Revival and the Fall and Rise of England

The history of Western nations testifies of their Christian roots and what happens when this influence is silenced. It was silenced in early 18^th century England. Indian Scholar Vishal Mangalwadi writes,

• In 1738, two centuries after the Reformation, Bishop Berkeley declared that religion and morality in Britain had collapsed “to a degree that was never before known in any Christian country.” The important reasons for the degeneration of Protestant England were the restoration of the monarchy and the supremacy of the Anglican Church at the end of the seventeenth century. Once the Anglican Church came back to power, it began to oppress the Puritans and expelled more than four hundred conscientious Anglican clergymen. They had become priests to serve God, and therefore they refused the oath of allegiance to William of Orange.” (The Book that Made your World, 259)

Along with this, the Anglican priesthood became utterly corrupt:

• A succession of archbishops and bishops lived luxuriously, neglecting their duties, unashamedly soliciting bishoprics and deaneries for themselves and their families. Parish clergy followed suit. (260)…Corruption spread like cancer. (261)

The church is the conscience of society. When it is silenced, corruption and moral decay are free to spread to all segments of society. Mangalwadi continues:

• The moral darkness of the age expressed itself in a perverted conception of sport, which, like alcohol, brought attendant evils in its train, such as further coarsening of the personality, cruelty, and gambling. (262)

• As for lawlessness, thieves, robbers, and highwaymen, Horace Walpole observed in 1751, “One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one were going to battle.” Savagery showed itself in the plundering of shipwrecked vessels, lured by false signals onto rocks, and in the indifference shown to the drowning sailors. This was a regular activity along the entire coastline of the British Isles.

Similarly, it appears that as the Christian influence has been replaced in the Western nations in the early sixties by a virulent and monopolistic form of secularism, social ills have multiplied. However, there are also revivals. Into this English malaise stepped the Christian John Wesley and others. However, their ministry to the poor and downtrodden wasn’t appreciated. No one likes their sins to be exposed:

• For three decades, magistrates, squires, and clergy turned a blind eye to the continual drunken and brutal attacks by mobs and gangs on Wesley and his supporters. Wesley endured physical assault with missiles of various kinds. Frequently bulls would be driven into the midst of the congregations or musical instruments blared to drown out the preacher’s voice. Time after time, the Wesleys and Whitefield narrowly escaped death, while several of their fellow itinerant preachers were attacked and their homes set on fire. Hundreds of anti-revival publications appeared, as did regular, inaccurate, and scurrilous newspaper reports and articles. And the most virulent attacks, not surprisingly, came from the priests, who referred to Wesley as “that Methodist,” “that enthusiast,” “that mystery of iniquity” [anti-Christ], “a diabolical seducer, and imposter and fanatic.”

The foulest criticism is always clothed within a veneer of decency and concern for the “rights and needs” of others. How else to appeal to the masses apart from disguising it as a moral and just cause! Despite the fierce opposition, Wesley and Whitefield persevered:

• The biblical revival affected the lives of politicians. Edmund Burke and William Pitt were better men because of their Bible-believing friends. They helped redefine the civilized world…Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Abraham Lincoln, Gladstone, and the Prince Consort, among others, acknowledged the influence of the Great Awakening. The biblical revival, beginning among the outcast masses, was the midwife of the spirit and character values that have created and sustained free institutions throughout the English-speaking world. England after Wesley saw many of his century’s evils eradicated, because hundreds of thousands became Christians. Their hearts were changed, as were their minds and attitudes, and so society – the public realm – was affected.

      The following improvements came in a direct line of descent from the Wesleyan revival. First was the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the industrial workers in England. Then came factory schools, ragged schools, the humanizing of the prison system, the reform of the penal code, the forming of the Salvation Army, the Religious Tract Society, the Pastoral Aid Society, the London City Mission, Muller’s Homes, Fegan’s Homes, the National Children’s Home and Orphanages, the forming of evening classes and polytechnics, Agnes Weston’s Soldier’ and Sailor’s Rest, YMCAs, Barnardo’s Homes, the NSPCC, the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the list goes on. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people behind these movements were Christians.

This redemptive story has been repeated many times throughout the history of the church. Why then is the church so widely despised? Perhaps it has something to do with this observation:

• “I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, [the traders] will not give credit to morality which they do not wish to practice or to a religion which they undervalue, if not despise.” (Charles Darwin)

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.

