Confessions of a Recovering Anglophile

I believe that Winston Churchill played the greatest role in the 20^th century. Almost single-handedly, he opposed Hitler. Chills still go up and down my spine when I see movies about how he and the nation he was leading bravely resisted the National Socialist onslaught. I am still profoundly moved as I watch documentaries of how common British boats-men raced to Dunkirk to save their stranded British army from certain destruction, allowing them to fight another day.

I am equally moved when I read about the 30 year quest of William Wilberforce to lead his nation in abolishing the slave trade and how he won the right for missionaries to be sent into the British colonies to counteract the effect of the exploitation of the traders.

However, I am a recovering Anglophile. Two articles in the latest Salvo Magazine will help to explain my evolution:

• Some elementary schools in Britain have taken sex ed to a new level by showing students as young as eight a DVD called Living and Growing. Computer-generated images show a man and woman having sex in a variety of positions, while the narrator describes explicitly what’s happening. The DVD also give information about masturbation and orgasms (with an animated sequence depicting ejaculation). (Salvo, Summer 2012, 33)

I don’t wish to pick on the UK. The entire secular West is doing-it! However, Britain is playing the role of our Big Brother – our role model – leading the way. It reminds me of a movie in which sweaty youth jumped out of their clothing ASAP to jump into the ocean. However, in this case, the West is shedding its spiritual clothing – Christianity – to jump into the sexualized unknown. But in the case of the youth, they subsequently and happily retrieved their clothing after their swim. However, in the case of the West, Britain is rejecting its spiritual clothing entirely and is now parading naked.

The next article also demonstrates how secularism has usurped the role of “parent” and “spiritual guide”:

• In Britain, news broke that girls as young as 13 were given contraceptive implants or injections at their schools as part of a government effort to decrease teenage pregnancy rates. Parental consent was apparently not required, and many parents were upset. One columnist summed it up like this: “School nurses aren’t allowed to apply even a sticking plaster (band-aid) to children in case they have a dangerous allergic reaction, but pumping school-girls full of hormones so they can get at it like brood mares is just dandy” (33)

Why the hypocrisy? Secularism not only wants to bypass parents, it also wants to bypass its Christian roots. Even more, it has buried its clothing as it rushes headlong into the ocean.

I may remain an Anglophile, but my love will not be for what Britain has become, but for what it had been.