Bishop: Collapse of Christianity wrecking British society
Posted on 29 May 2008 by Jack
The collapse of Christianity has wrecked British society, a leading Church of England bishop declared yesterday.
It has destroyed family life and left the country defenceless against the rise of radical Islam in a moral and spiritual vacuum.
In a lacerating attack on liberal values, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, said the country was mired in a doctrine of ‘endless self-indulgence’ that had brought an explosion in public violence and binge-drinking.
In a blow to Gordon Brown, he mocked the ’scramblings and scratchings’ of politicians who try to cast new British values such as respect and tolerance.
The Pakistani-born bishop dated the downfall of Christianity from the ’social and sexual revolution’ of the 1960s.
He said Church leaders had capitulated to Marxist revolutionary thinking and quoted an academic who blames the loss of ‘faith and piety among women’ for the steep decline in Christian worship.
Dr Nazir-Ali said the ‘ newfangled and insecurely founded’ doctrine of multiculturalism has left immigrant communities ’segregated, living parallel lives’.
Christian values of human dignity, equality and freedom could be lost as the way is left open for the advance of brands of Islam that do not respect Western values.
The Bishopric of Rochester is one of the ten most powerful positions in the Church of England.
Popularity: 45% [?]
May 29th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Religions collapse when they fail to meet the needs of their society.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Religion is all about power and control. The good bishop is loosing his power and control and he’d getting frustrated.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Heathens !!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 29th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Heathen:an irreligious, uncultured, or uncivilized person.
I’m certainly irreligious and I have probably been uncivilized from time to time but I could not be accused of being uncultured. Most of the time.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Labour, the socialist party of the militantly atheist and secularist lobby has done such a bang up job of running the UK that Gordon Brown is afraid to hold another election because Brits have seen through the Labour Party’s facade to its Marxist underpinnings and know full well who ruined the UK, and it certainly wasn’t the Christians. Liberal non-values championed by secular atheist socialists destroyed British society by attacking marriage and the family. Christians aren’t the ones who infantilized parents through making mothers dependent on a big government substitute for now redundant fathers while elevating children to a level above adults by taking away every tool necessary to enable society’s duty to instill discipline in them. That was all the secular atheist socialists doing. Christianity didn’t convince millions of mothers to abort their offspring or millions of hardworking taxpaying Brits to get fed up enough to flee their country, making way for the inflow of diverse groups of government dependents and cultural throwbacks. That was all the secular atheist socialists doing. The Bishop is right to blame Britain’s decline on a liberal lack of values and morals. Secular atheist Marxism is all about power and control.
I have no doubt that liberalism will collapse since it fails miserably to meet the needs of society. The same behavior that is forcing the liberal MSM to self destruct will eventually cause liberal societies to march lemming like towards their own doom. The only question is whether liberalism will destroy itself before taking the positive side of our western societies with it, those that Christianity brought us like freedom, democracy and tolerance.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
“Heathen” = “Infidel”
The good news is that, given the scope of history, Islam probably will not take over the world (or even Europe). These religions seem to collapse under their own weight after becoming too powerful. Absolute power corrupts absolutely…
May 29th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Brian … meh this probably not worth getting into again, but the positive social changes in the West were economically driven, not because the man in the white hat decided Jesus suddenly changed his mind. In fact, among the most devout you will find the greatest resistance to those social freedoms and tolerances that separate the West from the Islamic world. It’s the ECONOMY. Not the blue-haireds clutching their purses.
Without the liberals, the West would be the same as the Islamic world, and until the last couple hundreds years (strangely co-incidental with mass industrialization) was far worse.
Pick any major advance and we can discuss it.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Cynapse says “Religions collapse when they fail to meet the needs of their society.” Well perhaps, but more likely, they collapse when they are deliberately crushed by the State. “But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.” - The Communist Manifesto.
The left has always attempted to crush religion.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
And religion has always attempted to crush the left.
Both are ideological (ie pre-defined answers for everything in life) and are run by organizations of humans. Organizations of humans want power and will twist their central doctrine to maintain it. Simply pointing the finger at some ideology that makes you uncomfortable does not negate this fact.
