Presbyterian – Anglican, There Are Differences

In a comment to the post “What Now?” Malcolm Duff makes some interesting and important points. One in particular deserves further unpacking.

“The “centre” ground that used to encompass past moderators has been lost and these men have much to answer for. They have implied that this is a storm in a teacup like women’s ordination that will soon blow over.”

The Church of Scotland has become eerily similar to the Church of England. Only recently has the CofS began to be referred to as a “broad church.” Until the 80’s we wouldn’t have seriously considered this. We were a Presbyterian church, even a Reformed church, but not a broad church. The Anglicans were a broad church, and proud of it. We were a confessional church, and proud of that.

Anglicanism has at its core a centripetal force. Accommodation and compromise for the sake of the unity of the communion is written into its ecclesiastical DNA. How else could it have survived?

Until very recently, the CofE had been composed of two wings and a broad centre. There is the Anglo-Catholic wing which sees the pre-Reformation tradition as being the defining characteristic of the communion and would welcome increasing accommodation with Rome. At the other end of the spectrum are the Protestant wing who, in varying shades from Pentecostalism to Puritan see themselves as Bible centred.

Between both wings lay the broad mass, the followers of the Vicar of Bray. Whichever wing predominated they would go part way with them until the pendulum swung and the other wing predominated, and they would accommodate the new regime. Meanwhile the work of the church in parishes throughout England quietly muddled on.

Recently there has been a new element in the mix, an increasingly strident progressive wing who have no concept of tolerance. The broad mass in the centre are increasingly coming under the sway of progressive theology and mores. The Anglo-Catholics cast glances towards Rome as a safe haven, the Protestants mutter amongst themselves, and the progressives reshape the church in the image of its scriptures, the Guardian and Independent.

There will be no mass break up of the CofE, they appreciate accommodation as a theological as well as social virtue. A few will go off to Rome, but not many, a few will go independent, but not many, and the church will have a new progressive face. The new centre will not be as tolerant as the old, they will demand obedience and the wings will be gradually squeezed to eccentric irrelevancy.

Not so in Scotland. Admittedly we have seen the anglification of the CofS due to increasing standardisation of viewpoint courtesy of the influence of the media, and a drastic weakening appreciation of and understanding of theology courtesy of our method of training ministers. However, there is a core difference in denominations.

As Malcolm points out the centre no longer holds. That viewpoint which evangelicals could once deride as Auld Kirk, traditional, cautious and always seeing problems with anything new or enthusiastic, the view represented by the ex-Moderators in the play pen at the Assembly, has gone. Progressives, always more adroit politically and with greater access to and sympathy from the media have, as with the CofE, taken over the centre ground.

The big difference in denominations is that we have a centrifugal force at our core. In our history principle has usually come before compromise. At times this has been self destructive hair splitting, at other times it has meant awe inspiring faithfulness. The neo-Protestant progressive centre has little understanding of our history. They look south today and see that nothing terribly dreadful has happened or will happen, the CofE will continue under progressive management and a few trouble makers will have disappeared.

They assume the same will happen in Scotland. It won’t, we don’t have the same tradition of compromise, and evangelicals have been pushed too far.

There is no turning back now, the important thing is that we manage the split in a way which does not damage those congregations who want to leave. Once again I quote Malcolm:

“I hope evangelicals can show a maturity and unity that we are not always good at, and that we can keep congregations together as we work out the implications of leaving. I would like too, to see an understanding approach from the Law Dept and General Trustees so that congregations could take buildings with them. But don’t hold your breath!”

This is no temporary upset which will blow over as others have in the past. For many of us this is not a case of “Will we, won’t we?” This is a case of how we manage the split.

This is something we have to do together. We should have been preparing for this moment earlier. We must do so now.

Scotland’s Shame

Heinrich Heine said words to the effect that when books start to be burned pretty soon it will be followed by people being burned. He was proved correct when the Nazis came to power and bonfires of books by Jews and other undesirables were followed by bonfires of Jews and other undesirables.

Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UK has warned, “A place that boycotts books is not far from a place that burns them.” In parts of Scotland Burns Night may take on a literal meaning.

