his initial disciples, the Eucharist Meal was not intended to be an event mainly to be monopolized and controlled by a “mystical” celibate male priesthood managed tightly by an opportunistic and unaccountable hierarchy. For the current Vatican, the Eucharistic Meal appears too often to be mainly a weekly fundraising event for overly trusting Catholics dominated by low-paid priests that the hierarchy appears to believe must be protected and supported blindly, even when they sexually abuse children.

Once the true Eucharist history and the essential role of the assembled Christian fellowship first reported in Chapters 10 and 11 of Paul’s earliest Epistle, First Corinthians, are fully appreciated and broadly acknowledged by more Catholics, as is already happening, it will become clearer that the top-down Catholic hierarchy is a mostly unnecessary and, too often parasitic, accident of medieval history that Catholics should just consider sweeping into the dustbin of church history.

(D) The Loss of Effective Vatican Papal Political Power

The Vatican is increasingly and regularly losing its political influence, as evidenced by significant recent Vatican political failures in Ireland, Australia, the Philippines and the USA, make very clear. For more on this, please read my statement, “A Taboo, a New Pope and a Truer Church”, accessible by clicking either on the heading on the top of this essay or clicking on: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-8A

For the reasons discussed above, Catholics following Gospel mandates will, and morally are obligated to, steadily transfer their financial and other support from the imperial top-down Vatican church hierarchical structures that Constantine left behind to competing non-hierarchical church structures that conform more closely to the Gospel values that Jesus left behind. Without weekly Catholics’ contributions that currently depend on a rigged purported monopoly on the Eucharist offered exclusively by often excessively obedient celibate males supporting a self-interested and mostly unnecessary hierarchy, the current Roman Holy Empire will wither away over time, with a little help from prosecutors.

In the near term, the gates of hell will not prevail against the current hierarchy. Instead, prosecutors will open hell’s gates for entry by those in the hierarchy who have earned it. True Christian Catholics will then get on with restoring the Catholic Church to conform to the Spirit the first disciples left behind.

Readers are respectfully asked to forward this essay widely and/or to include links to it or quotes from it in suitable comments on other websites, as deemed appropriate.

Channel 4 News - as written by your daughter

Today, Channel 4 News covers the plot to oust Dr Philip Giddings as Chairman of the House of Laity of the General Synod of the Church of England, on the charge of allegedly undermining Bishop Justin Welby over the vote on women bishops. They write:

The House of Laity, part of the General Synod, is meeting in London for an extraordinary meeting to vote on a motion of no confidence in chair Dr Philip Giddings, who spoke against women bishops - directly after the Archbishop elect, Rev Justin Welby spoke in favour.

Canon Stephen Barney, who will propose the motion after setting up a petition, says Dr Giddings' action "undermined" the speech of the archbishop-elect and were not representative of the house.

The petition followed the failure of the General Synod to agree to allow women to become bishops after a long running debate and received signatures from 20 per cent of the house, double needed for the meeting to go ahead.

It was the House of Laity, made up of "ordinary" members of the Church of England, which scuppered November's vote after it failed to reach a two-thirds majority in favour.

The other two houses, the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy, both voted in favour of women bishops.

Not personal

Speaking to Channel 4 News ahead of the meeting, Mr Barney, who has insisted the motion is not a personal attack, said the purpose of the meeting was not to debate women bishops in this particular incident, but whether Dr Giddings was representing the house which he chaired.

He said: "I hope that we will have a proper debate. It's a question of whether this was appropriate given that he was not representing the view of the vast majority of the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and indeed all but 74 of the House of Laity."

In describing his motion, he said: "I have always been one of the first to say that individuals must vote according to their consciences. However, leaders have other responsibilities and accountabilities.

"I feel that if I am to support the leader of a group of which I am a member, then that leader must show wise and good judgement - and I do not believe that this has happened."

