"I mean, I can look back with great pleasure on what has happened in Sudan, and our commitment to people who are persecuted in that kind of way"
About this Quote
The disarming thing about George Carey's line is how effortlessly it turns catastrophe into a scrapbook. "Look back with great pleasure" is warm, almost domestic phrasing, the language of anniversaries and successful building projects. Set against "what has happened in Sudan", it lands with a chill: suffering becomes a scene for institutional self-congratulation. The sentence is built to keep the speaker clean. The passive construction ("what has happened") dissolves agency, politics, and culpability into weather. Then the focus slides, neatly, from Sudanese lives to "our commitment" - a pronoun that gathers moral credit for the in-group while the victims remain abstract: "people who are persecuted."
As a clergyman, Carey is operating in a tradition where public speech often doubles as moral accounting. The line performs that accounting without ever naming the ledger's messy details: which Sudan, which persecutors, which persecuted, what kind of British or church involvement, what outcomes, what costs. Vagueness is not accidental here; it's a protective sacrament. It allows solidarity to be claimed while sparing listeners the discomfort of specifics - the political entanglements of aid, the failures, the compromises, the asymmetry between "our" good intentions and what the persecuted actually endure.
The intent reads as reassurance: a signal to a home audience that the institution has been on the right side. The subtext is reputational maintenance, charity as brand management. It's not cruelty so much as a familiar pathology of humanitarian rhetoric: turning moral response into a feel-good retrospective, where "commitment" matters more than consequence.
As a clergyman, Carey is operating in a tradition where public speech often doubles as moral accounting. The line performs that accounting without ever naming the ledger's messy details: which Sudan, which persecutors, which persecuted, what kind of British or church involvement, what outcomes, what costs. Vagueness is not accidental here; it's a protective sacrament. It allows solidarity to be claimed while sparing listeners the discomfort of specifics - the political entanglements of aid, the failures, the compromises, the asymmetry between "our" good intentions and what the persecuted actually endure.
The intent reads as reassurance: a signal to a home audience that the institution has been on the right side. The subtext is reputational maintenance, charity as brand management. It's not cruelty so much as a familiar pathology of humanitarian rhetoric: turning moral response into a feel-good retrospective, where "commitment" matters more than consequence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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