Your Grace,
In these humble words, we would like to respond to your article for the Guardian titled ‘After all these days of hate and violence in the UK, we must find a way to live together well.’
We must first be clear – this response is in no way an attempt to legitimise the repugnant scenes of violence that were instigated by a small number of trouble causers and to which others more prone to follow than to lead; let fly their fury and anger in an uncontrolled, undisciplined, and unjust manner. Nothing of which I write should be understood as a defence of such scenes, the targeting of mosques or of refugee hotels. We agree – as Christians, that we are against racism in all its forms, and I am sure you will agree with me – this includes anti-white racism, which has been all too often captured and displayed across social media platforms.
However, we must raise a query, your Grace. Why are you writing the Guardian to talk ABOUT working-class people to other well-to-do, sheltered elites rather than speaking directly TO working-class people, many of whom are your co-religionists? Would it not have been better to have your article published in, say, The Sun, The Mirror, or the Daily Mail – at least simultaneously in an attempt to speak to the whole nation rather than speak about another part of it – to your own, in our divided Kingdom. You have come across as patronising and arrogant. I would like to be charitable and pray that it is because you see yourself as having a special vocation to reach out to the Islington and Clapham set – but I fear it is, rather, just another gaff tone-deaf that has so besmirched your tenure in the venerable seat of Canterbury.
We, as Christians – as you should know well, my Grace, are called to be the makers of peace, and so your question is a pertinent one. How might we build peace? You speak on how the protests across the land by working-class people should simply be dismissed as riots. However, your Grace, may I point out to you that the House of Bishops expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests – which also descended into scenes of riot across the country, particularly in London, in which police were attacked, the cenotaph abused, and murder was attempted – outside of Waterloos station. However, the response of the Bishops and yourself was to express solidarity with those who were, as you put it in your article, ‘The riots (don’t dignify them with the treasured word “protest”) are criminal and must be controlled.’
We do not remember, your Grace, you using such language of the BLM riots! Indeed, ever the one to see the way in which the crowd was marching, you attempted to run to the front – as if you had been there all the time, attacking, instead, the age-old Christian custom of representing the Christ in the same image as the people He has come to save, attacking white portrayals of Jesus. It was stated that the see of Canterbury should instead reconsider this most venerable custom of the Church in the light of the BLM ‘riots’ – let us not, after all, dignify them with the treasured word “protest.”
Why this double standard – your Grace? Are you suffering from white liberal guilt?
We wish to applaud your words about the importance of free speech and the protection of the freedom of worship. So, your Grace, we eagerly await your defence of it from the government’s recent spasm of cracking down on free speech, with the desire to limit speech further in societies Areopagus, the new media, like X and YouTube. We look forward, therefore, your Grace, to hearing your opposition to the introduction of a new blasphemy law under the guise of Islamophobia. We look forward to this, your Grace, for you have never once given off the impression – that you are only virtue signalling – and not a principled man of the cloth; that you would be a ‘doer of the word and not a hearer only.’ Your own word, that is, for I, like countless Christians around the country, have noticed with pained anguish that our mother Church and her leaders seem not to keep to the clear writ of Scripture on so many other points such as abortion, gay marriage, the practice of homosexuality, not worshipping other gods, and participating in false religious practices, male headship of the Church, solidarity with the persecuted Church, amongst other things. No one anymore expects you to be a faithful Christian, your Grace, but we do hope you can find it within you to be true to your own words on this matter.
We question you, however, your Grace, to your commitment to a multi-faith world; as Christians, should we not instead seek to build a Christian world? No one is, of course, implying anything but the conversion of the lost by appropriate means, but your Grace, surely it is wrong-footed to aim at the achievement of a world in which not all are Christian? How does such a commitment – fit with our Lord’s command to seek and disciple the lost in all nations? Perhaps you meant by a ‘faith-filled world’ the Christian faith, or as I suspect, did you mean a world filled with ‘faith’ in which that one faith is shared by many religions? Which faith, your Grace, are we speaking of? What faith here are you advocating?
‘Atheism or agnosticism are choices people may make, as are the different faiths, but no choice is an excuse for ignorance of others. And to remove any doubt, the Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far right is an offence to our faith and all that Jesus was and is. Let me say clearly now to Christians that they should not be associated with any far-right group – because those groups are unchristian. Let me say clearly now to other faiths, especially Muslims, that we denounce people misusing such imagery as fundamentally antichristian.’
