\u201cYet, at this time of great peril, I deeply regret that the British Government seems to be stepping back, rather than stepping up,\u201d\u009d writes Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander in The Sunday Telegraph, as he juxtaposed the \u201cno room at the inn\u201d\u009d of the Nativity with the horrors being meted out on Christians in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq and Sudan. \u201cJust like anti-Semitism or Islamaphobia, anti-Christian persecution must be named for the evil that it is, and challenged systematically by people of faith and of no faith,\u201d\u009d he exhorted.<\/p>\n
And he pledged that an incoming Labour government will establish a Global Envoy for Religious Freedom along with a multifaith advisory council on religious freedom within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: \u201cSupporting the newly appointed Global Envoy, this will help ensure a strong focus within the Foreign Office,\u201d\u009d he assures. And he lauded Baroness Warsi for her commitment to faith and human rights and \u201cthe leadership she showed and the seriousness with which she took her responsibilities\u201d\u009d, which was, he submits, \u201cwidely recognised…\u201d\u009d.<\/p>\n
The Archbishop of Canterbury was so impressed with this homily that he dared to tweet it out to his 68.3k followers, which caused alarm and dismay to some condescending Tories, as though Justin Welby were being indelicately partisan and unacceptably inattentive to the constitutional constraints of his Office. He didn\u2019t endorse any specific content: all he said was that it was \u201cgood debate\u201d\u009d, yet this is inexplicably deemed to be \u201cpoor judgment by Lambeth Palace\u201d\u009d (though the Palace didn\u2019t tweet it: the Archbishop did).<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been here before, of course. Last Christmas the tweeting was uncharitably critical of the Archbishop for not being \u201cdisciplined\u201d\u009d in speaking about Jesus, which was laughably unjustifiable.<\/p>\n