Martin Beckford, Telegraph (London), February 11, 2009
The governing body of the Church of England, the General Synod, voted overwhelmingly to follow the lead of the police and bar ordained priests, trainees and lay staff from becoming members of racist political parties, specifically including the BNP.
It will require discplinary rules for vicars to be rewritten, and some critics claimed the move could still breach human rights and trigger employment tribunal cases because the BNP is a legal organisation.
Others warned that far-right parties could get around the rules by changing their names, or by claiming their members are merely supporters rather than official members.
However the vote was carried by 322 votes to 13, with 20 abstentions, amid claims that the BNP is trying to promote itself as a Christian group, and fears that there are “racist undertones” in the Church that leave ethnic minorities “scandalously under-represented” among clergy.
In 2004, the Synod affirmed that voting for a racist party is “incompatible with Christian discipleship” while since 2006 candidates for positions in the priesthood have been screened for racist attitudes.
However Vasantha Gnanadoss, a lay member of the Synod and a civilian employee of the Metropolitan Police, put forward a motion that the Church should follow the policy adopted by the Association of Chief Police Officers in 2004 and ban specifically its employees from joining groups that contravene race equality policies including the BNP.
It comes after a list of 12,000 names and addresses of alleged BNP members was posted on the internet, including a retired Church of England priest among five “reverends” of different denominations.
Miss Gnanadoss said: “The Church is institutionally reluctant to take any bold measures related to racism, but when it is pushed it is capable of a positive response.
“Without [this motion], the day may come when the BNP or something similar will have gained significant power in our country and the Church will stand accused of having been feeble when it could have been resolute.”
Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner, was allowed to sit with her in the Synod chamber even though he has no official connection to the Church.
Speaking in favour of the motion during the debate, Dr Rowan Williams, the most senior cleric in the Church, said: “We have passed motions condemning racism in general in the past.
“There is a theological issue, one of whether someone who accepts their policies can conceivaby have the sensibility required of a Christian pastor who has responsibility for the whole parish.
“I think we have to name names, we have to talk about particular political organisations and not just racism in general.”
The Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a vicar in east London, said the reason there are so few ethnic minority clergy is “not purely because we have nothing to say”.
She claimed: “It is because of racist undertones. They do not believe in our parishes and dioceses that ethnic minorities have nothing to contribute to the life of the Church.
“We are all nice and pally to each other but the undertone of that is racism.”
The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, warned that the threat of the BNP would be particularly acute during the recession as the party attempts to play on Britons’ fears over jobs and public money going to immigrants.
He said: “In these difficult economic times there are always those who can be tempted to look for solutions among extreme political parties and we need to underline that the politics of hatred can never come up with a solution to our problems.”
Earlier the Archbishop of Canterbury told the Church that divisions in the Anglican Communion over women bishops and homosexuality are not completely beyond repair.
In his Presidential Address, Dr Williams said both traditionalists and liberals must accept that the other side is not going to go away, and not cling to the “fantasy” of a pure church.
He admitted that the communion between the 80 million members of the global church is “indeed a very imperfect thing”.
Last year hundreds of church leaders, mostly from Africa, boycotted a key conference in protest at the presence of liberal Americans who had consecrated a homosexual bishop, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, while many Anglo-Catholics have threatened to leave the Church of England if women are introduced to the episcopate without provision for those who oppose the reform.
But the Archbishop insisted: “We have not yet got to the point where we can no longer recognise one another as seeking to obey the same Lord.”
He said Anglicanism had always been pragmatic and diverse, adding: “Many feel that just this is what is now threatened from both ends of our current debates, whether on sexuality or on the role of ordained women.”
Dr Williams said legislation is now being developed that could allow traditionalists to remain within the Church once women have become bishops.
“My own hope is that we may yet be able to offer the rest of the Communion some possibilities for coexistence if we could get this right.”
The bishops of the Church will now have to formulate a policy that prevents priests from being members of the BNP, and amend the Clergy Discipline Measure, which currently does not prohibit them from allegiance to any political party.
Original article
(Posted on February 11, 2009)
Comments
The Church of England is no longer relevant, and involving itself in prohibition of political party membership will only winnow their numbers further.
The Liberal Leftists have torn the Episcopals apart in the US, and driven conservatives either to more conservative denominations or out of church altogether.
I do my best to adhere to the tenents of my faith, but if my church were to prohibit my participation in the political process, I would no longer be a member of the church.
A seemingly fogotten party in the church of England, Christ Himself, summed it up, “Render unto ceasar what is ceasars” effectively keeping politics and faith in two separate perspectives. But the Church of England has never been too attentive to the Bible anyway, I can understand how they might have missed it.
BNP Votes to Ban Members from Joining Church of England
by John Smith, London Daily Snail
The governing body of the British National Party (BNP), its board of directors, voted overwhelmingly today to enact party policy toward organizations like the police and bar dues paying members from joining overtly liberal apostate churches, specifically including the Church of England.
