Theology – Page 3 – All Things Considered

06 Sep

Onward Christian Soldiers!

Here follows the cheeriest, most encouraging, sentence I’ve read in a long time: “A Christian militia has liberated a village in Iraq from Islamic State.”

This victorious Christian militia bears a name with sonorous biblical resonance. They are called the Nineveh Plain Protection Units, in number about 3000 men, and they have just taken back control of Badanah in south-east Mosul. The group published video and images on Facebook of NPU fighters driving Islamic State from the village.

Praise be to God!

NPU commander Bahnam Abush told the Iraqi press: “The operation is a step towards the restoration of confidence and hopes for Christians to stay in the land of their grandparents.”

The Nineveh Plains were captured in 2014 by Islamic State who murdered many Christians and drove 125,000 from their homes. Since the Muslims took control of the area, they have used torture extensively. They also destroyed a number of historical landmarks in the area such as the walls of Nineveh and the 4th century Mar Behnam Monastery.

Well now, thanks be to God and the Christian militia, they have got their come-uppance.

Christianity has a long and noble military tradition employed frequently against imperialistic Islam. Charles Martel raised a Christian army and defeated a huge Muslim incursion at Tours in AD 732. The Knights of St John relieved the siege of Malta in 1565. When the Muslim general crucified captured Christians and floated their bodies across the strait on crosses, the Abbot rounded up 1000 Muslims, beheaded them and fired the severed heads back at the enemy from his cannons. Papal armies raised a fleet and routed the Muslims at Lepanto in 1571. And it was a Christian army under Jan Sobieski which lifted the siege of Vienna in 1683.

Now that what’s left of the European civilization created by Christianity is once again under Muslim attack, the words “Christian militia” never cross the lips of our archbishops and bishops. They prefer to appease our enemies and persecutors. You might say the policy of the church’s contemporary leadership is pre-emptive self-abasement. In Europe, the Middle East and much of Africa, Christians are being slaughtered wholesale and dispossessed on the grand scale. But all the bishops’ talk is about “Islamophobia” – in other words, don’t blame the Muslims; it’s our own fault.

Don’t hang around for Welby’s Christian militia to turn up: you’ll have to wait a very long time.

On at least four occasions in the last 1400 years, Christian militias have defeated the barbarians. This time it looks as if the barbarians are going to win. Not because we lack the resources to fight, but we lack the will. A courageous people under threat of subjection or annihilation can always hope to defeat the enemy. But once a people has lost the will to fight, has lost confidence in itself, there is no power on earth that can save it.

Things will have to get worse before they get better. When the threat became severe and critical in Iraq, there emerged that wonderful Christian militia to smite the enemy. The Muslim threat is only going to intensify here in Europe.

So we should all sing Psalm 68: “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered: let them that hate Him flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away: and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God.”

Shall we, in our extremity, produce a Christian militia too? Let us pray in the words of The Book of Common Prayer:

“O Almighty God, King of all kings and governor of all things, whose power no creature is able to resist, to whom it belongeth justly to punish sinners and to be merciful to them that truly repent; save and deliver us, we humbly beseech thee, from the hands of our enemies; abate their pride, aswage their malice and confound their devices; that we, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils to glorify thee, who art the only giver of all victory; through the merits of thy only Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

06 Jun

Bishops are no laughing matter

You have to laugh…

THE Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, and seven other bishops are among 37 faith leaders who have signed a letter warning EU referendum voters against “undermining” the international institutions charged with tackling the great challenges of the day.

“Faith is about integration and building bridges, not about isolation and erecting barriers,” they wrote, in a letter to The Observer, published last week. “As leaders and senior figures of faith communities, we urge our co-religionists and others to think about the implications of a leave vote for the things about which we are most passionate. . . So many of the challenges we face today can only be addressed in a European, and indeed a global, context: combatting poverty in the developing world, confronting climate change and providing the stability that is essential to tackling the current migration crisis.

“We hope that when voting on 23rd June, people will reflect on whether undermining the international institutions charged with delivering these goals could conceivably contribute to a fairer, cleaner, and safer world.”

Surely it would be rude to laugh at these noble sentiments?

It would – if they were noble. And even if there was a smidgen of truth in them.

But the bishops are wrong to claim that leaving the EU would mean “isolation and erecting barriers.” Getting out of the EU customs union would tear down barriers between Britain and the rest of the world – with countries with which presently we are not allowed to trade, unless we pay prohibitive tariffs.