Boycotting books seems much tamer than burning them, so much more genteel and politically correct, but it is a significant step along the road of intolerance. West Dunbartonshire Council has decreed that in future it will not purchase books by Israeli authors for its libraries. It does not matter what ideas are contained in the books, their literary value or their moral stance, it is the bare fact of their origin which is enough for them to be banned.

Although there is doubt as to the legality of the move it is reported that ten other councils in Scotland are considering following suit.

West Dunbartonshire Council spokesman Malcolm Bennie argues that the boycott doesn’t apply to Israeli books printed outside Israel, just those printed in Israel. So that’s alright then.

No it’s not alright, Malcolm. Your statement is mealy mouthed blethering, rationalising and attempting to cover up blatant bigotry.

In the meantime what have we heard from Britain’s literary lions, those ever vigilant champions of freedom of expression? Precious little.

Ian McEwan, for example, was recently awarded the Jerusalem Prize, and on the way became an advert for Israel’s political tolerance when in his acceptance speech he criticised its policies. Try doing the equivalent in Gaza Ian. Meanwhile if he is prepared to exploit freedom of expression to advance his personal political viewpoint perhaps it would be a good idea if he stood up against political censorship at home.

What about Irvine Welsh, whose drug-soaked rantings have, for some obscure reason, been translated into Hebrew? Surely he is favourably positioned to demand a recantation by West Dunbartonshire who continue to stock his verbal incontinence.

Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress called the banning of Israeli books and the marking of Israeli products in parts of Scotland “eerily reminiscent of darker times and perhaps there is a level of hatred that connects them.”

We are told that this is not anti-Semitic prejudice. However, West Dunbartonshire is deliberately targeting the only democracy in the Middle East whilst turning a blind eye to egregious human rights violations and political corruption in neighbouring nations as well as in Palestinian controlled Gaza and the West Bank. This smacks of anti-Semitism not only in effect but in intent.

Thanks to their council the good people of West Dunbartonshire now find themselves allied with such beacons of enlightenment as Saudi Arabia and Iran who also boycott Israeli books.

Thanks to the West Dunbartonshire Council the people of Scotland have been shamed.

We’re All Doomed

Instead of taking place last Saturday the date of the rapture is being
re-calculated and is found to be five months hence. Seemingly there was an error in the original calculation, the maths must be difficult as this is a common occurrence. Or perhaps there really are parallel universes and the rapture happened in another. Whatever, the secular world has had a laugh and because a few people were taken in by a manipulative minister all religion is condemned as absurd.

However, the Christian world has far fewer “The end is nigh” predictions than the secular, science based ‘rational’ world, especially the world of progressives. Private Fraser from Dad’s Army fitted in with the scientific pattern of communication. His constant refrain was, “We’re doomed.”

We're Doomed

Anyone remember YK2 when all computers were going to seize up,
aeroplanes fall from the sky, life saving hospital equipment malfunction, electrical supplies fail and civilisation generally would be reduced to survivalist mode?

Think of all the global warming predictions which have failed to materialise. Six years ago the UN warned that by 2010 the world would have to cope with 50,000,000 climate refugees. What has actually happened is that populations are growing in supposed environmental danger zones. Meanwhile the UN distances itself from its forecasts, and as a result of so many failed predictions and so many record cold temperatures global warming is rebranded
“climate change.”

Perhaps we will have a return to prophecies of the 60’s popularised by Carl Sagan when doom was forecast to occur through a “nuclear winter” where the earth would freeze under a half mile thick sheet of ice.

Food shortages can be relied upon to get the Cassandras active. Paul Ehrlich, a professor at Stanford, wrote in 1968: “In the 1970’s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programes embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in world death rate.”

The environmentalist lobby in full flow make Jehovah’s Witnesses seem like half-hearted amateurs.

The 70’s and 80’s saw AIDS as the scare of choice. In the USA the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that by 1990 1 to 1.5 million Americans would have died of AIDS. As to what actually happened, by the end of 1991, total AIDS cases in the USA stood at 206,400, deaths at 133,000.

There are two major differences between Christian doomsday peddlers and scientific pronouncers of looming disaster. With the Christians at least some get raptured and have a good time, with scientific end timers it’s a case of “We’re doomed, we’re all doomed.”

