Well, I never! The Guardian reports that the newish Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, admitted a few weird things in an interview with the BBC conducted in Bristol Cathedral (video below):
The Archbishop of Canterbury has admitted to having doubts about the existence of God and disclosed that on a recent morning jog with his dog he questioned why the Almighty had failed to intervene to prevent an injustice.
In a light-hearted but personal interview in front of hundreds of people in Bristol cathedral last weekend, Justin Welby said: “There are moments, sure, where you think ‘Is there a God? Where is God?'”
He quickly added that as the leader of the world’s 80 million-strong Anglican community this was “probably not what the archbishop of Canterbury should say”.
Earlier, the interviewer, BBC Bristol’s Lucy Tegg, reminded him of the weight his words carried. “You have a remarkably prominent role within the faith community around the world,” Tegg said.
“I’ve noticed,” Welby quipped.
Tegg then asked him: “Do you ever doubt?”
Welby replied: “Yes. I do. In lots of different ways really. It’s a very good question. That means I’ve got to think about what I’m going to say. Yes I do.” He added: “I love the Psalms, if you look at Psalm 88, that’s full of doubt.”
Welby suggested that his doubts were a regular occurrence, by recounting a recent morning run with dog.
“The other day I was praying over something as I was running and I ended up saying to God: ‘Look, this is all very well but isn’t it about time you did something – if you’re there’ – which is probably not what the archbishop of Canterbury should say.”
He added: “It is not about feelings, it is about the fact that God is faithful and the extraordinary thing about being a Christian is that God is faithful when we are not.”
What he means is that his wish for a God always overcomes his doubt. I wonder, though, how he manages to convince himself that God is still there though he never gives Welby any signs. As the American philosopher Delos McKown said, “The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.” (That, by the way, is one of the pithiest and truest criticisms of religion I’ve ever heard.)
However, Welby has no doubts about Jesus, and by that he clearly doesn’t just mean a historical person around whom the Jesus myth coalesced, but a real divine Jesus. But how can he doubt God and accept Jesus? Don’t Anglicans accept the Trinity? That’s like doubting Santa but accepting his reindeer!
In the interview, Welby said he was certain about the existence of Jesus, even talking about his presence beside him. “We know about Jesus, we can’t explain all the questions in the world, we can’t explain about suffering, we can’t explain loads of things but we know about Jesus,” Welby said.
Asked what he did when life got challenging, Welby said: “I keep going and call to Jesus to help me, and he picks me up.”
I’m baffled. Welby seems smart and eloquent, and realizes the formidable theological problem of “natural evil.” To say “we can’t explain loads of things but we know about Jesus” makes a very mockery of the word “know.” What he really means is this: “Yes, there are tons of things that religion can explain, but because it makes me feel good to think that Jesus is there, is divine, and is the source of our salvation, I’ll accept him.” It’s like a scientist saying, “I don’t know all sorts of things about dark matter, dark energy, and so on, but I do know that string theory is right.”
After a fulsome introduction by someone who feels “blessed” to have Welby there, the BBC interviewer takes over at 4:50 and the interview ends at about 18:00. Then the Archbishop lucubrates about suffering and how God is there “in the middle of it.” If you listen to only a few minutes (it was nearly unbearable for me to hear the whole thing), listen from 18 minutes to the end (about 5 minutes total). It’s not even Sophisticated Theology™, but a concatenation of statements for which Welby has no evidence. There’s also a bonus prayer at the end.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/18/archbishop-canterbury-doubt-god-existence-welby
Just remember, you English readers—this guy is the official head of your state church! Aren’t you embarrassed to have a state church?
h/t: Pyers
String theory IS right, ask any cat.
That would be my cat-gut reaction.
Well, quantum felid theory is certainly true.
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Oh, Jesus.
In some ways I prefer to have a wishy-washy state church as background noise than have to deal with the commercialised landscape (for souls as well as cash) that goes on in the US.
Not that I want either, though, but the CofE may well be an effective inoculation against this god stuff.
I think there is some truth to this. Better an inept government-backed institution than a thousand entrepreneurial con-men.
I’m conflicted about the first amendment. On the one hand the founders justifiably worried about the tyranny of a theocracy. And, it is fair and free to let a thousand flowers bloom. But shouldn’t snake-oil salesmen be put in jail?
The last Archbishop, Rowan Williams, was pretty agnostic too. He is really quite a good poet, if you like that kind of thing and I recommend him.