But more serious even than this – so perhaps we shouldn’t laugh after all? – is the bishops’ reference to “the things we are most passionate about.”

And what are these things? The Gospel, the Creeds, the Sacraments, Christian mission? Of course not. These men are bishops, after all. Their stated passions include “combatting poverty in the developing world.” Yes, but this is best achieved by free trade – a thing which the EU explicitly forbids.

Oh yes, and the episcopal fancy of the moment: “confronting climate change.”

The words “God, Jesus Christ, forgiveness, redemption” appear nowhere in the bishops’ letter to The Observer.

The bishops seem not to notice that the EU is not a Christian polity. In fact it is hostile to Christianity. It does not reproduce Christian symbolism in any of its documents, publicity, logos etc. Its political morality is not based on The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, but derived from the doctrines which appeared at the French Revolution, particularly the atheistic doctrine of universal rights.

The EU is militantly secular.

But then so are our bishops

02 Jun

The Incredible Shrinking Church

The Anglican boat is still heading for the demographic rapids.

Official figures just announced say that between 25% and 40% of full time stipendiary clergy are aged over 60. Only 3.4% of all clergy are from black or ethnic minorities. In his commentary, the Church of England Director of Ministry, Julian Hubbard, writes: “While the number of stipendiary ordinations showed a welcome increase between 2012 and 2015, this is not sufficient to redress the gathering effect of clergy retirements predicted over the next ten years.”

He added, “The statistics on the age and ethnicity of clergy show that we still have some way to go to ensure that the whole cohort fully reflects the demographics of the wider community.”

Mike Eastwood, Director of Renewal and Reform, the Church of England’s main response to falling church attendance, said: “These figures support what we have been saying about the need for renewal and reform in the Church of England. Renewal and Reform is about a message of hope, through changed lives and transformed communities, as people discover their vocation to love God and serve others. Renewal and Reform is not a top-down project to fix the church, but a narrative of local hope in God shared throughout the church. As part of Renewal and Reform, we are currently consulting on how we better release the gifts of all Christian leaders in church and wider society, whether ordained or not.”

As a priest with 46 years service, let me try to interpret the ecclesiastical spin for you.

In a word, Mr Hubbard has looked in the cupboard and found it to be bare. These numbers mean that the Church of England is very shortly going to be desperately short of full time, decently educated and properly trained priests. I will come back to the decently educated and properly trained aspect in a minute.

First, we notice the Church’s politically-correct obsession with racial quotas. St Paul said, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek,” but the talkative old tentmaker did not foresee the preoccupations of the modern C. of E. Why this obsession with colour and racial origins? In Mr Hubbard’s contorted language, why should “…the whole cohort fully reflect the demographics of the wider community”? Why should the racial origins of the ministers be precisely proportionate to those of the parishes they serve? Everyone walking about has a brain (we suppose), yet hardly any of us are brain surgeons. Millions take the tube every day, but few actually drive the trains. And the euphemistic phrase “positive discrimination” cannot disguise the fact that the obsession with racial quotas is itself an example of racism.

Mr Eastwood’s verbose exposition of the policies of Renewal and Reform are all blather and bluster – a species of what in RAF slang was always known as “flannel.”

His peroration about the “…better release of the gifts of all Christian leaders in Church and wider society” is a glossy way of saying that in future the cash-strapped Church will resort to appointing unpaid layfolk to do the work presently undertaken by the stipendiary priesthood.

This will, of course, involve a further dumbing down to follow that which has been the norm in the C. of E. over the last forty years. When I was training for the ministry, some ordinands took degrees and higher degrees in theology and philosophy. But the minimum educational standard was impressively high, consisting of the 13 papers of the General Ordination Examination (GOE) – affectionately referred to as God’s Own Exam. There were 3 papers on Old Testament and 3 on the New; two on doctrine, another two on history, one on liturgy, one on pastoral studies and a final one on Greek.

Since that time, there has been a relentless falling off in which all kinds of ad hoc training schemes have come and gone, with the result that most clergy under the age of 55 know very little theology. Most of them have never so much as opened The King James Bible and The Book of Common Prayer, let alone used those books which used to be the head and cornerstone of English Christianity. The worst of it is there now exists – under the shibboleth of “anti-elitism” – a perverse institutional pride in knowing nothing.