The problem is that when believers in scientism pronounce imminent doom and it fails to occur people lose trust in scientists. How many people continue to trust pronouncements about danger foods? As soon as we are told eggs, butter, red wine etc., are a danger to health another research project tells us they are good for us. In the end people just eat what they want to eat and ignore the medical professionals. Not a healthy state of affairs.

Environmentalists get upset that a significant proportion of the population don’t believe in man-made global warning. They have only themselves to blame. Scare mongers may be useful in order to obtain government grants and charity support, but in the long run they don’t serve science well.

Supposed rationalists had a good laugh at the weekend. Wasn’t there someone who spoke about seeing specks of sawdust in the eyes of others and failing to see planks of wood in one’s own?

What Now?

Yesterday the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland voted 351 to 294 to take a major step towards the acceptance for training, induction and ordination of those in same-sex relationships for the ministry. The Assembly also voted by 393 to 252 to allow ministers and deacons in same-sex relationships and ordained before 2009 to be inducted into pastoral charges.

There is now no going back.

It may be painful but realistically all that remains is for the revisionists to gradually mop up resistance and enforce their victory; and for the orthodox to devise our future outwith the Church of Scotland.

We can see the political adroitness of the revisionists in how this matter is being dealt with. Although, as acknowledged by the Report of the Special Commission, this marks a serious departure from the historic teaching of the Church, it will not go down to Presbyteries under the Barrier Act. (The Barrier Act is a mechanism designed to prevent the GA from introducing major legislation without the approval of the local Church). The argument is that this move does not need scrutiny by Presbyteries as nothing has been formally enacted. The underlying political reason for keeping it from Presbyteries is of course that they might well vote against this fundamental revision of the nature of the Church and its relationship to the Scriptures. Meanwhile the transformation of the Church continues apace.

A theological commission is to be set up to bring recommendations concerning homosexual ordination to the 2013 General Assembly. It will also consider whether ministers should have freedom of conscience to bless civil partnerships and possible liturgy for such occasions. It will be interesting to see who is included in this commission and what proportion of its membership take a clear cut orthodox biblical stance. There will be token representation, but that will be merely to legitimise the decision to fully accept that the CofS thinks homosexual acts are not against the Word of God.

The most we can do is institute delaying tactics to slow down the inevitable. This plays the revisionist game. We will become so tired of it all, the commissions, the discussions, the votes, the “thus far and no further” until the next “thus far and no further,” that we will be worn down and just accept the inevitable by slow painful degree.

The best we can do is grit our teeth, take our stand now, acknowledge that the establishment within the Church are going to have their way no matter what, and begin serious discussions about our future outwith the Church of Scotland.

Heroic Rape

Reactions to l’affair DSK have their interesting aspects.

In Britain it seems to be a shrug of the shoulders. So a politician has been  caught with his trousers round his ankles, what’s new? That it’s a Frenchman for a change has its satisfying side, but there’s nothing special in the incident.

In the USA there is obviously more interest. This is not just a politician in a sex scandal, it’s a champagne socialist trying to rape a chambermaid whilst staying at a $3,000 a night suite in a luxury hotel at the taxpayer’s expense. Throw in the fact that he is a “Cheese eating surrender monkey” and it is glee unconfined.

The "Joyful" and "Heroic" DSK

Whether the former head of the IMF is innocent or not the reaction of the French progressive intelligentsia is instructive. “We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilisation,” sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur. Daniel appears surprised that the New York police did not realise that Strauss-Kahn was “not like other men” as he wondered why “this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion.”

Bernard-Henri Lévy is stamping his little feet in fury at the lèse-majesté of this serving wench and the impertinence of America’s “absurd” justice system, not to mention the preposterous “American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.”

Liberation carried an article by novelist Luis de Miranda which praised DSK as “a philosophical hero.” Miranda takes it for granted that DSK is as guilty as sin, so what? Rather than condemning him for rape Miranda praises his heroic qualities. “We bet that in his depths Dominique Strauss-Khan is joyful. Perhaps he doesn’t admit it to himself yet. But behaving thus at this point in his biography could only have been  voluntary. I add that it is heroic.”

