The Church of England risks becoming the “spiritual arm of the heritage industry” unless it changes its attitude to money, according to the outspoken cleric who resigned from St Paul’s Cathedral last week.
A report in today’s Daily Telegraph states:
The Rev Dr Giles Fraser, who allowed anti-capitalist protesters to camp outside the City landmark then stepped down when he feared they would be forcibly evicted, said for too long the Church has been “obsessed with its own internal workings and with silly arguments about sex”.
In his first public comments this week, the former Canon Chancellor claimed the “very difficult situation” at St Paul’s triggered by the Occupy London tent city in fact represented a “historic opportunity” for the Church to “reset its relationship with the marketplace”.
In what could be a sign of shifting public mood, tourists, City workers and curious locals are donating up to £1,000 a day to the protest camp while St Paul’s has suffered a drop in public revenue.
But the activists remain unpopular in some quarters with Canary Wharf winning a High Court injunction to stop the protest spreading to its site, while the Conservative peer Lord Cormack said action must be taken to prevent the Olympics being marred by “squalid encampments”.
Dr Fraser, who despite his resignation is now taking part in a new St Paul’s project to discuss financial and ethical problems, wrote in his weekly column for Church Times: “Now is the time for a new debate and a new emphasis.
“For if we are not fully involved with complex discussions about the relationship between financial justice and the way our financial institutions work, then we might as well give up on being a proper Church and admit that we are the spiritual arm of the heritage industry.”
Dr Fraser admitted that St Paul’s “sits on a fault-line between the City” and Biblical texts that speak “woe unto you that are rich”.
But he denied that the Church had to be “in league with any particular secular ideology”, and that it represents neither the Labour nor Conservative party at prayer.
He said it was a “dangerous fantasy” to think the world would be a better place if we “smashed the banks”, and pointed out that “markets create jobs and generate wealth”.
Dr Fraser said that separating high street banks from investment arms, and the introduction of a global financial transactions tax, both need “serious consideration”.
As he wrote, well-heeled visitors were mingling with suited and booted bankers in the Occupy London camp’s information tent, where wads of up to £100 in cash are handed over to the organisers in support. A bank account set up to receive donations online is also expected to generate considerable resources.
But as the camp’s finances flourish, the cathedral’s hitherto profitable gift shop and restaurant have suffered a drop in trade, at an estimated loss of several thousand pounds a day.
Visitor numbers were down by “a few hundred” in the first three days of this week compared with the same period of last year, representing a loss of up to £7,500.
The restaurant, where a three-course lunch costs £25.95, has been closed for two weeks. The cathedral was forced to close its main doors for six days last month, at an estimated loss of £120,000, before re-opening a week ago.