Reductionism and Groupthink

 

A few thoughts on two insidious aspects of modern thought.

Parsons versus Fletcher

Stephen Parsons of Surviving Church writes:

"One of the weaknesses of conservative Christianity is the claim that there is only a single version of truth and teaching. There is a single way of reading the Bible and the leaders and their group possess it and proclaim it. This ‘truth’ is completely above any need to debate or even discuss. Such a claim is extraordinary when we think about it. It totally ignores the wide variety of cultural and historical manifestations of Christianity that exist. The expression the Bible ‘clearly teaches’ is also palpable nonsense for those who actually take the trouble to read the text for themselves. Consistency and clarity are not there to be found in the Bible, but only in the imagination of one who keeps the book firmly closed. Only in the context of a carefully supervised reading of selected passages during a sermon on Sunday mornings, can this illusion of coherence and consistency be maintained. For the rest of us who study it for ourselves with the help of commentaries, the Bible turns out to be a highly complex work, full of insight, nuance, paradox and mystery but not clarity. It does not suddenly become easy to understand, just because a preacher declares it to be the infallible word of God and makes numerous selected quotes to back up a line of teaching."

Of course, Mr Parsons is reacting to the deeply troubling abuse to be found committed by Jonathan Fletcher, a Conservative Evangelical who has been a leading figure in the CofE, and whose behaviour towards those in his care has been appalling.

Mr Parsons' view of Conservative Christianity is coloured by his rejection of abuse. He sees Evangelical interpretation of scripture as being more absolute than Is justified by history and culture.

I must confess to sharing the dis-ease with certain groups of Evangelicals who act as if the first 1500 years of the Church never happened. My main worry is that Mr Parsons is doing something similar.

Mr Parsons is saying that history and culture need to be involved in interpreting Holy Scripture and yet he does not say which version of history and culture he is using. There are different histories and different cultures. There is a version of history that says that women were ordained Catholic priests from the word go but their ministry was suppressed by a misogynistic regime. There is another version of history that says that the only women to be ordained in the Early Church were ordained in the Montanist sect. Likewise, we can read scripture in our own culture but this is vastly different from the culture of Africa where persecution is very, very real. To say that Conservative Evangelicals ignore 1500 years of Christianity on the grounds that they do not take into account other histories and cultures is to ignore the context of the Bible and the Church in which it grew up and influenced.

If one must take into account other cultures, then one must allow slavery, otherwise one is imposing one's culture of anti-slavery. Why is one right and the other wrong? Why is slavery obviously wrong in all cultures if one believes that another's culture should be respected.

Mr Parsons is setting up his own interpretation of Holy Scripture up against Mr Fletcher's under the assumption that his is right and Fletcher's is wrong. To what authority is Mr Parsons appealing? I suspect that he chooses the commentaries and studies that "challenge the system" which is all well and good but on what authority do they challenge the system. This seems more inconsistent and incoherent to me than Biblical Literalism because the only authority that is appealed to is one's own which is a bit problematic when one is supposed to be appealing to God's authority.

This is why I find Catholicism much more appealing. St Vincent of Lérins explains that Christian Doctrine develops organically and thus transcends History and Culture. The Bible has a context within the Church. While there are a lot of interpretations of the text they differ, not in doctrine, but in sense. I do not believe that the Bible is always literally true but rather that it is theologically inerrant which must take into account other senses than just the literal. The Catholic Church as a whole has been given the charisma of interpreting doctrine.

It is true that there is plenty of wiggle room, especially in the doctrines of eschatology, atonement and anthropology which are without clear position. However, the moral theology has more consensus than Mr Parsons will allow and, if Mr Fletcher is guilty of abuse (which is true) then Mr Parsons is guilty of promoting a morality based on emotional need and the authority of the present moral culture rather than that found in Christ's Church. To say that the idea of clear teaching in Holy Scripture is "palpable nonsense" is to cut off the branch on which one sits.

Mr Parsons is typical of those who follow the Liberal Christianity which I doubt to be properly Christian. He is as guilty of pushing his moral superiority as Mr Fletcher and his ilk. Both will rely on their own authority than submit to the Catholic Faith. Then again, perhaps they will say the same of me. 

Standing up and being counted for the Love of God

 

Why Christians need to risk the "cancel culture" to promote the message of God's love.

Thinking about “Thinking about conservative Christianity and divisions”

I came across this article by the retired CofE priest Stephen Parsons whom I have mentioned before here. Mr Parsons has been a voice for those who have suffered much abuse at the hands of disgraced ministers such as John Smythe and Peter Ball from the Evangelical and Catholic wings of the CofE respectively, and the institutional covers-up that these two abusers have relied upon to continue their work. I am conscious that when he writes, he does so with much compassion for those who have suffered much. In this piece, however, he does display a deeply unfortunate passion for the Liberal Agenda and thus, in my mind at least, undermines his compassion for those who are abused.

I have said very clearly that I believe that the Liberal Agenda is not properly Christian and I have given my reasons. This is something that I have to argue with my friends and family. I do think that the more I see of the Liberal Agenda eating its way through the Established Church and consuming good ministers and worshippers, the more I am convinced that this is a pernicious evil perpetrated to tear people from the loving arms of their Creator. I may be wrong, I must accept that, but this conviction has been growing faster and faster the more I see posts such as Mr Parsons’.

Mr Parsons’ main focus in this article is against conservative Christians, and it seems that, by this, he is concentrating on the conservative Evangelicals. The trouble is that there are conservative Catholics too and it is speaking against us that his arguments do unravel.

We do share many points of agreement. It is true to say that some conservative Christians reject “many of the achievements of two hundred years of scientific research.” There are many who, like the Westborough Baptist Church, scream out their hatred of homosexuals and proclaim God’s approval of their hatred despite this being so very much against the commandments of God. 

As a conservative Anglican Catholic, I accept very many of the findings of Science but I put them in their proper place as discoveries about Creation in itself. Yet, I do not believe that Science is a source of theological authority. Human beings may indeed be compared with the beasts that perish and that is how Science treats us. Scientific studies of the brain produce insights into the biological mechanism that is our body and gives ways of treating disorders, but it still misses out on the existence of the mind, of subjective consciousness and even something as simple as conservation of existence, i.e. why we should continue to be at any given moment. In that Science can be done by the complete rejection of God, we must question its role as being able to contribute anything theologically meaningful. We need God’s self-revelation in order to do anything theological. This means, if we want to believe in God, we have to have something definitive that tells us Who He Is.

And we have just that. Aside from the philosophical “proofs” of the Existence of God, we have the existence of Jesus Christ as a Historical Fact. We have the writings of the Evangelists in which modern scholarship is in agreement with the scholarship of the past that these Gospels are eye-witness testimony to the Life, Death, Resurrection and Teaching of Our Lord which have been passed down through the centuries in a myriad manuscripts copied faithfully from the First Century. That only tiny, non-doctrinal differences occur in these many, many manuscripts shows not only their reliability but, also, the importance that each scribe placed upon these words in order to get them right. So we have the Gospels. And we have the writings that came out of these from St Paul, St John, St Peter, St James and St Jude. We have Jesus, the good Jew, quoting the Hebrew Canon thus giving Christian weight to the Hebrew Scriptures. We have that writings of those who knew Jesus, who knew the apostles and those who read them and listened and wrote about them. We have those great arguments, the Councils in which those arguments were framed and settled. And we have the first millennium in which the Church, though always teetering on the edge of schism was largely in agreement about the Doctrine of Christ that it received.

In short, Conservative Christianity has already thought about, mulled over, and reached clear decisions about things and any of us can read these deliberations to this day. We simply do not need to re-invent the wheel. It is also why Conservative Catholics are in closer agreement to each other than many Evangelicals who do indeed seem to want to re-invent the wheel every time they split.

Thus, Mr Parsons is deeply wrong when he says, “The idea that even the words of Scripture do not give us certainties is very threatening to many conservative Christians.” The idea does not threaten us: it does not make sense to us. I really do not think Mr Parsons has actually thought about Conservative Christians at all. Perhaps he cannot: perhaps he and I have no real language in common with which to come to any theological agreement.

