BNP "Vicar" is no Holy Man!

I do wish the BNP, the media and anyone else who thinks as such would refrain from calling Mr.Robert West a "vicar". He is definitely not a priest in the Church of England. He is not a clerk in holy orders. All he is is a self-styled itinerant preacher following his own version of the Christian Faith.

Most people in England have no idea what a vicar is or does. That's because the likes of The Sun use "vicar" in much the same way as they do "tragic tot", "terrorist", "beast" or "victim". Mr.West is very much a civil Christian in his public utterances. He panders to those who never set foot in church, yet who somehow believe they live in a protestant wonderland where a divine creator has given them complete control to command the lives of others.

The BNP has no vicar with a megaphone shouting the odds. It has a man in a clerical collar whipping up the political debate with falsehoods and fantasies. A vicar is a priest who has a parish where the stipend (salary) was historically mainly derived from lesser tithes. A rector, on the other hand, was a priest who received both the greater and lesser tithes. A rector therefore could be assumed to be better off than a vicar, but a vicar was definitely better off than a perpetual curate, who got no tithes but was given a small stipend from the diocese.

The term vicar has become a loose expression for a priest in the Established Church. In the folk pysche of English society, a priest is only to be found in the Roman Catholic Church. I was once asked by a cradle Anglican, a woman who attended church regularly, but who had all the hallmarks of a C of E background, "Is your uncle a priest or vicar?". "He's both", I replied, without further comment. She looked at me blankly, wondering how on earth such a thing could be possible.

The Church of England may be pleading with people not to vote for the BNP, but I somehow think that the dearth of any real understanding, any proper appreciation of the Faith in the mass of the population, is partly down to ineffectual leadership by the hierachy of the C of E. The BNP can call on the English people with some vague gospel of mumbo-jumbo religious rhetoric and it has an ability to stir latent protestant sentiments. Nothing too deep, no real spiritual basis, just a primeaval approach to the problems that beset people in their daily lives.

The Church of England is always put down as the religion of those who don't tick the box for anything else. "I'm C of E, I suppose" is the reply you often hear. It is this mass of unbaptised, non-churchgoing people that the media includes in their headcount of Anglican adherents. However, to be a Christian one has to be baptised. By all means, we should encourage those with a desire to explore faith and to embrace those who have no faith. My point is about the vast bulk of secular Britons who are no longer part of the Established Church but who claim a Christian heritage based on myths, fables and folklore. It is this group of souls that the BNP is exploiting.

The Press gets its vicars in a twist

The British press, particularly the downmarket Sun, has never really understood the workings of the Christian Church. Now that we live in an increasingly secular world, knowledge of the Church is virtually non-existent now. To the Sun any person in a clerical collar is a "vicar" regardless of the fact. If they are told that person is a bishop, they may recognise that. But mostly it's vicars to the Sun.

Now a vicar is only a title for a priest who has a living (a parish) usually set in an urban setting. Originally a vicar received tithes that were lesser tithes, that is not ones directly obtained from agricultural crops. That was a rector's benefit in kind! To the Sun a vicar is a vicar even if he is a rector, curate, chaplain, deacon, or non-stipendiary minister.

So it is with great shock that the Sun announces that "vicars" are joining the BNP. I've heard of no such thing. But the loosely-worded paper thinks otherwise. They keep calling the self-styled "Rev" Robert West a vicar. He isn't even in the Church of England. He joined a sect called the Apostolic Church and is now a wandering preacher or an independent cleric. They also announced that the Rev John Stanton was a vicar. Again, no such thing. He is another independent cleric running the Rock Dene Christian Fellowship in Rochford, Essex.

The press has little clue as to how to address the clergy. They have more than no knowledge about the titles of priests and they keep on using the term "vicar" with all the acceptance of the hatch, match and dispatch brigade. I accept that they live in this world as it is, but I do not accept that it is right to call people vicars when they are palpably not. I could well say that a BNP blogger was a newspaper editor and go round saying that lots of newspaper editors had joined the BNP. It would be nonsense, of course. I know it. It's a pity the Sun doesn't!