…this obsession with things which are \u201d\u02dcless than God\u2019 is rooted in a more profound malaise \u201d\u201c the House of Bishops is not spiritually serious<\/b>. By this I mean to say that they don\u2019t seem to believe that the substance of Christianity is a matter of eternal life and death. The House of Bishops seems to be filled with just the same sort of social justice pleading that a liberal atheist would be perfectly at home with, with the consequence that the Bishops sound just like every other well-meaning middle class worrier….<\/p>\n
The Bishops, in other words, seem to embody the cultural cringe that most Christians in England suffer from \u201d\u201c that feeling when you are a reasonably intelligent and committed believer, but in mixed company refrain from mentioning anything to do with Christian faith for fear of causing offence, or, worse, being mistaken for a fundamentalist. The trouble is that the Bishops are there precisely to articulate the Christian faith in the public sphere and \u201d\u201c surely! \u201d\u201c to run the risk of offending when they do.<\/p>\n
What the Bishops have failed to do is articulate a coherent narrative, not about what Christianity is in general and as a whole, but what Christianity means for the English people at this point in our national life<\/b>.<\/p>\n