Light On Dark Water

Here, at National Review Online, is Andrew Stuttaford, more or less applauding the departure of “international brigades”—I think he means Anglicans outside of England—from Anglicanism:

“it would be no bad thing if the C of E were to become a little less ‘church,’ and a little more ‘England’…”

What makes this so odd to me is that Stuttaford, if I’m not mistaken, is not a Christian. I have the impression from reading his posts at NRO that he’s more or less an atheist. This conflation of nationalism and Christianity is not unusual, but generally it’s either more unconscious, as with some American Protestants who see the story of America as a continuation of the story of the Bible and really cannot separate the two, or less straightforward, as with the skeptic who quietly keeps his reservations to himself because he thinks religion is good for people, or for the country. I think it is relatively rare for someone in that latter camp to openly wish to build up the national church while actively denigrating the faith to which the church is ostensibly devoted.

Stuttaford’s remark is, however, a blog post, probably written hastily, so it could be that I’m misunderstanding him.

I am not, by the way, and obviously, not going to try to link to all the interesting commentary on this development. Most likely anyone who reads this blog and is interested in the matter reads others that cover it better than I could hope to. But in case you don’t, the American Papist is a good place to start.

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