If more than half of the laity say they have no confidence in Dr Giddings, then the motion will be passed and Mr Barney says it will send a very clear signal to the Synod's working group on women bishops, which meets next month to draw up a new legislative package to be presented to members in July.

Dr Giddings has not yet commented on the issue and said that "the time for debate is when we have the debate."

His Grace read this article with a degree of disquiet, for he knows that all this 'not personal' stuff is a blatant falsehood, and he wondered why such a respected news outlet as C4 had not considered any of the contrary argument, including the reputation and standing of Dr Giddings, and why his ejection as Chairman of the House of Laity would be a grave injustice. But at the bottom of the article, we get this:

So, the article is written by the daughter of the instigator of the motion to remove Dr Giddings from his position.

That must be why there's no mention of this ‘no confidence’ motion being an act of retribution for ‘thwarting’ the combined wills of the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy, as though those members of the laity who rejected the motion were incapable of discerning for themselves and, like children, were somehow led astray by Dr Giddings' charismatic (but evil) 'ideology'.

That must be why there's no mention of the outrageous waste of money (£38,000) this meeting is costing.

That must be why there's not a hint of the obnoxious and deeply personal campaign being waged against Dr Giddings by Gavin Oldham, who has written to all members of the House of Laity equating support for a male episcopacy with Nazism (along with advocates of slavery, apartheid and ethnic cleansing).

That must be why there's no consideration of the fact that it is not Philip Giddings who has damaged the credibility of the Church of England, but aggressive reformists who seek to subject the Laity to the Episcopacy even in democratic votes at Synod.

That must be why there's no mention of the precedent that would be set if Dr Giddings is ousted – that if any believer should dare even sympathise with those who seek to uphold the historic orthodox catholic teachings of the Church, they are showing themselves ineligible, unsuitable or, in the final analysis, too extremist to hold office within the Church of England. The via media thereby ends, and schism swiftly follows.

And that must be why there is no objective consideration of the following questions (proposed by the Law & Religion UK blog):

What will be achieved by holding this debate?

Is this a responsible use of Church resources?

Has the issue been discussed in the parishes/deaneries/dioceses other than between members of the House of Laity? If not, on what basis are the views of these groups to be represented?

What message is the meeting likely send to those outside the Church (and to those within who were not consulted)?

How does this fit into the bigger picture of: a] the ordination of women into episcopate; and b] synodical governance?

This debate will attract an awful lot of media attention: it touches on theology, equality, morality, the governance of the Church of England, and the right separation of powers. One might expect Channel 4 News to have done rather better than get the daughter of the motion's propser to write a superficial and thoroughly biased article on the matter.

Church of England gets powers to tackle 'far right' clergy

Yesterday in Parliament an obscure little statutory committee - all undemocratically appointed by the Lord Speaker - examined and approved draft Measures presented to it by the Legislative Committee of the General Synod of the Church of England on how to deal with the BNP. Ben Bradshaw was quick to extrapolate this to 'far right or racist parties' in general, suggesting future scope for the extension of these disciplinary measures. His Grace has purposely included the first two responses to Mr Bradshaw's tweet, since, if a council can discriminate against adoptive parents for their 'right-wing' UKIP-leaning views, it is inevitable (with a very high degree of certainty) that 'far right' will come to embrace those who oppose gay marriage or women bishops. For if racism be an abhorrent manifestation in the Church of Christ, how much more should homophobia, misogyny or europhobia be subject to ecclesiastical opprobrium?

His Grace has said this before, but he'll say it again. All reasonable Christian people will have immense sympathy with an expression of Christian witness which seeks to denounce racism in all its forms, including in the temporal political realm. The Church should be completely intolerant of all those who would foment discord on the basis of ethnicity or skin colour. The Early Church abolished the Jew-Greek division and declared all to be one in Christ Jesus, so there can be no theological rationale 2000 years later for black-brown-white segregation. To be Christian is to be blind to race: all of humanity is equal in the great plan of salvation. We are all children of God, and all equal in our sin.

