by Gavin Ashenden on substack
The Church Cannot Change Society by Forgetting Christ
“It makes no sense to attempt to reform society without first reforming the heart. The reformation of manners begins with personal piety.”
(William Wilberforce)
For decades, certainly throughout the whole of my life, the clergy and the Church of England have been digging a pit of less than competent politicisation in which they have been burying themselves and the Church they were serving,
as they urged left wing social reform on the country and the church.
The Archbishop of York has joined this chorus of ineptitude by chastising the BBC for its lack of ethnic sensitivity.
He thinks that its attempt to reach out across the different communities in the country by providing presenters with regional accents is a form of discrimination against ethnic minorities, whom he says “find their identity in ethnic origin and religious faith more than geographic location.”
Of course, he’s talking about Muslims but doesn’t want to say it.
It doesn’t seem to occur to him as odd or incongruous that the willingness to identify by your religious faith is something that Muslims cherish and the Christianity he represents and advocates rejects.
If he was going to chide the BBC for anything, it might more reasonably be its unwillingness to present Christianity on its channels and, in particular, to act to inform people about the reality of the Christian faith instead of marginalising it while mocking it. As it happens there is hardly any agency that is more devoted to imposing the visuals of ethnic mix on the majority of indigenous white English that it broadcasts to.