Politics & Power Quote by Robert Runcie

A warning disguised as pastoral restraint, Robert Runcie’s line draws a bright boundary around a perennial temptation: turning God into a national logo. “Those who dare” is doing heavy lifting. It frames religious interpretation not as a right but as a risk - a morally hazardous act that should produce humility, not triumphal certainty. The verb “claim” is equally pointed. You don’t “discover” God’s will here; you appropriate it, like property, like political capital. That’s the subtext: once God becomes an “asset,” faith gets audited, weaponized, and deployed to bless whatever tribe already holds power.

Runcie was Archbishop of Canterbury in an era when Britain was renegotiating identity under pressure: Cold War rhetoric, Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence, the Falklands War, and a late-imperial hangover that still wanted providential cover. His position demanded public speech that could critique nationalism without sounding anti-patriotic. This quote accomplishes that by aiming not at belief itself, but at the act of conscription - the moment when piety becomes a stamp of legitimacy for “one nation or group.”

The sentence’s genius is its moral judo. It doesn’t deny that people will try to read God’s will; it insists that any such reading, if honest, must refuse partisan ownership. In a culture that loves divine certainty, Runcie offers something rarer: a theology of limits, meant to keep the sacred from becoming just another flag.