Hence, calling out Jesus is not an immunity card. Christianity messed up and screwed over too many people so they left. Marxism has done the same in the third world and so many are leaving it as well. Fearmongering never helps in the long run - your ideology has to actually do something good.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Exactly what economic advantages did Christian Europe enjoy over say China or Japan that are not part of liberal mythology or revisionist history? Christian Europe remained an economic basket case ravaged by wars and one plague after another until long after it began it’s march towards freedom and democracy.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
“that are not part of liberal mythology or revisionist history”
One assumes that’s going to be your all-purpose waste bin for anything I suggest, leaving “God” as the answer.
Regardless, here goes:
-Complex system of rivers in Europe stimulated high volumes of trade and caused markets to mature much faster (Merci, Adam Smith)
-Weather conditions accelerated Agricultural development, which accelerated everything else (Merci, Jared Diamond)
-Greater propensity and ability to organize violence (Merci, Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis)
I have no idea in what proportions those conditions contributed but the collective knowledge of philosophers and economists have never settled on “My God is better than your God”.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Where have I stated that god is the answer? I am not arguing that god is the answer, just that Christianity has undeniably contributed to the success of the west, and that liberals are responsible for many of Britain’s current problems, and that nobody has rained destruction down on the earth more than secular atheists have.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
That last statement is blatantly false, unless you think that 1/3 of the WW2 theater + a few African/Latin/Asian wars have produced more destruction than all of mankind’s history.
That would be an example of Christian revisionist history.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Your last statement is unclear, are you suggesting that any one particular religion is responsible for all the destruction of mankind’s history, or are you now lumping them all together to get the results you want?
Irregardless, religion is not the reason for every war, and war is not the only form of destruction. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and China’s current leaders are among the many atheists who wrought all kinds of destruction beyond the wars they brought.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:37 am
I read this blog often, but have never commented here before, however I need to make a couple of statements on this topic.
If one believes the news reports coming out of the UK these days, it would be impossible to deduce that this society suffers from a surfeit of Christianity, at present. The unravelling of of functional families and responsible civic behaviour can be tracked back to British society’s abandonment of Christianity. Could it be any more obvious that people who believe in nothing and are motivated by no higher purpose will degenerate into self indulgence and materialism - after all what else is there? may as well just satisfy myself, have a good time and be done with any sort of self discipline.
For those who then drive by and ascert that religon has caused wars and the world would be better without religion, I put it to you that you are clearly not perceiving the motivating trends around social decay in the UK and in Western society in general. A society based on nothing more than self indulgence and materialism will not strive to achieve the accomplishments we have seen in past. As to the “religion causes wars”, I say to you that people who purport to be Christian, but who chase political power cause wars…….it’s the power seeking, not the religion that causes the wars. The religion is simply a gloss used to try to make wars acceptable. When a man says he is a Christian, but goes on to act in a distinctly unChristian manner, you need to ask if there is not a hint there. As Chesterton would have it, “it is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, it’s that it has been found difficult and not tried”.
While we’re at it, let’s remember where many of the institutions we now take for granted got their start. Have we forgotten that hospitals and schools were started by Christians who were called to serve? And it doesn’t end there. What about the separation of church and state? Does anyone remember “render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and unto God what is God’s”. The fundamentals of Western civilization are predicated on Christian philosophical principals - if this has worked out so badly, why do people from the Third World strive to immigrate to Western nations?
May 30th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Wildrose:
Welcome to the comment section and thanks for entering the discussion.
1) Plenty of negative outcomes have also been inspired by religion (and perhaps an even greater number than the good things). The Spanish inquisition was religiously driven, as were both the Crusades for Christ and the Muslim encroachment that prompted them. Most of the social and scientific advances that Christians like to claim as being accomplished under their command were actually opposed by Christians of the day - Galileo was imprisoned, Baptist preachers fiercely attacked MLK and the abolitionists before him, the church was definitely NOT on board with women’s suffrage, etc. Those who participated in these acts were every bit as devout as Mother Theresa or any other Christian looked upon fondly by history.
