The event which prompted this comment may have been Tim Farron\u2019s failure to answer the question, obviously set to trap him, of whether homosexuality is a sin. Tim responded with Sunday School level answers in a failure, matched within the Church of England, to address gender and sexuality properly. Our failure should not be protected, and given the Gospels are full of Jesus responding to questions asked to trap him, Tim Farron needs to wise up a bit.<\/p>\n
The letter then continues with general religious reflection and worry about \u201cfurther secularisation in the public realm\u201d. The problem is that talking about religions in general makes this contribution vague. There is a nod at \u201creligiously motivated violence\u201d and addressing it, and the refugee \u201cconversation\u201d is addressed by looking at the costs than some incur, and equally sharing them. But this highlights the mealy-mouthed responses. We are having a \u201cconversation\u201d about refugees while perhaps ten or twenty thousand come, while the German Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, welcome a million, because they are suffering, homeless and obviously need help, and Christianity requires us not to pass by on the other side when people need help. That signals the depth of our actual British Christian failure.<\/p>\n
National Values.
\nThen occurs a sentence which sums up the failure of this letter. \u201cThese deep virtues and practices \u2013 love, trust, and hope, cohesion, courage and stability \u2013 are not the preserve of any one political party or worldview, but go to the heart of who we are as a country in all its diversity.\u201d It does not matter what your views are, in party terms, or in terms of worldview, we as a country in all its diversity practising these virtues can hang together. There are some problems with this. First, parties and people disagree about these and other virtues. Second, the rosy picture of national unity conveyed by the Conservative Party at this election, ignores the disunities within the UK, over Brexit and among many different groups who for good reasons do not have trust or hope. More deeply, this sentence conveys that national virtues are the basis of British society. This is not true for much of British politics. The UK pursued an illegal war on the basis of a lie in Iraq which has contributed to millions of lives being destabilised. The poor are being impoverished while the rich get richer. Health and care services are threatened. We are arming and selling arms on a large scale, and corruption is appearing in our banking and other sectors. This vague hope in national virtue will not do. More than this Britain\u2019s Brexit exit raises the problem of British Nationalism, or more accurately English nationalism, the idea that we really do have to be separate from our European neighbours. The Archbishops\u2019 letter mentions no other countries and seems to participate in this British fixation.<\/p>\n