DSK seemingly, in full knowledge of what he was doing, heroically renounced the chance of being President of France. “If the cleaning woman has been attacked, the woman worker had violence done to her, then we are touching on the sublime, in the Kantian sense… A political suicide rather than the death of an automaton or the possibility of a reign unleashed.” Miranda concludes, “This event in New York is a sacrifice, a renunciation of an anticipated excess of power, a gift to the French national interest. In that, DSK, you are heroic. Thank you.”

Given any choice I think it would be preferable to live in a country where “frontier justice” means that a chambermaid can get a world leader dragged out of his first class air seat to answer charges, to living in one where the elites can get away with pretty much what they want because they are not “a subject of justice like any other.”

Before my American readers get too complacent this type of arrogance is not confined to France. To witness a progressive arguing for 21^st century droit de seigneur may appear odd, but is actually standard stuff. Remember the eulogies of that progressive standard bearer Edward Kennedy?

Not too long ago Whoopie Goldberg famously defended Roman Polaski. The director had drugged a thirteen year old girl and raped her, but as Whoopie said “There rape and there’s rape rape.”

Other Holywood progressives howled in anguish as Polanski was arrested, after fleeing to France who refused to extradite him. They supported his evasion of punishment for child rape. After all, hadn’t he suffered enough already, he had been prevented from entering the USA to pick up his Oscar in 2003.

It is not only French progressives who think that there are two sets of moral stands, one for the little people and an entirely different one for them.

Secular Tribes

Here in the West of Scotland we have a fair idea of what the reality of sectarianism means. Generally it is held to be the singing of obnoxious songs at football matches, threats to individuals involved in football management, generalised violence on a Saturday afternoon outside football grounds, and a rise in domestic violence in Glasgow determined by which football team lost. Do you begin to detect a pattern?

The Tribes At Play

However, contrary to popular perception this violence is not sectarian. Despite what Alec Salmond and the rest of the Scottish political establishment claim, despite BBC, STV, Channel 4, the Guardian and all other media outlets, this is not sectarian, it is tribal.

Does anyone seriously imagine that the Neanderthals who sent Neil Lennon a letter bomb had just come from a Protestant church prayer meeting? The postal threat to Donald Findlay, did that come from an altar boy fresh from the Mass? Is there any group in Scotland with a better record in teaching compassion and love than the Churches?

This violence, this noise, these threats, they don’t come from the Churches, they come from the Green tribe and the Orange tribe. This is tribalism. Instead of Campbells and McDonalds it is Orange and Green.

For the media to play it up as sectarian violence is understandable; they are secularist capitalists with a progressive mindset. As secularists they seize on any opportunity to trash Christians. As capitalists they know that scandal, especially involving the church, sells papers and grabs viewers. As progressives they have an agenda which Christians have the audacity to resist.

Politicians are more culpable, they are supposedly leaders rather than money grubbing media types, but they too have a currency; votes. Which politician is seriously going to buck the trend?

Why have focus groups? So politicians can see what the people think so they can either manipulate it to their advantage or follow after it. The old saw is true, “These are my people, I am their leader, I must follow them.”

From public bar to media outlet to Scottish Parliament the assumption is the same, sectarianism starts with the children. Denominational schools are automatically held to foster sectarianism. I am now going to do something I find awkward, I am going to agree with James MacMillan.

James MacMillan: Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out To Get You

MacMillan is both Scotland’s leading composer and also Scotland’s
leading professional Catholic. McMillan too often uses his undoubted talents to propagate a picture of a Scotland in thrall to a sinister Protestant cabal, probably centred on the New Club in Edinburgh, which is determined to crush Catholics in any way possible. Reading his pronouncements and blogs we get the impression that he lives on a grassy knoll; we Protestants are planning to herd all left footers down to the Broomilaw and ship them back to Ireland where the potato famine still rages.

But on one matter he is right; when he defends the only denominational schools in Scotland, Catholic schools. There are no Protestant state schools, all state schools are secular, often rabidly so.

MacMillan is right because the primary responsibility for educating children does not lie with the state, it lies with the parents. The task of the State is, within reason and according to resources, to facilitate the wishes of parents with regard to the formal education of their children. We do not serve the state, the state serves us.