There was a reasonable proposition abroad for some years that Christianity is just one of the religions invented by the Roman Empire for political purposes. The tautological nature of the Gospels, the imprenitability of the parables, the late date of the Gospels and all sorts of strange internal oddities, such as Let the dead bury their dead, etc,etc, suggest this is not impossible.But even so one should not run down the positive good works and community effects of the C of E.
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It reminds me of that funny Rowan Atkinson as the Archbishop of C sketch for Comic Relief. I’m not sure I’m allowed to link, but it’s easily located on youtube. To me the flaccidity of the C of E is contemptible.
Funny! And yes you can link. Link away. Here is one sketch: Rowan Atkinson
That generated *so* many complaints. Well, some. Enough that the Beeb left it off the DVD (iirc).
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I’m told that the majority of the complaints were from non-Christians – rather like the complaints/votes against in Parliament a couple of decades ago when the CoE wanted to move away from the Book of Common Prayer.
As someone who lives in England, that is a pin-sharp parody of most CofE clerics. Honestly. I went to a CofE primary school where the local vicar turned up occasionally and really he very like that!
As the Established Church the CofE these days has to be inoffensive, to avoid upsetting anyone at all. Belief in a god, or the divinity of Jesus (which a former Archbishop of York – which is kind of Canterbury’s #2 – famously doubted), or anything scriptoral is really is pretty optional, when it comes down to it.
If every religious group was like the CofE then most websites like this would not be needed!
Except that the bishops in the House of Lords exert undue religious influence on secular issues such as choice in dying.
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Yes, but an influence that has been reducing in recent years and will continue to do so as reform of the Lords continues its glacial progress.
But why stop with the bishops? Why is their presence in the Upper House any worse than the rest?
After all, the argument against a few bishops pales behind the arguments against the 100 or so remaining hereditory peers (though, curiously, they are elected these days, albeit from a small franchise).
Then the rest of the Upper House is made up of 700 or so political appointees (life peers), their position totally thanks to the party leaders who put them there (possibly thanks to large donations) – hardly perfect from a democratic point of view.
For all their faults, the Lords Spiritual are least the not at the beck and call of political machines, nor are they there because they, basically, bribed their way in. And will (occasionally) meet real people.
The whole House of Lords is an embarrassing mess, so maybe we should all shout like Cromwell “In the name of god go!”.
Snag is that it often tends, somehow, to so a better job than the Other Place…
To be fair to the archbishop,Christianity was fairly fuzzy and fluffy from the beginning, however he did sound in this interview a little on the evangelical side, Jesus picks us up and is there in a crisis etc, etc. Christianity does tend to major bit too much on the concept of a personal God who can help us out. Good popular idea, does not work in practise, after all,40 days after the resurrection,he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father, so that is where Jesus is now, he is not walking around down here.The archbishop did sound more than a bit diffident about his faith now, well maybe it is alright to lose some of it when you realise you could not fix everything yourself nor through God.
I wish every country in the world had a state church like the C of E. I can’t think of a better way of leading people away from religion.
We pretty much expect the Archbish not to believe in god.
I agree with TJR. i am English and not at all embarrassed to have a state church like the C of E. It is the best antidote in the world for blind faith ! Vide: Christopher Hitchens and his family values of Henry VIII.
Yet, the fact that faith is based to a large extent on doubt means that have Archbishops, Bishops, clerics and everyday Christians who doubt is 1) normal, (after all, the Old and New Testaments both speak about the importance of doubt – as, incidentally, does the scientific community – and 2) actually strengthens the faith of many who have been taught that doubt is ‘non-Christian’.
One of my Anglican friends admitted that most are pretty much deists.
If only we could get the bishops out of the second house.
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We are. In all honesty, it’s more like the Freemasons than any meaningful religious organisation.
Yes!
Not just embarrassed but outraged as well. We have men in frocks sitting in the House of Lords playing a part in legislation of for example stem cell research, where their arguments are based on their religion and not on purely rational arguments.
Perhaps God does not have the capacity to hear prayers. What if they are right about mostly everything else, but God can’t read minds because of free will?
We need to pray to have God’s email address delivered to us.
Makes as much sense as he does. 😉
Senile dementia would be another possibility. God, I mean.
Definition: Cognitive dissonance. See Dissonance, cognitive.
I have a very strong family connection to the CofE and my beautiful local parish church. The one thing you’ll never hear the parishoners talking about is all this Jesus/God business. Why ruin a perfectly nice strawberry tea party or murder mystery evening (bring your own booze)?
That actually sounds rather nice. My mother has been very attached to her church, but only because there is always lots of gossip and the minister is funny.
