Some are expressing shock and horror that the bourgeois Church of England are about to seek legal remedies for the eviction of the protesters presently camped in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. What started as a protest against world capitalism has become a sad little battle within the Church of England.
But why the shock and surprise? Was anyone really thinking that the established church would line itself up against the rich and powerful?
The Church of England, alongside many other Christian denominations is part of the bourgeois elite and seeks to control spiritual life on behalf of those that have the power.
In its foundation document, the 39 Articles, the Church of England specifically rejects any political programme which seeks to redistribute wealth (see Article 38 “The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as some Anabaptists do falsely boast…). No western Christian denomination, including the Methodist Church has ever challenged that position.
Bourgeois structures and theology completely smother our church and our faith. Our Bible colleges and Ministerial training programmes are all about ensuring that the radical message of Jesus is confined to personal salvation at best or New Age mysticism at worse. At the moment we have a license to be radical about “global warming” but that is conditional that it doesn’t really challenge the status quo and remains a legitimising way to stifle the economic aspirations of countries such as China and India..
Bourgeois theology ignores Jesus’s proclamation that He had come to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, no one bothers to learn the lessons of Jubilee from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the primitive communism of Pentecost is forgotten in the rush to spiritualise Whitsun, and no one tells us why the first Christian martyr was Stephen.
As for Mary’s reaction on hearing that she was to bear Jesus, we are left to assume she is exalting motherhood and apple pie. And when Jesus own brother James writes an epistle far more radical than anything written by Marx we are told by the patronising and ill informed theologians that it should be “read in context”.
As for the Sermon on the Mount, well when Jesus says “blessed are you who are the poor”, He really means “the poor in spirit”, and is all about depression and middle class anxiety. The bourgeois are very selective in which parts of the Bible we should accept at face value.
We now have a whole generation of Christians who have never read “The Ragged Trousered Philantropists” or anything by Conrad Noel. Many active Christians today have only ever been taught or exposed to bourgeois theology.
That’s why we don’t understand where the Church of England and other churches really stand on the present crisis of capitalism. There they stand, with the rich and the powerful. At the end of the day they can do no other. We need to put our faith in Jesus and Scripture, not in the Church.
