Review by Diarmaid MacCulloch of Roger Scruton's new book Our Church

Rubbishy review by Diarmaid MacCulloch of Roger Scruton's new book Our Church.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/19/our-church-roger-scruton-review

Diarmaid MacCulloch writes 1,174 words in his "review", except that it is not a review of the Scruton book at all.  Diarmaid MacCulloch makes it clear it does not like the book, but he does not tell us why.  He says he could tell us if he wanted to - but he is an Oxbridge academic and so presumably cannot be arsed.

What he does instead is write 932 words of his own views on Anglicanism, entirely unrelated to Roger Scruton's thesis.  Probably too much port in the Fellows Library, combined with an insistent deadline, led to Diarmaid MacCulloch pushing the book aside after just reading the introduction and thinking he could get away with reproducing some of his lecture notes and pinging it off to Kings Place.  One cannot blame Oxford professors for behaving arrogantly, it's part of their job description, but we can blame the Guardian for accepting this rubbish and serving it up in a newspaper they expect people to pay for.

The last three paragraphs are more relevant to the book, in a damning-with-faint-praise sort of way.  But the whole review is so poor that one learns nothing about Roger Scruton's arguments.  To say one feels short-changed is an understatement.

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford which is perhaps yet another indication of how bogus scholarship is in the Oxbridge hegemony.