The Church of England, race, and paedophiles

The House of Bishops of the Church of England have voted to make membership or support of the British National Party (BNP) or National Front (NF) a potential disciplinary offence for its clergy.  This vote was taken some time ago, but I believe that it has only just come into effect.


The Church's hostility to the BNP and the National Front appears to have something to do with the vague concept of racial equality.  If races are equal, then perhaps they would like to explain why native Americans never constructed a dam across the Colorado River, despite having North America to themselves for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years.

We sometimes hear it said that there is only one race, being the human race, but that is grossly misleading.  There is one humankind, but there are races, and The Bible appears not only to confirm this, but also to undermine the concept of racial equality.

So far as I can make out, the Church of England has never supported its views on racial equaliy with reference to The Bible, but I have just conducted an online search.  The word racial does not appear at all in the popular New International Version of The Bible, but the word race does appear, and I quote two example below:

Genesis chapter 6 verse 5 refers to humankind as the human race.

Ezra chapter 9 verse 2 refers to the Israelites as a holy race, and this is from a chapter which is scornful of miscegenation.

These two verses contradict one another.  If there is a human race, then logically there cannot be one particular race among them which is expected not to marry with other races. As it happens, I have checked both passages in another translation, and neither passage contains the word race in that translation.

There are many other issues I could raise here, but to save time I will concentrate on just one - paedophilia.  It is reported today that a close friend of Margaret Thatcher was a paedophile, and this does not surprise me at all.

It is now widely known that the Labour Party has historic links to the Paedophile Information Exchange, although Margaret Thatcher apparently never took any action about it when she was Prime Minister.

She also took no action against the Liberal MP Cyril Smith.  This quote is from Wikipedia:

In May 1979 [the month in which Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister], a local underground magazine, the Rochdale Alternative Press, alleged that in the 1960s Smith had spanked and sexually abused teenage boys in a hostel he co-founded. The matter was investigated by the police but Smith was not prosecuted. ... Smith never publicly denied the accusations of abuse, nor did he ever take legal action.

Does the Church of England allow its clerics to be members of either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party?  Has the Church of England ever publicly condemned either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party for their cowardice in the face of child abuse?

Maybe one of their bishops would like to comment.

Update: the issue of sexual perversion in the political establishment continues to be reported:

Police ignored victims of the rich and famous
Pervert speaker
Underage boys at Tory conference

Related previous posts include:
Christians could do more
Black violence: a black woman speaks out
Are you a racist?
Racism at the movies