Reformed theologian Thomas Chalmers argued in the 19^th century for Catholic emancipation on the grounds that it was a matter of justice. Anyway he was confident that as long as he had an open Bible he would be able to counter the doctrinal errors of Rome. He did not allow his profound doctrinal disagreements with the Catholic church to blind himself to the fundamental principle of the God given responsibility of assuming one’s freedom. In his instance casting a vote, in our case educating our children in faith. Similarly we should support the right of Muslim parents to school their children within their worldview, erroneous though it is.

For nearly 150 years education in Scotland has been in the hands of the state. Have they really done so well that we should capitulate utterly to the bureaucrats? No education system is neutral, they all propagate a worldview and are involved in social engineering.

Our secularist state education system cannot be absolved of its part in producing the tribalism we see in Scotland today. We have raised generations of children without any understanding of or respect for genuine faith and without any appreciation of the gospel.

The great Abraham Kuyper’s first national political campaign in Holland was against state control of all education. In concert with the Catholics he defended the right of any parents to educate their children in their faith, as long as it did not lead them into danger or criminality. As an admirer of both Chalmers and Kuyper I too would defend the right of Catholics to educate their children according to their deeply held beliefs, even if it means agreeing with James MacMillan.

Every Linus Needs A Blanket

You Are My Only Friend

One of the oft repeated criticisms of Islamists is that they reject our Western way of life. This is understandable, but only when it comes from the lips of secularists. It is easy to understand such comments when they come from the products of present day Western society. However, they sound somewhat incongruous when uttered by biblical Christians.

When it comes to criticism of western society many of those aspects rejected by Muslims are rejected by the biblical Christian. Western popular culture is shot through with much we reject: the media titillation of adultery and fornication, the idealisation of licentiousness, the embrace of debt as a way of life, the acceptance of self-stupefaction through drugs and alcohol as an escape when everything gets just too much and “You need to chill out.” I’ll stop before I sound like someone’s grandfather.

All of these aspect of life in today’s UK the biblical Christian also finds repulsive and rejects wholeheartedly. Where then lies the difference? Perhaps there is no difference between the radical Islamist and the biblical Christian. Could it just be a matter of the difference in our method of protest; the IED as opposed to muttering into our Horlicks during the evening news?

The difference lies not in our reaction to the surface expression of post-modern culture but in our understanding of the underlying causes. The unbridgeable difference lies in the source and therefore in the reason and motivation for trying to live what is conceived of as the summum bonum

Islam, in moderate as well as radical form, sees living a good life as unhesitating adherence to a set of rules laid down by a supposed god of absolute power and unrelenting demand. The call is to submission without question.

With God the call to a good life is participation in a relationship which has to be worked out in messy and sometimes painful reality. The call is to love freely given and freely received. At core there is an utter disconnect between Christianity and any false religion.

Those amongst our progressive brethren who have jumped aboard the interfaith bandwagon are attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. The only question worth asking them is: Why?

There are many possible answers. They have abandoned the Bible in any meaningful way so have no basis for proceeding other than whatever is propounded by their secular equivalents. They see the Church seemingly shrink in the face of secular forces and therefore seek allies in ‘religion.’ We could go on making excuses for progressive Christians. The basic reason for inter-faith accommodations is much simpler. Progressive Christian have a patron saint – Linus.

Having realised ecumenism has failed they now turn to inter-faith as a substitute. Every Linus has a blanket. The blanket may be illusory, it may be threadbare and full of holes, it may be laughable to grown ups, but it is their blanket, their comfort.

They are afraid of the big bad world, deep down they know that their secular idols really despise them, they realise that Christians who take Scripture seriously see them in need of conversion, who can they turn to give them comfort and reassurance that they are the good guys? But do serious Muslims really believe that progressive Christians are the good guys? Or perhaps they are just “Useful idiots.”

Next time you are in conversation with a progressive Christian and he chunters on about his meaningful contacts with the local imam just mention the word taqiyya. Unlike Christianity Islam has the concept of taqiyya. This means that it is not only permitted but is laudable to lie to unbelievers, especially the willingly gullible ones such as progressive Christians. The ultimately important thing for the obedient Muslim is the advance of Islam and for this cause, as with Western post-modernists and their equally destructive cause, truth is a redundant concept. Islam has the concept of taqiyya or holy deception.