But here we now have the Established Church of England empowered by Parliament to prohibit those in Holy Orders from joining a political party which is not only legally constituted in the United Kingdom, but has won elections to the European Parliament and is deemed to conform to both UK and EU law.

Oh, of course, the party has not been named: the General Synod simply decreed that allegiance to a party whose policies are ‘incompatible with the teaching of the Church of England in relation to the equality of persons or groups of different races’ would be ‘unbecoming and inappropriate’. So, in theory, Ben Bradshaw is right that all racist or discriminatory political parties are to be proscribed.

But he only mentions the 'far right'. Are there no 'far left' parties with racist or otherwise discriminatory ideologies? Setting aside the fact that the BNP is manifestly a left-wing, statist organisation, are Church of England clerics free to be Communists, revolutionary socialists or members of Respect?

Clergy are being prohibited from joining the BNP because the Church is perceived by some to have a problem with racism (too few BME vicars and bishops). Which is fair enough. But the Church is also perceived by a sizeable constituency to have a problem with homosexuality and an even more sizeable constituency to have a problem with women (it is still to 'get with the programme', as the Prime Minister decreed).

The anti-far-right measures agreed by the Ecclesiastical Committee were born out of a proposal in 2009 by Vasantha Gnanadoss who warned then of the potential for the BNP to grow in influence. “Passing this motion is a push that is seriously necessary,” she told the Synod at that time.

The peculiar thing is that it is a completely hypothetical move, since no member of the Church of England clergy is presently known to be a member of the BNP. But if one were, why would they now disclose it? And, further, it is not at all clear how prohibiting membership of a racist or discriminatory political party could change a racist or discriminatory heart, with which the Lord is far more concerned.

That the BNP has a racist foundation is beyond dispute. That the Church of England is sexist at the Episcopal level is also beyond dispute. That the Church of England is ‘homophobic’ (to use the vernacular) is manifest to everyone who grasps the basic principles of discrimination - if only as they relate to marriage. Some would say these discriminations are ‘institutional’.

Yet the Church of England has only voted in favour of legislation to prohibit clergy from joining racist or discriminatory political parties like the BNP because that party’s policies are deemed to be inconsistent with Christian values, notwithstanding that there are many thousands who find the Church’s stance on women and gays equally inconsistent with Christian values.

It is now for the Bishops to determine which parties or organisations are deemed to be incompatible with Christian values. To them is given power to bind and loose, and they may do so as long as two thirds of them support the motion. Any ban can be lifted by a simple majority vote should the political party repent and change its ways.

One wonders how long it will be before a bunch of Guardian-reading, liberal-leaning bishops determine membership of the Conservative Party to be ‘unbecoming’ or ‘inappropriate’ conduct for clergy, for, surely, that which became known as Thatcherism was (and is) frequently denounced as being ‘incompatible’ with Church teaching on equality. What of the poor? Was not Jesus the first Socialist?

His Grace can hardly wait to see which political parties or organisations are deemed by the Bishops to be incompatible with Christian teaching and so proscribed. For then we will surely see high-profile court cases giving such groups £millions worth of free publicity. His Grace is loath to quote any BNP spokesman (and, like the bishops, they do all tend to be men). But one of their number has challenged the Church of England, insisting: “We are a modern, forward thinking and progressive nationalist party. We are non-discriminatory and we have a constitution to match. It is high time that was put out there. The Church of England has to keep up to date – they are stuck in the 1970s.”

And since the European Convention on Human Rights gives all people (including CofE vicars, who fall within the broad definition of ‘people’) the right to freedom of political belief, the Church cannot win in the courts: clergy cannot be disciplined for lawful political activity.

For His Grace, if the Church of England were to expend just one tenth of its efforts to the propagation of the Gospel that it devotes to issues of gender or sexual equality, it might just reverse its terminal decline. Racist views and discriminatory undertones are going to exist wherever there is diversity and the freedoms of belief, expression and association. This is not to excuse them: it is a simple statement of fact. But the proscribing of the outward manifestation will not transform the inner life of the believer, which is a work of the Holy Spirit.

