Scotland has become a progressive Petri dish where woke ideas are cultivated, brought to virulent reality and let loose on the public.
Wishing to create a new criminal offence of attempting to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity, Scotland’s SNP/Green administration established an Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices (EAG). The resulting EAG ‘Report and Recommendations’ outlines 32 ‘guiding principles’ which, if implemented in a Bill to be presented to the Scottish Parliament later this year, could prohibit practices such as talking therapies, parental chats, prayer and preaching.
If these recommendations are passed into law this year Scotland is going to become a dangerous place for concerned parents and Christians.
The Christian Institute warns: ‘If the Scottish government follows the advice of its Expert Advisory Group it will be exceeding its powers and inflicting the most totalitarian conversion therapy ban in the world.’ The Scottish government welcomed the report.
We all have opinions regarding leadership styles, from Sir Alex Ferguson to the Dalai Lama. My preferred leaders are boringly competent rather than charismatically exciting.
Our society faces increasing internal division and economic hardship. More importantly, we see the benefits of Christian-based Western civilisation being trampled underfoot. Unfortunately when we look to today’s leaders in church and politics they seem to embody the ‘boring’ whilst missing out the ‘competent’.
Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury
The greatest controversy facing the Church of England, the UK’s largest and most influential denomination, is the issue of same-sex marriage. Should the CofE bless or even permit homosexual marriages in church?
Tomorrow the Scottish Parliament will debate, and very possibly approve, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. This Bill will allow anyone to be given a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), which recognises a change of gender, purely on self-identification without any medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
This Bill . . . a powerful new weapon which predatory men will exploit to harm women and girls
The Bill would establish the criterion for legal status of sex as a matter of simple self-declaration of ‘gender identity’. If passed, the Bill will erode the scientific, biological basis for the protected characteristic ‘sex’. All rights and protections of women and girls as the female sex will be affected. The legal and cultural definition of ‘woman’ will be changed from a person who is of the female sex to a person of either sex who has a feeling of being a woman.
The Armenian Christians of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh face yet another threat to their existence. Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, is a mountainous and landlocked region in the South Caucasus. Its population is nearly 100 per cent Christian ethnic Armenian, members of the oldest Christian nation on earth (301 AD). They are surrounded by Azerbaijan which is 99.2 percent Muslim, with only one road connecting them to Armenia.
The Christian Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have justified fears of ethnic cleansing at the hands of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Armenians were the victims of genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turkey between 1915/16, with further massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian survivors carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement after World War I. Today the Christian Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh face another possible genocide, at the hands of Azerbaijan and modern-day Turkey.
Jesus tells us that if the world hates us, we should remember that it hated him first (John 15:18f), and that we are not of the world. But why does the world hate Jesus? He was goodness personified, he taught how to live a good life, he showed compassion and understanding, he gave sight to the blind and even raised the dead. Why hate one who lived like this? Because he testified that the world’s works are evil (John 7:7). Why do progressive social justice warriors (SJWs) constantly attack Christians? Because they’re afraid we’ll derail their project.
SJWs want to enforce political, social and intellectual group-think, and to do so they target Christians. This isn’t because they think we can be brushed aside easily: it’s because they recognise that Christians are the only genuine roadblock to their total triumph.
It’s not old-style persecution; we aren’t being thrown to the lions. We do face job losses, harassment and social stigma. Christians, especially Evangelicals, are the sole minority it’s socially acceptable to scorn and marginalise. Ordinary rules of civility and social inclusion don’t seem to apply to those who believe in biblical teaching.
In the Middle Ages there were no nation states. Instead, there were competing and interlocked feudal power blocs ruled by upper classes identifying with each other. The elite spoke the same language, had the same interests, shared the same culture. The peasants and serfs they ruled were of no account.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same.’ Today another elite leadership rules businesses, universities, the media and governments. Having little attachment to the people, local traditions and cultures where they live, they are creating a global civilisation shaped by their values and technocratic beliefs.
Many Christians, especially young Christians, have been persuaded by constant media pressure and some Christian leaders to embrace ‘social justice’ as the outworking of the Christian faith. They may be sincere, but such Christians fail to realise they’re importing into the church a corrosive ideology destructive of biblical Christianity. Despite a surface similarity, social justice is diametrically opposed to biblical justice.
Christ’s Call To Justice Christ’s followers are called to confront evil, to care for the vulnerable and to make right that which is wrong. This is no cultural fad: throughout the Old and New Testaments, God’s call that we do justice is consistent. Psalm 82:2, Proverbs 3:27-28, Isaiah 1:17, Micah 6:8, Zechariah 7:8-10, Luke 11:42, 1 John 3:17; this message appears again and again.
The tectonic plates have shifted, and when that happens chaotic destruction follows.
State Involvement
It is becoming ever more apparent how far progressives are prepared to go in their relentless search for ‘freedom’ from the restrictions of the created order. It is not only the woke media and academia who push the boundaries: there are arms of the state which find the Bible, and with it God, too threatening to be let loose in the public square.
In England and Wales criminal prosecutions are brought by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Describing their function, the CPS say: ‘Our duty is to make sure that the right person is prosecuted for the right offence, and to bring offenders to justice wherever possible.’ Their criteria for prosecuting include a need to be satisfied ‘that prosecuting is in the public interest’.
The Case
In November 2020, 55 year old former Special Forces soldier John Dunn was preaching in the open air on Swindon High Street, as he had been doing for 15 years despite losing his voice box due to throat cancer. In conversation with two women who said they were in a same-sex marriage, Dunn told them: ‘It says in the Bible that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.’ Dunn claims his motivation was concern for the women and those passers-by who were listening.
