Jim Round has also posed this comment questioning Farage’s professed reason for no longer going to church.
‘As an additional question, Farage used to state that he was a Christian, but has now given up on Church going because of “Woke Agendas” (There was me thinking that Christ’s teachings were against injustices)
I wonder if he would like to discuss things with the writer of this blog:
I doubt it.
I did post questions on Nigel Farage’s former press secretary Michael Heaver’s YouTube Channel, for some reason my comment was deleted.
I always thought Reform were big on Free Speech.’
Now I’ll be honest – I stopped going to church a little while ago. This was partly because my lowered immunity due to the myeloma means I have to be careful mixing with people so that I don’t pick up any illnesses going round. But it was also because I’m very traditional in my liturgical tastes and don’t get on with charismatic worship. There have been allegations floating around for years about the left-wing bias of the Anglican clergy. There’s a Conservative Anglican site online, which seems to come from someone in the diocese of York. By its own admission, it was set up to counter the political preaching coming from the clergy. This site stated that the Anglican church was now becoming a case where the congregation were Conservatives and the clergy Communists. A very religious friend of mine laughed when I told him this,, and said it was pretty much true.
Well, I’ve come across Conservative evangelical Christians over here, though these were the non-denominational types who’ve been around since the ’80s. They tend to be very right-wing, but I don’t think the evangelicals in the Anglican Church are. One of the clergy in my local parish was an evangelical, and definitely no fan of Donald ‘Damn Near the Last’ Trump, as he called him. He was quite hot on racial injustice, which I think came from his experience working with Aboriginal Australians. I’ve heard that our current vicar may sport a rainbow Pride badge, but that’s it as far as his preaching seems to go. A few months ago we had a transwoman come in to give a sermon on love and tolerance towards transpeople. From what I gather, this left at least some of the congregation a bit puzzled, because I don’t think it’s ever come up as an issue in our local church. And the move for trans inclusion isn’t new, or at least not in Bristol. Back in the ’90s, I believe, we had a transperson give a talk in the evening at church about finding Christ. It was a novelty, and while some people had qualms about what he/she may have been saying, there wasn’t any militant opposition as there has been in some cases over Drag Queen Story Hour at local libraries. The Famous Artist Birdy Rose, an activist against the trans movement, said in one of her videos that one church cancelled a performance by her partner’s band after finding out that he was connected to her. Then, of course, there are the various videos posted online showing churches in Britain and the US draped in the rainbow flag. But I don’t know how common this is. It may only be in certain churches, in certain very left areas.
As for race and immigration, it’s an issue in Bristol because of the city’s links to the slave trade. About a year or so ago the vicar of Redcliffe Church, described by Queen Elizabeth I as the ‘fairest and goodliest parish church in England’ and which is far more impressive than Bristol Cathedral, had the memorial to slaver and philanthropist Edward Colston removed. It was replaced with a stained glass window showing African asylum seekers coming across the briny. Redcliffe is just south of the Old City and the city centre. It has a school, which I think at one time not only had Black pupils but also a Black headmaster. I think the stained glass window was put in to redress this injustice for the church’s Black members. But after that, I really haven’t heard much about racial politics being preached from the pulpit down there.
Regarding immigration generally, there are videos up of Farage and Douglas Murray tackling the Black bishop of Dover over immigration. I think one of them states that Murray called the good clergyman a ‘diversity hire’ because he or she said that we should take asylum seekers and other migrants whatever the cost and consequences to ourselves. This, I suppose, quite a prominent recent case and I don’t doubt it’s being used to show the ‘woke’ corruption and abandonment of traditional Christianity. But I don’t know how general these cases and attitudes are. There have always been left-wing clergy, and I can remember how Thatcher and her pet bruiser Tebbit got very annoyed by the-then archbishop, Robert Runcie, after the Church dared to issue a report into growing poverty and inequality in Britain. Tebbit made some kind of comment suggesting that Runcie, who did have a camp manner admittedly, was not as masculine as other men. Cue egg on face. Runcie had been an army chaplain, when he was called ‘Killer Runcie’. And this wasn’t ironic. A friend of mine remarked that the really hard men don’t show it.
As for Christ preaching against injustice, this is absolutely true. You also find admonitions to be just to the poor throughout the Bible. The Book of Common Prayer, hardly the Communist Manifesto, contains lines from the Psalms such as ‘He (God) hath pulled the might from their seat’ and ‘the poor he hath given good things, and the rich he hath send empty away’. When Our Lord attacks the moneychangers in the Temple and says that they have turned His Father’s house into a house of robbers, He’s actually quoting one of the Old Testament prophets. As you’d expect from a rabbi and diaskalos (teacher).
And yes, this teaching really does upset people even now. A few years ago, when my cancer looked like it was in remission, I had the pleasure of worshipping with Roman Catholic friends at their church. The priest was a Black African who was studying at seminary in Rome. He gave what I considered to be a very orthodox, doctrinally unremarkable sermon based on Christ’s preaching to support the poor. All that stuff about ‘sale everything you have, and give to the poor’. Going out, there was man angrily arguing about this with the poor chap in front of us as we were coming out to shake hands with the priest and compliment him on the service. As you do. After this irate gentleman had left, the priest turned to my friends and asked them if his sermon had deviated from proper Christian truth. No, they reassured him. Not at all. Absolutely. It was the type of sermon you heard regularly at one point. When countries like Britain and France were setting up poor houses in the 17th and 18th centuries, according to one of my books on urban history, these sermons were particularly common at Easter, when the collection money was used on poor relief. This was particularly true in France, where the poor hospitals were funded through charitable donations rather than the poor rates as in England.
Jim has touched on some very good questions, and I’d be interested in hearing the other side from Farage’s supporters.
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