According to the latest church statistics, only 2.8 per cent of its 114 bishops and 1.4 per cent of the 4,443 vicars come from ethnic minorities. No doubt we are now heading for quotas to address this scandalous under-representation.

What would Jesus say?

Well, if God can speak through an ass (Num 22:21-38), He can undoubtedly do so through the Labour Party, the Guardian, the EU, and even the Rev’d Giles Fraser. But Parliament has now united with the Church of England to dehumanise members of the BNP - they are sinners beyond redemption, through whom the Lord would never choose to speak or work. They have replaced the ‘homosexual offenders’ who were once destined for eternal darkness: the Kingdom of Heaven is not for such as those.

And talking of Giles Fraser (if you're reading, Giles..), if sexually active gay priests or bishops now have a moral responsibility to lie, do not those clergy who hold 'far right' political views have the same moral responsibility? Surely, 'lying to the church authorities, in these conditions, is a bit like disobeying an unjust order. It's a form of non-violent resistance'?

Freedom in the World 2013: Middle East gains provoke intensified repression

Democracy in the world has declined for the seventh year running. The emergence of popular movements for reform were the driving force behind major gains in the Middle East last year, according to Freedom in the World 2013, Freedom House’s annual report on the state of global freedom. However, a number of regions experienced setbacks due to a hardened and increasingly shrewd authoritarian response to these movements.

“Our findings point to the growing sophistication of modern authoritarians,” said Arch Puddington, Freedom House vice president for research. “They are flexible; they distort and abuse the legal framework; they are adept at the techniques of modern propaganda,” he added. “But especially since the Arab Spring, they are nervous, which accounts for their intensified persecution of popular movements for change.”

While the number of countries ranked as Free for 2012 was 90, a gain of 3 over the previous year, 27 countries showed significant declines, compared with 16 that showed notable gains. This is the seventh consecutive year that Freedom in the World has shown more declines than gains worldwide. Furthermore, the report data reflected a stepped-up campaign of persecution by dictators that specifically targeted civil society organisations and independent media.

Among the most striking gains for freedom was that of Libya, which advanced from Not Free to Partly Free and registered one of the most substantial one-year numerical improvements in the report’s nearly 40-year history. Burma and a number of African countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Lesotho, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, also saw major advances. Noteworthy declines were recorded for Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine.

The Middle East showed ambiguous results for the year. In addition to major gains for Libya, and Tunisia’s retention of sharp improvements from 2011, Egypt experienced relatively modest progress. The country held a flawed but competitive presidential election and direct military rule came to an end, yet the elected parliament was dissolved and President Morsi pushed through a new constitution under deeply problematic circumstances.

Moreover, the gains for the Arab Spring countries triggered a reaction, sometimes violent, by authoritarian leaders elsewhere in the Middle East, with resulting setbacks for freedom in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates.

The report’s findings were especially grim for Eurasian countries. Russia took a decided turn for the worse after Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. Having already marginalised the formal political opposition, he enacted a series of laws meant to squelch a burgeoning societal opposition. The measures imposed severe new penalties on unauthorised demonstrations, restricted the ability of civic groups to raise funds and conduct their work, and placed new controls on the internet.

Citing an accentuation of repression in a number of critical countries, the report urges the United States and other democracies to demonstrate leadership in the struggle for freedom. It criticises both the Obama administration and the Republican opposition for a reluctance to provide that leadership.

“Right now there are societies where freedom is in the balance, yet the democracies have beaten a retreat,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “What we’ve learned over the years is that gains for freedom usually take place with the active participation of democracies like the United States and those in Europe. And where they have opted out of the struggle, the result is usually a defeat for freedom.”

Key global findings:

The number of electoral democracies stood at 117, the same as for 2011. Two countries, Georgia and Libya, achieved electoral democracy status, while two were dropped from the category, Mali and the Maldives.

