The
vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be
bountiful.
For
the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to
practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul
of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
The
instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy
the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
But
the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.
Isaiah 32.5-l.8
Recently
I took part in a public read-through of the entire King James Bible, and
declaimed this passage from Isaiah. I’d been mulling over what I might say in
this statement, so it struck me quite forcefully.
My
fiction writing is very much in the context of the Church of England, sitting
squarely in the middle of the liberal tradition. I’m almost afraid to admit
this in the current climate of extremism and dogmatic certainty within the
Church. So much of what is happening today – insistence on an Anglican
Covenant, defections to the Ordinariate, witch-hunts against those who are
‘different’ – goes against what I stand for, and continue to believe. Perhaps
it is time to re-define liberal values in terms of the historic Church of
England, before the word became a pejorative inevitably prefaced by
‘woolly-minded’. Liberalism should be something to be proud of, not to demean.
2011
Kate Charle's website
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