God, Man & Mrs Thatcher

Chatto CounterBlasts #1

by Jonathan Raban

A critique of Mrs. Thatcher's 1988 address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 74 pages.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

73 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

British travel writer, critic and novelist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan...

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late '80s, Margaret Thatcher was beset by "turbulent priests" who would insist that Christian values included Charity, which meant looking after the disadvantaged, you know, like what Jesus did. Maggie wasn't having any of it! So, she took herself off to deepest Scotland, at the time a nation utterly opposed to her government, to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a message delivered there, but intended for the Archbishops 'back home'. Presuming to give a lesson in theology to her reverend audience, she told them in no uncertain terms that the Church has no business dabbling in 'society', which in any case doesn't really exist, that she had found a loophole in Christ's injunction to love others as you love yourself, and that the business of the clergy was with the souls of the dead, not the conditions of the living. It didn't play well to the Scots, but went down a storm in the Tory heartlands, most of whom would identify as followers of Jesus Christ, the humble man who fed the hungry and cared for the sick. Turning from this contemporary dissection of her speech to today, I can only wonder at the sight of so many professed people of faith who support leaders embodying the exact antithesis of the moral creed upon which they claim to build their lives and their salvation.

[Ben S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more historical context, and some examination of Thatcher’s personal theology and its difference from the Church of Scotland’s. I don’t know if that book exists—this one isn’t it.

Nevertheless it’s short and fun and gets at the failures of Thatcher’s rhetoric in a famously ill-advised speech. Worth reading if you enjoy stories of speakers totally bombing with their audience.