Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, Credit: Leon Neal / Getty
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The post of Archbishop of Canterbury has never been a particularly safe one, nor one that wasn’t political. Thomas à Becket, Thomas Cranmer and William Laud (murdered by over-zealous acolytes of Henry II, burnt at the stake for heresy, and beheaded for treason, respectively), all died for publicly disagreeing with what the Church would call the temporal, or what we’d now call the political, powers of their day.
Justin Welby, the current incumbent of the See, needn’t worry about a similar fate. He has, however, come in for a degree of criticism for his speech to the Trades Union Congress conference, in which he condemned zero-hours contracts and the gig economy as “the return of an ancient evil”, apologised for the Church of England’s historical opposition to the trade union movement, lambasted payday loan companies and Amazon, criticised the tax system, and said that he dreamed of government putting charities such as food banks, night shelters and debt advice clinics out of business.
Some of the criticism was that a religious figure should take any political stance. A more reasonable objection, in my view, was that Welby’s speech was excessively party political – a distinction he himself made during it, though while denying that his position was party political. The third criticism, which came soon after the speech, was that it was hypocritical, since it turned out that the Church of England itself not only employs people on zero-hours contracts, but that the Archbishops’ Council (which Welby chairs) expressly advised that they do so, and that the Church Commissioners, who handle the Church’s finances, own quite a lot of shares in Amazon.
The first objection is a non-starter. Anyone who thinks that the clergy should stay out of politics, or that religiously-motivated politicians “shouldn’t do God” (as Alastair Campbell advised Tony Blair, arguing that it was a recipe for trouble) is on a hiding to nothing. Religion and politics are both ways in which people attempt to make sense of the world, ensure justice and attempt to correct iniquities. On any reading of the Bible, it is impossible for any Christian, let alone any clergyman, not to scream from any available pulpit for a radical rethinking of the world in which we live.
What is not obvious is a solution provided by the material world, let alone the policies of Jeremy Corbyn in 2018. The direct teachings of Jesus provided by the Gospels are non-existent when it comes to specific instructions on issues that seem to be of high priority to many people who call themselves Christians (homosexuality, birth-control, race, class, redistribution of wealth). They are, however, painfully direct about things which often seem impossible aspirations: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as yourself.
One of the most remarkable things about Jesus –and an indication of the powerfulness of his teachings – is that he was totally obscure for most of his life, and active as a preacher for no more than a year or 18 months. He was sufficiently popular to acquire a following, but sufficently unpopular to be crucified.
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