Under all the spin, smoke and mirrors, the truth is that congregations will continue their precipitous fall and increasingly be taught and ministered to by people who are hardly qualified for the task.

22 May

“Mind your manners, St Paul!”

Archbishop Justin Welby has told Christians firmly that we should not “proselytise” or talk about our faith to non-Christians until they invite us to do so.

It is a pity that St Paul didn’t have the benefit of the Archbishop’s guidance before he set out – without being asked – on his three missionary voyages in which he founded churches among the pagans in such as Philippi, Ephesus and Corinth. The presence of the finger-wagging, politically-correct Mr Welby on the quayside before St Paul boarded his ship would have saved the Apostle a great deal of trouble: the thirty-nine lashes he received (five times), an attempt to stone him and his shipwreck.

How ironic that Welby should choose the season of Pentecost to issue his injunction for, according to chapter two of The Acts of the Apostles, this was the day when the disciples of Jesus experienced the rushing mighty wind of the Holy Ghost and tongues of fire upon their heads and immediately rushed – all uninvited – out into the Jerusalem streets to preach to members of every race under the sun: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cretes and Arabians and all the rest.

If only the wise, admonitory and well-mannered Mr Welby had been there to say, “Never mind the promptings of the Holy Ghost, St Peter! Mind your P’s and Q’s! Wait till you’re asked!”

And if we go back a little earlier to the life of Our Lord himself, we can imagine – if only Welby had been there to quieten Jesus’ enthusiasm – his command “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” would never have been given. Or at the very least Jesus would surely have toned down his command to something more polite such as, “Go and ask those pagans if they’d like to join an Alpha course! Tell them there’s red wine and pizza afterwards!”

Christian history would have turned out quite differently, if only Jesus had minded his manners.

But Welby’s verbal facility is not limited to the occasional sound-bite, such as “Don’t proselytise!” He is capable of quite extraordinary prolixity. How’s this for an example of what Humpty Dumpty called “Impenetrability”? In his Pentecost speech, he went on to say:

“I draw the line in terms of respect for the other; in starting by listening before you speak; in terms of love that is unconditional and not conditional to one iota, to one single element, on how the person responds to your own declaration of faith; and of not speaking about faith unless you are asked about faith.”

That is an utterance so syntactically obscure that Welby’s predecessor, the Great Obfuscator, Rowan Williams himself, would have been proud of it.

21 May

Is the Pope a Catholic?

Some words from a recent interview given by Pope Francis to the French newspaper La Croix make me wonder. He said:

“Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam. It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.”

The Pope also said he “dreaded” hearing about the “Christian roots of Europe” because they take on “colonialist overtones” and he called on European nations to “integrate” Muslim migrants into the continent:

“This integration is all the more necessary today since, as a result of a selfish search for well-being, Europe is experiencing the grave problem of a declining birth rate,” he stated. “A demographic emptiness is developing.”

What is the range of possible interpretations of these bizarre utterances? First, that the Pope has lost what marbles he had in the first place. Secondly, that he only joking. Thirdly, that he is the Antichrist. Finally, that he has spoken the truth.

I shall consider the last interpretation first. Did Pope Francis speak the truth?

No. There is not a shred of truth in any of his statements.

Jesus did not send forth his disciples “In terms of the same idea of conquest.” He said, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” (Matthew 28:19)

Is the Pope’s “dread” of hearing about Christian roots derived from “colonialist overtones”? Of course not. Christianity did not colonise Europe: Christianity created European civilisation, culture, art, literature, music and its fundamental social and political institutions.

What about his injunction to “integrate” Muslims into European society? Has the Pope not noticed that Muslims do not wish to be integrated into Europe: they desire only to conquer Europe, destroy it and recreate it in the image of the age old Islamic shambles.

My inclination, in the interests of trying to be as charitable as I can, is that Francis was only joking, or that he has indeed lost his marbles – though I wish I could rule out the third possibility: that he might be the Antichrist.

09 May

Hold very tight, please…

Coming soon to a bus near you: SUBHAN ALLAH – GLORY TO ALLAH. That slogan will be written on the sides of busses in London, Manchester, Bradford and Leeds. This outbreak of idolatry will be paid for by the charity Islamic relief – the organisation which recently had its HSBC account removed after suspicion that some of the donated funds were destined for Muslim terrorist groups.

