Bishops were wrong about poverty last time... this time they're irrelevant, by Damien Thompson, Daily Mail

Justin Welby

The quickest way to ruin a dinner party is to talk about the Christian belief in an after-life. ‘Heaven? It’s just a fantasy cooked up by clergy to keep themselves in a job,’ a typical metropolitan hostess might say, her lip curling as she spoons out the asparagus soufflé.

To which I can only reply: in 20 years of covering religious affairs as a journalist, I have almost never heard vicars or priests talk about heaven – except from the narrow confines of the pulpit, and even then not very often.

But I certainly hear clergy talk incessantly about another fantasy world. It’s a Britain in which they talk about the ‘gulf between rich and poor’.

This always seems to be a nicely flexible concept that they never precisely define. Above all, it is always ‘widening’ and they argue that society’s ills can be miraculously solved if only more taxpayers’ money was spent on them as if it was holy water.

This week, they are it again with a book that deliberately echoes the infamous ‘Faith In The City’ report published by the Church of England in 1985 when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

It controversially called for greater government spending in every conceivable area (except on the country’s military defences, of course) and was denounced by one Thatcherite minister as ‘Marxist’.

Such criticism was, I believe, over the top – but make no mistake: the truth is that the Church of England tried to strangle the Thatcherite reforms that turned Britain into the economic capital of Europe.

The Church failed in it efforts – and it seems that Archbishop Sentamu is still very bitter.

In his new book, he says he is sorry that the Church lost its nerve in its response to what he calls the ‘savage attack’ of Thatcherism.

But he is wrong. The Left-wing bishops did not lose their nerve: they actually did everything in their power to elect Labour’s Neil Kinnock as prime minister. And then when that failed, too, they went into a sulk.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this offensive by the Church of England is the involvement of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The fact is that some of what he says is patently not true.

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Further Reading

Bishops branded 'out of touch' for claiming the poor are being cast aside and cities are in a 'cycle of decline'

Supersize benefits family claims £50,000 in handouts every year and spend cash on designer trainers and mopeds