Until the age of 11, I went to an old-fashioned English private “prep school” where we were required to learn the “collect” (buggered if I know what that is to this day) for the week and recite it on a Friday. Failure resulted in a beating. An excellent introduction to an atheistic life, although I can still recite some of them by heart.
For the next four years, I was in a boarding school infested with frightfully nice parsons and vicars (at least I think that’s what they were). Around that time there was a bit of an evangelical revival in the school, which captured one of my friends who is now a leading light of “Jews for Jesus”. For my part, I discovered LSD and girls… Each to their own.
Anyway, my point is that while it is embarrassing to be a citizen of a country with an established church (not to say a “subject” of the head of that church), there is something so quintessentially ineffectual about the Church of England that, as someone has already commented, it remains infinitely preferable to the money and bile driven incarnations of Christianity found in the US and many developing countries.
None of which, of course, excuses the drivel emanated from the current Archbishop of Canterbury.
Christianity was fairly fluffy from the beginning, either strength or weakness depending how you see it, all those parables and poems etc, early Christians had huge debates about it all and the history of Christian theology is absolutely incredible, things never were that clear or definite, plenty scope for doubt and debate..
The McKown quote is a perfect gem.
Aren’t you embarrassed to have a state church? YES
Ah but what if it was a cunning ploy by militant atheists to make religion look idiotic and irrelevant?
The CofE does a GREAT job at this
“The Queen is inseparable from the Church of England. God is an optional extra.”
From the yes prime minister episode, the bishop’s gambit.Another gem is,
“An atheist clergyman could not continue to draw his stipend, so when they stop believing in God they call themselves ‘modernists’.”
“Yes, there are tons of things that religion can explain, but because it makes…”
Maybe I’m misconstruing your sentiment, but I think this should be “…tons of things that religion *CAN’T* explain…”
“I keep going and call to Jesus to help me, and he picks me up.”
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How about:
I keep going because I connect to my strong sense of self identity (though it is a illusion but at least it is emanating from an existing brain) to help myself and I pick myself up.
My current musing is that we are all on a self-identity continuum (not that of an ego, but the ability to sustain the illusion of a self), and that folks drawn to religion need to beef up their self-identity so as to let that superstition go.
Many professional actors have such a strong self-identity that they temporarily forget about it and take on the character’s that they are playing, and then go back to their own. Instead of pushing meditation, Sam Harris should encourage people to get acting training. 🙂
Well put.
The same strong self-identity can also be found in people who go “under cover” for long stretches. I think I’d rather take the acting training route. 🙂
“Aren’t you embarrassed to have a state church?”
I’m shocked that such an intelligent man as yourself should even feel he has to ask that question!
Of course not. Having a state church is the most inclusive and civilising thing you can do. It allows the members of that church an extra strong feeling of belonging that gives them a security that you simply don’t get from continually having to compete for parishioners (which has the unenviable side effect of turning any private church into nothing more than an overt and superficial money making machine) as is the case in the US.
Having a religion attached to the state means the parishioners have a real, tangible support system in place that their superstitious nonsense is attached to, in the form of the NHS and welfare state etc……in fact everything that the state does for the common good. As an earlier poster said, this means there is very little, if any, proselytising going on, simply because it’s unnecessary as they have an assured privileged position within society.
This privileged position gives them enough confidence to allow other, more minority religions, to feel secure in being able to practice their religion. This is because the system is set up to maintain that privileged position which goes back over 1500 years and is inextricably attached to the history and culture of the nation whether you or I like it or not.
It may not be a perfect system, but the simple fact that it is inclusive rather than exclusive means the extremism you get in the US and other parts of the world are severely curtailed. As the state religion, it has to adjust its position to fit in with the pervading mood of the nation at any given time through the elected representatives sitting in parliament. It may at times be slow in doing this but, as its tangible and very real attachment to the state bring demonstable benefits whereas attachment to an invisible god doesn’t, they usually end up making the correct decision that enables them to keep that privileged status……….even though it may be many years down the line and it may take them even further away from the so called ‘truth’ of the bible.
Fundamentally, if you can’t get rid of religion and you want to pacify its effects as much as possible, then having a state religion is the best thing you can do.
It has worked exceptionally well in Saudi Arabia!
I wondered how long it would take somebody to make a bogus analogy. Saudi Arabia is a theocracy run by an absolute monarchy under islamic law which underpins the constitution. The UK is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy who is the head of the state church. In other words, nowhere near being a theocracy.
Of course. I should have recognized that a state church and a states mosque is totally different. And that if the UK’s state religion was Catholicism or Pentecostalism, then things would be fine because it wouldn’t be a theocracy. Somehow.