My real issue with Mr Parsons is his lack of Faith and how he is willing to put forward a fear-mongering of his own through a tyranny of whim and emotion whilst trying to undermine the very thing by which Christians know they are saved. Faith is about cultivating something as a certainty even in the face of doubt. We conservatives believe that God exists and cling to that based on the evidence that we have which must be the theological evidence that we have received. For conservative Anglican Catholics, this evidence is Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, Holy Reason, each being the foundation of the next. This is faith, and it is faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks and, clearly threatening to the liberals.

Yes. Salvation is indeed a work in progress, but the immutability of Christian Doctrine provides the rod by which my progress in holiness can be measured. We are not “once-saved, always saved,” there is no single moment of conversion. But while we rehearse our formulae, we move along the groove in a record towards the centre that is Christ, not around and around in circles as perhaps Mr Parsons thinks we live.

The truths of Science are horizontal and limited to the 11 dimensions (or whatever it is now) of physical reality and they do not touch upon the real issues of life and death. Science does not give us our morality: it tells us how different patterns of behaviour work through various Game Theoretic methods. Where then does Mr Parsons get the belief that the Church should be “liberal, inclusive and open to the findings of scientific research” especially when “liberal” seems to mean “willing to reject what God commands”, “inclusive” seems to mean “rejecting the notion of sin”, and “open to the findings of scientific research” seems to mean “accepting an authority which cannot make any theological or moral statement”? If the liberal believes that the Bible is not authoritative then why bother with the commandment to love one’s neighbour? Or why not reinterpret “love” to mean whatever you want. Actually, that is indeed what seems to be happening given ECUSA Bishop Michael Curry’s equivocating sermon at the recent Royal Wedding.

In praising the integrity of human nature to be spiritual and creative, Mr Parsons seems not to see that there is this business of sin infecting human nature and both common sense and basic psychology are just as infected aspects of our humanity as anything else. Of all people, he should know how sin destroys lives as he bears witness to it often enough. The reason that Smythe and Ball are exposed is because there is a firm, immutable standard against which they fall short and are seen to fall short. The same is true for the Westborough Baptist Church: they are seen to promote evil because they disobey one of the Lord’s Commandments very obviously. The fact of the matter is that human beings have fallen; they sin; they are sinned against; they sin because they are sinned against and they are sinned against because they sin. If there is no fixed moral compass then sin goes away and all this suffering is irrelevant.

If we try to save ourselves then we fall into the Pelagianism that was condemned by the Early Church. For Mr Parsons, that Pelagianism is expressed when he says, “Does what you believe enrich your life, enable you to flourish as a human being and bring you into touch with a God who gives you hope, love and joy?” whereby we become responsible in telling God how we want to flourish. I see little flourishing of the children slaughtered by Herod. I see little flourishing of St Paul languishing in prison. I see little flourishing of people dying in dark prisons for their faith, for the very certainty, the very conviction of the Faith that Mr Parsons believes “allows absolutely no scope for disagreement or doubt”. In fact, I see in what Mr Parsons says nothing that values the witness of the countless millions who have suffered for the Faith that the Liberal Agenda wants us to hold back on the grounds that we have more to learn about God from sources that are fundamentally opposed to God, such as Scientific Materialism, Freudian Psychology and Cultural Marxism. The Liberal Agenda robs the martyrs of their dignity and robs us of the possibility of being martyrs in our own way.

I am sure that Mr Parsons would agree that the one common theme that characterises the human condition is struggle. We have to struggle with God in order to realise that we should not want to be the people that we want to be, but rather the person that God wants us to be. That means a denial of worldly thinking. It means a denial of the social expectations of political correctness, of the language of entitlement and diversity, of sexual freedom. Sex may be a gift from God but it is not a right, nor is it always a gift that can be exercised. Our Lord suffers because we have to suffer. He did not have to suffer given His omnipotence, but He clearly feels that it is necessary to suffer because of the reality of our own pains. We have to do things God’s way and this means our life becomes that of service to the Gospel in order to proclaim the freedom that is coming in the morning. For the conservative Christian, nothing is more apparent than the fact that we are passing through this life. Mr Parsons would want us to settle down and be comfortable in this life on the grounds that it is psychologically better for us.

If conservative Christianity presents a “take it or leave it” approach to doctrine then this is because we believe firmly in in One God to which the three Creeds bear witness. Yes, God has made us free to choose whatever we want to believe. This doesn’t change the fact that there is One Church, One Faith, One Lord, et c. It means that one’s personal experience cannot be as authoritative as Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Experience is a means of hypothesis to test against the revealed truth. It is valuable but not one single experience is automatically authoritative. It means that we do wander in doubt and difficulty and that we can only ever build on what is already there. If God says that Fornication is a sin, then it is a sin no matter how liberating it feels. If only a heterosexual couple can marry in the eyes of God, then it cannot be changed no matter how badly we feel. If Society expects us to sin, then it is Society that will be judged harshly when God comes again in glory.

Where I am in agreement with Mr Parsons is that the legalism of certain expressions of conservative Christianity needs to stop. The monk obeys the Benedictine Rule because he knows it will keep his community together as they follow the Catholic Faith to God. He submits himself to its discipline, even to its sanctions and stripes, because he knows that his earthly body must be kept in submission to his spirit. Both body and spirit are God's, but both need to be brought into line for the good of the self and of the community in a more perfect love for God. It isn't a question of whether He loves me: I exist therefore I am loved. It's whether I love Him that matters more, and this involves a denial of myself and a conformity to Him. The self that I deny is the one defined by myself, by my experiences and by my society. I am of God's creation, corrupted by the sin of my species, and saved from the Hell of living in these sins by my Creator. If I follow Mr Parsons' programme of progress, I shall find myself drowning in the saccharin senses of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction at actuating my own identity in the very Hell that I long to leave. 

Give me my cross now so that I might stand a chance of resurrection in Christ when the time comes.

Looking in from the outside

One of the seminal approaches that seem to have been knocking around the atheist circuit for a while is the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) concocted by John Loftus.

"1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.

2) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

4) So the best way to test one’s adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF.

The OTF is primarily a test to examine religious faiths […] The OTF is no different than the prince in the Cinderella story who must question forty- five thousand people to see which girl lost the glass slipper at the ball the previous night. They all claim to have done so. Therefore, skepticism is definitely warranted.” (The Christian Delusion)

It is good to treat claims critically, especially since we base our lives on claims. I therefore have questions that the OTF to answer.

1) What is the test for?
Primarily, it seems that it is a mechanism by which people are encouraged to give up their faith. Or it is another shibboleth by which to label those who hold to a particular faith as being uncritical or less "freethinking". It makes the assumption that religious people cannot be skeptics and that atheism is always more rational. It also assumes that the only true skepticism is atheist.

2) What is this thing called "religion"?
The argument for the reliability of the test mentions likelihood which needs to be made rigorous if it is to be worth mentioning. The mathematics of probability requires, in this case, religions to be completely separate quantities. The probability of winning the lottery is about 1 in 14 million on the grounds that lottery numbers are separated from one another.

But religions overlap. Most religions involve the practice of prayer. As a Christian, I believe in one God. So do Muslims, and Jews and other religions, too. So the religious adherent never truly rejects another's religious faith as being wholly fallacious. Loftus wants us to regard religions as completely separate packages which are given names like "Muslim", "Jew", "Hindu" et al. In fact, despite Geography, religions often follow very similar practices and experiences.

I believe that Muslims are wrong to follow their prophet, and the Muslim will believe that I am wrong to worship Jesus as divine - that is the consequence of our different faiths. But we do agree that the materialist account of the universe is incomplete.

3) Is atheism a religion?
Loftus will say no and that he has no faith, therefore the OTF does not apply to atheism. The question is whether "I don't believe in God" is the same statement as "I believe in no gods". There is an apparent difference as the second statement implies the first. Yet to say that one does not believe in God means that one does not believe in any being that would qualify as God. Thus by implication there is a belief that no being qualifies as God. If this is true, then the lack of belief is a belief in a lack. In this case, atheism itself falls under the OTF.

But perhaps this is too semantic. So let us offer another course.

Atheism is certainly a way of viewing the world and making decisions in life. Thus, if it is not a religious viewpoint, it is certainly a philosophical viewpoint.  Let us therefore try a little mutatis mutandis for the Outsider Test for Philosophical Worldview (OTPWV).

1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of philosophical worldviews due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the philosophical worldview diversity thesis.

2) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s philosophical worldview is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the philosophical worldview dependency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted philosophical worldview is false.

4) So the best way to test one’s adopted philosophical worldview is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other philosophical worldviews. This expresses the OTPWV.

Thus, we have broadened our horizons to include atheism and agnosticism. We therefore have as good a reason to be skeptical of atheism and agnosticism as we are of any religion.

Even if we regard philosophical worldviews as being mutually distinct (which they are not) the probability of one of them being false is tiny and yet one of them must be the worldview of Reality. It's rather like the lottery: it's of tiny probability that your numbers will come up, but one set of numbers will certainly come up. If that's not a valid use of probability in the OTPWV, then it's not valid for the OTF.

The fact of the matter is that I have assessed my faith critically which is why I sometimes struggle with it. What I have learned is that faith is not something that can always be expressed through philosophical analysis. It must also be there in the heart. If we struggle intellectually or emotionally with God, then it is best to stop and seek silence with Him. It is best to treat God as a being with Whom to engage rather than purely as a philosophical proposition.

When the atheists try and trounce us with their arguments (and even succeed at times) God is there for us in His unknowability but also in His love. Let us learn just to trust Him.

Mens Sana Incorporises

I read with no little concern about the latest initiative by the CofE. Normally, I take the shrill bleating of the Daily Mail with a cellar of salt.

This latest plan to bring people to faith, to my mind, is another instance of the CofE confirming to worldly thinking.

The matter of Muscular Christianity is one that I think is easily misinterpreted to be essentially masculine or "manly". Here I have to beg the indulgence of Fr Christopher Little who works in defence of something he calls "Muscular Christianity" which seems part of his American upbringing rather than the half-hearted attempt to go back a century or two as CofE Archbishop Welby seems to want. This is the man who wants Cathedrals to be fun.

I loathe sport. It brings out the worst in people because it sets human being against human being in utterly arbitrary and pointless point scoring which frequently infects life outside sport. The strongest, fastest and most skilful are rewarded at the expense of those who are not. In this enterprise of physical prowess, we find ourselves comparing Man to the beasts that perish as we perpetuate the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" leaving the weak by the wayside and forgetting those who miss the mark.

Ah! Might not the CofE teach good sportsmanship?

Perhaps. Games are good when they are for honest fun. Yet, the very spirit of competition is dangerously Pelagian when injected into the Christian milieu in which we can always win the prize by running fast enough or flonking the dwile far enough, and at the expense of others. Competition is necessarily divisive and tribal. The only competition that truly matters is the spiritual battle that wages within us. The victory there is Christ's and our success in this is Humanity's participation in that victory. If it doesn't matter whether we win or lose, but how we play the game, then what do winning and losing mean? Do we win if we play the game better than our opponent?

And we see this in the Imperialist notion that Victorian Muscular Christianity possessed. Once one tries to celebrate fastest, strongest, lithest, one tries to instill these as virtues into the people and thus put us on the road to eugenics, and that's a nasty place to go.

All this is a deflection from Christ and a distraction of the soul from contemplating life. The Church is not a "mens sana in corpore sano" keep fit club. It is a hospital for the spiritually wounded and a hostel for the spiritually poor. If the CofE wants to cater for the physical body and forget about the health of the soul, that's its affair. Again, I severely doubt that this initiative will do anything to help the numbers on pews, nor will it help the spiritual health of a nation that is sinking into the Slough of Despond.

The focus of the Church is the worship of Christ. He is not a trophy but the cure of our sickness. If the CofE wants a trophy, then it will end up with atrophy.

Sex and Tolerant Conservatism

Many moons ago, I was introduced by John Beeler to the notion of Tolerant Conservatism, to wit:

Charity and discretion about people’s failings while at the same time not making excuses for those vices either.

The point of the Catholic Faith is to demonstrate what sin is and thus show people who have ears to hear how they have sinned. It is also very much supposed to be a reassurance that, despite one’s sin, God’s love always offers a way back without damnation. We can always be restored to righteousness with no conditions except that we desire to be restored to righteousness wholeheartedly.


I find this incredibly healthy. Even today, I see too many people sit in judgment over other. This judgment is not the same as God’s Judgment: Man’s judgment springs from law which can only say where we have gone wrong; God’s judgment puts things right.


This is why I am so wary of the Liberal movement and its successor – the Progressive movement – both within the Church and in secular society. If by Liberalism, we mean the pursuit of freedom of opportunity for everyone to follow their conscience and excel in what they do, then I am in full favour and a proud Liberal. But that is not what being Liberal means now. Being Liberal now seems about being free to be who we want to be and to be free from the demands of others which may prevent that. The former is more conducive to the cohesion of Society and the latter conducive to its division.


I find it ironic that proponents of this Modern Liberalism only apply it to those who agree with them. As a proud conservative Christian – i.e. one who holds to the traditional teaching of the Church, in particular men and women being substantially different within humanity and fornication being inherently sinful and with all the consequences therefrom– I am judged to be illiberal and therefore not allowed the freedom to be who I am because it impinges on other, more worthy, freedoms of others within Society. I am judged to be homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist and must therefore be censured, censored lest I incense the ire of decent members of Society. This Modern Liberalism is intensely illiberal.


Let us, for example, look at the current question of surrogacy. You may know that the diver, Tom Daley and his (male) partner have had a baby by surrogacy. What we do not hear about is the person who carried that baby in her womb for nine months. We do not hear about her involvement despite the fact that this child bears her DNA. The woman has been whitewashed out of that relationship. The fact of the matter is that two homosexual males have an inherently sterile relationship UNLESS a woman is involved. What we will soon see is that women in poverty will be encouraged to be surrogate mothers for payment. What if the baby is not satisfactory, or disabled, or dies in the womb? I have already heard of a case of a single man who entered into a surrogacy agreement with a woman of little economical means who subsequently bore him a child with Down’s Syndrome. He refused to take the baby or to pay the sum due leaving a woman in penury with a completely dependent child. Is it any wonder that my mind is turning to the Handmaid’s Tale?


Liberalism needs to ground itself in basic facts: we simply cannot be what we want to be. Such a freedom is always going to encroach upon the same freedoms of others. The same desire that wants to see women being regarded as equals within the human genus is actually seeking to define women out of existence because it refuses the basic facts of the sacredness of being a man and the sacredness of being a woman and the intransigence between the two. As a man, I cannot know what it is like to be a woman, and Society doesn’t seem to get this. Society confuses being and doing grotesquely. Look at the retail industry: blue for boys, pink for girls; trucks for boys, dolls for girls; heavy shoes for jumping in mud for boys, pretty princess shoes for girls. Whether or not we have a visceral reaction to a boy playing with dolls, it’s clear that the boy is still a boy and that his preference for playing with dolls does not change what is written in every cell in his body.


Likewise, a stay-at-home father is often regarded as doing “women’s work.” He is not. He is doing his own work in looking after his children and playing a different role from his wife who is earning the money. The work does not rewrite DNA: DNA is a fact, not an opinion and Progressivism needs to ground itself in inalienable facts if it is to do justice to the human condition.


And this is where I am proudly conservative because I regard tradition highly and seek to preserve the corpus of human experience. It seems to me that the Revolutionary Spirit found in the present swathes of Social Justice Warriors seems out to deny the human beings of the past their own existence which has been completed. They are who they were and they were who they are. We have to share solidarity with all humanity throughout all ages because, despite the proud claims of the Progressives, humanity has not changed morally-speaking. Thinking that we have progressed will lead to the Progressives becoming ironically the cause of an enslaved society. It will be the Modern Liberals that will bring about the reality of the societies found in the Handmaid’s Tale, the Hunger Games, 1984, and even the Time Machine.


We can look, say, at the Carry On films which are probably being derided once more. They seem to have gone up and down in popularity since their time due to how politically correct their humour is found to be at the time. However, they are never allowed to be of their time. No, gawping at a woman’s chest is tacky and yet, the heterosexual male naturally finds the female figure attractive. The figure of Sid James lusting after Barbara Windsor is horrific in that Babs is being dehumanised, yet it is also tragic as Sid dehumanises himself as an animal on heat, and it is comedic in that this is how humanity is. That is something that has been expressed in all human culture from the beginnings of human culture. It has always been the source of comedy. Human experience finds much comedy in the figure of the man in the thrall of sexual desire because it is a common experience which conflicts with manners.


