The former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has warned his next successor to avoid commenting on policies like immigration.
Speaking to The Telegraph, he was also critical of essentially the most recent Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, for diverting funds away from parish churches towards reparations for slavery.
Carey was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, before being succeeded by Rowan Williams after which Welby.
Welby, who took office in 2013, stood down in the beginning of this yr following a report that was critical of his handling of historic sex abuse cases.
Church leaders have recently been heavily critical of Nigel Farage and Reform UK, specifically over the difficulty of immigration. The acting head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, spoke out against Farage, telling The Mirror that Reform’s plans to deport illegal migrants were “beneath us as a nation”.
The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Steven Croft, published an open letter to Farage saying, “I disagree profoundly along with your attempts to politicise the questions of migration and asylum by deliberately increasing fear of the stranger in our communities.”
Farage, who recent polls suggest often is the next Prime Minister, hit back at church critics by saying they were out of touch with large swathes of their congregations.
Welby himself got here under fire during his time as head of the Church of England when he criticised the previous government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which he described as “morally unacceptable” and “politically impractical”.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Lord Carey advised against such interventions in future.
“I hesitate to comment on the balance struck on commenting on politics because I’m sure that I didn’t at all times get it right. But there must be a judicious silence from the Church on specific policies,” he said.
“The Church has no more expertise than anyone in relation to the ins and outs of how we handle migration, for instance. We squander our influence after we offer easy platitudes. Yet interventions can have considerable authority when Church leaders comment from clear Christian moral principles in additional general terms.”
Carey also advised the following archbishop against shouldering the burdens of leadership alone.
“You are usually not alone and are usually not expected to be the saviour of the Church of England,” he said.
“Only the great Lord can try this. You are here to guide a team of bishops, clergy and laity – to encourage them, empower them and back them to the hilt.”
Carey was critical of the choice by Welby to pay reparations related to alleged profiteering by the Church of England from transatlantic slavery, suggesting it had diverted much-needed funds away from “neglected” and “woefully and disgracefully underpaid” clergy.
“The last Archbishop of Canterbury gave hundreds of thousands towards historic reparations, money that ought to have gone to support parish ministry,” he said.
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