by Ceirion H Dewar, TCW
A Bishop’s rebuke to Anglican hierarchy who denounce Christians marching with Tommy Robinson
I WAS there. I stood at the front of the recent Unite the Kingdom event in London, and I led the prayers from the stage. I saw ordinary men and women – fathers carrying their children, pensioners gripping their sticks, young men and women lifting their voices – gathered not in hatred but in hope, not in rage but in resolve. I saw the cross of Christ raised aloft, not as a weapon of division but as a banner of faith.
Yet, within days, the familiar chorus began. Bishops and clergy, those who should have stood shoulder to shoulder with their faithful, rushed instead to the newspapers to denounce them. With one hand, they clutched their mitres and collars; with the other, they pointed accusingly at their own people. And with trembling voices, they scolded not those who desecrate our heritage, but those who dared to carry the cross into the public square.
This is no small failure. It is a betrayal of vocation, a collapse of courage, and a surrender to the spirit of the age.
Abandoning the faithful
The first calling of bishops and clergy is simple: feed my sheep. Not feed the media, not soothe the cultural elite, not curry favour with the powers of this world – but feed the sheep.
Yet what we now witness is the abandonment of the flock. The faithful, anxious about the future of their nation, concerned about the moral collapse of society, longing for leaders who will speak plainly, find instead that their shepherds have deserted them. They are branded with the scarlet letters of ‘far-right’ or ‘extremist’, not by enemies of the faith, but by their own bishops and clergy.
I tell you: this is cowardice draped in clerical robes. It is easier to condemn your own than to confront the godless ideologues tearing apart the nation. It is safer to sneer at the sheep than to stand against the wolves. But it is treachery all the same.