There are many reasons to criticise the Archbishops of the Church of England...

[wildeabandon]

...but contrary to one Tory MP, I feel pretty sure that "using the pulpit to preach from" is well within their remit.

What do you suppose he thinks a pulpit is for?

Comments

[hilarita]

I would like to complain that the archbishop did something precisely within his remit.

[judiff]

O like they aren’t just for displaying like liturgical-season-ly appropriate pulpit falls from and decorating with a sheaf of wheat for Harvest Festival?

[hairyears]

I think that asking a Conservative MP "What do you think [object] is for?" is some kind of Rule 34 drinking-game, only we replace necking shots of vodka with gargling radioactive brain bleach.

The kindest explanation for the Honourable Gentleman's remarks is that a journalist from one of London's nastier shitrags made-up the lot of it and what 21st-Century MP would have the guts to contradict it?

...Especially after reading page after page of Speek-Yore-Branez replies on the BBC and the Daily Mail's reader comments that praise his mephitic efflations of wisdom and leguminiferous aether.

And I worry that large tracts of tghe United Kingdom have the politicians they deserve.

[karen2205]

Yes. But like many of these stories I wonder what it's trying to distract us from noticing. Agnostic atheist here and I quite agree Archbishops preaching from pulpits is well within their remit and exactly what we'd expect them to do. And so, I think, would most people. So what are we being distracted from today? Poverty? Appalling treatment of aslyum seekers? Brexit? The Duke of York? Strikes?

[wildeabandon]

Oh, it was explicitly in response to the archbishops kicking up a fuss about the plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. But I think in this instance at least he's drawn more attention to what they were saying rather than distracting from it.

[simont]

Mmm. It struck me at the time of this post, without even clicking through the link, that I could see what the Tory was trying to say, even if they had chosen a particularly silly way to say it.

There's definitely a secular sense of the word "preach" that means "obtruding your moral opinions on me unwantedly". Usually meant negatively (and said by the person on whom the opinions are obtruded), but occasionally acknowledged by the person doing it (e.g. "Sorry to preach at you, but you really shouldn't be buying from EvilCorp, you know").

So my first assumption was that Tory Plonker thinks that the pulpit is for talking about general timeless Christian stuff – saying heartwarming stuff about Baby Jesus, or incomprehensible stuff about the Trinity, or salvation, or grace, and if morality is mentioned at all it would be a restatement of very general principles like Being Lovely And Fluffy To Each Other and Turning The Other Cheek™ – and that what they didn't like was the use of the same platform to criticise a specific moral choice someone had recently made.

Of course that doesn't excuse the total failure to re-examine the sentence once you've composed it, and apply the "Wait I suddenly realise this is hilariously nonsensical" filter. And of course even in the sense the Tory meant it, it's still not out of bounds as a thing for a CofE archbishop to be doing. But I even more like your point here – on tactical grounds they also ought to have run the sentence through the "Wait the Streisand Effect is a thing" filter!

[barakta]

Comment of the week in Dreamwidth. Thank you for making me snort at your extremely apt description of Conservative MPs and indeed the populace at large.

[andrewducker]

Yes - there's definitely a feeling from the ruling classes that religious people aren't supposed to have actual moral opinions about things and attempt to impart them. Which seems very odd to me.

[simont]

I think it's the flip side of the attitude Douglas Adams referred to in that interview he did with American Atheists:

"In England we seem to have drifted from vague, wishy-washy Anglicanism to vague, wishy-washy Agnosticism—both of which I think betoken a desire not to have to think about things too much. [...] In England there is no big deal about being an Atheist. There’s just a slight twinge of discomfort about people strongly expressing a particular point of view when maybe a detached wishy-washiness might be felt to be more appropriate—hence a preference for Agnosticism over Atheism."

I think the person fitting this stereotype wants their state religion to be just as detached and wishy-washy on the religious side as the local nonbelievers are on the atheist side :-)