What’s on Anglican priests’ minds: social media, colonialism, maybe Ascension Day

You could not make this up.

Ascension Day was last Thursday, May 26, 2022, a principal feast of the Church year. Without our Lord’s ascension, He could not have sent His disciples the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost, which is the Church’s birthday.

In 2022, we read Luke’s Epistle and Gospel accounts of that miraculous event of Jesus returning to His Father to sit on His right hand in glory.

However, Anglican clergy chose not to discuss that.

On May 29, the Daily Mail reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury opined on social media instead. Another clergyman discussed colonialism.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

Social media is polarising society and destroying the ‘common narrative’ of the Christian story uniting Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned yesterday.

Justin Welby criticised online platforms for giving people ‘a very loud voice’ and creating colliding ‘waves’ of opinions.

The Archbishop, who has 173,000 Twitter followers, said social media had led to the erosion of shared experiences.

‘People don’t know the narratives and the stories of the Christian faith – the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep,’ he added.

And whose fault is that?

Anglican pronouncements are no better than an op-ed page in an average newspaper. They tell us nothing about the Gospel story.

Here’s another secular perspective, from the Dean of Trinity College Cambridge, the Reverend Dr Michael Banner.

This was his Ascension Day message:

A leading clergyman has accused Christianity of spreading colonialism around the globe – and wants the Church of England to make reparations for its ‘corporate and ancestral guilt’.

Preaching in an Ascension Day service broadcast on Radio 4, the Reverend Dr Michael Banner said Christians had marched around the world, ‘subduing and rendering it one vast kingdom hand in hand with merchants and colonialists’.

Dr Banner, Dean of Trinity College Cambridge, said Christ urged disciples to be his witnesses, but added: ‘We were not witnesses, but a scandal.’ He told worshippers at St Martin-in-the-Fields, central London on Thursday: ‘Now is the time for moral repair and reparations.’

In September, he became the first clergyman to call for the Government to make reparations, but said it was not ‘a demand for a pile of cash’ but ‘a holistic healing of the wounds of colonialism’.

Well, there you go. There is much spiritual enlightenment there for Ascension Day, wouldn’t you agree?

It is highly unfortunate that Banner omitted that it was an English MP, William Wilberforce, a Yorkshireman, who made it his life’s ambition to abolish slavery.

Wilberforce became an Evangelical in 1785 and began looking at the world entirely differently, all thanks to his Christian faith. He became England’s leading abolitionist. His 20-year campaign in Parliament resulted in the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

Even when he left Parliament in 1826 because of ill health, he continued to campaign against the evils of slavery. He died three days after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was passed.

Wilberforce was also instrumental in persuading the US Navy to co-ordinate interdiction efforts with the Royal Navy off the coast of West Africa in an effort to stamp out slave trade.

I did like the way the Mail‘s piece on Banner’s sermon concluded:

Last week, black commentator Calvin Robinson told The Mail on Sunday he was blocked from becoming an Anglican priest because he refused to endorse the view that the Church of England was racist.

Indeed. Here’s my message to senior C of E clergy: mote, meet plank.

Readers can learn more about Calvin Robinson’s sad situation that has caused him to join a less judgmental and more traditional Anglican movement, GAFCON, here.