According to Christian ethics lying is a sin. After all the One whom we follow describes Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus is the Word, a concept which demands from His followers an adherence to veracity which is total. However much we may fail His standard holds us to account. In Islamic jurisprudence and theology the use of taqiyya against the unbelievers is regarded as not only a a virtue but a religious duty. To preserve a Muslim deception is permissible. To progress the Islamic faith deception is permissible.

Deceit is part of the package.

Fish Friday

The Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales have decided to re-establish the Friday Penance. For younger readers this is the practice of going without meat on a Friday to remember the crucifixion of Christ on Good Friday. It is seen as a small sacrifice in order to remember the greatest sacrifice. The law will come into force on Friday 16^th  September 2011, the first Anniversary of the State Visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom in 2010.

Obviously it has to be dressed up in touchy feely fashion to be even half acceptable today. We are told that this move will protect the environment and empathise with the poor. Let me assure the good bishops that tucking in to crab soufflé, poached wild salmon or lobster omelette is not a way to empathise with the poor and marginalised. Nevertheless this is a brilliant move.

The real reason for the restoration is the laudable one, if you are a Catholic, of emphasising Catholic distinctiveness. A trifling change of diet can mark out the faithful, creates a sense of identity and proclaims that there are other values which are more important than materialism. Most importantly it draws a line of distinction between Catholics and the rest.

This is a sign of a growing Catholic determination to appear distinctive, and to be unapologetic about their Catholicism. Whilst there is much the Catholic clergy and hierarchy should apologise for it is interesting that they are no longer content for the run of the mill Catholic to remain in hand wringing mode.

If I were a Catholic I would applaud this move. As a Reformed Christian I can only wish our church leaders were as determined to be unashamedly and distinctively Reformed.

However, there is one addendum to the proclamation by which the bishops hole their flagship project below the waterline. What about vegetarians? After all they have given up meat seven days a week not just Fridays. What can they do to be distinctive?

The bishops have an answer. Carrots.

Catholic vegetarians, to protect the environment, empathise with the poor, and maintain their distinctive Catholic identity can give up carrots.

You don’t have to live in the West of Scotland to imagine the jokes which are going to come pouring in about Catholics and carrots. And no, I have no wish to reprint them here.

The Willingly Blind

List all the things which radical Islamists loath to the point of stoning: homosexuality, liberated women, democracy, freedom of expression, unbelievers, lenient sentencing… You fill in the blanks.

List all the things Western progressives love: homosexual rights, women’s liberation, democracy, freedom of expression, sneering at faith, the slapping of wrists… You fill in the blanks.

List all the things progressives loath to the point of silencing: fundamentalist faith, patriarchy, subjugation of women, suppression of minorities, capital punishment, intolerance… You fill in the blanks.

List all the things radical Islamists love… Never mind, you get the picture.

Yet whom do we find apologising for Islamists and opening the doors of Western culture to them but progressives. Do they never ask: When Islam comes to power in Europe who will be the first to be persecuted? The answer is obvious, Western progressives.

It has happened before. Think of the major revolution of the 20^th Century. In the early USSR there were two groups who immediately felt the lash, Christians, and what might best be termed the soft Left.

Christians were an obvious target, as the state religion and established faith they were an integral part of the Tsarist regime. Erastian Christians always ride high, and just as inevitably fall low when their horse falters. Every morning on awakening anyone who supports an established Church should say three times “Beechers Brook.”

The soft Left who had supported the revolution were dispatched easily. Literally so in the case of internal opposition to the communists; progressives soon found themselves standing against a wall wondering if they would get a last cigarette. Their crime was that they might weaken the revolution from within.

Externally Western progressives were willingly, even eagerly, gullible. Those whom Lenin termed “useful idiots” actually wanted to be deceived.

In 1936 when the Stalinist terror was raging and the gulag was overflowing Sydney and Beatrice Webb could write that the previously “downtrodden Russian peasant is gradually acquiring a sense of political freedom.”

During the show trials which condemned innocents by the thousand to unimaginable suffering Berthold Brecht was able to say, “The more innocent they are the more they deserve to die.”

