The Archbishop of Canterbury has challenged Gordon Brown’s plans for Britain to spend its way out of the recession and instead called on consumers to curb their appetites.
Dr Rowan Williams used his Easter sermon to advocate a return to the spiritual values embraced by monastic communities ”” poverty, chastity and obedience.
His message was echoed by Church leaders around the country, putting them on a collision course with the Government and its solution to the economic crisis, which is to persuade shoppers to start buying again.
[blockquote]†He said that renewed interest in the monastic life could be one sign that people were looking afresh to find ways of living their faith. “We’re still fascinated by this life — we joke about it, yet have an uneasy respect for it, as a whole series of television presentations will confirm.â€[/blockquote] I’m not certain who the “we” is that jokes about the monastic life. I hope he doesn’t include himself in this. He is not including me in this.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has challenged Gordon Brown’s plans for Britain to spend its way out of the recession and instead called on consumers to curb their appetites.
Going against all economic wisdom. That’s why he was appointed as the Chief Economist for the UK. I have the greates respect for the ABC, but stick to your specialization ++Rowan.
To quote that great existentialist Bugs Bunny – “What a maroon.”
Easy to talk about the simpler life when you live in a government provided palace and have no worries about your physical safety or financial condition. It has always been one of my pet peeves that the monastic life is somehow viewed as more pure. I have often thought it is actually the easy way out. No messy engagement with all the sin and disorder in the world. Just leave it behind and go to the monastery. No need to struggle on a daily basis with how to be in the world and yet not part of it.
Rowan continues to underwhelm.
Benedict XVI’s Easter message: “Even if through Easter, Christ has destroyed the root of evil, he still wants the assistance of men and women in every time and place who help him to affirm his victory using his own weapons: the weapons of justice and truth, mercy, forgiveness and love.” Rowan Williams’ message: “Curb your appetite.” To put it generously, perhaps one is the way of affirmation, the other the way of negation? Perhaps we need to hear both. But, I can’t help wondering asking which is a message born of weary decadence and which is driven by the life-giving truths central to the Easter message of transformation?
Great. He can start a great revival of monasticism by demanding the government put lead back on all the abbey churches they destryed in the HVIII administration. Start with rebuilding Glastonbury Abbey, maybe Lindisfarne? Make Westminster into a monastic institution perhaps. With the vast population of completey uncatechized laymen to choose from it’ll be a little difficult to fill them, though.
RE: “Going against all economic wisdom.”
Well, no.
Going against all committed Keynesian economic “wisdom” — but by no means all economic wisdom.
Not too much in these Easter Sermons. The challenge to spiritual values does sound ominously like “conversion” in a unclear sense.
Well, given the brilliance of his track record in managing the Anglican Communion and, ahem, the Lambeth Conference finances, there is not a whit of doubt the Government will find his prognostications and recommendations to be the “solution” to their current fiasco. Where, exactly, will be the nadabadaveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeda groups for the government planners and persons charged with defending the economy, one wonders. Will it be under a big tent and include the EU?