Archbishop Attacks!

[Byron]

The post IS the poster - or have you never read McLuhan?

yes I have.

Didn't agree.

Just because someone says something, doesn't necessarily mean that it is so.

[sikejsudjek]

One of my constant irritations with the church and church leaders in particular is their complete silence when it comes to matters of money and the poor. The US churches are really just sold out to rampant capitalism, with no ability to criticise its excesses. Ironic when such large parts of the Bible, both new and old testaments are concerned with how the rich behave towards the poor. There are parts of what Jesus said that I have never heard preachers preach on - always to do with money. Still better late than never with the archbishop's comments.

[stormymonday_2011]

The post IS the poster - or have you never read McLuhan?

As for the fact the Church has land - SO? It did not get it by standing by a screen lying and jeering all day, distorting the economy, bringning it to collapse and widening the gap between rich and poor - and then visiting lap dancers and beating up prostitutes when things get tough (see Observer) before retuning home to materialistic wives - did it?

I believe that the Bishop of Winchester used to own quite a few stews (brothels) in Southwark back in the time of Will Shakespeare. Indeed, so close was the connection between his grace and the girls on the game that prostitutes were often described as 'Winchester Geese'.

Edited April 25, 2008 by up2nogood

[Cogs]

If it wasn't so preposterous it would be extremely funny. I don't think I have ever read a more nonsensical post in this forum. Are you MAD? The job of the Archbishop is to define moral and ethical standards which is what he is doing.

Grubs who talk about how rich the Church is COMPLETELY miss the point. Money, money, money - all you little grubs out there, living your whole lives in a small minded vacuum....missing the higher point of life utterly and totally. A life less lived. And by the same token you will ignore this post. This forum is getting full of smal minded money grabbers and it is the worse for it.

No I haven't ignored it although I'm not sure how to respond because I've clearly upset you.

I think I agree with the broad point you are trying to make -- that being the position I was coming from in the first place -- and perhaps I should have expressed myself in a more temperate manner. The problem you have however is that the CoE as a commerical landowning entity doesn't really agree with either of us and never has. You might like to remember not everyone is an Anglican and there are several branches of Christianity in this country that have taken a rather dim view of the CoE's long-standing predilection towards the accumulation of material wealth and power and offering succor for those on a similar quest. Far from speaking out, the church since the reformation has done nothing but support capitalism, this is not a new or controversial point. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, he made them high and lowly, he ordered their estate? I agree entirely with what he said but then I agreed with all the other people who have rather less responsibility to speak out who have been saying the same thing for many years.

[Bardon]

Some`excellent post on here clearing up the religion myth. Good stuff shows that posters here think outside the square. This chap also reports directly to the Queen enough said.

[Methinkshe]

The Archbishop does seem a bit behind the times. He should perhaps take a leaf out of Spurgeon's sermon preached in 1907. Here is an excerpt:

GOD IS THE POOR MAN'S FRIEND; the poor man, in His helplessness and despair, leaves his case in the hands of God, and God undertakes to care for him. In the days of David,—and I suppose, in this respect, the world has but little improved,—the poor man was the victim of almost everybody's cruelty, and sometimes he was very shamefully oppressed. If he sought redress for his wrongs, he generally only increased them, for he was regarded as a rebel against the existing order of things; and when he asked for even a part of what was his by right, the very magistrates and rulers of the land became the instruments of his oppressors, and made the yoke of his bondage to be yet heavier than it was before. Tens of thousands of eyes, full of tears, have been turned to Jehovah, and he has been invoked to interpose between the oppressor and the oppressed; for God is the ultimate resort of the helpless. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed; he undertakes the cause of all those that are downtrodden.

If the history of the world be, rightly read, it will be found that no case of oppression has been suffered to go long unpunished. The Assyrian empire wean a very cruel one, but what is now left of Nineveh and Babylon? Go to the heaps of ruins by the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and see what will become of an empire which is made to be only an instrument of oppression in the hands of an emperor and the great men under him. It has ceased to he more than a name; its power has vanished, and its palaces have been destroyed. In later times, there sprang up the mighty empire of Rome; and even now, wherever we wander, we see traces of its greatness and splendour. How came it to fall? Many reasons have been assigned, but you may rest assured that at the bottom of them all was the. cruelty practised towards the slaves, and other poor people, who here absolutely in the power of the aristocracy and oligarchy who formed the dominant party in the empire. There is a fatal flaw in the foundations of any throne that executes not justice; and it matters not though the empire seems to stand high as heaven, and to raise its pinnacles to the skies, down it must come if it be not founded upon right. When ten thousand slaves have cried to God apparently in vain, it has not really been in vain, for he has registered their cries, and in due season has avenged their wrongs; and when the poor toilers, who have reaped the rich rnan's fields, have been deprived of their hardly-earned wages, and have cast their plaints into the court of heaven, they have been registered there, and God has, at the right time, taken up their cause, and punished their oppressors.

For many years the Negro slaves cried to God to deliver them, and at last deliverance came, to the joy of the emancipated multitudes, yet not without suffering to all the nations that had been concerned in that great wrong. And here, too, if the employers of labour refuse to give to the agricultural labourer his just wage, God will surely visit them, in his wrath. At this very day, we have; serfs in England who, with sternest toil, cannot earn enough to keep body and soul together, and to maintain their families as they ought to be maintained; and where masters are thus refusing to their labourers a fair remuneration for their work, let them know that, whoever may excuse them, and whatever may be said of the laws of political economy, God does not judge the world by political economy. He judges the world by this rule, that men are bound to do that which is just and right to their fellow-men; and it can never he right that a man should work like a slave, be housed worse than a horse, and have food scarcely fit for a dog. But if the poor commit their case to God, he will undertake it; and I, as one of God's ministers, will never cease to speak on behalf of the rights of the poor. The whole question has two sides,—the rights of the masters, and the rights of the men. Let not the men do as some workmen do, ask more than they ought; yet, on the other hand, let not the masters domineer over their men, but remember that God is the Master of us all, and he will see that right is done to all. Let us all act rightly towards one another, or we shall feel the weight of his hand, and the force of his anger.

[Not Long Now]

One of my constant irritations with the church and church leaders in particular is their complete silence when it comes to matters of money and the poor. The US churches are really just sold out to rampant capitalism, with no ability to criticise its excesses. Ironic when such large parts of the Bible, both new and old testaments are concerned with how the rich behave towards the poor. There are parts of what Jesus said that I have never heard preachers preach on - always to do with money. Still better late than never with the archbishop's comments.

...agree with what you say.

And what is reportedly the richest organisation in the world? General Electric, Pepsi, The House of Saud?

Nope - that would be the Catholic Church then. They are more interested in making money than sorting out the disgraceful goings on in the US..

[Methinkshe]

Crikey - he doesn't like banks does he?

"Go to the heaps of ruins by the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and see what will become of an empire which is made to be only an instrument of oppression in the hands of an emperor and the great men under him."

Yeah, he doesn't have much time for "the oppressors of the poor" as he puts it. And I reckon banks could be included in that description.

He also wrote an excellent sermon on the iniquity of debt, but I can't find it.

I like this bit from the above sermon, though:

He judges the world by this rule, that men are bound to do that which is just and right to their fellow-men; and it can never he right that a man should work like a slave, be housed worse than a horse, and have food scarcely fit for a dog.

Seems rather fitting to me when we have so many unable to afford a roof over their heads even though they work like slaves.