It is absolutely abhorrent for a man to force his attentions upon women, and rape is a disgusting way to treat a human being. Yet it is impolite and degrading to remark upon a woman’s body in a way that will make her feel uncomfortable and less-than-human. The comedy arises in this tension between the male animal seeking gratification of his desire and the homo sapiens seeking to rise above his animal instinct and treat a woman with the respect and dignity she deserves. And yet, comedy is the thin median between tragedy on the one side and horror on the other. Conservatism should seek to keep the boundaries by which this line is apparent: tolerance should allow someone forgiveness when they transgress this line and, having transgressed, render remorse, apology and transformation. Every human male should learn to feel disgust at the thought of a woman being raped and seek to check his natural instincts. Every woman should indeed call out any activity that she finds infringes her body autonomy. Both sexes must also recognise that mistakes happen, sometimes with terrible consequences. There needs to be the capacity for forgiveness but it must be recognised that this forgiveness may take a long time to complete and at a cost commensurate with the offence.


Conservatism ensures that we keep to the same standard as always even though some societies have gone against that. Conservatism keeps that ideal standard going above the changes and chances of this fleeting world and, for me, engages in a reflection of the Divine Nature. Conservatism recognises that there are moral absolutes and objective moral values. These values turn Hume’s “ought”s into concrete “is”s. In recognising both the immutability of these values and also the brokenness of human nature, we see Tolerant Conservatism as being a fully Christian view of politics. I don’t doubt that Christians can take other political stances: it is the Christian Royal Priesthood that will sanctify politics. However, the Christian does need to make room for the King of Kings as a king and thus recognise the limits to which human beings are truly free. The fact is that we are free to be the people whom God has created us to be, not whom we create ourselves to be.


The seeds of dystopia are always in our society and they always will be. We need to learn about all kinds of Fascism. Conservatism has its own Fascism as the Nationalist movements of the last century show us; Socialism has its own Fascism which fell largely at the end of the Century and yet still afflicts countries today; we need, therefore, to be on our guard against Liberal and Progressive Fascism which is beginning to build up in our youngsters disillusioned with any ideal that disallows themselves to define themselves as they desire. Once the generation of old-style conservatives has lost control, the Social Justice Warriors will succeed them. They have a chance to see how their politics could become intolerant and alter their stances accordingly. I pray that they will take this chance.

Liberalism and Evangelism: a Traddie responds

I came across this article in the Church Times by Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes in which she claims that it is time for Liberals to “reclaim” evangelism from the Evangelical wing of the CofE. Given that the Evangelical wing of the CofE is the wing most likely to break off and ally itself to the Jerusalem Declaration Churches such as GAFCON and AMiE, it is quite apparent that the Liberals need to make sure that empty pews are filled by more palatable and inclusive Christians.

First of all, why do I bother commenting on this? Surely, it’s none of my business, being a member of the ACC having renounced my affiliation to the Established Church? Secondly, I’m a Catholic, neither an Evangelical (in the Low Church sense of the term) nor a Liberal (in the “progressive modernist” sense of the term). I don’t have a horse in the race, do I?

As I have said before, the fact of being established does mean that the CofE is trying to speak on behalf of all Christians, which it most assuredly does not. It raises the question as to whether it is, in fact, speaking for and Christians at all, given that it seeks to employ the atheist and the heterodox in positions of influence whilst leaving aside those who believe wholeheartedly in the three creeds and that God-given library which we know and love as Holy Scripture. I also have a profound doubt in the claims of the Liberal/Progressive wing within the CofE to be properly Christian.

Secondly, I am worried by the word that Dr T-H uses in her essay. When she says that she wants “want to reclaim evangelism for liberals” what does she mean by the word “reclaim”? Does she want to “want to reclaim evangelism for liberals from Evangelicals” i.e. does she regard the Evangelical voice to be contrary to the Gospel and need to silence it? Or is she being inclusive and just wanting Liberals to start evangelising better alongside Evangelicals? The problem here is quite clear in that Evangelicals, and Traddie Catholics like me, believe in the immutability of the nature of Sin and that Sin is not the matter of opinion of the Church but rather the clear direction of God as something He wants to save us from.

What I do notice is in Dr T-H’s article is that she does seem to build straw man and even almost admits it when she refers to the caricature of “Christianity as a religion of ‘Thou shalt not’, smiting, and the fear of hell.” It’s clear that she is trying to evoke the image black-clad bible-bashing Protestant flinging Hell and Damnation about like goodness knows what into the mind of the reader. Yet, she so readily talks about Salvation and this begs the question, “salvation from what?” If it isn’t salvation from Sin and Hell, then what are we to be saved from? If Christ Himself speaks of Hell, then should we not listen? Does God send people to Hell? No! They send themselves there. Surely, if Dr Threlfall-Holmes can understand that Traddies have left the Church because they will neither accept her as a priest nor her liberal preaching, then she will understand just how someone ends up in Hell by rejecting God and His salvation.

The salvation that Dr T-H seems to be alluding to is very strange and it seems to me to be typical of the notion of Salvation in Liberal Theology. She says that she sees Liberal Theology as that “which does not see our salvation as relying on our getting Christianity right; and from a theology of creation which believes in “original blessing” rather than original sin.” It’s interesting that neither do the Evangelical nor the Traddie Catholics see our salvation as “getting Christianity right”: that would be Pelagianism. Where the Evangelical and I might part company is over the idea of Original Sin: I tend to understand that in the more Orthodox notion of a fracture of our human nature as a result of our misuse of free-will – a fracture which is infected with evil and sin. However, neither the Evangelical nor I see our salvation as something we get right. Our salvation comes about by faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ and (I believe) co-operating with His grace by wilfully displaying that faith in works of Charity alongside Him. In order to be saved, (and salvation, I believe, is a process, not a one-off event) I need to know Our Lord Jesus Christ – I need to make sure that it is the real Jesus Christ and not an idol of my own making. The fact that Our Lord is an historical figure as opposed to a mythical figure means that there are objective things we can say about Him, and the fullest historical evidence for what we can say about Him comes from the Gospels. We may not know His every opinion, but we can be sure that if He has an opinion on our salvation, then it is not just opinion, it is objective fact. Why? If the Christian believes John iii.16-17, then it is clear that Our Lord knows what He is saving us from and thus what He teaches is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact. Orthodoxy is therefore of salvation importance to the Christian.

And talking of Orthodoxy, what does “getting Christianity right” mean? Surely that’s orthodoxy. But I thought Liberalism was supposed to be about believing and trusting in God – isn’t that doing something right? Or are we saved without any input? Are we saved against our will? Dr T-H claims “The heart of liberal Christianity, for me, is, fundamentally, very orthodox: the belief that God’s love is unconditional, and is enough.” So there is some contradiction. Are we to get Christianity right by loving God with all our being and our neighbour as ourselves? Or are we saved regardless? Is Dr T-H a follower of “Origien’s” apokatastasis whereby all are eventually saved, even Hitler, Jimmy Savile and the Devil? No Hell means no Justice, it also means that love coerces our salvation and, to my mind, that goes against love.

She cites Bishop Michael Curry as being the prime example of Liberal/Progressive Evangelisation, and yet, if we do the biblical thing and test the spirits. Bishop Curry speaks to the emotions and passions rather than to the soul. His sermon has been shown to be rather content free and equivocating on the meaning of Love. I suspect that a translation of that sermon in Greek would show up the jarring discrepancies that Bishop Curry makes when he confuses agape,philia and eros in the same sermon. If this is the archetypical Liberal Evangelism, then it is a sower of confusion making the self the arbiter of what right and wrong are in this milieu of moral relativism. If this is the gospel that people want preached, then it isn’t actually going to transform them, rather, it will entrench them further in their own self-caricature. There is no challenge in this Liberal Gospel.