2) Belief in any religion or mythology is not required for personal discipline or a strict code of personal conduct. Religions are simply pre-rolled moral codes, enforced by threat of damnation from the magic man in the sky. Many people are content to live a good life based on this fear but many live equally exemplary lives without it. The distinction is more having guidance vs. not having it.
Combining #1 and #2, the best that can be said for Christianity (or any religion) is that it unearths existing human qualities rather than creating them. If you’re psychopathic atheist, you’d be a psychopathic Christian as well. There’s no reason that sympathy for the proletariat or a love of the environment can’t unearth those same qualities. Religion has never gotten in the way of man’s will - it’s mostly used to justify actions after the fact.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Brian I find your comments about atheists insulting as well as ignorant. To assume you are somehow better than me because you believe in some religion is absurd. I believe you have grave doubts about your own religious beliefs and by attacking those of us who do not believe in your particular god ignoring your own doubts.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I do not have strong religious beliefs, my beef is that you uber atheists of convenience have made absolutely no attempt to counter the Bishop’s argument and instead have attacked the man because of his beliefs. Christianity has made many positive contributions to our society, including to the free thought and free speech which gives all of us, including atheists, the right to hold and air our opinions, and Christians are entitled to have their opinions aired like everyone else. Would you attack a Muslim’s beliefs as a means of discounting what they said? No you would not. Would you attack Barack Obama’s beliefs in order to discount his opinions? No you would not. If for a change you would attack the mans argument and not the man for being a conservative Christian, then I have no problem because Christianity has given you rights that did not develop anywhere outside of the sphere of Christian influence.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Actually, Brian I did attack and disprove his argument. It’s a common argument made by theists who fear losing power and thus leech onto any social blip or decline as proof of what happens when we turn our back on “the divine”.
And again, Christianity did not give us these freedoms but were merely ineffective in mitigating Europe’s lightning-fast economic liberalization and America’s social advances thereafter (all of which reduced the Church’s influence - since when is political suicide the aim of a religion?). It never ceases to amaze when people take credit for their losses.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Cynapse:
Thank-you for your welcome!
1) Have the negative outcomes been inspired by religion per se, or by people’s desire to exert their power over others? And if there were no religion, would not these same people fashion another method of exerting their power over others? To support this, I give you all the death, destruction and despair visited on humans by communist regimes. Must all those who purport to be Christians be perfect, in your view, to validate Christianity? If you hold to this view, then I would have to suggest that the same standards must apply to those who are atheist and again, I would draw your attention to all of the previous discussed outcomes of communist regimes, who in addition to outcomes of widespread death, imposed restrictive regimes on their citizens.
Let’s further discuss one of the historical events you mention, the Inquisition. No where in the Bible does it say that we should force people to be Christians and torture them til they give lip service to belief. It does say that faith is a gift and that the 10 commandments can be reduced to two main rules: love God and love your fellow man as yourself. Which part of these justifies the Inquisition? The Inquisition arose out of a church which had become part of the political power structure and felt free to create new rules, not supported anywhere in the Bible. This is men seeking power, this is not religion except as a vehicle to gain power over others.
And yes, there have been those who were both devote and wrong. However, the Bible does predict false prophets, and these may at times truly believe their own philosophy. There is a handy phrase in the Bible: “you shall know a tree by it’s fruit”, i.e. if the outcome of something is clearly evil, it never was of God in the first place. We have been given free will and we make our own decisions, having to live with the consequences thereof. Given the concept of free will, there is really no way to guarantee perfection, which is apparently what atheists would want of Christians, in order to validate Christianity. The truth is that there is no Utopia to be found on this earth, the best that we can strive for is to leave the place better than we found it.
Too many of the problems encountered in past arose when churches were integrated with the political power structures. The true purpose of Christianity becomes polluted when it gets mixed up with political power. That’s the lesson of history!
