{"id":22491,"date":"2015-01-31T22:24:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T03:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=22491"},"modified":"2015-01-31T22:28:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T03:28:16","slug":"justin-welby-the-socialist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/justin-welby-the-socialist\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Welby the socialist"},"content":{"rendered":"

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby opened the discussion, which was part of the Trinity\u2019s Institute\u2019s conference on Creating Common Good: A Practical Conference on Economic Inequality, Jan. 22 to 25. Examining scriptures from both the New and Old Testaments, he said, \u201cThere is an ambivalence, an acceptance of wealth as blessing and yet a hesitation, a doubt, a fear about its consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, examples of people who have created great wealth and used it for the common good, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, spring to mind and are reason to give thanks, he acknowledged. There is no biblical injunction against all personal wealth but, he said, there is an injunction against \u201cthe systematic and indefinite accumulation of grossly unequal [wealth in] societies.\u201d\u00a0 That, he said, “always leads to abuse, even if every wealthy person is generous, because the asymmetries of power means that wealth allocation becomes a matter of paternalism not a basic issue of justice.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has never been \u2013 nor, I contend will there ever be \u2013 a society in which there is not an allocation of grossly unequal wealth<\/em>. The difference between capitalist inequality, an inequality from which, as a salaried archbishop Welby derives considerable benefit, and socialist inequality is that the poor in capitalist countries tend to be far better off than the poor in socialist countries.<\/p>\n

As Winston Churchill observed, the only equality that socialism manages to spread is equal misery \u2013 apart from the ruling elite, of course, who appropriate grossly unequal wealth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help wondering if Welby believes his own Gospel \u2013 the one where the poor are blessed and a camel going through the eye of a needle is easier than a rich person going to heaven. In Welby\u2019s red Christianity, the rich young ruler would not be invited to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor: his wealth would have already been confiscated by the state, depriving him of the choice. But that\u2019s what socialism is all about: removing choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From here: Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby opened the discussion, which was part of the Trinity\u2019s Institute\u2019s conference on Creating Common Good: A Practical Conference on Economic Inequality, Jan. 22 to 25. Examining scriptures from both the New and Old … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[2186],"class_list":["post-22491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justin-welby","tag-justin-welby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}