Cranmer and Christianity

This chap is a funny character. He does regularly quote Margaret Thatcher as having denied that you have to be right wing or a Tory to be Christian - at which point those of us conservative Christians who happen to be anything but a Tory are relieved. I think a bit like advertising George W Bush is a Christian is bad publicity for the Christian faith, so too is advertising Thatcher was a Christian, given the general regard with which she is held in by much of the population (that doesn't vote Conservative).

Anyhow, he often writes, and I usually want a "dislike" button somewhere for his frequent lashings out at the left, since the tone of his stance is that one can't possibly be on the left and be a conservative Christian - a stance I do manage to take.

This article though, on multiculturalism, is perhaps the best of the lot. I find it hard to believe that multiculturalism is purely a phenomenon of the last 13 years - and Wikipedia partially supports me on this.

I'm not sure exactly what the Archbishop is proposing, it is hard to tell. He can't be saying end all immigration (although his comment on Peterborough is the usual right-wing hyperbole on immigration). He seems to be saying stop the ghettos emerging that apparently exist in Birmingham dominated by Muslims. He writes about them as if ghettos (defined basically as no-go areas in towns and cities) have only started existing since the Labour Party embraced multiculturalism.

I'm sure he probably doesn't really need reminding that they have always been with us in inner-city UK. I can remember many in Manchester where I grew up (incidentally in the mid-1990s before Labour's Multiculturalism came about). We haven't really got rid of them so why he thinks we can get rid of these ghettos I'm not really sure.

However, my main thought on this is that Cranmer in this article strays closest to being a parochial Anglican (i.e. someone focussed on the UK and worldly matters rather than Christianity) when talking about "bring a stranger in one's own land". This I noticed earlier in an article on a left-wing Vicar who dared to say something less than supportive about the Royal Marriage. Cranmer noted that the vicar's boss was not God but instead the Queen. I'm sorry, but a Bible-believing Christian minister's boss is not the King or Queen of England, but the Lord Jesus Christ, as is the case for any Bible-believing Christian.

Yes there are social problems in the UK, but are they really associated indelibly with immigration? I'm not even slightly convinced. We are all fallen sinful human beings regardless of where we are from, and we will always fail to get on. This doesn't mean we should put a stop to immigration, describe ourselves as strangers in a foreign land (does Cranmer think that the foreigner should be thought of as the stranger? Doesn't seem much like what Jesus would do to me).