I did read the whole thing.  According to the archbishops, the problems in Britain are greedy wealthy people and the “profit motive.”  If this is the general feeling of the British electorate, their goose is cooked.

If the UK officially becomes an atheistic Marxist state how can we tell?  Seems to be there already.

I guess the archbishops proclamation of the Gospel isn’t persuasive enough to encourage people to voluntarily share their wealth out of a love for God, so the archbishops fall back on having the state confiscate it.  Doesn’t sound like they have a lot a faith in their own message to change people’s hearts.

Katherine,

I think you’re reading too much into what is, after all, election eve advice, which most people would expect an established church to give. And let’s quote what they actually urge - a move away from the idea that the profit motive is “all important.” No doubt some will argue that it currently isn’t important enough, but that’s a different issue.

Bear in mind, that the “profit motive” has come to inform such behaviors as local councils (Labour and Conservative) happily selling off school playing fields in the face of widespread community opposition, as well as numerous poorly conceived public-private partnerships which recent Labour governments have championed.

I think the real problem is that none of the parties running are that concerned with the restoration of civic virtue, or have a view of civic virtue greatly at variance with many practicing members of the Church of England.

Catholic and Reformed

That is the problem with “wealth” in the public sector (socialism) and Democracy. The solution is to privatize the wealth so everyone can have a chance at it and become a republic so every stinking election is not about the voter’s own pocketbooks but about law and national interests.

“Their goose has been cooked” for a long time.

Don

Well Don,

I can tell you that in the UK we used to complain about the nationalized British Rail. Then we had privatization of the railways and, strangely, prices went up and services went down. I’m not arguing strict cause and effect, but I would say that your blanket statement doesn’t necessarily hold for every type of human endeavor.

In passing, I must say that I do find it a little sad to see Charles Gore and William Temple consigned to the rubbish heap of Anglicanism, since they definitely wouldn’t pass muster in the new order (on either side of the divide - well Temple might have adjusted, I suppose, but Gore certainly wouldn’t).

#1 I think that greed should be considered a problem for a democracy.  Um.  Have you been following the news about Goldman Sachs?  Seems that a lot of the bankers didn’t have a lot of time for democracy, except when it came to taxpayers bailing them out.

Jeremy Bonner, it’s true that political code words mean different things on opposite sides of the Atlantic.  Many religious ones do, too, for that matter.  The gist of the archbishops’ statement sounds like income redistribution to me.  I don’t think any of the three major party contenders correspond to American conservative ideas, even roughly.