The “Spiritual Redoubt” Has Fallen

Credit Image: Gareth Hughes / Wikimedia

The Church of England (CoE) is hiring an “expert” to investigate its “deeply, institutionally racist” history. The church will also issue an official apology. It is especially ashamed about what happened to the “Windrush Generation,” the Caribbean blacks who moved to the United Kingdom beginning in 1948 but may not yet have legal status. In April 2018, four CoE bishops called for their status be legalized and for compensation for their “loss and hurt.”

“We have damaged the church, we have damaged the image of God and most of all, we have damaged those we victimized, unconsciously very often,” said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby this week. He also said barring “radical and decisive” action, “we will still be having this conversation in 20 years time and still doing injustice.” He further confessed that he was “ashamed” that he didn’t always know he had “white advantage, straight advantage, male advantage.”

His efforts are pointless. No matter what the Church of England does, it will be “having this conversation in 20 years time.” It will be having it in 200 years time, assuming the Church of England and England last that long.

Enoch Powell warned that the Britain was needlessly importing the “tragic and intractable phenomenon” of race. Today, the British government wages what the Daily Express called a “campaign of aggressive discrimination against its indigenous population [white English people]” in the name of equality. The Church of England, a state church that has representation in Parliament, is part of this campaign. Its apology and the report it will eventually write on its “racist history” won’t ease racial tension. They will only encourage non-whites to complain about racism and demand more compensation.

The American Conservative’s Michael Davis, in a tribute to Sir Roger Scruton, called the Church of England “the great spiritual redoubt of the English people.” If it’s a redoubt, it has fallen.

In 1999, Bishop John Sentamu said the CoE is “still socially glued together by a culture that is monochrome” and that  “lacks color and spice.” He eventually rose to become Archbishop of York. “There was a time when everybody was embarrassed by the lack of black leadership,” he wrote. “I’m not sure that embarrassment is there any more, but it must be revived.” “The Times has reported that “the anger in his voice is unmistakable when he talks about the paucity of black Anglican bishops.”

Stephen Cottrell, a white man, will be the next Archbishop of York after John Sentamu. Mr. Cottrell says diversity is something that matters “hugely” and hopes that when he retires, “the church will look different and more diverse.” Bishop Cottrell thinks it is the church’s job to “hold politicians to account.”

In November, Archbishop of Dover Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the CoE’s first black female bishop, said that she “longs for the day when we stop having firsts,” because then black female clergy will be “normal.” She also decries the CoE’s “institutional racism:” “Those of who are in a minority will always want to see the change happening much faster.”

The Church of England thinks embracing diversity will make it “relevant.” It monitors “congregation diversity.” It created a new bishop to specifically “reach out to black, Asian, and minority ethnic people and drive cultural change in one of the UK’s most diverse cities,” Leicester. The Telegraph reported in 2015 that a “drive to make the Church of England less ‘male, pale, and stale’” backfired because a new promotion system was “dominated by white, middle-age men.” In 2016, the Church of England appointed a national minority ethnic officer to recruit more non-white clergy. The effort met with some success. From 2016 to 2018, the percentage of non-whites studying to become ordinands (trainee priests) doubled from four to eight percent.

While the CoE busies itself recruiting non-whites, overall attendance is plummeting. The Daily Mail reported in October that “a typical Anglican congregation numbered just 27 people” last year. Over a decade, “congregations fell by 15 percent, church marriages by a third, and fewer than one in ten babies were baptized.” A 2018 survey found just 2 percent of 18-24 year-olds affiliated with the church. The Independent said the denomination was facing “oblivion.” Church attendance fell by 211,000 from 2009 to 2018. From 1983 to 2018, the share of Christians in the UK plummeted from 66 percent to 38 percent.

When churches try to become “relevant” and modern, they become irrelevant and eventually extinct. A 2016 study of the Evangelical Lutheran Church found that “the churches [congregations] with the greatest diversity growth . . . had the steepest decline in attendance.”

The New York Times reported in 2018 that black evangelicals were leaving mostly white churches in reaction to the 2016 election. A prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, criticized his own denomination’s history: “The cross and the Confederate battle flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire.” In 2011, the SBC increased efforts for minority outreach and in 2012, elected its first black president, Rev. Fred Luter Jr.  In 2017, the convention passed a resolution against “white supremacy,” and in 2019, the denomination reported the lowest membership in 30 years.

White Christians don’t want to attend churches that shame them about racism or other newly invented “sins” that Christians 100 years ago had never heard of. A people and its faith should support each other. When clergy attack their church’s history and traditional congregations, they are undermining their own legitimacy.

This is especially true in England, a nation with a state church that supports the monarchy. When Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, Episcopalian Bishop Michael Curry spoke about the chance to “make of this old world a new world.” However, it’s the “old world” that built Anglicanism and Episcopalianism. Now that these denominations are fighting “racism” instead of serving God and their congregants, they are collapsing.

No wonder Prince Harry repudiated his royal title.  Celebrity and money mean more than duty to a system that hates itself. If England’s state church is denouncing the country’s institutions as racist and demanding change, the monarchy itself is desacralized. Why shouldn’t Prince Harry earn money giving talks to banks and lobby Disney to give his wife a job?

This was all unnecessary. There is nothing in Christianity that prohibits national survival. The Church of England, and other denominations, are surrendering to leftist dogma. The surrender is so complete that it resembles a conversion, the creation of an new, suicidal faith.

This “secular theocracy” is so full of religious fervor that church leaders will probably not change course no matter how far attendance falls. Proud Englishmen must recapture what Sir Roger called “Our Church.” If this is impossible, white advocates must champion a new spirit, a new creed, and even a new faith that champions greatness instead of racial suicide.