Q. In the wake of the attacks in Paris, do you think Islam is a religion of peace?
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A. It’s an incredibly complex question, and as Christians we have to recognize the slightly thin moral ground, the slightly thin moral standing, that we have. We only have to go back to the Balkans 20 years ago and Srebrenica to find Christians killing 7,000 Muslim men. So there’s an element of, Let’s not be too quick to stand in a glass house and throw stones.
However, there is within many faiths, traditions, at the moment, a stream that says: “We need to change things, we need to change them quickly, and the way to do that is through violence.”
There are aspects of Islamic practice and tradition at the moment that involve them in violence, as there are, incidentally, in Christian practice. The answer to that is not to condemn a whole religious tradition with one simple sentence, but nor is it to pretend it’s not happening.
I have a number of problems with this and his talk at Trinity Wall Street. Over the past month or so I have read a number of articles in the UK church, claiming some sort of parity between Christians and Muslims in violence and by implication a link with what is termed ‘fundamentalism’. Just one example was in the Church Times Leader by Paul Handley who should have known better.
People look to their Christian leaders to articulate an accurate picture of what the Christian faith is about. The Massacre in Srebenica was set against a background of Croat massacres of Serbs in the 1940’s and was undertaken by Bosnian Serb Nationalists who, while you might say that Serbia has an Orthodox Christian Majority [there is a considerable Roman Catholic population as well], was not undertaken as a Christian ethnic cleansing, but as a Serbian Nationalist war crime.
The Christian witness there was given by a Christian British officer, Colonel Bob Stewart, who has since served as a member of Parliament, who remonstrated with the Serbs in a courageous and publicly televised act reported worldwide at the time.
Christianity is not about killing anyone, and while some may take the name, such as the IRA, it is very important that this is got across all the time, even if it is at the expense of taking cheap shots at ‘fundamentalists.’
It is really really important that the idea that such things are ‘Christian’ or committed by ‘Christians’ is not given credence, and that is part of an archbishop’s job to give a clear witness and explanation of the faith. This is central, and comes before whatever else he may chose to spend his time doing, given lectures on liberation theology or gay-liberal theologian Walter Brueggemann’s pontification on Isaiah.
No doubt it went down well with his sponsoring parish who have backed his schemes so well, just as they promised to do if he wished at his consecration, but it really is rather disgusting to see an Archbishop of Canterbury fawning all over the Presiding Bishop’s bagmen at Trinity Wall Street, particularly when she has this last month executed yet another Bishop, Peter Beckwith formerly of Springfield. I see David Porter has gone over to carry the baggage back – just says it all.
One banana skin after another, as the Times pointed out this week, by someone who seems unable to publicly articulate the word of life which people expect to hear from him, rather than giving a fourth former’s talk on ‘Christian massacres’ and Marxist-Leninist ramblings.
It is time he bucked his ideas up and went for best practice Christianity, and stopped fawning all over TEC and taking their money as if he was a Tanzanian bishop.
General and wholehearted agreement. One small correction – Walter Brueggemann is not gay – though he is a campaigner for gay marriage et. al.