I notice that, like most Liberals, what is actually at the heart of Dr T-H’s gospel is not Love but Power expressed through the Marxist language of Rights and Privilege. She speaks of handing power over to the historically marginalised forgetting that Christianity is not about power, but rather Love. Yes, Christ’s Kingship means that Christians have a political dimension to their expression of the faith, but the kingdom of God will be built upon Christ and Faith in Him. It is not true that every historically marginalised body is Christian. The Jews have suffered much in the way of historical marginalisation, but Christians cannot accept their “power and agency” over the Church. Christianity is centred on the teaching of Christ and not on politically correct apologies to the socially marginalised, especially when that marginalisation has been self-inflicted through the rejection of the teaching of Christ. Yes, that teaching is centred on love, but on the transformation in that love by which we die to sin and live to Christ. If we continue to sin unrepentantly, then we cannot be living in Christ because to do so necessarily rejects that transformation which is offered not imposed according to the character of love expounded in I Corinthians xiii.

Again, Dr T-H resorts to the implied straw-man of the Evangelical selling a “pre-packaged solution” whilst the Liberal knows that she hasn’t “got there”. This is rather offensive in a way. The Incarnation is precisely the “pre-packaged solution” to the human calamity and to the transformation of human life. It requires unpacking certainly, but the Catholic Church has the framework in which that unpacking takes place. We don’t stifle questions but rather seek solutions in the person of Christ as has been revealed to us by God Himself in Scripture, Tradition and Reason. It is Experience which frames the question and Scripture, Tradition and Reason which work together to seek the solution. Experience is not a source of Authority, it is the means whereby we interact with the Revelation of the Incarnate Christ. Perfect knowledge is not attainable in the life, but Orthodoxy allows us to converge to it rather than diverge from it.

Finally, Dr Threlfall-Holmes does as all Liberals do and refutes herself beautifully. “Ask questions, give away power, and risk trusting God rather than your programme for the results.” Indeed, I trust God rather than the Liberal programme for the results. Likewise, Dr T-H should also seek not to trust in her own liberalism but rather seek the real God in Christ. She can only do so if she rejects her relativism, especially her trust in “secular experience” and Liberation-Theology. We notice again, the Liberal search for Christ away from the Church – the search for the Groom away from the Bride. To bring communities up in secular philosophies will never bring them to Christ but rather to a distorted image worked out through secular morality and values.

It’s a shame that a clearly intelligent woman is so confused about the rot that Liberalism is causing her church. As an Orthodox Christian, I say that she is wrong but, out of love and respect, I must allow her to be wrong and wait for her, like the Prodigal Son, to return to the Church where the Father will gloriously and outrageously receive her in joy. However, for this to happen, she, like me and every other sinner must recognise sin and evil for what they are and repent. She can’t do this if she, like all followers of the Liberal Agenda, reasons sin out of existence through equivocating on the Word of God. Like most other Liberals, she seems to find fault with the conviction that Conservative Christians have for their faith. I am convinced that there is a God and I have good reasons for why I am an Anglican Catholic in my approach to Christ. If that offends her and that she rejects my arguments and those of other Conservative Christians on the grounds that conviction is a sin, then how can she be convinced that she is right to do so? If nothing is objective and we can be certain of nothing, then being convinced of something leaves us no worse off and all convictions are equal in this regard. She has no grounds on which to call Conservative Christians to account, nor any reason to evangelise to the unchurched in the first place.

I hope that the evangelising of the Evangelicals as well as the evangelising of the Traditional Catholics continue to expose the false evangelism of the Liberal and Progressive movement until the latter truly finds Christianity and thus ceases to endanger the salvation of souls.

"O” for the love of Ozanne and her curate’s egg

Honestly, I do try not to take the Church of England to task these days for the things that get preached from its pulpits and expounded as some form of “official” doctrine from its official “unofficial” spokesmen. The trouble is that, while the CofE is established, it does have a claim to be the voice of the Church even when what it preaches is deeply concerning. I will be clear: as a Christian, the CofE does NOT speak for me, nor does it speak for my Church. That it claims to do so by virtue of its establishment puts it into a rather ambiguous position. There are Christians in its membership, yet there are also atheists and heretics.

 

I find that I can’t even describe the CofE as a curate’s egg because of the ambiguity that the phrase possesses. The curate, in being polite to his bishop, says that his egg is “good in parts”. The humour arises because an egg cannot usually be good in parts: it is either rotten or perfectly edible. Yet, the phrase can be used to mean that the egg truly is good in parts. This ambiguity arises because one loses the context from the original cartoon (reproduced above) and is left with only the shell (ha ha) of the phrase “curate’s egg.”

 

We lose the meaning of the phrase because we lose the context or reinterpret it incorrectly.

 

These days for my own clarity of thought, I see the CofE as being an umbrella term or brand for groups of separate congregations. There is nothing Catholic about it apart from the word in the creeds and some pretence at apostolic succession. The CofE parish near me is a truly lovely place with some very committed and orthodox Christians who seem keen to get me back on board. If you cannot get on board with our little tiny mission here in Sheffield, then I do recommend it but I would not recommend becoming a member of the CofE. Accept the people, but not the brand!

 

 I am, however, a Catholic in the original sense of the word as first recorded by St Ignatius and expounded by St Vincent of Lerins. If I am being true to being Catholic, then I do need to commit myself to the Faith of the Church as given by Christ Himself. This means a commitment to seeking the Truth and helping others to find it. While I do try to foster bonhomie with this parish, I cannot join it because, to do so, I would disengage myself from my bishop who is a true Catholic, from my Church which seeks to be united in being Catholic, and join myself to a body which has no uniformity of belief beyond the parish level, where so many bishops and priests are obviously not Catholic and  where the very nominal head of the Church can’t make up his mind about, let alone preach on, what good Catholic Faith is.

 

Of course, the CofE doesn’t have a single mind on what “Catholic” means. It means more than just “universal”- it is literally holistic in its meaning. It cannot have the idea that everyone’s beliefs are equally acceptable. The Church is for everyone, but not everyone is for the Church. Like “Curate’s Egg,” “Catholic” is a term that is no longer used in its original sense. It means that we do not speak the same language.

 

Another word that is used to obfuscate the situation within the Church is “love” especially the translation of agape as “unconditional love.” This confusion is certainly expressed in the words of people like Jayne Ozanne, member of the CofE General Synod and “LGBT” activist. She says:

“I’ve been reflecting on why sincere Christians are doing this….and I can only believe it is because they see “the other” as someone who is outside of God’s love and care. Who represents a threat to the Gospel and is what God warns us to ‘guard against’ – they perceive this threat in real people rather than in spiritual powers.”

What she says is utterly agreeable here and a theme that I have preached on myself in the past. We do not battle human beings, but the evil spirits, powers and dominions that constantly assault Man whom God loves so much. Indeed, Ms Ozanne suggests that the healing of the conflict between progressive/liberal and conservative/traditional elements is that of seeking “love” by which she means agape. She asks which “side” God is on, and comes to the following conclusion:

“I for one believe the answer is plain and simple….which ‘side’ is the side of love? Or perhaps it’s easier to discern the opposite – which side is the view based on fear?

Unconditional love has no limits, no boundaries, no borders.

It loves all, embraces all, forgives all.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

It Just Loves…”

And yet, Ms Ozanne seems to be missing something crucial. She would thoroughly agree with me, and I her, that we must always promote the same unconditional love for other human beings as we would want them to show us.

 

Does God love Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Fred West, Jimmy Saville, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley? And Judas? If God’s love is unconditional, then the answer must be in the affirmative.  Yet, there is a big question about how God’s justice can be done without them being confronted with the painful truth of their actions. What about those who, while acting morally and even seeking justice, reject God? What about Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens who cannot belong to the category of people we class as “evil” and yet refuse to be associated with God?

 

Hell is a Gospel reality and, if there are human beings in Hell, God still loves them for His love is unconditional. I cannot but accept the existence of Hell and that it is not empty, for Our Lord speaks clearly of Eternal Life and Eternal Death. God’s love is not a barrier to Hell – in that I am in agreement with Ms Ozanne: it is our “love” that might be a barrier to Heaven. If we are commanded to be as unconditional in our love for others as God is to us, then we are faced with some rather frightening prospects.

 

If we truly love someone like Harold Shipman, the doctor who murdered so many people under the guise of respectability, then does that mean accepting their propensity to murder? Clearly not: hate the sin but love the sinner is the only way we can go. We love the sinner by trying to claw them back from a life of self-destruction. The notion is very clear: our actions are not always acceptable and that there is something within our very selves that requires excision like a cancer. Sin is spiritual cancer, practically by definition.