These words, your Grace, are most conceited and patronising – you have demonstrated that you do not ‘understand’ the Christians, like myself, who have ‘associated’ with the working classes, who media, like the Guardian, has falsely labelled ‘Far Right’. It would help if we could agree upon what ‘Far Right’ actually means, as it is being stretched to include more and more people – including myself – who do not identify themselves as ‘Far Right’. I want to correct you again, your Grace, that the Far Right, and by that you must mean ordinary people, have not ‘exploited’ Christian iconography (though you strangely give no examples). Christians are interwoven in this reawakening of the political consciousness of the working classes. Christians are active within it, at the top, the middle, and the bottom to evangelise and try and guide, as well as to express very real concerns that affect the common good of the working classes, something you clearly do not ‘understand’ which you have said cannot be ‘excused’ by any ‘choice’. Why did you not understand, your Grace? What choice stops you from understanding?
Why now, your Grace, are you trying to present yourself like some Christian leader, respected by your people? I want to assure you, your Grace, your conduct in office has left you bereft of the moral authority to tell anyone to do anything. I would say to you that you should not associate with those who push the religion of humanity and the cult of the self within your Church, but many of them – you (and you alone) consider them to be Bishops of the Holy Church. When Christians – cry out – Christ is King, on these marches, it is to call the world and those from amongst ourselves to the banner of Christ to the establishment of a new Christendom. We are not calling for a revised Liberal Secularism that is just more conservative than progressive, which is what most compatriots on these marches default to. No! We reject the failure of Liberal Secularism and its incumbent Religion of Humanity that holds sway over your thinking and that of the people you condemn. No one has hijacked this! It is an organic expression of the people of GOD from amongst the poor who desire the Kingdom of GOD – here on earth as it is in heaven. DO NOT PATRONISE US with faux, moral authority, your Grace! You do not understand us, speak for us, or even speak to us!
We agree that Far-Right Politics is all-too-human-centred; it does not desire the Kingdom of GOD. Depending on its flavour, your Grace (you are aware of the spectrum, because you took the choice to understand), some aspects of the Far-Right are completely anti-Christian, but not all, especially those of us labelled ‘Far Right’ (for in truth, we confess no allegiance except to Christ), who is Christian. The Spectrum, your Grace, is this: ethno-nationalists, civil-nationalist, technocrats, and (ourselves) theonomists. We do not all see eye to eye, and we do not all agree. However, we have all seen or know someone who has had a relative raped by the grooming gangs, or a family member and veteran who is homeless or otherwise struggling. We have all felt wage deflation and the frustration of watching others who have only just arrived be housed before us in the system. All matter you might have tried to speak into, if you had bothered to understand.
In your example about the Imam, you forgot to mention the pleasant way in which he was received by the very same people you had earlier in your article attempted to lampoon as racist. The fact he was received safely shows that the people he spoke to were not the violent racists you wished to portray them as. His reception by members of my community tells the truth to the lie you and others in the Guardian, and those who read the Guardian, have attempted to throw on them! The reality is – as the Imam observed – but you did not – ‘they just want to be heard’. Do you hear them now, your Grace?
By ‘othering’ (as you and your ilk are so fond of saying) as ‘the mob’ – as you called them, you deny their right to be heard on issues connected to child grooming, out-of-control immigration and its effects, Islamisation, and their general loss of culture and identity, a wound the poor feel sharply, because they have so little else they can build their pride upon!
The turn to the ‘self’ that you mention, your Grace, is at the very heart of the apostacy in the Church of England you are surrounded by (and possibly even a practitioner of the cult of ‘self’ worship). This might explain why, on abortion and sexual ethics, your church is so disastrously compromised, as these are the two pinnacle alters of the worship of ‘self’!
We charge you – your Grace, that you have confused civic religion and Liberal Humanism with Christianity. You are more a disciple of the Enlightenment and its Humanism than you are of Christ and the Apostles. We reject your admonition, not because in every sense it is wrong, but because you lack the moral authority to make it. Remove the plank from your own eye before you try to take the speck of dust from ours! We Christians – who associate with ‘Far Right’ movements, will continue to do so because Christ must be amongst sinners because His body must be amongst the poor, and because we are working towards a Christian society that is diverse in the catholic sense; not a ‘precious diversity’ in the Liberal Humanist sense.
