The positive impact of turbulent priests

By Daniel Gover

When Rowan Williams agreed to edit this week’s edition of the New Statesman, few could have predicted the political fallout. According to yesterday’s front-page story in the Daily Telegraph, the Archbishop had launched “a sustained attack on the coalition”. Before long, government ministers were lining up to politely rebut the Archbishop’s remarks. Williams’ article was, in truth, far more measured than the media coverage suggested. But he did highlight some serious concerns: that the government’s flagship reforms to health and education lack a democratic mandate; that the Big Society agenda could be a cover for “opportunistic cost-saving”; and that the debate around welfare policy is becoming an arena for the “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”.

At the very least, yesterday’s controversy should dispel the popular myth of the Church of England as “the Conservative Party at prayer”. That reputation has long been wide of the mark. The wartime Archbishop and supporter of the Labour movement, William Temple, is credited by some as having helped lay the intellectual foundations for the welfare state. More recently, Archbishop Robert Runcie provoked the ire of the Thatcher government on more than one occasion, including through the 1985 publication of the ‘Faith in the City’ report into urban priority areas. Dismissed by one unnamed Conservative minister as “pure Marxist theology”, dozens of Labour MPs quickly leapt to the Archbishop’s defence by signing an Early Day Motion in the Commons in support of the report.

Archbishops of Canterbury have long participated in political debate in England. My report, Turbulent Priests?, which was published yesterday, examines the political involvement of the three most recent occupants of Lambeth Palace, Robert Runcie, George Carey, and Rowan Williams, between 1980 and 2010. Over that period, these three men were widely reported in the media for their comments on an extraordinarily wide range of social and political topics, and have challenged and commended governments of various partisan hues. Whatever we may think of some of their specific arguments or policy positions, their contributions almost certainly enriched the quality of debate. We could surely do with more of this in the years to come, not less.

For instance, all three men highlighted the challenges facing poor urban communities by speaking about them in the Lords. All three called on the government to do more to promote international development. Each of them publicly called for a reform of prison conditions, and criticised successive governments for their immigration policies. Beginning in the late 1980s, the Archbishops have become increasingly vocal in making a moral case for tackling climate change. Contrary to the claim that faith and politics don’t mix, it was precisely because the Archbishop is a religious leader that these three clerics were able to make this positive contribution, whether through Williams’ reflection on just war theology in response to the Iraq war, or Runcie’s pastoral concern for urban parishes in the face of 1980s unemployment.

Of course, we cannot ignore the so-called “traditional moral issues” of sex, relationships and the sanctity of life. It is certainly true that these three Archbishops have tended to be moderately conservative on these matters. Yet they have been far from the puritanical moralists sometimes imagined, and at times may even have been less conservative than the population at large. Indeed, when Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill came up for discussion in the Lords – the now -notorious Section 28 – Archbishop Runcie defied public opinion by voting for an opposition amendment that aimed to significantly limit its effect. And when the Conservative Party launched its ill-fated “back-to-basics” family values campaign in 1993, Archbishop George Carey appeared to publicly distance himself from the government’s rhetoric. In any case, these traditional moral concerns have occupied a relatively small amount of the Archbishops’ time.

And so we return to Dr Williams’ editorial. That the New Statesman published an article that was mildly critical of the current government would not usually be considered news. So how was it that, in a supposedly secular, 21st-century Britain, the eyes of the media focussed so intently on the political pronouncements of one religious leader? Whether we like it or not, the truth is that the moral assessments of the Church of England – and indeed other religious groups – continue to be of relevance to many. Less reported yesterday was Williams’ observation that “we are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently”. Perhaps – as Maurice Glasman and others have argued, and as has happened many times in the history of the Labour Party – the moral imagination of the churches can provide part of the answer.

Daniel Gover is the editor of the Common Good, the magazine of the Christian Socialist Movement, and author of Turbulent Priests?, about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s involvement in politics.