Bishop of Durham Should Stand for Election if he Wants to be a Politician
Bishops have no business commenting on political matters. So says Ken Booth, BNP Regional Organiser for the North East, after the Bishop of Durham decided to announce his opposition to the British National Party.
Mr. Booth, who is standing for the BNP for Elswick, Newcastle, in the May local elections said the Bishop has no business commenting on political matters.
He said: “If the Bishop wants to be a politician let him stand as a politician and take part in the local elections, but as a religious leader he should stay out of it.”
Amongst his other comments, Bishop Tom Wright said: “Opposing the BNP isn’t simply a matter of saying ‘the status quo is working fine, so please reject these idiots’.”
Sunderland BNP organiser Alan Brettwoood, who is standing as a candidate in Southwick in May’s council election, said “The election is a democratic process and it’s really strange how religion is starting to intervene. Religion and politics are two totally different things,” he said.
“The bishop is intervening in the political process by asking people not to vote for the BNP, he should be concentrating on what’s happening in his own religion.”
He added: “We’re just ordinary, hard-working people that want the best for our country – what’s wrong with that?”
An interesting aside to the issue of Christianity and the BNP, can be found here – it is an article on distributism, nationalism’s radical alternative. Readers interested in studying the matter will see that it is founded in Christian social conscience, and, as an important part of modern British nationalism, not at odds with Christianity, as the Bishop of Durham seems to imagine.
Nationalism’s Radical Alternative – an introduction to Distributism- by Nick Griffin (1990)
