WELL, THE OLD BOY HAS TAKEN his parting shot. Describing David Cameron’s ‘big society’ as ‘aspirational waffle’, Dr Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, has tied his own liberal waffle to the mast before retiring into academia where he should have been lodged in the first place.
The insipid and hippy-like leader of the Anglican Church, gave his literary rebuke in the soon to be published best seller Faith in the Public Square - which will also include his past speeches.
The fact that Cameron’s ‘big society’ is indeed 22 carat waffle does not mean that the Archbishops’ alternative is any less dismissive. Having, in the past, dismissed what he regards as society's acquisitiveness brought about by the pursuit of economic growth; he now shows himself as ignorant of economics as an economist is of theology.
Now, I admit I am no economist. But I do know that human beings need to advance themselves material. As consumers they generate not only the wealth that allows governments to tax income and provide them with a health and education service; but they also seek to help their families prosper – or at least make them feel secure.
Economic growth transforms society. The opportunities it generates lead to advances in science and medicine. The much loathed drug companies invest billions (far more than the state would find themselves able to do) in finding treatments or cures for much of human suffering – suffering which, no doubt, the Archbishop is now against in light of its acquisitive nature.
All the main scientific advances have been made within a free market system. I hate to use the word capitalism when writing about the soon to be lamented archbishop; but it is indeed true that humans are driven by ambition, and ambition is no sin. We are competitive by nature, but we are also in search of knowledge, and the two meet admirably. Incentives drive human beings on to further progress. Even in such unprofitable fields (financially that is) as natural history, where material reward is somewhat limited, the reward of finding a new discovery, or advancing a new thesis that captures the imagination of contemporaries is certain to advance the respect of its founder.
Human nature in the modern age is all wound up in the advancement of our scientific and technological evolution. When an anti-competitive system was introduced under Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the state had to resort to espionage with the West in order to keep abreast of technological and scientific developments. Their scientists were either unsympathetic to the regime they were serving, or lacked the free flow of scientific information that the West denied them, but was much needed if they were to perform to their full competitive ability with the West.
DR ROWEN WILLIAMS reminds me of my early association with socialism and communism. Both of which had faith in the state to oversee the material needs of the people without resorting to what Dr Williams would describe as capitalism’s acquisitiveness.
The dynamic of capitalism is ambition and advancement built upon reward at every level of society, with the one exemption, that of the public sector. It is this exemption that Dr Williams finds himself supporting: '…if the big society is anything better than a slogan looking increasingly threadbare as we look at our society reeling under the impact of public spending cuts, then discussion on this subject has got to take on board some of those issues about what it is to be a citizen and where it is that we most deeply and helpfully acquire the resources of civic identity and dignity.'
To the likes of Dr Rowan Williams, money is the root of all evil, and its accumulation ever more so. He sees a nation’s sovereign deficit as little more than monopoly money; while he himself, no doubt, lives well within his financial means; It is not always true of society generally
Money and wealth to Dr Rowan Williams are like alcohol and cocaine. They ill-serve society and whatever replaces them will prove sufficient, providing it has a rigorous Anglican teaching as part of the menu.
DR ROWEN WILLIAMS should confine himself to theology, the discipline he excels in; and not attempt an incursion into a subject he knows little of, but through Christian prejudice he feels himself entitled to comment upon - the quality of such remains commensurate with his ignorance.
Those like Canterbury who speak out against growth, capitalism, bankers and tax avoiders, offer us no alternative. The last anti-capitalist who did so, ended up creating a murderous system; built on good intensions such as the brotherhood of man and equality, but whose legacy embraced the killing of millions of Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Polish, Czechs, as well as many from the other nations that put their faith in communism.
Cameron’s big society was a piece of Blairite gruel served up as a headline but about as nourishing as a piece of rice paper. The ‘big society’, like ‘education, education, education’ were fabricated as sound bites. To believe they had any intellectual depth attached to them, as no doubt, the good Doctor did; only goes to show why he should be heading off to academia.
One would have thought there was more to occupy an Anglican than the words of a politician – namely the dismemberment of the Anglican church itself, which the archbishop has helped bring about.
We have had women priests, and now, the slippery slope has led to the inevitable call for women bishops: while gays are seeking to have their relationships sanctified by being allowed to marry in a church with the blessing of an Anglican priest.
It is true that Anglicanism, in this country at least, is merely a follower of fashion. The ancient ties and beliefs that the Bible has provided them with since the Reformation have been, it seems, all for nothing.
The church has replaced its duty to God with a duty to a liberal agenda, described as progressive. We all know that the Bible, from what we know of the time it was written, that neither women or gays come out of it very well. Yet liberal progressives within and without the Anglican church seek to overturn the centuries of biblical teaching that contradicts what they feel is right and proper today – thankfully the Catholic church remains immune from the advances of the ‘progressive’ virus, and may outlive the great Protestant Reformation – in this country at least.
DR WILLIAMS HAS CHOSEN WELL the timing of his departure; for his church is in a far worse state than the country. Instead of attacking David Cameron’s big society, he would have done a far better service to his church by offering solutions to its own predicament. A predicament that may see the Anglican church dissolve after over 500 years of painstaking and often bloody ascendency.
The Anglican church faces a schism over its current liberal rapture with those more conservative high Anglicans finally giving up the ghost and deciding to live within the quadrangles of the church of Rome, instead of having to kow-tow to fashion and trend in order to appease ‘progressive’ modernism.
There are two forms of religious teaching. First there is the Holy Book which is sacrosanct. Then there is the teaching of the institution of the church which elaborates the duties a believer owes to the church which he or she is a part of. It is this aspect of the churches’ role that caused the Reformation.
While there were doctrinal disputes, it was the demands and practices (such as indulgences) of the church of Rome that helped cause the 16th century schism known as the Reformation.
In the Anglican church today we can happily replace indulgences with ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’, and arrive at the same destiny that the church of Rome arrived at during the Reformation.
The Anglican church has, particularly under the administration of Dr Rowan Williams, been allotted such a dire position. Dr Williams is himself a liberal by both instinct and intellectual capacity. He, you will remember, suggested that sharia law would find a home in English law; which led to his first debunking in the British press. His liberalism has brought the Anglican church to this illiberal position where conflict reigns within.
The wretched and soon to be former Archbishop of Canterbury, leaves the field of battle at a time when his church, through his own lake of endeavour, is about to enter schism if women Bishops are allowed to come into existence or gays allowed the blessing of the Church of England.
Yet all Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, can concern himself with in his final essay, is a flippant posting of a headline making (and nothing more) comment by a politician that will amount to mere confetti thrown on the political landscape.
Dr Rowan Williams will retire to his academic retreat in the knowledge that whatever befalls the Anglican church after his administration of it, he will no longer be held accountable - even if he began the journey that eventually led to schism within the Anglican church.
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