It’s not a theocracy because parliament, as elected representatives of the people, dictate the role that the monarchy and the state church have within society, not the other way around. Therefore the monarchy’s, (and therefore the state church’s) role is to serve the nation and not to have the nation serve the church. That’s the fundamental difference between a theocracy and a state church.
Except for the religious leaders in the second house …
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We are considerably less ‘theocratic’ than the US. From this side of the Atlantic the US appears to be run by the Christian Right whether they have legal status or not.
The best way to detooth a religion is to divert its energies into taking tea and crumpets with old ladies rather than stocking up weapons for Armageddon.
Yes Shatterface, I’m a firm believer in the end result justifying the means by which you get there.
I’m well aware of this. But I dispute the idea that the solution to theocratic bullying is a state church. Sweden does pretty well without one. France manages well without one, as does Switzerland.
The peculiarity of the American situation does not the result from the absence of a state church.
The situation is not quite as simple as you make out GBJames. Sweden’s devolution of its state church puts it in a fairly close comparison to the position of the state church in the UK. As a secular state, France is pretty much a hotbed of divisive political and religious intolerance and Switzerland………….well, it makes good watches and has stunning scenery! 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion
I’d say the oversimplified case is the one we started with… “Having a state church is the most inclusive and civilising thing you can do.”, as you said.
The map on the wikipedia page you provided kind of makes my case for me. Thank you.
“The peculiarity of the American situation does not the result from the absence of a state church.”
The peculiarity of the American situation results from the fact that there has never been the protective umbrella of an officially sanctioned church providing certain needs to its citizens, thus resulting in a ‘make it up as you go’ scenario which developed in the vacuum that was left because of the ‘genius’ of writing up a constitution that specifically imposes a ‘hands off’ approach towards religion. Only under this kind of ‘genius’ constitutional wall building could you get the bat shit crazy cults of mormonism, JWs and Scientology developing, as well as many others, as a result.
In hindsight, the US Constitution, while attempting to legislate against the perceived harm caused by the state religions of its time, failed to take into account the potential negative consequences of this utopian new world it was trying to create through its new constitution. In essence, if you legislate ‘in spite of the people’ rather than ‘for the people’ (or, in other words, you legislate on how you think people should live rather than how they wish to live themselves) then you’re simply storing up a whole load of problems as well as creating new ones – and that seems to be the historical legacy of the US over the last 250 years.
“The map on the wikipedia page you provided kind of makes my case for me.”
Then maybe you need to read rather than just look at pictures because nowhere have I stated that having a state church is ALWAYS the most civilising thing you can do. Nobody is denying that, to have a theocracy you require a state church/religion. However, as you seem unwilling to actually read the Wiki article, let me copy and paste the relevant piece as it applies to the C of E.
“A state religion (also called an established religion, state church, established church, or official religion) is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state. A state with an official religion, while not secular, is not necessarily a theocracy.
The term state church is associated with Christianity, historically the state church of the Roman Empire, and is sometimes used to denote a specific modern national branch of Christianity. Closely related to state churches are what sociologists call ecclesiae, though the two are slightly different.
State religions are official or government-sanctioned establishments of a religion, but neither does the state need be under the control of the church (as in a theocracy), nor is the state-sanctioned church necessarily under the control of the state.”
It then goes on to say:
“England: the Church of England is the officially established religious institution [17] in England, and also the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is the only established Anglican Church. The British monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and is Defender of the Faith. In 19th century England there was a campaign by Liberals, dissenters and nonconformists to disestablish the Church of England, even when most of its privileges had been removed by Parliament.”
In other words, Parliament has removed most of the societal privileges of the state religion to the point where it provides nothing more than a ceremonial and civic role in the way that Parliament decides.
You really are a rather unnecessarily belligerent person, six45ife. I’m done talking with you.
“Having a state church is the most inclusive and civilising thing you can do.”
Ah. So Sweden didn’t kick out our state church because we wanted to have a fully inclusive, civilized secular state.
Maybe we did it so we could point to UK and say, “wish we had a a particular sect as state church, so we could be more inclusive than today”.
Besides that inane claim, your comment is filled with mush that can’t be responded to. No doubt by purpose.
The Archbishop has a strong case of the belief in belief.
I think there was a typo in this sentence:
“What he really means is this: “Yes, there are tons of things that religion can explain, but…”
I think you meant “can’t” explain.
About the Jesus thing – I get the impression that with some clergy, they take that “perfect spouse” idea a little more seriously than others …
“Just remember, you English readers—this guy is the official head of your state church! Aren’t you embarrassed to have a state church?”
