Ah. Giles Fraser. A BBC favourite, on the speed-dial for comment, with a guaranteed line of thinking that flows effortlessly into the BBC group-think. B-BBC’s Alan picks up on this here…
“Another little BBC programme just adding to the undercurrent of anti-capitalism, anti-banker rhetoric and whispers that are the cause celebre uniting the unthinking chattering classes and the great unwashed of the Socialist Workers Party and Occupy.
‘Ceremony and Society, Rev. Giles Fraser, the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, and David Rennie, Political Editor of The Economist, discuss the past and present importance of St Paul’s.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01f5hnx
The BBC likes to keep the anti-capitalist controversy on a rolling boil never allowing the subject to drop.
The programme is about St Paul’s Cathedral…but in reality it is a platform to allow Giles Fraser to declaim about ‘greed’ and Mammon and the City.
It is in itself a very interesting programme, just 14 minutes long. Rennie is from the left leaning Economist magazine but he speaks well and intelligently in an engaging manner. Fraser comes across as immature and student like….looking out over the city he proclaims ‘ Mammon hey!’.
He doesn’t do the cause of religion any service, in fact the opposite.
He explains why the British don’t like religion:
‘What St Paul’s stands for began after the English Civil war when the Church of England reinvented itself as a place of national togetherness. It shapes the national character…we don’t like ‘isms’, we don’t like any sort of ideology, we don’t do theology. We sit and pray together in a shared common space and that is what binds us together.
They don’t want to talk about theology…because that’s what killed people.’
So religion, at least deeply held views, kills?
Fraser goes on to say, disregarding his previous conclusion, that what we need is a more radical Church, one that goes back to its tenets and beliefs and makes demands of people….it shouldn’t just be a spiritual arm of the National Trust.
The Church should not be just a national place of coming together…a place of unity.
Christianity should be an act of rebellion creating a new narrative.
So back to the Bible then and its commands?
If he was a Muslim the BBC and the Government would be calling Fraser a radical or an extremist…someone ‘perverting’ the meaning of the Bible who doesn’t represent the true Christian community.
I’m not sure how a fundamentalist of any religion who wants to invoke the fundamentals of his religion can be called an extremist…unless the teachings of his religion are in themselves ‘extremist’.
Fraser of course doesn’t disappoint the BBC…he bashes the Bankers and capitalism demanding an ethical capitalism and the end to Individualism….Individualism which is ‘responsible for the way that morality has fallen apart in this country’.
Isn’t ‘Individualism’ meant to have been one of the great successes of Christianity? In fact it is Socialism that promotes individualism….with its take over of family and community responsibilities for caring for those around us.
Fraser says ‘Occupy’ has tapped into something wrong with our society…that banking and capitalism don’t work for the common good. Extreme wealth produces ‘moral hazard’…having a lot of money if bad for your soul…money is the Bible’s number one concern apparently.
I wonder where all the money comes from for the welfare fund and NHS…and all those coins that fill up the collecting plates in the churches or the success of the stock portfolios held by the Church…or paying the BBC license fee that pays his wage?
Where did the £147 million come from to build St Paul’s…or indeed the donations it seeks…‘Every gift from £10 to £1million helps to ensure that St Paul’s can continue to offer moments of peace, reflection, and prayer to all those who seek it, for generations to come.’
It seems God does not provide but the upkeep is from fleecing tourists for a £14.50 entrance fee.
I’m sure it’s all from ethically based Capitalists ….let’s hope they’re not just trying to buy their way into Heaven as the Tory Party ‘kitchen suppers’ are now out of bounds.
The only thing “occupy” revealed was just how many people live in a fantasy world where money grows on trees and that if they ever got their way the world would be plunged into utter chaos. Whelk stall ? They couldn’t even organise a tent site they actually wanted to stay in ! It was a good example of the hypocrisy the Left practice so well.
‘So religion, at least deeply held views, kills?’
Yes, afraid it does seem to.
The comments and views of Fraser might well be worthy of forensic dissection, if not ridicule, but I’m with him on that one.
What’s the body count for each denomination of deeply held religious views so far this century? Postmodern relativism is such a bore.
Do tell me what ‘body count’ has to do with it. Numbers are surely irrelevant to the point.
As far as ‘this century’ is concerned (and I am assuming you mean the 20th rather than the 21st?) I am prepared to concede that nationalism and political extremism of the left and right could well be responsible for greater numbers of killings than has religion, but that is not to refute my argument.
As far as other centuries are concerned, one has only to look at France in the 15th and England in the 16th to see how different sky-fairy myths have caused otherwise reasonable human beings to engage in the most appalling brutality.
And what about 9/11?
So sorry to be a bore.
Sorry – I mean France in the 16th and England in the 17th – doh
No, I mean this century as in the years from 2001 onwards. When you reach back to the Reformation Era, you kind of make my point for me.
“What St Paul’s stands for began after the English Civil war when the Church of England reinvented itself as a place of national togetherness. ”
Are there was me thinking St Pauls was built because of the Great Fire of London.
“The Church should not be just a national place of coming together…a place of unity.
Christianity should be an act of rebellion creating a new narrative.”
Yes a rebellion against your Marxist nonsense Mr Fraser.
Giles Fraser is to Occupy what St Sebastian is to gays….simply a burning/pierced martyr to a False God of their own making.
That the Parable of the workers in the Vineyard can be taught both from the unions and the employers point of view clearly shows that Jesus was no politico…He was way beyond that-and to try to shoehorn Him into any campaign is despicable.
Especially when they hate Jesus in all terms but what they decide He stands for.
Why the hell don`t they ever put up a Scruton or the like up against the sixth form ramblings of a Cof E trustie gone rogue…Sacks for one would skewer the likes of Giles, but “Frasier” never seems to be let near the likes of these.
Was this meant to be ironic in the run-up to Easter? The BBC enabling Fraser to be born again and thus truly saved, in the manner Jesus explained to Nicodemus? Baptized in the waters of Broadcasting House, I guess.
Since Passover also starts in a couple days, the whole scene of Jesus chasing the merchants and money-changers out of the Temple court is relevant as well. Are we supposed to believe that Fraser’s mewlings are intended to echo this? If he’s so serious about Christianity being about rebellion against….er….”whadda ya got?”, why didn’t he go down among the Occupiers and pray with them every day when they were gathered outside St. Paul’s?
If we’re supposed to accept that Christianity is about rebellion in the way that Jesus took a whip to the merchants at the Temple, does this mean that Christ condones the violence we’ve seen from the Occupiers? Do tell, BBC, do tell.
As Jews sing at the end of the Passover Seder, “Enough!”
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that it is for a wealthy cleric to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.