Sir Tom Moore & the Raging Vicar

Sir Tom Moore recently died of COVID-19, aged 100. He was an otherwise obscure fellow who gained fame last year raising millions for the NHS by doing Zimmer-framed laps of his garden, which was no mean feat. He seemed a decent chap, probably deserving the knighthood bestowed by HM. When he passed away, the predictable call for a national hand-slap was made. This is something in which I did not take part. I have no problem with him being honoured, while alive or dead; I just thought it a rather superficial, silly gesture. In the same way, I do not clap when a couple is pronounced man and wife. It is a moment to celebrate, but clapping, somehow, is just a little crass for such a profound, life-changing moment.

Well, I was joined in my clapping abstinence by the Reverend Jarel Robinson-Brown, a Church of England curate. Our reasons, however, were rather different. He wrote ‘The cult of Captain Tom is a cult of white British nationalism.’ Presumably, all who clapped for this fascist poster-boy are members of this racist cult. Rev Robinson-Brown, as a black homosexual, assumed he was able to get away with this kind of slur; woe betide any white vicar who would dare say such a thing about an old, black man whose life and death were deemed worthy of commemoration. Robinson-Brown’s comments provoked an uproar with many tabloids exposing his insulting smear, forcing him to offer an apology. Writing in this week’s Church Times, just before this storm, he said:

that there has been little refuge from the violence and injustice that brings an emotion like rage to birth in a person’s life. This has rendered rage not only necessary, but means that it comes to me endowed with a certain utility: survival.

This university-educated vicar, who enjoys a job-for-life and free accommodation in the state church, has the luxury to be a professional rager. This time, however, it was he who caused a great many others to rage. I was invited to sign an online petition calling for his dismissal. It had reached 25,000 names when I saw it. In the end, I decided not to. Sacking people because of their views is becoming all too common. Free speech means allowing unpleasant opinions to be expressed as well as those reassuringly like our own. Secondly, he might deem this further evidence of the white majority’s cruel persecution. Thirdly, Rev Robinson-Brown is just one more in a great line of duds the Church of England has seen fit to ordain in recent decades. He might have substituted Critical Race Theory, with its fixation on victims and oppressors, for the gospel, and he might never be troubled by the need for sensitivity and tact, but he’s far from unique. I’ve come across other vicars who are equally preoccupied with the organ fund or preaching the gospel of ecology. If we sacked every Anglican vicar who neglected grace and salvation, there would be few left in holy orders.

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