Leading Christian clergy may now be appointed, via advice from Rishi Sunak the UK’s practicing Hindu Prime Minister.
King Charles is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The King appoints archbishops, bishops, and deans of cathedrals on the ‘advice’ of the Prime Minister.
Hinduism is ok but Catholics and Jews – well no chance!
Being Hindu is no obstacle if the PM wished to offer advice on ecclesiastical choice to the King.
However, C of E bias goes back a long way. Roman Catholics and Jews are the only non-Anglicans to be legally prohibited from advising the Sovereign on ecclesiastical appointments. However, there’s no prohibition for other faith systems like Muslims, Buddhists, Lutherans or even Atheists from having a say.
This Hindu PM axis is ruffling Christian fundie feathers too, and not just in the UK.
“A Hindu Prime Minister is now responsible for advising King Charles on appointments to the Church of England. Britain is dead," said Collin Pruett, Operations Associate at The American Conservative, who thinks that… “Charles III should depose Parliament".
Moreover, PM Rishi Sunak could not completely extricate himself from the Church of England, even if he wanted to. He would still be an ex-officio Church Commissioner under the Church Commissioners Measure 1947.
The Church of Scotland too previous stuck the boot into Hinduism. Alexander Duff, the first overseas missionary of the Church of Scotland to India, wrote: “Our present purpose not being to expose, but simply to exhibit the system of Hinduism, it has all along been taken for granted that in the eye of the intelligent Christian, its best confutation must be the extravagance and absurdity of its tenets.”
Christian academics have been very clear-cut on the incompatibility between Hinduism and Christianity. They not only reject any merits of religious pluralism but commend Christianity’s denunciation of it, as being one of the Abrahamic religion’s major benefits.
The fervour of Christian evangelists can be measured from the fact that previously Pope John Paul II encouraged Christian missionaries to convert the area, during his trip to India during 1999. The pontiff exhorted a synod of Asian bishops to convert the territory in the coming millennium. He instructed them to go forth and conquer the continent for Christ, just as the Church had done in Europe during the first millennium and in the Americas in the second.
Christian fundamentalism has long regarded Hindus as being satanically – inspired and practices such as Yoga and Eastern meditation being and gateway to evil.
Even vocal Christian activists like Lord David Alton have previously been happy to condemn practices such as transcendental meditation, (which is rooted in Hinduism). In one of his regular anti-occultist/New Age Catholic news articles Alton warned that children in schools were being opened up to ‘messages from sources they do realise they should question’, via meditation techniques.
Alton imprudently went on to lump TM with other things he regarded as being occult – based and not to be ‘dabbled’ with. He gave the game away however when he invited readers to write to one Audrey Harper for additional help.
Harper is well known today as a widely discredited sensation-seeking, satanic scaremonger, and extremist Christian who was influential during the socially - destructive Satanic Panic of some years ago. She was one of the leading players in the hardline, Christian charity, Reachout Trust.
Reachout campaigned against many things that they considered to be against the bible, things, like - Hypnosis, Transcendental Meditation, Tarot Cards, Christian Spiritualists, Halloween, Fantasy Games, Rock Music and later on even Harry Potter books.
Today, they include ‘Hinduism’ in their list of ‘very real spiritual dangers’.
As with all other faith systems, their words on Hinduism remain biased and largely condescending.
“…the worship of a Hindu is not to the Creator God of the Bible, but to what evangelical Christians regard as a false god.”
“Most Hindus will have no reality of forgiveness in their life and they will be striving towards a goal rather than knowing what has already been accomplished.”
Reachout invite other Christians, like them, to help to equip their churches to ‘better defend the faith’. In other words, patronise with a grin and then convert or suppress anything that stands in their way!
Such is the nature of blind intolerant religious fundamentalism.
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