Easter has been and gone for another year. I hope you managed to have a nice break. Not everyone did as it was plain to see that the vitriol in politics never took any time off.
It has now become a tradition at Easter for politicians, especially Conservative ones, to post a message proclaiming their Christianlty only for these messages to be met with cries of hypocrisy. I’m not a Christian, nor do I subscribe to any religious faith, yet I find it hard to square some of this government’s policies with the teachings of Christ. Many seem more Old Testament.
At times I feel that these outpourings of religious zeal are to serve two purposes, firstly to nail their colours firmly to the conservative mast and secondly, to wind up the liberal woke. It certainly does the latter.
Yet for some reason it doesn’t work the other way round. Should anyone who is in the religion trade speak up about politics they are told to shut up and stick to what they know about. Duplicity abounds.
Take the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby’s comments for example. In his Easter sermon he condemned the government’s plans to send asylum seekers in the UK to Rwanda, saying that it raised ‘serious ethical questions’ and that it was ‘the opposite of the nature of God’.
Many politicians rounded on him including Johnson who claimed (and later denied) that Welby was being ‘softer on Vladimir Putin than on Priti Patel’.
Many who should know better screamed that Welby should stay away from politics. The irony is of course that the Archbishop of Canterbury sits in the House of Lords (full title The Most Rev. and the Rt Hon. the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury). He is a member of the upper chamber. They do politics there.
I would be happier with a disestablished church but for the moment Justin Welby is both a theologian and a politician. The outcry shows a shameful and basic lack of understanding of how politics works, or doesn’t, in this country.
Of course Welby, as a citizen, just like the rest of us can say whatever he likes. For the time being at least.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 