Speaking at the Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury reinforced his credentials – Marxist ones, that is.
His Grace views the world as a battleground for two implacable enemies. Given his occupation, you probably think the clash he sees in his mind’s eye is one between good and evil, or God and Satan if you’d rather.
You have another think coming. For the good archbishop doesn’t think in theological terms. The conceptual framework of his worldview is solidly Marxist.
Yes, good and evil are still the warring parties, but they are embodied in the poor and the rich. Every war the Archbishop declares, be it on climate change, mistreatment of refugees or oppression, is class war at base.
Perhaps ‘think’ is too generous a word, based as it is on the assumption that thought precedes speech. Yet His Grace treats this assumption with the contempt it doesn’t deserve:
“To be silent on the climate emergency and its implications for the economy, to be silent on the unethical treatment of migrants or on war and oppression, on the abuse of human rights, on persecution is to be one of the oppressors.”
This little statement goes beyond category error. It’s more like category demolition.
Leaving aside his acceptance of the subversive climate hoax on faith, lumping it together with “war”, “oppression” and “the abuse of human rights” shows that His Grace’s mouth is disengaged from his brain.
Following his logic, it’s “climate change, better called the climate crisis or better still the climate emergency” that’s directly responsible for, say, Putin’s bandit raid on the Ukraine, with war, oppression and abuse of human rights aplenty.
And when the climate was warmer than it is now, in the first century BC, was it hot weather that fuelled Caesar’s conquests? I don’t think he showed a lot of respect for the Gauls’ human rights. Must have been too hot for that sort of thing.
Not only does His Grace diagnose the world’s malignant disease, but he also has no doubts whatsoever about its aetiology. It is “the result of the wealthier countries having declared war on God’s creation, unknowingly, unthinkingly starting from the 19th century.”
Is the Archbishop nostalgic about windmills, hoes and horse-driven ploughs? If so, he must also miss high infant and natal mortality, life expectancy half of today’s, intolerable pain caused by dental and surgical procedures, regular murderous famines and whatnot.
The Industrial Revolution, which he sees as “war on God’s creation” made life infinitely better for the apex of that creation, man. Scientific and technological progress isn’t without its downsides, but describing it in such crude binary terms wouldn’t be out of place at a meeting of a clandestine Marxist cell.
“The symptoms of that war now are that the wealthy dump refuse in the oceans,” continued His Grace. And the poor don’t? It’s the underdeveloped nations that are by far the worst ecological abusers.
Asia, for example, is responsible for emitting 81 per cent of ocean plastics, compared to Europe’s 0.6 per cent and North America’s 4.5. Never mind. When a Marxist talks, facts run for cover.
Nor do poor countries take close to heart the Archbishop’s entreaty to cut carbon emissions. But hold on for a moment: climate emergency or no, the poor shouldn’t be told to cut down on their hydrocarbons. That’s assuming I can follow the rattling runaway train of His Grace’s thought:
“They [the rich] tell the poor not to use carbon-generating fuels and they say to the world, too often, not by their word but by their actions ‘we will keep our wealth and you, the poor, must discover new paths’.”
That’s not even apples and oranges. It’s apples and bicycles. For ‘the rich’, a group implicitly anathematised by the Archbishop, are cutting their economic throats by buying into the climate hoax, today’s surrogate religion.
Just yesterday Biden’s administration undertook to cut carbon emissions 40 per cent by 2050. Britain’s targets are even more ambitious, which is to say suicidal.
Does that qualify as actions or words? The former, I daresay. What’s definitely just words, empty ones at that, is vague, almost apologetic suggestions that perhaps third-world countries should also cut their emissions, if only by a smidgen.
And shouldn’t we be allowed to hold on to our wealth, what little is left of it? Jesus, after all, only said that man shouldn’t live by bread alone, not that he should live by no bread at all.
Having declared war on the rich who oppress, pollute and abuse, His Grace lamented that many churches, including his own, are cheek by jowl with state power. That reduces their crusading potential: “The history of the churches is too often tragically not one of challenging unjust structures.”
How can the Church of England, for example, fight the good fight when it’s “embedded in establishment”? Eh… well, yes. That’s why it’s called ‘established’, which is to say state, Church. And that’s why both the Church and the state have the same head, the Queen.
If His Grace is campaigning for disestablishment, he’ll find some sympathy in these quarters. But, he hastened to reassure the Conference, he isn’t. He isn’t really campaigning for anything much.
Archbishop Welby is simply making Marxist noises with woke overtones that have more to do with semiotics than semantics. That’s what passes for thought these days, and that problem is much worse than anything His Grace finds so vexing.
“Asia, for example, is responsible for emitting 81 per cent of ocean plastics, compared to Europe’s 0.6 per cent and North America’s 4.5. ”
I have seen statistics that say ASIAN countries 90 %. 5 % from Nigeria. Rest of the world the remainder. Of that 90 % Asian almost all from India and China combined.
The good Archbishop seems to be following the pope’s direction – is there a reconciliation between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches on the horizon? Both men speak of earthy matters far more than the supernatural. The Archbishop seems to have garbled some of our Lord’s teachings:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost – chastise all nations in the name of the climate, and of oppression, and of economic disadvantage.
Go, and sin no more – pollute no more
Love thy neighbor as thyself – hate yourself, for your ancestors were colonizers and inventors!
Seek ye first the kingdom of God – Focus entirely on earthly matters, speak not of God
Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell – Fear them that kill mother earth, no mention of heaven or hell.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing – beware of them? He has become one!
I wrote a piece like that 10 years ago, and doesn’t time fly: http://www.alexanderboot.com/the-gospel-according-to-dave/ Two great minds… and all that.
Very nice. I had long forgotten that one. Surely puts my effort to shame, but I will venture to guess you spent more time on yours.
Two great minds? You’re too kind, but I’m glad you would think so. One for sure, and maybe one in training (still, and so late in life). Though I do think I have a knack for finding the absurd and surely a true gift in sarcasm.
I wrote a piece like that thirty or forty years ago (who didn’t?), but I offer you an updated version.
Our Parent of indeterminate gender who art not up in the sky but in a very real sense a product of all our most admirably trendy yearnings,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy Socialist Republic come.
Thy will be done, except all those bits of thy will that are clearly and repeatedly expressed in the Bible and 1900 years of unanimous Christian Tradition,
On Earth as it is in Portland, Oregon.
Take away this day their daily Internet access from people who disagree with us.
And forgive us our mistakes in sorting our recycling,
As we forgive those who fly-tip against us (after gleefully reporting them to
the council).
And lead us not into the Church of Rome, the Continuing Anglican Church, the Orthodox Churches or anywhere else where we might find something resembling the true Christian Faith,
But deliver us from any threat to our ecclesiastical emoluments.
For thine is every KINGDOM that isn’t polluted by the presence of white people, the POWER to action Real Change in a leftist direction, and the GLORY that is Conceptual Art.
Amen.
Ah yes – virtue signalling writ large , costing him nothing for cheap “likes” or “thumbs up” . He must never have ventured into any slum/ghetto in any Western city and seen the burned out cars , or on blocks or dilapidated buildings , garbage everywhere on the street , graffiti on most surfaces , businesses boarded up . No need to bring up the third world’s ailments to blame the West.