Four countries moved from Partly Free to Free: Lesotho, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tonga. Three countries rose from Not Free to Partly Free: Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, and Libya. Mali fell two tiers, from Free to Not Free, and Guinea-Bissau dropped from Partly Free to Not Free.

Some notable trends highlighted in the report include increased Muslim-on-Muslim violence, which reaching horrifying levels in Pakistan and remained a serious problem in Iraq and elsewhere; a serious decline in civil liberties in Turkey; and among the Persian Gulf states, a steady and disturbing decline in democratic institutions and an increase in repressive policies.

Worst of the Worst:

Of the 47 countries designated as Not Free, nine have been given the survey’s lowest possible rating of 7 for both political rights and civil liberties: Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Two territories, Tibet and Western Sahara, were also ranked among the worst of the worst.

An additional 5 countries and 1 territory received scores that were slightly above those of the worst-ranked countries, with ratings of 6,7 or 7,6 for political rights and civil liberties: Belarus, Chad, China, Cuba, Laos, and South Ossetia.

Key regional findings:

Middle East and North Africa

In a region notable for sectarian polarisation, civil strife, and repressive autocracies, freedom scored some grudging but nonetheless impressive gains in 2012. Gains: Tunisia maintained dramatic improvements from the previous year, and Libya and Egypt both moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Declines: Syria suffered by far the worst repercussions from the Arab Spring. Declines were also seen in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

Sub-Saharan Africa

In recent years, sub-Saharan Africa has ranked as the world’s most politically volatile region, with major democratic breakthroughs in some countries, and coups, civil strife, and authoritarian crackdowns in others. While the region saw several significant gains, especially in West Africa, civil conflicts and the emergence of violent Islamist groups prevented an overall upgrade for political freedom. Gains: Three countries moved from Partly Free to Free: Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. Côte d’Ivoire moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Guinea and Malawi also showed gains. Declines: Mali suffered one of the greatest single-year declines in the history of Freedom in the World, dropping precipitously from Free to Not Free, and Guinea-Bissau’s status declined from Partly Free to Not Free. Declines were also seen in the Central African Republic, The Gambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Madagascar, South Africa, and Uganda.

Central and Eastern Europe/Eurasia

The return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency ushered in a new period of accelerated repression. With Russia setting the tone, Eurasia (consisting of the countries of the former Soviet Union minus the Baltic states) now rivals the Middle East as one of the most repressive areas on the globe. Indeed, Eurasia is in many respects the world’s least free subregion, given the entrenchment of autocrats in most of its 12 countries. Gains: Improvements were seen in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia, as well as in the disputed territories of Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the latter of which moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Declines: Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine all had notable declines.

Asia-Pacific

For years ranked among the world’s most repressive regimes, Burma continued to push ahead with a process of democratic reform that was launched in 2010. While it remains a Not Free country, it registered improvements that brought it ahead of China in both its political rights and civil liberties ratings. Gains: Improvements were seen in Burma, Bhutan, Indian Kashmir, Mongolia, and Tonga. Declines: The most serious declines in the Asia-Pacific region for 2012 took place in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

Americas

As the year ended, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez was in a Cuban hospital attempting to recover from surgery for an undisclosed form of cancer. For over a decade, Chávez has been a significant figure in regional politics and has aspired, with less success, to a leading role on the global stage. His reelection in 2012 was ensured by the massive abuse of state resources. Gains: The region of the Americas saw no substantial improvements. Declines: Ecuador, Paraguay, and Suriname suffered notable declines.

Western Europe and North America

Although Western Europe and North America continue to grapple with the impact of the financial crisis and, in Europe, an increase in nationalist sentiment in response to an influx of immigrants, they have managed to weather these challenges without a serious weakening of their traditionally high level of respect for democratic standards and civil liberties. There were no major gains or declines in this region.

To view the complete findings, click HERE.

Freedom House is an independent watchdog organisation that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.

