Britain has lost its way, says Archbishop

[Snowden]

Britain has lost its way, says Archbishop


By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Last Updated: 12:31am GMT 02/03/2008


The Government has failed to find a vision for the country and has not built a cohesive society, the Archbishop of York has claimed.

Dr John Sentamu said that racism had been allowed to flourish and that Britain was no longer the "great nation" it once had been.


Dr Sentamu: Britain is in a very uncomfortable place

Instead, it was a nation in crisis. "Britain is in a very, very uncomfortable place," he said.

In a wide-ranging speech on the country's "broken society", the Ugandan-born archbishop called for Britain to regain the values of "mission and enterprise" that had made it so effective when it had an empire.

His comments follow weeks of debate between political and religious leaders over the impact of multiculturalism on Britain, which has centred on claims from fellow senior bishops that the country has no-go areas for non-Muslims and will adopt aspects of Islamic sharia law in due course.

The criticism from the Church of England's second most senior figure will come as a blow to Gordon Brown, who yesterday, at Labour's spring conference, vowed to build "the Britain of our dreams" and a country where "security and opportunity for all is within our grasp".

Dr Sentamu said that it had suffered from a loss of identity, which had made it less able to welcome immigrants and had deepened tensions between communities.

"When I came here in 1974, we were treated with dignity, with love, and in the rest of the nation there was this sense of magnanimity, the will to meet another person. Over these 34 years, we've had a rant about immigration and haven't met major questions of race. Britain is in a very, very uncomfortable place."

As the Church of England's first black archbishop, Dr Sentamu has played a leading role in fighting racism. He criticised the Government's policy on asylum seekers after visiting Oakington immigration detention centre in Cambridgeshire, where he talked with people who have been housed with convicts.

Speaking at Cambridge University, the archbishop accused the Government of trying to put a positive spin on the impact of its policies when, in fact, Britain had lost its standing abroad and was in crisis domestically because it no longer had a "vision for coherence or purpose".

"The loss of purpose has led to a crisis in Britain and a crisis for Christianity," he said. "At the heart of the empire was very strong mission and enterprise. British goods used to be very good, but not any more. Something has gone wrong. Britain needs a bigger vision."

He stressed the importance of Britain not losing its Christian heritage which, he said, could be a "medicine" for the nation's ills.


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