Tooley: Anglican Bishops' Report on Terrorism Rooted in British Prejudice
by Jim Brown
October 3, 2005
(AgapePress) - A committee of bishops commissioned by the Church of England recently issued a report responding to the Iraq war and the war on terror. A Protestant renewal group in America is dismissing the report as "absurd." The five Anglican bishops suggested that Christians should apologize to Muslims for the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq and the subsequent overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein. The report -- entitled "Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post 9/11" -- includes a 13-point schedule of "Christian principles" in response to the threat of terrorism, in which the writers call for states to "understand" the perspective of their terrorist antagonists. The September 19 report also alleges that U.S. evangelical Christians promoted and facilitated the war in Iraq because of their purported belief that the United States has a manifest destiny for military conquest.
Mark Tooley with the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy does not give the report much credibility. Tooley says Church of England bishops often rely on stereotypes of U.S. Evangelicals rooted in British prejudice rather than genuine reality.
"The Church of England, of course, is very much a declining institution dominated by liberal theology," Tooley notes, "and I think these bishops -- as do probably many bishops of that institution -- don't even know much about Evangelicals, much less [are] able to comment about Evangelicals across the ocean."
The conspiracy theories laid out in the bishops' report, says the IRD spokesman, are spurious, yet also very revealing about those making the allegations. He believes the Anglican bishops are trying to deflect attention away from their own problems.
"Only a small percentage of British people go to church, and a smaller percentage of that even are Anglican," he points out. "More of the churchgoers in England now are either Catholic or evangelical. So I would surmise that at least subconsciously there may be some resentment and jealousy from the bishops of the Church of England, or least the bishops who wrote this report."
Tooley notes that by some counts, there are more mosque-going Muslims in Great Britain than there are church-going Anglicans.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