Sartre aggressively supported the atrocities of Stalin. Writing to Camus he said of the gulag, “Like you I find these camps intolerable, but I find equally intolerable the use made of them by the bourgeois press.” Thus the icon of the intellectual progressive equated the deliberate and systematic slaughter of millions with a passing headline in the Daily Mail.

Radical Islam is an ideology just as revolutionary, just as determined to overthrow the prevailing culture, just as willing to pay any price to destroy that culture as the Bolsheviks were.

There is much about prevailing Western, post-Christian culture we should reject utterly; there is a triviality in the media which is demeaning to humanity, there is an abandonment of lasting moral standards which is dangerous to our future, and there is a materialism which is destructive of any lasting value. Yet that which would replace it is much more dangerous.

Progressives are so preoccupied with being big boys and girls and rejecting what Daddy says that they cannot see the greater danger. Progressives attack Christian influence in the West and make allowances for those from the East who reject the West. Why do they do this?

Partly cowardice. This is an attitude which most of us share, given the choice most, except in extremity, choose an easy life.

Partly popularity. They can play to an audience of their peers and those gullible enough to emulate them. This is always a temptation from the local bar to the House of Commons.

Mostly childish blindness. Such is their antagonism to that which has made Western culture, given them the freedoms they enjoy and the tools they now use to undermine that culture for cheap laughs or to score debating points, that they can willingly destroy their only safety. As Van Til reminds us an infant has to stand on his father’s lap in order slap him in the face.

Progressives are unable to condemn, or even in some instances to name, the destructive ideology because they share the same aim, the rejection of traditional Western civilisation as we understand it. Vastly differing understandings of reality. Vastly differing methods of practical action. Vastly differing values. But under it all the same aim, the rejection of Christian based culture.

Faith In The BBC

Some time ago the question of what constitutes a religion was raised. I don’t want to be too much of a presuppositionalist but it is apparent that one’s definition of religion is decided by the starting point of the enquiry; either a sociological or anthropological approach would have very different results from a theological. Within theology there are differing standpoints, a Calvinist will come to a very different conclusion from a hand wringing, never mind truth let’s all be friends, progressive “Christian.” There are so many approaches it is impossible to decide what is a religion and what is not.

The prize so far for most outré admission to the ranks of religions or belief systems to be protected by law, even more bizarre than Jedi, is a belief in public service broadcasting.

Devan Maistry - A True Believer

Mr Devan Maistry has been given permission by a Birmingham Tribunal to sue the BBC for wrongful dismissal on the grounds of age and belief discrimination. South African born Mr Maistry had worked for the BBC Asian Network for six years before being sacked. He now claims that during those six years he suffered from discrimination and has filed a claim for “religious or belief discrimination.”

His case rests on the belief that “public service broadcasting has the higher purpose of promoting cultural interchange and social cohesion.” He alleges that this belief led him to be treated unfairly by the BBC. How a public service broadcaster discriminated against one of its employees on the grounds that he believes in public service broadcasting is less than clear.

The interesting aspect of this incident is that the tribunal has accepted the case for adjudication. Pam Hughes chairman of the tribunal said: “The claimant had a genuine and strongly held belief in what I will describe in short as the higher purpose of public service broadcasting. It is clearly of great personal significance to him.”

Broadcasting House - Temple of the New Religion

This means the tribunal equates belief in the vaguely beneficial and well meaning with religion. This should not surprise us as another tribunal has already found in favour of someone with a belief in environmentalism and global warming.

The BBC’s lawyer Tariq Sadiq in defending the Corporation drew a comparison between the BBC and the NHS. He is reported as saying that, “A belief that the aim of the NHS should first and foremost be to look after the health and welfare of its patients could, if the claimant were correct, amount to belief for the purposes of the 2003 regulations but it would be absurd for that to be the case.”

There is a blind faith in the NHS amongst the general populace, cynically exploited by political parties; it reaches levels of belief the average churchgoer never attains. Criticise  the NHS, the medical staff, and especially “our wonderful nurses” and you will meet not just disbelief but hostility.

Perhaps Nigel Lawson was correct when he remarked that the NHS was “the closest thing the English have to a religion.”

When a word can mean anything it means nothing.