Talking of the odious Nick Griffin, as we were here and here, the excellent Ekklesia reckons that, whatever their views about the rights and wrongs of his appearance on Question Time last night, “church leaders will now have to think long and hard about some of the arguments they employ”.
“Last night,” writes Ekklesia co-director Jonathan Bartley, “the leader of BNP used the words ‘Christian country’ three times in setting out what he believed about what it means to be British – which many in the churches should find a little close for comfort.”
Many Christians don’t, of course, do themselves any favours when they espouse the Right. Your mainstream Christians – the likes of Jonathan Bartley – don’t, of course, but that leaves a lot who do. Their treatment of women and homosexuals marks them out as having some fascistic tendencies – and the redneck, brain-dead fundamentalists in the USA and to some extent over here just wouldn’t dare, I assume, to criticise the BNP for fear of being accused of having similar prejudices.
The Anglican Church is such a broad church that you can’t blame the BNP for trying to climb into bed with it. There’s plenty of room.
