Right winger first, Christian second

I'm not sure why I do it, maybe it's some kind of sad thing where I need something to provoke me. Either way, I persistently check in Google Reader the feed from the Cranmer blog.

Everything I read there confirms to me more and more (it may be obvious to others but forgive me my denseness as I catch up!) that this chap is a Conservative first (and hence belonging firmly to the right), and then a Christian second - and I think a distant second at times. He makes persistent disparaging remarks about people on the left, despite from time to time noting how his hero Margaret Thatcher (I would have thought an Archbishop's hero ought to be Jesus but that's by the by) never claimed you had to be right wing if you were a Bible-believing Christian.

In his most recent flare up, he has taken on some rather outspoken chap called Mehdi Hasan. Cranmer describes Hasan as being pretty childish, throwing toys out of the pram. This kind of patronising attitude is all over Cranmer's blog, and really irritating and off-putting. No wonder people look at Christians who attach themselves to the Conservative party and are put off.

However, in Cranmer's original description of why he disagrees with Hasan, Cranmer contains not a single bit of evidence to support his assertions. It's a bit like reading the Daily Mail. Cranmer attacks Hasan about things that supposedly are self-evident, uses emotive language, but doesn't provide a single shred of evidence. It's the kind of stuff that convinces those already convinced about the prevalence of these supposed problems.

And of course, the bottom line is that Cranmer is against multiculturalism, something he blames Labour squarely for, as if it's something that only started happening in 1997. Multiculturalism is something for the left, it seems. Not fo right wingers in the days of Cameron preaching illiberalism on the same day the EDL marches through Luton.

The fascinating thing for me is this. Cranmer is fiercely opposed to a number of things that people from different cultures do, because they are an anathema to him, rightly or wrongly. He agitates that they must not be allowed to do them in a country as wonderful as ours (since when was a Christian supposed to be ever so tied to the things of this world and proud about them, exactly?). So we should be telling these people the bloody well do what we do, or else.

Yet at the same time, he argues for freedom of religious expression, particularly on the part of Christians. Now I happen to believe this should be allowed. But my point is this: If we have freedom of religious expression for Christians to do things that are increasingly counter-cultural (e.g. say homosexuality and sex out of marriage is a sin), then we have to allow others to be able to do counter-cultural things.

I just don't get the difference, and it really irritates me about this Cranmer chap. His economic illiteracy also bugs me, but I'll have to write about that elsewhere since this isn't a blog about economics...