Shocking words from an English Bishop

When the church gets in bed with the state,  the message of the christian gospel will always become subservient to the demands of the state.

Here for instance are the words of the C of E Bishop of London in the early days of the Great War.

The Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, emerged as the most vocal supporter of the war effort in 1914, speaking publicly in support of recruiting drives and the armaments industry. Later in the war he urged his younger clergy to consider enlisting as combatants rather than as chaplains. 

Winnington-Ingram saw the war as a “great crusade to defend 

the weak against the strong”. The language he used to describe

 Germans was intentionally xenophobic. In one sermon he said:

 “Kill Germans! Kill them!” ... not for the sake of killing, but to

 save the world… Kill the good as well as the bad… Kill the 

young men as well as the old… I look upon it as a war for 

purity. I look upon everybody who dies in it as a martyr.”

His words embarrassed and offended many in his native England

Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister at the outbreak of the

 war, described his public statements as ‘jingoism of the shallowest 

kind’.

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