 

That’s very clearly extreme example, but nonetheless pertinent. While very few of us are as able to commit vile acts as Harold Shipman or Jimmy Saville, we are each of us as equally broken as they. Each one of us is infected with the consequences of being free to choose whilst being morally weakened through the influence of the evil powers that swarm around us seeking to tear us away from God and consume our being in order to satiate their hunger insatiable.

 

The fact that we can sin and choose to sin is evidence that our love is very far from being unconditional and that we need Christ to perfect that love by His example, by His teaching, by His life, by His death, by His resurrection, by His Body and Blood. We might not be a mass murderer, but that does not mean that we are not in danger of Hellfire. Again, as Our Lord tells us plainly, our very intentions can convict us of abominable crimes that we need to repent in order for them not to infect our actions. We can live a “good” life but still end up in Hell for rejecting God for Who He is.

 

The unconditional love that God wants us to show cannot allow itself to be confined to temporal affairs. The love that seeks to build Heaven on Earth is missing the point. We have to love people by being deeply concerned for their last ends not just the circumstances of their earthly living. We do not earn our way into Heaven by making Earth Heavenly – that’s impossible and heretical as Pelagianism. Our unconditional love for our neighbour must be in begging God for those who are near to Hell. Our unconditional love for our neighbour must be pleading with those who reject God to see the light. Our unconditional love for our neighbour must be in sitting down to eat with tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners but still not accepting their manner of living as being right or acceptable to God. Our unconditional love for God must be not in looking for Him to be on our side, but rather for us being on His side.

 

This does mean seeing all that is human as being deficient from God. A mathematician understands infinity using the reflection principle – something that I speak of in my latest submission to Fr Chadwick’s upcoming edition of the Blue Flower. In bearing God’s image, we are imperfect reflections of God’s being in every aspect of His being. In God, love is perfect; in us, it is not but there is a reflection of it there. The trouble is that, we say that we are being loving when we allow people to “be themselves” despite the fact that it is God who says who they are and neither us nor they. That’s understandable because we value human free will which is a reflection of God’s almost paradoxical freewill. But human beings are broken and they are broken in the very power that God gives us in the second chapter of Genesis when we name the animals and thus give some definition to what they are. When that is broken, then the very act of definition becomes twisted and distorted and used for sin, even to the extent of belittling our very selves.

 

In speaking up for “LGBT” rights, Ms Ozanne has missed what love is or has at least conflated and equivocated on the meaning of the term, because a human being is not defined by their sexuality nor by their gender. Sexuality, like any other aspect of our being, is distorted and pulled this way and that by temptations. In saying to God, “to love me, you must accept my sexuality” is imposing a condition on God – it is not an unconditional love of God. It would not be an expression of unconditional love by an “LGBT” activist for an opponent of “LGBT rights” (whatever they are). The same is true for gender which is a social construction seeking to subject the biological objective of sex with a more malleable concept which can be manipulated by law and convention. To say to God, “in order to love me, you must accept my denial of what You made me” is a condition on love for God. God loves the person despite the fact that they reduce themselves to being “LGBT” and demand rights concomitant with that reduction.

 

The implications of these “rights” are frightening and impose upon rather more basic rights. Consider the lesbian who finds out that her date is actually transgender and still bears male genitalia. To refuse the advances of the transgender would be a violation of transgender “rights” because the lesbian is refusing to regard her date as a woman. Yet, to accept those advances would be an act of violence against lesbian “rights” because lesbians do not have sex with those with male genitalia – that is what genitalia are for, isn’t it? There is no right to force anyone to have sex, and yet the hierarchy of rights – in this case “transgender” over consent – almost goes against it on the grounds of discrimination. Let us be absolutely clear: there is NO right for any individual to have sex. There is no right for anyone to have their sexual desires expressed or their sexual appetites indulged. Sex is not love. Erotic love is not unconditional love. Eros is not agape.

 

Personally, I don’t have a problem with people of the same sex living together in a committed and celibate lifestyle. We’ve been doing that for centuries: it’s called monasticism. It is a marriage of sorts in that it is built on promises, vows and commitments, but they are certainly not the same as those of the generative relationship that marriage is supposed to be and to which Our Lord Himself bears witness as being between a man and a woman to the extent that He makes it a sacrament. The fact that monasticism has been declining so rapidly in recent years could possibly be due to the apparent requirement that committed relationships must be sexually expressed. I appreciate that this is an unproven hunch on my part

 

To say that God does bless these same-sex marriages is based on arguments from silence. The biblical evidence is truly contrary to that argument. To say that God is like us in His unconditional acceptance of who we say we are is blatantly untrue and does not love Him because it does not accept His sovereignty which demands the submission of control of our lives and desires. His love is unconditional: His acceptance is not as the existence of Hell proves. To suffer from same sex-attraction is as much a weakness of the human condition as suffering from the tendency to want more money or to want what that woman has got over there. It is a weakness in the human condition to be suffered in the same way that we all suffer from the temptations that the Evil One sows in our lives. If people fall, then we must forgive with tenderness, kindness and generosity knowing that we need to be forgiven in our habitual failings. What we don’t do is pretend that there is no falling into sin, for then we are deceiving ourselves and blurring our fallible understanding of Who God is. Sin always separates us from God. I am a sinner and I hate my sins because they tear me from God and damage the Gospel that I try hard to proclaim. Thankfully, my sins are truly sins, and I don’t want them accepted but I rather want them removed, cut out, excised so that my love for God may be made perfect. He matters to me more than my acceptance of myself and my self-esteem.

 

If love is to be unconditional, then EVERYONE must make sure that accepting a sexual orientation or gender position does not become a condition on which love is to be based in the same way that the rich and the poor are to be loved regardless of wealth, that Jew and Palestinian are to be loved impartially, and that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are to be loved regardless of their politics.  I’m sure Ms Ozanne would agree with that. Wouldn’t she?

Doctorates in Doubt, Deception and Devilry

Update 28.10.18: It appears that the Imam gave his address immediately after the Eucharist following protest by more level headed thinkers. That he was originally invited to speak during the Mass itself shows what the intention of the powers-that-be were.

Splendid academic dress, isn't it?

For many years, I have longed to find my way into an academic establishment to study Theology, Philosophy and Divinity to as high a level as I could, the goal being, eventually a bona fide Doctorate in Divinity preferably from Oxford.

I have revised my opinion, though not my goals.

First.

Second.

With the greatest respect to my Muslim friends, colleagues and associates, I am a Christian and not a Muslim. It means that I believe the Christian religion to be true and the Muslim religion at best true only in part and thus not the best expression of reality and morals. Since Muslims do not believe that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, their admission into a celebration of the Holy Eucharist as preacher is an affront to both religions. Why? Because either it will be viewed as an opportunity to proselytise the other, or neither party truly believes the tenets of the religion they claim to profess in the fullness that an orthodox expression of either Faith requires.

Why do it? Why have a preacher from a markedly different belief stand in the pulpit of a prestigious university church to preach?

The purpose of a University is the furtherance of knowledge. This means that it is committed to the development of new ideas within the fields of study it offers. In Mathematics, I would expect lectures on Topology, Analysis, Complex Geometry, and the like. I would not expect lectures on the cell structure of members of the fungi kingdom unless that structure was expressly mathematical. Even so, I would expect it billed as Applied Mathematics and certainly not Pure Mathematics, save perhaps as some motivation for a particularly new geometry to be found in the Natural World. I would also not expect a lecture course within Mathematics on “Why mathematicians MUST study the cell structure of members of the fungi kingdom”.

The purpose of a sermon, homily or address at any Christian office of worship must begin and end with the God of the Christian Faith. I cannot say that it is all that clear that Christians and Muslims do in fact worship the same God. Certainly, we both claim to worship the God Who Created the Universe, but I believe in One God in Three Persons, Three-in-One, et c. The Muslim cannot accept this. This is not how they encounter God. It is certainly not how their prophet Mohammed saw God. If neither I nor Mohammed recognise the same attributes of God as necessary, then I can have a healthy doubt that these two gods are the same. Any address by a faithful Muslim will not begin and end with the God as expressed in the words of the Nicene Creed which, if it was said at this “celebration” of the Eucharist, would have been said either before or after this address.

The second purpose of a sermon, homily or address in any Christian office of worship must be to edify, comfort and challenge the faithful in the Christian Faith. If it is not the Christian Faith that is being preached, then it cannot do so.

