Make him Archbishop of Canterbury
Submitted by Toque on Sun, 04/05/2009 - 11:02
Previously I wrote:
Given the attitude of the Church of England towards England the nation - with the honourable exception of John Sentamu - I think disestablishment and a name change is long overdue.
And yesterday up popped John Sentamu to deliver a speech that he alone amongst the Church of England's archbishops is capable or willing to make. 'Englishness', he says, 'is back on the agenda'.
Now I say, hold off on the disestablishment, and hold fire on the name change, but make this man the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.toque.co.uk/trackback/1275
- Login to post comments
could you see his taffiness
could you see his taffiness catweazle of Canterbury making a speech about the English like that? Thought not.
"To be patriotic, is to
"To be patriotic, is to appreciate and be grateful for all that is valuable in the country you live in. It does not require you to be a xenophobe or a blinkered nationalist."
This guy was knocking the lax City regulation before Fred the Shred got his pension - could he be blazing a trail with this one? I hope so - the Britishness agenda, conjouring up a history of oppression, isn't going to help us build a green and pleasant land.
And yet, as I pointed out in
And yet, as I pointed out in my comment on the Archbishop's sermon in the Cranmer blog, Sentamu is somewhat blurry on the distinction between England and Britain. This is rather critical, as he wishes to draw on the history and best traditions of the British Empire as an integral aspect of his revalorisation of Englishness.
Conversely, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, in my experience, is usually quite clear about the distinction between England and Britain. For instance, on Radio Four's 'Sunday' programme this morning, they carried an excerpt of his interview with Matthew D'Ancona for Radio Four's plug of D'Ancona's and Gordon Brown's book on Britishness, the second episode of which is due to be aired on Tuesday morning (at 9 am, I think). D'Ancona insidiously asked him a question about the contribution the Church and Christianity have made to the formation of 'British national identity', and Rowan Williams deftly avoided the trap, talking about the role the faith has played in shaping "English national identity, let alone British" since the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and the time of Bede the Elder.
Similarly, in last year's controversy over Shariah law, Williams' argument was based on principles underlying English law - not 'British' law as such; effectively, I think, implying that Shariah could have a status among consenting sections of the Islamic population akin to the traditional role of Common Law.