Anyone left in any doubt about which religious group alone receives deference and preferential treatment in Britain today should reflect that, while the Muslim buses get the all clear, the established Church of England – Supreme Governor Queen Elizabeth II – was forbidden to screen a one minute advert for the Lord’s Prayer in cinemas.

The chief executive of Islamic Relief, Imran Madden, said he hoped the buses bedecked with these slogans would help start a “conversation” in Britain but he did not comment on the supremacist nature of the phrase “Glory to Allah” – often mistranslated as “Glory to God” by Western media outlets. This slogan is in the same tradition as “Allahu Akbar” which, rather than the meaning usually given, “God is Great,” actually means, “Our God (Allah) is greater than yours.”

Imran Madden certainly maddens me. The “conversation” he claims he wishes to start began rather more violently on 7th July 2005 when Muslim terrorists slaughtered fifty-two people on London transport.

How preposterous then that London buses are to be emblazoned with a triumphalist slogan which glorifies the religion of our murderers.

It is more than preposterous: it is blasphemous.

This is only one of the most blatant – so far – examples of the Islamic colonialisation of our country.

I go to London from time to time, so now I shall have to ponder whether I ought to ride on one of these idolatrous buses. For I am a Christian and the Ten Commandments – given by Moses and endorsed by Jesus Christ – are at the heart of my faith. The first of these Commandments – and they are Commandments, not suggestions – says, “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Such gods were and are no gods and that is why their worship is described in the Bible as idolatry.

The Christian religion is no mere matter of preference and whim. It is a matter if truth. What would it mean for a Christian to say the Christian faith is only partly true or only probable?

The Christian God is the only true God: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

To Him, the only God, Christians are commanded to bear witness. The old word for such a witness is martyr.

02 May

No dumbing down in the C. of E.

The Church of England has been accused of dumbing down after drawing up a new service in which worshippers use Post-it notes, clap like football fans and move their fingers like “twinkling stars.” This new pantomime – sorry, this creative invention of the Church’s Liturgical Commission – was performed in parishes for the first time at services on 1st May. So what is it meant to do? Answer: “to celebrate the role of godparents.”

Acting true to character, the former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, has criticised this innovation as “reflecting the Church’s now familiar desire for being trendy.”

Surely it is long past time for so-called traditionalists and reactionary backwoodsmen such as Bishop Michael to cease their endless carping? Can’t you get it into your head, Michael, that this new service for godparents was produced by some of the finest minds in the Church of England?

He mocks the service, saying, “It’s like a game of bingo.”

This is a typically elitist remark and an insult to members of the Liturgical Commission who, as a matter of fact, enjoy nothing better than a game of bingo on a Saturday evening after watching Strictly Come Dancing.

The new service is redolent with intellectual and theological substance and it is yet another example of the erudite and scholarly productions we have come to expect from the Liturgical Commission. For instance, worshippers are urged to write their thoughts about godparents on notes to stick on a “memory wall” and to tie ribbons to a “prayer tree.”

This is in the same glorious tradition we noticed in the Commission’s worship suggestions for Lent – such as arranging a Christian line dance for the Lord or cutting out bits of yellow paper and pasting these on larger pieces of blue paper.

It is hard to imagine anything more spiritually significant than this.

At the opening of the service, the congregation is told to act like a football crowd and in response to the call “God is great!” – a nice ecumenical touch expressing Christian solidarity with our jihadist brothers and sisters – perform “a double clap with an arm raise” as they shout out “Let the people praise you!”

In case the congregation has difficulty in appreciating the sacramental profundity of these gestures, the priest is instructed to get them to repeat the exercise “as often as feels right.”

Then everyone should “Shout ‘bingo’ or ‘housey housey’ really loudly!”

(Sorry, I misread that. They should, of course, shout “Hallelujah”)

Then they are all asked to touch their feet and put their hands over their ears in a prayer asking for God’s help “during life’s journey.”

They are then invited to draw a heart shape over the front of their bodies, and think of members of the community such as teachers or social workers.

Worshippers should then hold up their hands and move their fingers “like twinkling stars” to honour people that shine in their lives.

How dare Bishop Michael suggest there is anything dumbed down about all this!

27 Mar

Happy Easter Mr Cameron!

The prime minister has taken on something of the job of the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury and given us an Easter message. He says the UK must “stand together and defend its Christian values” in the face of threats from terrorism.

