AS CONVINCING AS SOCCER YOBS DECLARING FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Drive for multi-faith Britain deepens rifts, says Church (Jonathan Wynne-Jones, The Telegraph, October 8th, 2006)

The Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government's drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society.

In a wide-ranging condemnation of policy, it says that the attempt to make minority "faith" communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society "more separated than ever before". The criticisms are made in a confidential Church document, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, that challenges the "widespread description" of Britain as a multi-faith society and even calls for the term "multi-faith" to be reconsidered.

It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government's "schizophrenic" approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given "privileged attention" to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.

Written by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the paper says that the Church of England has been sidelined. Instead, "preferential" treatment has been afforded to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent of the population. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda, it says.

This recalls the modern European who loudly and proudly abjures every aspect of his cultural, artistic and religious heritage in a fit of postmodern revolt, but then who, when engaged in a debate with a North American about who is culturally richer, suddenly becomes a card-carry member of the ancien regime. The 3% of Britain that is Muslim takes its faith seriously. The majority that calls itself Christian doesn’t and has been apologizing for it for years. The state therefore respects the Muslims, but not the Christians. Terribly unfair, to be sure, but there it is.