As far as I see it, truly Christian education and the Christian quest for further knowledge has only two justifications. It is to glorify God and to reveal His glory for the encouragement of the people in the Christian Faith. We should not pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge because that makes an idol of knowledge. This is a trap many modern academics have fallen into: they worship their corpus of knowledge and see themselves as more advanced than their predecessors because knowledge has “progressed”. There is a huge lack of respect that living thinkers have for those who have lived before. Yet, if Christ is indeed God (and I pray that I may have the courage to die for that very belief!) He is the logos – the Divine Reason – and a thinker whom no-one can surpass, living or dead. Likewise the writers of Holy Scripture.

It is a dreadful disease of the University Church that it needs to reconcile knowledge that it discovers outside of the Christian Faith with Orthodox Christian Doctrine by massaging the doctrine so that it ceases to mean what the Early Church believed it to mean. Our Church Fathers will not have come across Hegel’s dialectic, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, or Derrida’s Deconstruction. I doubt that this new thinking would have caused them to bat an eyelid given that many of them died for the Faith that they received from those who went before. However, their lives of faith in God will show up people who try to muddle the Christian Faith into a socially acceptable and “inclusive” mush as being intellectual cowards who haven’t the gall to believe in something with all their heart without capitulating to what seems just and fair to the society in which they live.

I still would love to study for a doctorate in divinity, but I prefer to do so sitting at the feet of Christ through the words that He has given to many humble and intelligent people. I will learn Christianity and Divinity from the poor destitute, not from those who can’t survive without a television set; from those who offer their lives in sacrifice for the good of others, not from those who bleat that their identity has been insulted; from those who have learned to deal with the effects of abuse, not from those who campaign for the right to do as they please; from those who confess and repent of their sins and crimes, even by accepting and owning their punishment, not from those who not only refuse to recognise their sinfulness, but rather want to make it legal and acceptable. Christ tells us who will teach us His ways: the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after HIS righteousness (not their own), the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for the sake of HIS righteousness (not that of Society’s).

The Doctors of the Church – i.e. those who did seek after God’s righteousness and teach it to others – these will teach me much, but it will be in the eyes of those Our Lord mentions in the Beatitudes that I will learn Christ. They will teach me how to loose the bands of wickedness, undo heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free and break every yoke. Notice, that this means that I need to know God’s Righteousness to tell me what is wicked, burdensome, oppressive and coupling with Evil. They will teach me to give bread to the hungry, invite the poor into my house, cover the naked, and make myself available to all people in their true need. The need of any person before even food or drink is the word of God Who gives life. If I distort that word, then I have no love for God nor for my neighbour. If I reinterpret God’s righteousness to make it nice and acceptable and challenging only those who stand up to the godlessness of Society, then I have no love for God nor for my neighbour.

I have so much to learn, and I MUST learn it because I burn to do so for the pitiful love for God that I have in my heart. I love Him so little, but I do love Him enough to seek Him on His terms not in the terms of my own making that go against what the Church has always said.

Nonetheless, I am to learn the Truth and to help others in their search for it. This means that I have a duty to Christian Education first to the glory of God and second to bring people to His glory. As part of that latter, I also see Christian knowledge as a protection against deceit, doubt and the Devil. It is the Devil who wants to be deceived and to deceive us, directly or indirectly. The Doctor who seeks to alter the faith to bring it into line with modern values has been deceived and is sowing doubt. Since doubt and deceit are from the devil, such an educator is not a Doctor of Divinity, but rather a Doctor of Devilry.

I can imaging academics of University institutions either smugly dismissing me as a relic of “old-style” stupid thinking. Others will be appalled at the level of offense that I have caused to the sensibilities of those who just want to be nice and “include” everyone in the Church. I don’t care. I may never wear the fine robes of a DD (Oxon) as did Dr Pusey, but neither will I wear the same robes of a heretical female Episcopal bishop who somehow has become equivalent with a scholar of fine standing and who sought to bring the Church of England back to her roots. I will content myself with learning what the Early Church has always taught without their interference.


I would like to be involved in building and developing seminary education for Anglican Catholic Clergy and Laity alike. However, if I am honest, I do not know what I could teach – I have too little formal theological education. However, I still seek to pursue this: education is not about fine robes, nor pieces of paper, nor letters after the name, nor the respect of one’s peers. It is about loving God and loving His children and helping them to know and love Him better. Certainly this is not the education that you will receive in Oxford!

Perceiving Hate

Apparently, according to the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, a hate crime is "any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity".

Of course, we must remember that in the UK at least, we operate to the spirit of the law and not merely the written word. We also have to interpret law in a way that is reasonable to a general, indifferent and rational member of the public thus eliminating as much bias as possible.

Using these ideas, it ought to be straightforward to identify a hate crime through perceiving motives based on hostility and prejudice. Most of the time this is reasonable. We can identify hatred through the visceral reactions of those who meet the object of their hatred. We hear name-calling, see houses covered in graffiti, businesses set alight - all because of an unreasoned hatred of people whose skin has a hue that is darker than pale or whose voice contains an accent that does not originate from these isles.

We have to understand that hatred of people is always unreasoned, or at least poorly reasoned. In Psalm cxxxix, after proclaiming the utter transcendence of God coming into contact with little humanity, the Psalmist shockingly cries upon God to slay the wicked whom he hates right sore. This might suggest that we must necessarily hate wicked people whom we them should go out and eradicate in some kind of Biblical extermination. But that is not the way forward. We need to read the psalm carefully.

 19 Wilt thou not slay the wicked, O God? Depart from me, ye blood-thirsty men.
 20 For they speak unrighteously against thee, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
 21 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
 22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

Who is to slay the wicked? The Psalmist recognises that the prerogative to slay the wicked is God alone, not him. It's as if he knows that he is incompetent to judge what is wicked. Clearly, he knows that Evil exists and he hates it because where Evil is, God is not. Of course, the Old Testament is filled with instances of men and women being the instruments of God's judgement and slaying wicked folk like Eglon, Sisera, Haman and Jezebel. Even then, we cannot possibly comment with any certainty on their Eternal condition because that decision lies with the Almighty. Death is not a barrier for God's judgement. However, Death is no barrier for God's mercy nor for His Love.

The Psalmist wants the end of Evil and the cause of Evil. I would have thought that this would be common to every human being, really. We should not tolerate Evil in any form. However while human beings possess the faculty to tell Good from Evil, they have the tendency to allow this faculty to be corrupted by their desire to define what is Good and Evil based on their their false perceptions. This perception is now critical when it comes to defining what a hate crime is.

Of course, an accusation of hate crime needs to take into account three perceptions:

The perception of the accused as to the alleged hated characteristic of the victim;

The perception of the alleged victim as to whether the action of the accused arises from hatred;

The perception of the indifferent observer as to whether the perceptions of those involved are reasonable and accurate.

For example, in Ruritania, extending a hand has long been associated with stabbing someone and is thus a gross insult communicating the message "I wish you were dead!". On a state visit to Ruritania, Donald Trump offers his hand to the Grand Duchess for a handshake. Has a hate crime been committed?

You can see the headlines, can't you?

Trump declares war on Ruritania! 

Trump calls fake news on reports of insult to Ruritanian Royals 

Trump gaffe cools Ruritanian relations 

Archaic Etiquette to blame for Ruritanian crisis

Is there a hate crime? Surely there are lots of different perceptions here. The only thing that is objective is that Trump extended his hand to the Grand Duchess. What needs to follow is not a frenzy of media speculation muddying the waters and thus muddying the eyes of perception, but rather an immediate clearing of the air and a search for mutual understanding.

If Trump intended a friendly gesture which, to be honest, comes quite naturally in the West, then the perception of hatred is quite unfounded. However, how do we know what is truly intended? Actions speak louder than words, don't they?

The  foundation of Western justice is the assumption that we are innocent until proven guilty. It's an extension of the principle of Charity in which we assume the best of our brothers and sisters until they demonstrate otherwise, and even then beyond reasonable doubt. This is a Christian principle in which we afford in our neighbours the same generosity that we would wish for ourselves. Of course, in this age we tend to divorce the second commandment "love thy neighbour as thyself" from the first, "thou shalt love the Lord thy God." The second commandment is not something we can base our morality on alone because we can choose not only how to love, but also what "love" means.

