THE war of words between church and the British state has escalated with the Archbishop of Canterbury likening Downing Street's response to the economic downturn to that of Nazi Germany.
In a pre-Christmas article written for The Daily Telegraph, Dr Rowan Williams, the Church of England's senior cleric, argues that the Christmas message is one of unconditional love and that some of the economic principles designed to cushion the impact of the financial crisis can fail to take into account the human cost.
Quoting religious philosopher and intellectual Karl Barth, Dr Williams said the great thinker had courageously expressed open defiance against the Third Reich and, at Christmas in 1931, preached that one of the greatest freedoms was to understand that while one should be able to live with principles, it is also important to be able to "live without them".
"The 20th century built up quite a list of casualties around 'principles' in Barth's sense," he writes. "Various philosophies solemnly assured us that the human cost is really worth it, because history will vindicate the sufferings … of the present. Keep your nerve, don't be distracted by the human face of suffering, because it will be all right in the end; we know it will because the principles are clear.
"Fortunately the Western world has not for a long time seen the real horrors that this entails in terms of brutality and devastation. Yet we are not completely immune from appealing to 'principles' in order to help us avoid some of the harsher consequences of our policies and preferences."
Suggesting a comparison between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's fiscal stimulus package and the Third Reich, Dr Williams writes that the "principle" might have worked but in the end it required acceptance of the notion that "a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn't".
He said the fiscal strategy failed to factor in the impact on the most vulnerable: "What about the unique concerns and crises of the pensioner whose savings have disappeared, the Woolworths employee, the hopeful young executive, let alone the helpless producer of goods in some Third-world environment where prices are determined thousands of miles away?" he asks.
In his article, he warns of the dangers of "unconditional loyalty to a system" that turned into a "nightmare" under Hitler in Germany.
Dr Williams uses the same language used by Mr Brown, arguing that without thought for these doubts about the human cost "we've lost the essential moral compass" — the same reference to a moral compass used by the Prime Minister last week.
On Friday, the Archbishop likened the British Government's policy fiscal stimulus package as a strategy similar to "an addict returning to a drug".
This sparked Mr Brown to respond in biblical terms, relating the Good Samaritan parable and insisting that the Government could not ignore the suffering of its people and just "walk by on the other side".
"The Archbishop would also agree with me that every time someone becomes unemployed or loses their home or a small business fails it is our duty to act and we should not walk by on the other side when people are facing problems," he said.
The British Government has promised to encourage spending, hiking the level of public borrowing and embarking on a record £20 billion ($A44 billion) emergency package to kick start the economy, as well as other big spending measures.
But with the number of jobless forecast to reach two million next year and the property market pushing thousands into negative equity, Dr Williams suggested that the downturn may provide a reason for the modern, Western world to rethink its obsession with accumulating material wealth.
Dr Williams' comments may be perceived as a further attack on Mr Brown's economic strategy and risk damaging the relationship between the Church and Downing Street.
"It threatens a return to the 1980s, when the Conservative Government came under fierce attack from the Church over its social policies, which were said to exclude the poor deliberately," the newspaper warned.source