He is hardly expert in the subject of Christian values, having introduced homosexual “marriage” in clear opposition to both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Apart from this atrocity, he has a strange idea about what Christian values are. Among them he includes, “responsibility, hard work and compassion” which are “important to people of every faith and none.”

If these things are shared by every faith and none, in what sense can they be called Christian?

Perhaps I can help clear his head about Christian values. Christian values are inseparable from the Christian truth on which they are based.

The shortest summary of Christian truth is The Apostles’ Creed. You can find this, prime minster, in the order for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer

Happy Easter Dave!

23 Mar

Easter Syringe-Head

The Most Reverend Justin Welby has occupied the throne of Canterbury for three years, so this Easter is as good a time as any to examine the condition of the Church of England under his leadership.

Some years ago, the Church irritated many when, in an advertisement, it depicted Jesus as Che Guevara. It seemed shocking at the time, but it was a gesture of piety compared with the blasphemous atrocity produced this year. In the advertisement, a former drug addict takes the place of Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns made from syringes. The Church hopes this will attract new worshippers this Easter.

Rob Jones, 46, from Halifax, West Yorks, who spent years living rough punctuated by time in prison before turning his life around, plays the central role in a short film modelled on a traditional passion play.

He appears with, among others, a former white witch who converted to Christianity, in the video made as part of the Church’s “Just Pray” campaign.

It follows a previous advert, featuring the Lord’s Prayer which was banned from cinemas last year for being “too religious.”

The Church’s latest publicity stunt is based on the text of Psalm 22, in which the Psalmist utters his despair and asks, “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?” These words were repeated by Jesus from the cross.

All the main parts in the film are played by people who have recently found faith through an informal church in Halifax called “The Saturday Gathering”.

In the central scene, Mr Jones is grabbed by a crowd and has the mock crown, made from the plastic tubes and syringes used by drug addicts to inject themselves, forced on to his head.

It then cuts to a scene in a church, in full colour, accompanied by a message about resurrection.

To describe the whole performance as inappropriate is something of an understatement but, whatever else it is, it is inappropriate too – because inaccurate. It fails as an analogy.

The central character Mr Jones is a reformed drug addict. Jesus, the original wearer of the crown of thorns, was never a drug addict. It is thus entirely misleading to make the comparison between an addict who claims to have been redeemed by his encounter with Jesus, and the Jesus who does the redeeming.

But you may well ask what has this obscene parody of the faith performed in Halifax to do with the Archbishop residing in Canterbury? Much. Of course, the Archbishop is not to be expected to micromanage everything that takes place in the Church which he leads. But his role in the governance of the Church of England is like that of a minister of the crown. The departmental minister is not occupied in the minutiae of the day-to-day running of his department, but he is the person ultimately responsible for the integrity of his department. This is why, when a section of his department is found to be seriously at fault, the minister resigns.

There is a lesson here for the Archbishop of Canterbury

21 Mar

Sentient beings are an endangered species

The presenter of a BBC television natural history programme invited us to weep with her over the diminishing number of snow leopards: “There are probably no more than 4000 left.” Of course their demise is very largely “our fault.”

But the basic premise of that BBC programme – and indeed of the whole series of which it was a part, of David Attenborough passim and of the entire natural history department of the BBC – is the doctrine of evolution which, as we all know, involves natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Specifically, evolution has no room for sentiment. Human beings are not a special creation but entirely a part of the natural order.

It’s not so much the atheism of this view which I detest – though I do detest it – as the inconsistency amounting to self-contradiction.

If, by their actions, human beings – a few of whom are said to be homo sapiens – reduce the population of snow leopards, then their reducing the number of snow leopards also is part of the natural order.

Evolution knows nothing of ethics.

So that presenter cannot legitimately introduce an ethical proposition, as she did, without stepping outside the doctrine of evolution. But this is precisely what she is not permitted to do – because she holds that doctrine exclusively and absolutely.

Evolutionists believe there is no God and there is no teleology. It has no use for the concepts of praise and blame. So it is senseless to say that the demise of the snow leopard is “our fault” – or anybody’s fault.

Incidentally, the disjunction between evolution and ethics also extends to a similar disjunction between evolution and aesthetics: that is we cannot say that the snow leopard is beautiful without employing criteria which derive from outside the dogma of evolution.

It is impossible to combine natural selection with cuddly snow leopard cubs. But it doesn’t stop our contemporary Darwinists from going “Ooh!” and “Aah!”

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Category Archives: Theology