What about saving souls?

The 'Christian socialist' clergymen praising the Occupy protests are more socialist than Christian. What about saving souls? – Telegraph Blogs

The religious Left doesn't believe in saving souls. They don't believe there are any souls to save in the first place, and that there is nothing to be saved from in the second.

The British Left was surprised but supportive when Canon Giles Fraser quit his position at St Paul’s Cathedral in protest at its handling of the Occupy crowd squatting on its door. Fraser’s rebellion was a rather confusing one: he didn’t think that the occupation should stay, he just opposed the use of force to move it on. Nevertheless, the anarchists in the street welcomed what looked like a revival of radical Christian witness. The eloquent Canon Fraser said: “I think that, in a sense what the camp does is that it challenges the church with the problem of the Incarnation – that you have God, who is grand and almighty, [who] gets born in a stable, in a tent. You know, St Paul was a tent maker. I mean, if you looked around and you tried to recreate where Jesus would be born – for me, I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp.”

But Fraser’s benediction of the occupation should be qualified by the fact that he is a very odd Christian. For a start, judging by one of his Thought for the Day broadcasts, he doesn’t seem to believe in life after death. The hope of “life eternal” is really Christianity 101: it’s the hope that defeats suffering and keeps us all from dying in despair. What does Fraser say to his parishioners on their deathbeds, one wonders? Obviously not, “We’ll meet again”. Working on the basis that if there’s only one life you may as well live it to the max, Fraser also endorses gay marriage. He promotes his views through The Guardian, The Socialist Worker and Radio 4. Not that he does any of this for the money! He doesn’t need to: until recently, Canon Fraser lived in a 17th-century grace and favour house.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, "radical Washington DC cleric Fr Thomas Reese" has called for the “redistribution of wealth and the regulation of the world economy by international agencies.”

To which I respond the same as Milton Friedman: "Where do you find the angels" to do that?



If there is anything that we know about international agencies, it is that angelic they ain't.