We live in a Lewis Carroll world. Brian Nguyen, 19, an overweight young man, can compete against attractive young women in a beauty pageant in the USA and win. In doing so he/she scooped a scholarship designed specifically for young women. Nguyen was described as ‘iconic’, ‘brave’ and a ‘history maker’. The business management student will go on to compete for the title Miss New Hampshire; we can only hope that the swimsuit round will be omitted.
Miss Greater Derry Bryan Nguyen and the other contestants
Men who have failed to make an impact in sport can say they are women and compete in women’s events and become the winners they have always wanted to be. ‘Comedian’ Eddie Izzard can sometimes be in ‘boy mode’ and sometimes in ‘girl mode’, often depending on the height of his heels. He is a possible Labour candidate for Sheffield Central in the next general election.
A duchess can lay out differing versions of ‘my truth’ which are contradicted by the facts and still be admired and followed by millions because it is ‘her truth’. The Archbishop of Canterbury can say that there was no ‘secret’ wedding before Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, and that not only would he refuse to do such a thing, he couldn’t as it would be unlawful. Nevertheless, ‘my truth’ reigns.
Those of us who cry out that the emperor has no clothes are either silenced or ignored by the holders of power in the media, academia and politics because in today’s society truth is subordinate to feelings. Ours is a society without anchor, adrift in a chaotic complex of competing claims to ‘my truth’, every one of which must be respected; if we feel something is true then it is true for us.
Who Is Responsible?
The 19th century grandfather of today’s post-modernism, Friedrich Nietzsche, the pastor’s son who killed God and buried good and evil at His side, said that ultimately the only authority we can appeal to is ourselves. ‘May each man, or woman, be only his or her true disciple,’ he wrote in 1878. We can see that post-modern philosophy has spread the anti-gospel of Nietzsche throughout the universities and colleges and into the schools and media until a generation is indoctrinated.
The Frankfurt School and the proponents of Cultural Marxism, following the lead of Antonio Gramsci, have also played their part in successfully altering society fundamentally, not by violent overthrow but by infiltration. Those who have deliberately sought to change the culture and destroy the legacy of the Enlightenment by banishing reason have won.
While they are responsible for the present state of cultural confusion, just as responsible are those who should have resisted them and failed to do so. The watchmen who failed to raise the alarm are as responsible as the cultural despoilers. Chief amongst the failed watchmen is the mainstream church.
Failed Watchmen
Western culture, our values and ways of thinking, our achievements and advances stem ultimately from the Christian worldview. Whether or not the individuals who pioneered our scientific and cultural advances shared the faith (and the great majority of them did) they all operated within the parameters of a Christian worldview. Today’s mainstream church has failed to defend what has been built on a biblical foundation.
Writing in the Times on the way in which our culture has been degraded, Melanie Phillips said: ‘Crucial to that process has been the absence of any concerted opposition. Institutions such as the Church of England, which might have produced a counter-narrative, have instead been among its principal cheerleaders.’
Dare to Be Different
This cheerleading tendency is exemplified by Dr Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford, who thinks the Church of England should conduct same-sex marriages. He has been joined by the Bishops of Worcester, Dudley, Buckingham, Reading and Dorchester. So eager is Dr Croft to accommodate LGBTQ+ sensibilities that he is willing to split his denomination apart by setting up a separate episcopal structure for conservative priests and congregations.
His reason for rejecting the teaching of the Bible and two thousand years of church tradition is that the CofE’s claim to serve the whole of society is at stake because its present stance ‘is leading to a radical dislocation between the Church of England and the culture and society we are intending to serve’.
Dr Croft, and those like him, labour under the illusion that the Church reaches the world only when it is no different from the world. Why should unbelievers consider the claims of Christ if there is little discernible difference between being a Christian and being a member of the Green Party? No wonder many think the mainstream church is more concerned with saving whales than saving souls. Dr Croft has added an extra vow to the confirmation service, affirming care for the environment. In Oxford you must follow Christ and St Greta of Thunberg.
The Dangers of the Institution
Dr Croft fears that ‘we are seen to inhabit a different moral universe’. The truth is that Christians do inhabit a different moral universe. The church is called to follow Christ, and that includes defending the teaching of Scripture including the unpopular bits, even ‘if the world hate you’ (John 15:18,19).
The mainstream church has morphed into just another social institution. Institutions begin with a vision and the passion to carry it through. A necessary structure develops to serve those who do the work of furthering the vision. However, every structure carries the danger of seeing itself as important; what can follow is a gradual shift from maintaining the vision to maintaining the structure.
There are members who maintain a gospel vision but increasingly the institution sees the function of the organic church, the living stones, being to serve and preserve the institution rather than the institution being there to serve and further the organic church.
Ezekiel 33:1-6 reminds us that the watchman who fails will be held responsible by God. Without doubt the mainstream church has failed to sound the alarm and has gone over to the invader. As we needed a Reformation five centuries ago, we need a Reformation today.
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A return after a long rest. There is just too much insanity in the world to remain silent.
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In a comment on The Transgender Cult Cannuck210 who has experience of China, compared the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution to the SJWs of today’s West, pointing out that ‘the resemblance is quite close’. This view is shared by John Gray, former Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and one of Britain’s few public intellectuals. Gray warns that what we are witnessing today ‘is strikingly reminiscent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which convulsed communist China from 1966-1976 and wrecked much of what remained of the country’s ancient civilisation’.
Red Guards ‘re-educate’ a counter revolutionary
Parallels between one historical epoch and today can go only so far – ‘history rhymes but does not repeat itself’ – but parallels do exist and should act as warnings. The cultural revolution the West is undergoing today has many parallels with China’s decade of destruction. This should be of concern to Christians.
A Grain of Sand 