Vacuous calls to prayer and propagating a false gospel must at least give us pause, surely?
by Stephen Kneale:
There was an interview on the Sunday programme on Radio 4 with the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell. In it, the Archbishop was asked about his push for a day of prayer and how he interprets an article that claims a fifth of Church of England adherents are wandering off and the church is planning to make major cuts to clergy. He was also, somewhat bizarrely, asked for his views on the COVID-19 vaccine plans, which strike me as entirely outside of his purview, but there you go. You can listen to the interview here (37.00-41.30 mins).
On the face of it, I can understand why some would be perplexed about church ministers being less than thrilled by the suggestion of a day of prayer. Aren’t we in the business of wanting people to pray? I linked to an article by John Stevens, in my Snippets from the Interweb this past Sunday, outlining why some of us aren’t enamoured by this call.
But this interview on the Sunday programme underlines the points John was making. Let me just note a couple of things. First, the Archbishop claimed prayer changes things and is an expression of love. Well, so far, fair enough. But he went on to insist that prayer changes things (yes, but there may be some caveats to make here that we’ll come onto later) then proceeded to claim that prayer is ‘what God is asking me to do’ which is ‘to be the very best person I can be’. So, in his call to the nation to pray to the God of the Bible, the Archibishop of York manages to proffer a gospel that is not only nowhere to be found in the Bible, but a message that Jesus specifically called out in the Pharisees over and over again. Only, unlike the Pharisees who clearly did believe in an objective legal standard, it is a strange works-based righteousness that insists Jesus calls me to be the best person I can be, whilst at the same time implying a subjectivity to what constitutes being ‘the best person’ that descends into some sort of universalism. So, on the one hand, try with all your might to be the best person you can be but, on the other, however you subjectively define ‘being the best person’ is absolutely fine with Jesus. This, folks, is an Archbishop of the Church of England denying the gospel.
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