The Gay Agenda and the Deadening of the Mind and Choice

When I first read Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about everyone praising a king walking around in underwear, convinced that he was wearing the most exquisite clothing, I dismissed it as too unbelievable. I was certain that no normal person could ever be so persuaded. However, I now have to revise my judgment. It now seems that many of the leading “psychiatric and psychological” associations in the UK have been taken captive by a similar delusion. While they had never had been hesitant about treating the most intractable conditions – bi-polar, very psychoses, depression – they have now become persuaded that homosexuality is untreatable. Not only that, but anyone who attempts to treat it is committing an “ethical offense,” even when it is the homosexual client asking for treatment:

• While most medical ethics throughout the western world has adopted the primacy of patient autonomy as its guiding principle, the psychiatric and psychological professions in the UK are becoming increasingly authoritarian in matters of sexuality, according to one would-be therapist.

• Recently published professional guidelines in the UK say it is an “ethical offense” to either offer to help a client overcome homosexual temptations and feelings, or to accede to a request to do so from a client.

What is unethical about leaving the homosexual lifestyle – a lifestyle strongly associated with depression, suicide, mental illness, and a greatly abbreviate lifespan. Why shouldn’t a homosexual try to avoid such ills! And why is it now “unethical” for a therapist to assist?

I could better understand if an adulterous client approached the therapist with this request: “I feel guilty about this adulterous affair, and I want you to help me to overcome these unwanted feelings of guilt.” Adultery is a destructive moral evil. Such psychiatric help shouldn’t be offered! The same is true if the client is a Mafia hit-man and wants the psychiatrist to give him a drug to make killing easier.

However, fleeing the homosexual lifestyle is not morally wrong. Rather, it’s a rational choice and psychotherapy had been committed to rational choice! However, in the case of homosexuality, the choice to participate in this self-destructive lifestyle has become the only acceptable choice, as one courageous doctor has now affirmed:

• “I would agree that the focus is no longer on autonomy” in ethics in psychotherapy, said Dr. Michael Davidson, PhD, Director of the Core Issues Trust. In Britain’s main psychotherapeutic organisations, “the person-centred approach is not being respected,” he said.

• The psychotherapeutic community has created a climate in which therapists who do not toe the official “gay affirming” line, daring to assert that homosexuality is not, or does not have to be a fixed condition, face severe censure, even the loss of their professional credentials. Dr. Davidson said that the system overrules even the wishes of patients, telling them, in effect, that they must remain in the homosexual lifestyle, whether they want to or not.

Such flagrant dogmatism and authoritarianism, apart from the gentle persuasion of reason, usually does not characterize our professional societies. Such a transition reflects the fact that they have been politically co-opted to spout the party line.

Davidson has a vested interest in this matter. He was a homosexual who had exited from this lifestyle and is convinced that others have also broken free through counseling and other means:

• Dr. Davidson’s troubles started with an interview on BBC radio in which he “expressed the idea that therapeutic support should be made available to those who want to move away from homosexuality.” The result was that his membership and trainee status were revoked by the British Psychodrama Organisation. His future remains in question.

In Andersen’s story, the King became convinced through friendly persuasion. When reason doesn’t prove adequate, those promoting the homosexual agenda use force, coercion and intimidation. They also do great damage by encouraging youth to embrace homosexuality, even though they realize that sexual feelings can be very fluid during the early years, and initial sexual encounters are formative. Davidson therefore warns:

• “I think we are doing damage when we make these categories something that are so fixed. So if a nine year old boy has homosexual thoughts we have to tell him to take on a gay identity. It’s an appalling abuse of freedom.”

Children have become mere pawns in this game of promoting the militant homosexual agenda. The fact that these promoters are encouraging them into a lifestyle of greatly heightened suicide and grossly abbreviated lifespan is never discussed. As with the tailors who sold the King his clothing, they seem to care about nothing else apart from the “sale.”

However, even more culpable than the money-hungry tailors, were the King’s advisors, appointed to protect the King against such threats. The media, the universities, and the profession societies are even more culpable than the gays. While the gays are caught in the grips of the powerful psychological forces of guilt, shame, self-contempt and anger, the professions know better, and they have been appointed to guard against these “appalling abuses of freedom.” However, they have become willing accomplices!

This is reminiscent of the observations of Albert Einstein regarding the advent of National Socialism in his homeland of Germany. As this horrible transition into darkness was occurring, he had looked to the media to expose them. However, he was shocked when they all capitulated. He then looked to the great German universities, which certainly would not tolerate Hitler and his gang. However, they too fell willingly into line. He then looked to the Church, an institution that he had long despised, but the only institution that offered any resistance against the violent hoard. Perhaps this resistance had been too little and too late, but within the great sea of capitulation, the Church had been the only light.

Someone needs to scream, “The King has no clothing on,” but silence reigns in our corridors of education and government.