Victory for religious symbols; defeat for the religious conscience

British Airways check-in worker Nadia Eweida (top right) has won the right to wear a cross at work. The landmark ruling was made by the European Court of Human Rights Today (full judgment HERE). Basically, the Court found that her rights had been violated under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines the right to be able to manifest religion.

The court said this was because 'a healthy democratic society needs to tolerate and sustain pluralism and diversity; but also because of the value to an individual who has made religion a central tenet of his or her life to be able to communicate that belief to others'.

This is a defeat for the Government, which opposed the case on the basis that religious freedoms apply only to the private sphere (despite the Prime Minister declaring in Parliament that Christians should be allowed to wear the cross at work).

The other claimants all lost their cases. They included nurse Shirley Chaplin, who was taken off ward duties for refusing to remove a cross necklace that she had worn to work for 30 years. In her case, the court ruled: 'The reason for asking her to remove the cross, namely the protection of health and safety on a hospital ward, was inherently of a greater magnitude than that which applied in respect of Ms Eweida.'

Gary McFarlane, a relationships counsellor, and Lillian Ladele, a registrar, had both asked their employers to accommodate their religious conscience in regard to civil partnerships and homosexual relationships. Ms Ladele was disciplined by Islington Council, in London, for refusing to perform same-sex civil partnership ceremonies. Her lawyers argued that employers should make 'reasonable accommodation' for religious beliefs. Mr McFarlane was sacked for gross misconduct by the charity Relate after he said that he would not be able to provide sex therapy to same-sex couples.

Responding to the judgements, the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu said: 'Christians and those of other faiths should be free to wear the symbols of their own religion without discrimination. Christians are not obliged to wear a cross but should be free to show their love for and trust in Jesus Christ in this way if they so wish.

‘In July 2012, the General Synod stated that it is the calling of Christians to order and govern their lives in accordance with the teaching of Holy Scripture and to manifest their faith in public life as well as in private. This means giving expression to their beliefs in the written and spoken word, and in practical acts of service to the local community and to the nation.

‘The Equality Act 2010 encourages employers to embrace diversity – including people of faith. Whether people can wear a cross or pray with someone should not be something about which courts and tribunals have to rule.’

His Grace is delighted for Ms Eweida. But it is a curious accommodation of the 'fundamental right' to manifest religious belief in the workplace which permits Roman Catholic doctors and nurses to deprive women of their right to abort their babies, but then forces council workers and charity employees to transgress their consciences on the issue of same-sex relationships. In what sense is a woman's legal right to abortion a lesser right than the right of homosexuals to be civilly partnered?

It is a curious notion of religious liberty that puts symbolic trinkets above the religious conscience. 

Dawkins: religion makes you stupid

So, the emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and the University's former Professor for Public Understanding of Science, is of the view that religion poisons thought processes and makes people stupid.

He appears to have forgotten (conveniently, as ever) the religious foundations of Oxford University. Has he no knowledge of Keble, Merton or Pusey? Who founded Christ Church and why? Has this 'stupidity' hindered academic progress or undermined its global reputation? Oxford takes its Christian foundations very seriously indeed. Despite multi-faith multiculturalism, its higher degrees are still bestowed upon all graduands Ad honorem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et ad profectum Sarosanctae Matris Ecclesiae. As they kneel before the Vice-Chancellor, he touches each one upon the head with a Testament, admitting them in nomine Domini, Patris, Filii et Spirutus Sancti.

Dr Dawkins' remarks must be rather offensive to the Theology Faculty and the eminent scholars who work under its aegis (not to mention current students). A brief summary on Wikipedia tells us that Oxford has produced at least twelve saints, and twenty Archbishops of Canterbury. Is Dr Dawkins really of the opinion that Rowan, Lord Williams is 'stupid'? Was John Wycliffe stupid? What about the Christian humanist John Colet? Or John and Charles Wesley?

What stupidity is it which asserts correlation or causality between stupidity and religion based on a BBC programme?