That the current Archbishop of Canterbury’s latest pronouncement is rooted more in anti-Americanism than the promotion of Christianity is not only a measure of the thoughtless fever presently sweeping those who consider themselves intellectuals, it is also a sadly precise diagnosis of the larger problem infecting many leaders of the human bureaucracy we regularly mistake for Christ’s true church. In an interview with a Muslim magazine, Rowan Williams makes another of his not-surprising sweeping statements about the evil of the West, the inhumanity not just of capitalism but of free markets, and the destructive force that America is in the world. The Archbishop is a learned man, but as he demonstrates over and over, the possession of an educated mind does not always accompany the possession of common sense–and, in his case, an American Sunday School pupil’s familiarity with the nature of G-d Himself.
There are a half-dozen points in the Times summary alone that merit hundreds of words of rebuttal–but I am confident that anyone who has read this little post this far could make them on his own. I’ll note only the most important one: the most important–perhaps the only–job of those in authority in the church is to bring others to Christ. Rowan Williams’ fashionably blinkered view of the world reveals him to be far more interested in intellectual fashion show than in preaching the Gospel–it appears to me that Williams believes simply spreading the Christian idea that Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life is too simple an assignment for one with such deep thoughts about war and diplomacy–which, in Williams’ world, translate to keeping (again, fashionably) mum about the violent “gospel” of Muslim extremists, the primacy of human choice mirroring G-d’s own relationship with man as expressed in free markets, the difficult and costly choice of waging war to fight human oppression (and the shame of choosing personal safety over sacrifice to overthrow oppression)–sigh. I could go on; so could you.
The Archbishop is tasked with spreading the gospel. Instead he makes pronouncements as if he were an elected leader of men. He is not.
The Church on earth is tasked with spreading the gospel. Instead, it is in most corners a bureaucracy of men, and those men are quite often far more interested in showing off how smart they are–rather, how smart they think they are.
Rowan Williams is not helping anybody at all. He is prolonging suffering, spreading misery, and causing men to hurt and die. Above all, he is undermining the work of God’s people on earth–no less. The Archbishop of Canterbury is a destructive force against Christianity and peace. I’ll suppose that most of his colleagues are, too. And it’s high time somebody said that. The church worldwide is being dragged down by a damnable human overstructure; in that respect it is a mess, a heartless business, a force for delaying good and sometimes for tearing it down.
In the book of Judges in the Old Testament, the Israelites rejected G-d’s call to live by law and prophets; they foolishly demanded a King. The modern form of the church, filled with offices occupied by the likes of Rowan Williamses, is the modern equivalent of those kings.
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