UK Bishop Addresses Moral Vacuum

The Telegraph has an interview with the Bishop of Rochester in which he asserts that the decline of Christianity leads directly to a decline in "Britishness," as hedonism and radical Islam fill the "moral vacuum."

Unlike the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali is not buying the notion that British common law should be supplemented with sharia law. Nazir-Ali has criticized the Anglican church for failing to seek to convert the increasing number of Muslims in the U.K.

Nazir-Ali blames the church's loss of influence on its capitulation to pressure from liberal theologians and Marxist students.

It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves. While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.

The church's loss of influence has led to hedonism on a personal level and appeasement on a political level:

The bishop warns that the modern politicians' catchphrases of respect and tolerance will not be strong enough to prevent this collapse of traditional virtues, and said radical Islam is now moving in to fill the void created by the decline of Christianity.

Britain would never have become a global empire without Christianity, according to Nazir-Ali, because before the rise of Christianity, the United Kingdom was just a "rabble of mutually hostile tribes."