Rev Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, has resigned as police and the City of London Authority prepare to take action to forcibly remove the tented protest encamped outside the cathedral. Rev Fraser has criticised the plans and refused to collaborate with them. The authorities have insisted on proceeding and, in the absence of any support from his superiors, Rev Fraser has stuck by his principles and given up his job. It is heartening to see him take such a stand, but at a dreadful and unfair cost to himself.
As blogged earlier this week (click here), the Trustees of the Cathedral are drawn heavily from big finance and stockbroking backgrounds and could be expected to be sympathetic to the banks which are the target of the Occupy demonstrations - they ended up at St Paul's after being forced away from the City itself. Rev Fraser would appear to have been surrounded by men and women whose views were alien to his own - none of the Trustees has so far followed him in resigning, so must be deemed to support the police plans.
It is a travesty that big business would appear to be calling the shots over a church which whose founder threw moneylenders out of the temple and warned people that they could not serve both God and Money. The City has repeatedly refused offers to meet and talk from the protesters, while the Cathedral Trustees have provocatively closed the building on highly spurious health and safety grounds, clearly as a ploy to demonise the protesters - notably, on BBC Question Time tonight, two speakers, the odious Nigel Farage of UKIP and Labour's Gloria di Piero, warned that it would be a national disgrace if the protesters are still there on Remembrance Sunday next week - after all, not even the Nazi Blitz closed the Cathedral.
Evidently, we didn't fight the Second World War to preserve freedoms such as being able to protest peacefully against Government policy.
Adolf Hitler, eat your heart out.
As blogged earlier this week (click here), the Trustees of the Cathedral are drawn heavily from big finance and stockbroking backgrounds and could be expected to be sympathetic to the banks which are the target of the Occupy demonstrations - they ended up at St Paul's after being forced away from the City itself. Rev Fraser would appear to have been surrounded by men and women whose views were alien to his own - none of the Trustees has so far followed him in resigning, so must be deemed to support the police plans.
It is a travesty that big business would appear to be calling the shots over a church which whose founder threw moneylenders out of the temple and warned people that they could not serve both God and Money. The City has repeatedly refused offers to meet and talk from the protesters, while the Cathedral Trustees have provocatively closed the building on highly spurious health and safety grounds, clearly as a ploy to demonise the protesters - notably, on BBC Question Time tonight, two speakers, the odious Nigel Farage of UKIP and Labour's Gloria di Piero, warned that it would be a national disgrace if the protesters are still there on Remembrance Sunday next week - after all, not even the Nazi Blitz closed the Cathedral.
Evidently, we didn't fight the Second World War to preserve freedoms such as being able to protest peacefully against Government policy.
Adolf Hitler, eat your heart out.
I think we should listen to what the Rev Fraser himself, had to say on Radio 4.
ReplyDeleteThe assumption that a "Christian" church has anything to do with Christianity is the height of insanity. Churches are ALWAYS about control and money, nothing more. Religion is what individuals do with their lives. Fraser appears to be a real Christian, not a "church" Christian.
ReplyDelete"It is dangerous to be right when those in power are wrong" (Voltaire)
ReplyDelete