The vote was carried by 45,536 votes to 2, with 3 abstentions, amid claims that the COE is trying to promote itself as a Christian group, and fears that there are “egalitarian undertones” in the Church that leave native white Christian Britons “scandalously under-represented” among worshipers.
***
That should be the story.
Good! why would the noble BNP want those diabolical traitors on board?
My hope is that the clergy leaves the Church and not the BNP. Staying on its present course, it is only a matter of time until the supreme religion of Britain is Islam and the clergy will be unwanted by any group, including the Muslims.
I don`t know if the church accepts any fiscal responsibility for training new vicars but if they do… I would do what I wanted to with those corporations who deemed that their new hires be “drug free.” If each preemployment drug screen was say $50.00 I`d have 25 activists flood each ad for work. It would kill em in two ways. First tie up resources to interview, hire and train. Second, it would cost money to confirm thier “suitability.” If I was BNP and the church paid for housing and food and clothes for new vicars in training , I`d ride that train almost into the station, then announce, “Oh by the way, I`m staunch BNP. People that think they dictate what you can be in your off time just because you work for them need to be taken down, no matter what their cause.
The Church of England is an institution in decline: its numbers and its influence are dropping. If present trends continue, it will eventually disappear.
The British National Party is an institution that is ascending: its numbers and its influence are increasing. If present trends continue, it will eventually come to prominence, mainstream acceptance, and possibly even form (or assist another party in forming) a government.
Choose wisely, Britons.
Sue. It’s a legal party. They aren’t banning people from parties that promote racism directed at white people.
Europe long ago committed itself to stifling and silencing any and all open debate and discussion about immigration, and this is merely another in a long line of such measures. The Left in Europe shall not halt their campaign till every last remnant of European culture is destroyed by wave upon wave of immigrants.
They say this now because they can earn brownie points with the big boys. If the BNP or a similar party ever attains power, these same types will be licking their boots.
I’m pretty sure scripture has something to say about these types.
-Svigor
I bet they don’t prohibit people from joining the Communist Party.
The Church of England is a laughing stock. It is full of “priests” from Africa and some from Pakistan. It is anti-white and full of genocidal bigots who want to see the native Brits be assimilated and detstroyed.
The fundamental thing that we bequeath to our children is our culture. This inheritance is fragile. An ethos of culture is being presented to the English nation that defines our racial consciousness as immoral, and our history and heroes as a source of shame. So overawed are we by this ethos, so mute have we become, that many parents today are incapable of transmitting to their children an appreciation or understanding of the European world from which their culture, let alone their race, originated. This is indeed tragic, because the family is the last bastion of our race. All other British institutions, which once proudly served as transmitters of our culture, are either in decline, or––like the Church of England––have themselves become instruments of our undoing.
I recall the words of the Protestant hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers,” which we learned by heart in our childhood. The stirring second stanza, which hearkened back to the sufferings of our refugee Huguenot ancestors, went like this:
Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Now read the second stanza as it has been rewritten in current Church of England hymnals:
Faith of our fathers, faith and prayer
The title remains the same, but it is a different hymn with a different message, and, one is tempted to add, a different religion for a different people.
The church is making itself irrelevant, if it cares more about its global 80 million than it does about its founding white membership.
That the churches have been taken over has been clear at least since the WCC stance on South Africa.
(g)I fondly remember an incident in Bad Goisern (Upper Austria. Incidentally, this is where Jörg Haider hailed from. There are a few reservations in the Alps of Protestants who survived the Counterreformation - though not intact; substantial numbers emigrated to Romania. I worked there for a few years, mapping for my master´s thesis. They are the most friendly and the most hard-headed people you can imagine :) in the mid-80s.
Now THIS is what I call attitude :).
“Others warned that far-right parties could get around the rules by changing their names, or by claiming their members are merely supporters rather than official members.”
Or by leaving the church and forming a new one.
The C of E has to be among white Britons’ greatest enemies. Their absence from the BNP will not represent any kind of loss to the party.
Sadly the British do not have some of the protections afforded us here in the US from the Constitution. The British government is a more totalitarian type regime. Special interest steer the government into being outright tyranical and no one can do a thing. Not that it matters much more here in the US. At least we have freedom of speech and no legal recourse taken against us for party affiliations unlike Britain it would seem. The people simply need to revolt. There’s no changing the government democratically.
The Church of England is dying. I half expect to see them adopt a new ritual of swinging a dead chicken over the heads of believers to bless them. It’s really farcical. It’s run by a crazy old coot who is out of his mind with hatred for the indigenous white people of England.
It seems like every week or so there is an article announcing the plans of this or that established organization to pursue some politically correct multicultural tripe, and my response is: we don’t follow you, you follow us. If instead of following our will, you issue us an order, we’ll just leave you hollow and re-establish whatever service you performed without you.
