Bishop worships at the altar of the State
by Jules Gomes, TCW:
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. So do bishops in the Church of England. Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, has now crowned himself the supreme personification of the honorific office of Useful Episcopal Idiot.
This preacher of the false gospel of tolerance is now urging the government to strip the Church of England of its exemptions under the Equality Act to help it stamp out a culture of abuse, homophobia and sexism.
Wilson’s suicidal policy is akin to three blind mice squabbling over a piece of cheese. When they cannot find a solution to the equal distribution of a miserable chunk of cheddar, they optimistically approach the cat, urging him to clamp down on their squeaking and grant them justice and equality.
The Equality Act of 2010 grants exemptions to any ‘organised religion’ in the case of same-sex marriages. ‘A minister does not contravene Section 29, so far as relating to sex discrimination’ if the minister does so ‘for the purpose of avoiding conflict with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers’.
The commentary provided by the government on the Equality Act explains that ‘the protected characteristic of religion or religious or philosophical belief’ is ‘in line with the freedom of thought, conscience and religion guaranteed by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights’.
In a sense, the Equality Act wonderfully upholds the inalienable rights of freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The Declaration of Independence reminds us that human beings are ‘endowed by their Creator’ with these inalienable rights. God, not government, has granted us these rights and government has no right to take these rights away. The Equality Act emphatically affirms this; the ‘tolerant’ bishop categorically denies this.
Bishop Wilson would like the government to go one step further and invade the sphere of thought, conscience and religion. Does the bishop believe more in government than in God? Does the bishop believe in the power of government to coerce and compel people into surrendering their inalienable rights of freedom of religion and conscience? Does the bishop believe that the strongly held political convictions of a minority within the church and other religions on homosexuality should trump the ‘strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers’ even though the latter is protected by democratic legislation?
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