Prince Mushkin of Canterbury

THE CURRENT ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, Rowan Williams, is an authority on the writings of Dostoyevsky. He has an intellect that many would envy, but he carries about him the air of Prince Mushkin, the simple soul created by his favourite author in The Idiot.

Prince Mushkin, like the Archbishop, was crippled by innocence, naivety, and a very modern form of Christianity; a form that Rowan Williams believes in, which demonstrates gullibly and the relentless turning of each cheek in the hope that such behaviour would humble ones enemy into, admiration, submission or conversion.

The death of Christianity in this country will not be heralded by Richard Dawkins, but by those who, like Williams, take literally the message of Christ and so alienate so many other Anglican Christians. The present Archbishop is as much a literalist of the New Testament as many of those in the American Bible belt are of the Old.

Dostoyevsky’s faith, like his politics, was deeply conservative and would have no truck with liberalism. Indeed, despite suffering exile in Siberia, he remained loyal to the very conservatism that sent him into exile.

Liberalism to Dostoyevsky was an intellectual weakness, and he would rather have had a strong tsar leading his country than someone of our Archbishops’ calibre.

ROWAN WILLIAMS has begun losing both priesthood and laity to Rome because of his liberal agenda. And it was to this issue that his latest, of what must have been a well considered outburst, was ultimately directed. Williams nevertheless rightly offered his opinion of the disgraceful way the Church of Rome sought to cover-up the hundreds of cases of child abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland: in particular the way in which Ireland’s Catholic hierarchy sought to cover up such abuses.

He has now, however, bowed his head as a culpable child before a headmaster, and apologised for his remarks. Whatever his motives for criticising the Roman church in Ireland, he was right to do so on the issue of child abuse. But to then apologise, not only betrays the victims, but sums up clearly to the Anglican community in Britain, the worthlessness of their current head.

Rowan Williams had, upon his appointment as leader of the Anglican Faith, all of the qualities Tony Blair, at the time of his inauguration in 1997, wished for. That this benign entity, with his naive intellectual grip upon Anglican Christianity, and tortured by doubt with every decision he makes, was considered worthy of the office at the time by our political leaders, beggars’ belief.

Rowan Williams is a prime example of this nation’s decline. This nation’s religion which once held solid moral values that exemplified our English culture, has degenerated into a meaningless moral relativism, typified by the Archbishop’s earlier suggestion that there was a place for a Sharia law hybrid within our society.

The Anglican church has been like a sinking vessel under the current Archbishop’s stewardship. The captain, unable to prevent the leakage, stands ready to go down with his ship. While many of his crew and passengers don the lifejackets, hoping to be picked up by a more sturdy vessel than the one they have had to abandon.

THE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY is love: but if this message has certain politically incorrect tenets that are unacceptable to modern liberal society; then we must abandon them. If the New Testament is somewhat misogynistic and anti-gay, then just move the goal posts. For is this not what moral relativism is all about?

When Darwin undermined the creationist explanation of our origins, the goal posts were moved. Genesis, we now say, is just mere poetry - nothing more nor less; it is without any reality. As Darwin’s logic has managed to find little rebuttal from the Anglican church, the church has had to accommodate itself with Darwin.

In America however, the rebuttals of Darwinism are still coming thick and fast: and as both an atheist and a Darwinist, I admire these religious stalwarts, who stand by every word in the Bible, far more than I do the relativists in modern Anglicanism.

Every society needs a well cemented moral bedrock on which to build. We found ours in Christianity. Obviously, to me it matters little about the truth or otherwise of any religious belief. But the Ten Commandments has, for almost the last 2,000 years, kept society glued as a functioning entity.

This does not mean that there cannot be any morality without Christianity - this would be an absurdity. But until the rise of Christianity, the great moral absolutes of the Commandments corralled us and made us feel guilty about our worst behaviour - be it only based upon superstition.

THE MUSHKIN OF CANTERBURY has tried to accommodate Anglicanism with multiculturalism by his invitation to sharia law to form a part within such a society; but by so doing the modern world will be relinquishing the foundations of Christianity, and by so doing will be exchanging faith with liberal reasoning.

Thus, in such circumstances, all becomes possible - except faith. Moral boundaries accordingly no longer exist. Once the rational world intrudes upon that of the religious to such an extent that it undermines 2000 years of Christian faith by dilution, as the modern Anglican Church has sought to do under Rowan William’s moral relativism; then the Anglican church has little of its original purpose left.

I am a materialist who believes strongly in scientific reasoning in order to fully understand our origins. But I also have a great admiration for the role that Christianity has played in our history. Much human behaviour has been changed for the good (and not by psychiatrists) but by religious morality, and it matters little to me whether you believe it or not.

Of course Christianity combined with the Old Testament was, in times past, a somewhat toxic combination with emphasis placed upon the Old rather than the New. But thanks to Darwin the Old was supplanted by the New…at least in Europe.

Modern Anglicanism has gone too far with its accommodation of the politically correct. Women Priests and Bishops, as well as Gay marriages and priests, were never part of the Christian package as the Archbishop of Canterbury knows all too well. Yet he has proved himself submissive to any overture considered liberal.