Poor old A. N. Wilson … I can’t help liking him and have a fondness for him dating back to my first reading of his biography of Hilaire Belloc in the mid-eighties. I am also indebted to him for his kindness towards me, especially in the very positive review he wrote of my own biography of Belloc. He is, however, a somewhat pathetic figure. Several months ago I wrote a post on the Ink Desk in response to the news that he had rediscovered his Christian faith after years in the wilderness of materialism. I rejoiced at this return to faith but expressed my disappointment that he had not embraced the One, True Faith established by Christ Himself. Instead he had returned to the Anglican faith from which he had earlier lapsed. I likened such a choice to that of a drowning man who chooses to clamber aboard a sinking ship.
In order to remain in the intellectually, ecclesiastically and theologically untenable position in which he finds himself, Wilson has embraced Orwellian nonsense, believing that double-think is blessed, and that hypocrisy is not really hypocritical as long as it’s a good old English hypocrisy, on which ANW seems to accept that Anglicanism is founded, and that such hypocrisy can wear the masks of pragmatism and compromise with impunity.
One wonders how long dear old ANW can flail around in the fogs of such nonsense. He is caught between his attachment to the meretricious zeitgeist and his desire for the truths of the Gospel. He is in the dead marshes of no-man’s-land where no man can stand for long without sinking forever into the bottomless bog of infernal sophistry. The choice he faces is a simple one. He must render his heart to Christ or to Caesar. He must choose between God and Mammon. He must choose the Church or the World. He cannot serve both masters. The service of one leads to nothing but wailing and gnashing of teeth; the service of the other holds the promise of Eternal Life.
Those wishing to read ANW’s bizarre defence of “blessed double-think” and English hypocrisy should follow this link:
Thanks much for posting this link and for your explanatory remarks; I confess I had difficulty understanding what point he was trying to make other than he wanted to burnish his modernist credentials by always referring to those Anglican clerics who support traditional beliefs as “bigots” or ‘gay-bashers.”
Sadly I think his confused approach to faith – he cannot resist its appeal, but he refuses to embrace its tenets – is emblematic of much of society today. I seem to encounter more and more of folks like him, albeit less well-known and with less access to large dailies!
Dear Joseph,
I pray he would read what you have written and take it to heart.
Wow.
Mr. Pearce, I thought you were just being hyperbolic with your words…then I read the article.
Let me say this again: wow.
You weren’t kidding.
What on earth was that?! Other than a steaming pile of dung, I mean. Is it even safe to say he came back to the Faith? Or did he come back to faith in englishness? He seems to think C of E’s idiocies are it’s good points!
Then there are the other things…
The fact that he frames the entire “debate” over homosexualilty as being between BIGOTS and activists is laughable. His solution to the problem, pretending the issue away, is even more laughable!
Then there is this wonderful and classy paragraph:
“While the rest of the world listens to Rowan on the big questions, his own Church wanted to hear his views on the trivial questions so dear to their heart. There must be some liturgical or theological equivalent of the words ‘F*** off’ – perhaps ‘Get Thee behind me, Satan’ – which should have been said to all who yearned for or opposed gay bishops or women priests.”
Yes, I think I’ve read enough of A.N. Wilson, thanks.