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The C of E, whatever its failings, does not have too many James Dobson wannabes in it; but he has been a disgusting exception for some time.
His earlier sermons are readily available on the 'Daily Reckoner' site, and include such gems as:
'Our troops put their lives on the line. They need to know that they have the support of their civilian countrymen who lie abed on Crispin’s Day. Sometimes, regrettably, this support seems to be lacking – especially in certain sections of the media and even, I am sorry to say, among the church hierarchy. ...t these people need to get into their heads is that peace is not the mere absence of fighting. Peace is the life of a free people living under just laws. War is a very bad thing, but it is not – as the pacifists believe – the worst thing. Worse is to be defeated and overcome, to have freedom and justice taken away, to be subjugated by barbarism.
Recently, Professor Marcello Pera, President of the Italian Senate asked a question:
“Is there a war on?” I answer, yes. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ossetia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Morocco and much of the Islamic and Arab world, large groups of fundamentalists, radicals, extremists – the Taleban, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brothers, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Armed Group and many more – have declared a holy war jihad on the West. This is not my imagination. It is a message they have proclaimed, written, communicated, preached and circulated in black and white. Why should we not take note of it?”
Well, the response to Marcello Pera’s question is that, when the bombardments in this war come heavily enough – in New York, in Madrid or in London – we do take note of it. But only for a while. And then, during the ensuing lull, we retire into our drowsy unconcern again. We love our consumerist lifestyle and our secularised permissiveness. We do not want to be reminded about the enemy at the gate and we do not even notice our decadence within.'
And:
The child is given no traditional moral guidance. In fact it is illegal for state schools to teach that Christianity is true. One is only allowed to teach about religions. And of course the perspective from which one teaches an overview of the various religions is bound to be secular. So we have atheism by government decree. In the matter of morality, the child is not taught anything definite: “Moses thought this and Jesus thought that, while Mahomet thought the other. What do you think, Sharon?” They say to a girl aged eleven. We should ask ourselves why it is now considered wrong to try to teach those things which 1000 years of Christian civilisation regarded as true. But it is barely admitted that there is such a thing as truth. Everybody must “make up their own mind.” Let’s go the whole hog and apply this method to the teaching of maths and science as well. Then see what happens.
Where the New Testament is mentioned at all, it is to promote Jesus as a proto-Che Guevara – the Church of England even used a picture of Che one year as its advert for Christmas. Or here comes Jesus as the social welfare officer, preacher of human rights, diversity and equal opportunities. What commandments are left? Thou shalt not smoke. Thou shalt not go foxhunting. Thou shalt not be fat. Thou shalt not deny global warming. And the first and great commandment is Wear A Condom. This sort of thing is not child-raising: it is child-abuse.
...You would think that Archbishops, theologians and parsons might prophesy against this shambles and try to stop the rot. Instead the church has merely lost all its confidence in its God-given authority and slavishly followed the secular decline these last forty years...
What chance for our children in a society that has wilfully demoralised and infantilised itself? Ten year ago, Digby Anderson and I produced a volume of essays on the sentimentalisation of society. We got death-threats. I wanted to follow this up with another book on the infantilisation of society. For one reason and another we didn’t get round to it and now I think I have missed the boat. Things are too far gone into institutional infantilisation. The culture we inhabit and promote is both babyish and narcissistic....
It is hard to see where any repudiation of our decayed and infantilised society might come from. If your house falls down, you can replace the materials and rebuild it. But socially, educationally, intellectually, morally and spiritually, we have thrown away all our materials. It is impossible to build an enduring cultural house on the shoddy wreck which is all that’s left.'
He is also carrying out a persistent running battle against the 'prince bigot' Richard Dawkins.
This sort of thing is not usual in England, and he is explicitly rebelling against the leaders of his Church on a lot of this. But I always find such things scary.
I also think it's pretty ironic that a clergyman in the City of London, at a time when it's become very obvious that greedy bankers have brought serious damage to the country, should choose gays as his target!
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