The church is making itself irrelevant, if it cares more about its global 80 million than it does about its founding white membership.
That’s exactley why I no longer beleive in church or it’s
Not that the Catholic church is better. Once they canonize Jägerstätter - and that´s only a question of time - they will have seen the last of me too.
In this Church, whether in England or America,
This is the epitome of hypocrisy.
I have long ago ceased to respect organized religion.
Islam is winning in England and when they take over the church of england and its leaders will all be given their just reward.
I don’t think they will like it.
Out here in Australia, the Church of England is the foremost entity that brings refugees from Zimbabwe and Sudan, they then get them on welfare to sponge off the taxpayer. The sooner the Church of England collapses the better.
Last I heard only about 14 people in England even still bother to attend an actual church anyway…so this shouldn’t exactly be a major problem. Symbolism without substance if you will.
The Church of England has fallen by the wayside, the same as all Christianity. The teachings of Christianity has been watered down and misinterpreted. It has become it’s own worst enemy. Henry VIII wouldn’t recognize the church that he started.
Like the university system and certain sectors of the civil service, the C of E was taken over by marxists back in the thirties.
Now the Russian communist regime has imploded, they swiftly found another enemy to help them in their project of destroying England.
Late breaking news:
CofE Bishop in London says that unemployment is good for the soul:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5717382.ece
Since they’ll fire any clergy that are part of the BNP, then they’re really doing their souls a favor.
In 2006, Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori told the New York Times that she was glad the Episcopalians were dying out.
“Aren’t Episcopalians interested in replenishing their ranks by having children,” the New York Times asked.
“No,” Schori replied. “It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”
See the story.
The Church of England drove away it’s own people who came to America and built a very fine country and whom’s descendants are busy selling down the river. Their membership has been falling off for decades. They are down to 1.7 million people attending once a month. England has over 50 million people today. So they are hardly even relevant anymore in their own country yet still making bad decisions as ever before to make themselves even less relevant.
Nokangaroos…
“a few reservations in the Alps of Protestants”…
Where are these locations?
Harvey…
This article has some excellent commentaries above. I enjoyed reading them all, but the award for the best should go to the comments posted by Question Diversity at 6:17 PM on February 11. Amid the tears I should be shedding for the world, I still got a chuckle out of “London Daily Snail.” I’m a pessimist by nature, but if the BNP can gain ground - even slowly but surely - then I wish them Godspeed.
With all due respect to the good people who, for one reason or another, find themselves stranded in the Godless Church of England or in the Episcopal Church in America, I hope they come to their senses and find a better church or split with organized religion completely, leaving their spineless leadership to wither on the vine and, I hope, end up in a special ninth level of Hell reserved especially for them for having sold out God and Country, for having replaced in America the 1928 Book of Common Prayer with a prayer book intended to appeal to the masses, and thereby, water down Christianity. The Church of England needs no help in watering down Christianity. They’ve effectively watered it so much it has washed completely away.
I quit the Methodists. I can’t see spending my Sunday mornings sitting in a pew being insulted for being a White heterosexual American man.
Maybe the “worthy” Clergy should take a damned good hard look at today’s reality! That there is no actual “sin” in rejecting an unending flow of third-worlders who do their best to become perpetual burdens on the White society they want to join. Third-worlders who commit the MAJORITY of violent, as well as non-violent crimes in their new home land.
Maybe that worthy clergy should take another look at liberalism. Like the reality British government is and has long been riddled with homosexuals and other psycho-sexual cripples. Like those bringing down various governments since WWII ended. Or is speaking aloud about homosexuality against the “new religion.” No, we won’t stone them in the village square. But please don’t call homosexuality “an alternate lifestyle.” That term implying a voluntary choice… given the average homosexual will claim to have been born that way. Or, for that matter, trying to advocate homosexual marriage. An idea totally repugnant when the concept, the idea of marriage always was as a union between a man and a woman, and for the production and maintenance of children. Granted few marriages today are permanent, but still, they’re “normal” marriages, not a gross distortion of an ancient and noble concept.
Why, why why why are these people so intent on destroying themselves? The Episcopal church in the US - same thing -they bleed members but continue the same strategy and policies.
Obama met with Bishop Gene “Vicky” Robinson three times
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zea0QmsE8XM
I went to my former church today, and the preacher was saying how the church has been living off a special fund that deceased members have remembered in their wills. It seems that the fund has been invested in the stock market, and can no longer afford to support all the church’s activities. Therefore, the preacher wants the congregation to pony up. Sorry Reverend, you have preached one too many times about your version of “social justice”. I think I’ll buy a new gun or something instead.
Good thing you aren’t in England Posted by Anonymous at 3:08 AM on February 16 or you wouldn’t even be able to do that.
