Lord Carey of Clifton isn’t the retiring sort. He stood down as Archbishop of Canterbury ten years ago, but he wasn’t ready to end his days in quiet contemplation. At 76, he is still a public figure — more so, perhaps, than ever.
He used to be dismissed as a plodding liberal; a typically ineffectual Anglican primate. Today, he is recognised as perhaps the leading British voice of Christian conservatism. He speaks out against mass immigration, multiculturalism, gay marriage and militant secularists.
He makes headlines. He’s recently fulminated against a High Court ban on prayers at council meetings, and attacked his fellow bishops in the House of Lords for their opposition to the government’s benefits cap. ‘I think some people were a bit upset with me about that,’ he says.
Indeed they were. Bishop Stephen Lowe accused him of peddling ‘Tory dogma’. Dr Giles Fraser, the former canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, called him a ‘Thatcherite’ — a swear word in most Anglican circles — and one of ‘yesterday’s men’.
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