This is an excerpt from the latest episode of the Holy Smoke podcast with Damian Thompson, which you can find at the bottom of this page:
The Easter issue of the Spectator includes two provocative articles exploring aspects of Christianity. Nigel Biggar, Regius professor emeritus of moral theology at Oxford University, now a Conservative peer, celebrates the heroic ‘faithful dissent’ of Christian heroes such as Thomas More and Helmuth von Moltke, who lost their lives rather than defend injustice.
Meanwhile Spectator columnist Mary Wakefield interviews Roman Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s inspired by his holiness but depressed by his use of ‘C of E bureaucratese’ to uphold liberal orthodoxy on subjects such as gender ideology. But, she says they can share an uncomfortable space together within faith.
Nigel and Mary joined Damian Thompson in the latest episode of Holy Smoke to discuss how Christians can embrace ‘faithful dissent’ in an era of conformist Christian leaders who parrot the platitudes of secular opinion.
Damian Thompson: I’d like to ask both of you if you think there are subjects on which Christians should be exhibiting the faithful dissent that Nigel [Biggar] talks about? … It’s difficult in some ways to know, particularly in a structure like the Roman Catholic Church, how to show faithful dissent because people are so terrified of criticising the Holy Father… And yet, at the same time, in the process of exhibiting faithful dissent, I do see people on the right-wing fringe saying horrible things. What do you think?
Nigel Biggar: Just in terms of faithful dissent? Well, of course, the Church is called to bear witness and nobody following Jesus Christ can fail to be prepared, to be prophetic and to stand out against common sense that is untrue or unjust. I just wish that the Church would find its way to being prophetic on things other people are not talking about… rather than being prophetic in the way the left always is prophetic. So, I guess, asking countercultural questions on the trans issue in public, for example…
And I found myself on colonial history, and on race, to some extent being a right-wing dissenter from the present orthodoxy. And I’ve done that partly as a Christian. But there are not many of us in the Church of England who are doing that. Everyone seems to be singing from the left-wing hymn sheet. So, I think I’d say to my Church: by all means, be prophetic, just don’t assume that prophecy always comes from the left.
Damian Thompson: Mary, what do you think?
Mary Wakefield: I wanted to ask Nigel If he has friends who’ve contacted him in private – you know, members of the church – and said: ‘well, I agree with you. I just don’t want to say so in public’?
Nigel Biggar: Yes… And I am in touch with other Anglicans who feel much the same as I do. It’s just that we’re not at the centre of things, are we? And certainly in the university front. The phenomenon of people coming up to you and whispering that they support what you do and applaud what you do…
Mary Wakefield: Yeah, it’s depressing, but it’s reassuring in a way to know.
Damian Thompson: Mary, what are the subjects, do you think, on which Christian leaders are culpably silent?
Mary Wakefield: Gender madness; the lack of acknowledging of biological reality; the abandoning of women, motherhood, perhaps; surrogacy. But Pope Benedict, for me – Ratzinger – had so much to say that was truthful and prophetic on this, that the current Pope has not taken up the baton of truth like that. So, I look back to him. And so that’s a form of dissent from the current regime, but it’s a form of fidelity to the past Pope.
Damian Thompson: I think it’s difficult to show fidelity to a past pope when the current Pope is busy dismantling Benedict’s legacy…
Mary Wakfield: I just find it… It just makes me very heartbroken. But, you know, I think it’s not a reason to leave a Church. I hold to the ideas that brought me into it in the first place, and to my love of Benedict, and I just feel heartbroken from within it. And I assume that truth will make itself visible in the end.
You can listen to the full episode here:
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