I don’t recognize any solid reasons for its continued existence, contrary to what seems to me to be the dissenting opinion. The notion that a state religion encourages religious freedom strikes me as nothing more than speculation borne from a biased sample.
Look around all the European countries, though, and it’s not clear that having a secular state or a state religion necessarily correlates with religious freedom. European nations with secular states include Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Spain. As you can see, those are some good eggs in the religious freedom department, some of them being better at it than the UK. This is before we mention some eastern ones like Russia, Estonia, and the Ukraine. Heck, Turkey is technically a secular state.
On the flipside, European countries with official state religions include Liechtenstein, Vatican City, Greece, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Finland. This is before we get into the technicalities, such as disestablished or national churches or similar, which aren’t technically state religions but which still receive official privileges (some of the ones on the previous list have such ambiguous cases). This is before we move on to countries like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and this is before we move on to the rest of the world.
A trained statistician could probably make out a few subtle trends, but the differences don’t scream out at you, that’s for sure. Honestly, the greater religious freedom in European countries compared with, say, the US, seems to me to be a side effect of other factors. It owes more to a general trend: European countries tended to lead the cultural progress towards secularization and humanitarianism in recent history, along with commonwealth places like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. It’s hardly a complete summary, but go through the world countries on different statistics (homicide rates, acceptance of LGBT rights, demographics of atheism, etc.), and the European ones tend to lead the list.
Gary Gutting interviews Keith DeRose
In which DeRose stands up for special pleading and argumentum ad populum.
“No. When there’s a genuine dispute, a lack of evidence on the other side does not give you knowledge if you don’t have evidence for your claim.”
Uh huh. And who gets to determine when a dispute is “genuine”?
*how* does one determine if this god is faithful or not? What would prove or even merely support this nonsense?
hmmm, I’ll have to ask this of a Roman Catholic who has claimed that he can show me why all atheists should become Roman Catholics.
What he must have meant was:
When I think God cannot possibly exist,
I remember being told as a child He is faithful to me.
Now, God couldn’t be faithful to me if he didn’t exist.
Therefore God must exist.
ouch. that hurt 🙂
still how does one figure out what “faithful” means when applied to this god/
Jesus picks him up? Did he just admit he’s a prostitute?
“That’s like doubting Santa but accepting his reindeer!”
Good one
so what’s wrong with the reindeer, Ben??
I just have to answer that question even though my name is not Ben. Exactly like Jesus, Reindeer really cannot fly.
Oh, no. Are you sure about that? Cognitive dissonance descends🐾🐾
“Aren’t you embarrassed to have a state church?”
Not really, when one compares the relatively innocuous C of E with the rabid religiosity of the US. I think there’s a good case for thinking that the C of E provides a sort of default for people’s need to feel ‘part of something’ with a mass of tradition and architecture behind it, without the risk of leading them into religious extremism. And though it is the ‘state church’, nobody has been compelled to belong to it for centuries.
Rather the cowpox of the C of E than the smallpox of USAnian freedom of religion.
Of course, the C of E may not be a causal factor in national religiosity (in which case it doesn’t matter if we have it or not), but if it is a causal factor then the results suggest it’s fairly benign.
Yes, I quite like having the Church. It’s not really a religious organisation, despite all the priests and incense (High) or bibles (Low); more of a social club. English people don’t do religion. We leave that to the excitable colonials.
Being unfamiliar with it I checked out the psalm 88 reference. While much of the writing in the Hebrew Bible is dreadful, some of it is amazing. Here is the final stanza of this kafkaesk lament in the New International Version:
“From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.”
According to some accounts, Oilwellby (as Private Eye refer to him) got serious religion through attending an Alpha course. My understanding of Alpha (and I am open to correction) is that it lays emphasis on the charismatic influence of the Holy Spirit and the intercessionary powers of Jesus. Perhaps this is why the ABofC thinks and talks so much about the latter.
His predecessor Rowan Williams was also supposed to be keen on Alpha, but at least he had a background in more orthodox Anglican doctrine. His discussions with Richard Dawkins suggest that in some ways they were on more or less the same wavelength, even though they disagreed about many (most) religious issues. I can’t help feeling that in a similar discussion Welby would not have any conception of where Richard was coming from. Such an exchange would be interesting to watch…
“His predecessor Rowan Williams was also supposed to be keen on Alpha,”
Or was it Rowan Atkinson. I can never keep them straight.
Ah, Rowan Atkinson would be the one with the big druidy beard and the mellifluous Welsh accent.