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November 29, 2005
Archbishop John Sentamu Speaks Out Against Multiculturalism
Why does it take a foreign-born national to defend English culture?
"What is it to be English? It is a very serious question," he said. "I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed. When you ask a lot of people in this country, 'What is English culture?', they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out."It is a place that has allowed reason to be at the heart of all these things, that has allowed genuine dissent without resort to violence, that has allowed all the fantastic music that we experience in our culture."Multiculturalism as a concept failed to convey the essence of what it meant to be English. "England is the culture I have lived in, I have loved . . . My teachers were English. As a boy growing up, that is the culture I knew."He disliked the word "tolerance" when used in reference, for example, to people of different cultures.
"It seems to be the word tolerance is bad because it just means putting up with it," he said. "I was raised in the spirit of magnanimity. That is a better word than tolerance. If you are magnanimous in your judgments on other people, there is a chance that I will recognise that you will help me in my struggle."
He described English culture as rooted in Christianity and, in spite of attempts by secularists to marginalise it, the Church still had a central role to play. "I think the Church in many ways has to be like a midwife, bringing to birth possibilities of what is authentically very good in the English mind."
God bless the Archbishop. And God bless England.
(Hat tip: Fjordman.com)
Posted by Isabel de Castilla at November 29, 2005 2:20 PM
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