In the Ruritanian Crisis above, the principle of Charity allows us to defuse a situation.

Yet, we know full well that this is not going to be allowed to happen. Instead, Trump will be tried by media, like Boris Johnson, Sir Cliff Richard and Bishop George Bell rather than in the proper places of the law courts and debating chambers of informed and unbiased democracy.

Of course, the public need to be kept informed and allowed to cultivate an opinion. What seems to be happening, though is that these opinions are being founded on sensationalism and popularity rather than by reason, careful consideration, and awareness of our own tendencies to confirmation bias. It is this process that needs to be taught carefully.

As a Christian, I am accused of hating Science. As a Catholic, I am accused of worshipping Mary. As a non-Roman Catholic, I am accused of not having valid orders. As an Anglican Catholic, I am accused of hating women priests, homosexual peopke and transgender folk. All of these are false assumptions that will colour people's perceptions of me.

I cannot and will not marry two people of the same sex, not because I am homophobic but rather because I believe that to do so would not be an act of love to them from me, but rather a means of pushing them away from God by giving affirmation to what is not possible and not what God wants. In not marrying such a couple, I am offering them an opportunity to see things as I believe God would have them. I am willing their good by offering them something better than the world can give. By accepting same-sex marriage, they are settling for second best which is just not good enough when the best is within reach.

Is this prejudice on my part? Given that I have reached my position through careful thought and prayer, I don't really see how I can be charged. My belief in God and my desire to worship Him necessitates my obedience to what He says is Good and Evil because Good and Evil have their definition in relation to His character. He ordains marriage between men and women as a place of protection as a family.

Likewise, I believe it to be an act of love to regard someone as they are rather than who they define themselves to be. Self-definition is an isolation from others through a restriction and control of language and communication. I don't accept that changing one's gender changes one's sex because I believe that, in rejecting God's creative capacity, one is swallowing a lie to the detriment of the good of all humanity.

I am a Christian which means that I believe it to be an issue of Eternal salvation to hold fast to Our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God than accepting the prophecies of Mohammed. In so doing, I regard the Q'ran as being deficient in the truth and thus deceptive. Since I want everyone to be saved from Hell regardless as to who they are, I see it as a gross error of judgement to allow a deficient text to be read in Church.

Now I have said this, Society would accuse me of hate crimes on the grounds of homophobia, transphobia and islamophobia despite the fact that I hold my positions through a genuine regard for each human being on a level deeper than physical appearances and social constructions. This is because the idea of what is a reasonable perception in the definition of Hate Crime is being altered by social and political influence and is thus skewed away from seeing Good and Evil as being qualities that transcend any society.

I am not perfect and I have my biases as does everyone else. I do try to love my neighbour as myself, but I know that I fail. I pray to God that this failure is due to weakness and not malice. If it is the latter, may God show me and correct me accordingly. If I am weak, then I pray for strength in future. If I am to be judged hateful by Society on purely human understandings of Love, Hate, Good and Evil, then I must bear that judgement all the while praying for the Day of Judgement to put all things right.

In turn, I pray and urge everyone to seek the truth with reason and charity so that true hatred may be revealed and put away and that true Love may abound.

SJWho?

Or Why I stopped watching Doctor Who

I will confess to having been an avid Doctor Who Fan for much of my life. It was a wonderful premise of the maverick alien pootling about the universe in a Police Box battling demonic pepper pots and mechanical men with ear protectors. I know that it was rather ramshackle at times, the sets wobbled, you could spot plasma balls being passed off as vortex manipulators, and some storylines were on the bonkers side of loony, but it was a show I grew up with. There was Good and there was Evil and sometimes it wasn’t absolutely clear which was which, even with the Doctor at times. There were explosions and drama and death and tragedy as well as comedy and mystery and science.

However, I will not be watching the series again, for much the same reason why I left the CofE: they are changing the show to indoctrinate people with the current Cultural Marxism. The catalyst for me is the fact that the Doctor, despite having been played by twelve actors, is now to be played by an actress. That’s not the cause of my disenfranchisement, it’s a symptom of it. It has only been in the last few seasons that the notion that the sex of a Time Lord is interchangeable despite it being quite fixed for the major part of the series. There are ways in which a female Doctor could have been achieved quite reasonably and in ways that made sense, but it has clearly been introduced as a norm for the Doctor that biological sex is fluid. Yes, I know that the Doctor is a “shape-shifting alien” (yet, he isn’t – the evidence of the series is regeneration, not “shape-shifting”) and thus anything can happen in science fiction, but the mechanism for this change is pure political correctness.

I didn’t watch the last episode of the series because, by then, I had had enough. Apparently, they brought back the character of the Doctor’s first incarnation and gave him lines which were deliberately sexist in order to show him as a thing of the past. This doesn’t fit in regard to the idea that Time Lord Sex is fluid, because if it is, then for the First Doctor to be sexist is completely incomprehensible. Yet it is clear that this was deliberate so that the audience could distance itself from values of the sixties when the series first aired.

Of course, that’s fine. Sexism, properly defined and properly understood, is an evil that must be eradicated. Women are not objects to make a cup of tea, wear pink, or submit to the wishes of their husbands; the fact that we have challenged that grotesque caricature and won is a true joy. But we cannot airbrush that out of history as if it never happened, nor can we demonise historical figures for attitudes that were socially acceptable then - that's not to say that by not demonising we are condoning their ideas. This demonisation of the past is, however, very short-sighted given that the same thing will happen to this milieu. All this Cultural Marxism will be looked back on with the same awkwardness and discomfort as we might encounter the phrase, “Women! Know your place!” We have to accept the facts of history as they are. I believe in objective moral standards by which all human beings and all ages will be measured. Sexism was wrong in the sixties, but that does not mean that we are any morally superior today! I think our Society is very good at virtue signalling when it comes up against attitudes of the past.

Of course, much of the motivation behind this is part of the phenomenon of the Social Pendulum that swings between the Liberal-Conservative, Socialist-Capitalist and Traditional-Progressive spectra. The physics of the Pendulum shows that the Pendulum always passes through the Equilibrium point with the highest speed. This means that just when Society has the balance right, the momentum of political swings always carries it through into political incorrectness. Why haven’t we learned this simple fact and worked out how to stop the Pendulum properly so that it balances?

You can see just how much the politics of Cultural Marxism is invading simple television shows by listening to the new producer of Doctor Who, Chris Chibnall, the man who is responsible for the sexual fluidity of Time Lords. On casting the female Doctor, he says:

“I just felt the time was right. I think if the show hadn’t done it, we would have been behind the world, and Doctor Who has got to be out front leading the world, and being a great example of all the amazing things that are in the world. So, it wasn’t even a question in my mind.”

What Mr Chibnall has just said is that he believes that a television programme is going to change the world for the better. He declares that it is his vision that everyone will subscribe to the moral values that he writes into his scripts. Mr Chibnall is a Social Justice Warrior par excellence, seeking to indoctrinate people against modern political incorrectness. What was a television programme that set out to inspire with ideas, to thrill with stories, and to pull on the heart strings has become a vehicle by which people are told what is good and bad.

There have been quotes in the series that are not so much Feminist (in the best and proper sense of standing up for women's equal humanity with men) but rather anti-Men. At one point, one female character says that she will hit the Doctor so hard he’ll regenerate. If a male character were to say that to a woman, there would be many moral questions asked. Yet, if the Doctor’s sex is fluid, then this horrible threat has already been said to a female character! But then, if sex is fluid, what is female and what is male? The attitude of many SJW activists is based on whether you feel male or female and thereby render language captive to the sensibilities of social groupings.

Of course, I am not allowed to voice my opinion on any official site because I will be shouted down. Apparently, my privilege as a white Englishman will be showing. Because "I" have been the oppressor, I must now take my turn to be oppressed. Apparently, this is socially just. It doesn't matter that two wrongs don't make a right, everyone needs to fit into the correct stratification according to privilege. Thus, stories which surround an itinerant Time Lord which have entertained me and inspired my thinking for much of my life must be taken away in order to teach me a lesson in how to be part of Society.

But the thing is, I have my imagination, my memories and an "off" button on my remote control. No amount of attempted Social Justice Indoctrination is going to prevent me from using them all.