2) Whilst it is entirely possible that individuals may be wise enough in their own right to exercise the personal discipline required to live a better life, I suggest to you that self discipline by itself, does not motivate societies and that such individuals are the exception and not the norm. Most people need to reflect on a higher wisdom to orient their lives and to look towards a higher calling to motivate the better angels of their nature. If we look at the unravelling of British society, I would have to suggest that we are seeing people who believe in nothing beyond materialism and self indulgence. They operate without the motivatation to consider anything beyond their own gratification and you cannot build a functioning, forward looking society on this.
With regard to the scientific advances you mention, I make no claims on behalf of Christianity. I rather say that we have been given free will, reason and intellect. Some use it well, others assume that they are intimately familiar with what God wants and in this arrogance, attempt to impose their will on others. A definite want of Christian humility.
I don’t know that Christianity creates new human qualities, but it certainly acts to motivate the more positive qualities, which is what is wanted. If one believes that we are created by God, then we already have an operating system of human qualities, but given free will, it is up to us to use and operate these qualities, based on our perception of how this can best be done.
You know, I have certainly enjoyed this discussion and appreciated the intelligent responses here!
May 30th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Cynapse, your ignorance about how our freedoms developed is astounding. Our freedoms took many centuries if not a millennium to develop and did not start to form sometime after socialists like Trudeau came to power. Further, nowhere do I see where you have attacked the Bishop’s argument. If the Labour Party’s liberal social engineers are not responsible for Britain’s sorry state then who is?
May 30th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Brian:
Nowhere did I make any claim about freedoms starting with Trudeau. You’re making things up now. Western concepts of freedom started with Ancient Greece which had exactly nada to do with Christianity. Future developments were covered in a previous post that you apparently missed, but the central point was that the church was NOT in favour of these advances. It is you who seems to be a bit ignorant about how freedoms have advanced. “Giving in” isn’t equivalent to advocacy.
Britain is simply an empire in decline and has been since WW2. When the money runs out, the social problems begin. Strict religious brow-beating has never pushed a state into prosperity.
How can someone with as much apparent economic factoids on short recall as yourself completely ignore the economy when evaluating what causes a nation to rise and fall? Instead you’re falling into the “who did this to us?” trap.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:34 am
It is idiotic to think that Europe became free because it had rivers, weather, and trade, because so did the rest of the world. What we call freedom or individualism came about through centuries of struggle during what some have called the period of Christian enlightenment, as power was, over time, wrested from tyrannical monarchs and placed into the hands of common people. Freedom from the tyranny of Monarchs had to be won through a power shift brought about by democracy and a move away from the Kings Law and toward Common Law, and the Christian Church played a great part in those struggles.
The power to protect our own freedoms came about through the issuing of the Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Freedoms) in 1215. The Magna Carta was the result of attempts by Pope Innocent III aided by English noblemen, to wrestle power from the King and place it in the hands of common people, in order to protect them from abuses of the state. Britain began its move towards democracy soon after the signing of the Magna Carta, however it still took many centuries of bloody struggle before all European monarchs had relinquished their power. The tyrannical Monarch whose reign prompted the drafting of the Magna Carta was none other than King John of Robin Hood fame, and the document was written in Latin by Stephen Langton, who was Pope Innocent the 3rd’s elected appointee to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. The English Barons in league with the Church against King John had wanted the charter to guarantee freedoms and property rights to those considered “free Barons”, and it was only through the Church’s foresight and input that the document ended up guaranteeing freedoms for “free men”, otherwise our western world would have probably turned out quite different.
No one would remember the Greeks if it were not for Christians as through the Dark Ages the knowledge of democracy was kept alive only through the efforts of Christian monks and priests. After the Dark Ages were over, Parliamentary style democracy as we know it was first practiced by the Church of England as it settled disputes and elected its Archbishops, and Republican style democracy was likewise first practiced by the Roman Catholic Church.
From wikipedia: “The Catholic Church has the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the Western World, predating the common and European civil law traditions.” Roman Catholic Canon law evolved into our western law systems of English Common law, and European Civil law, which have subsequently been exported around the world becoming the most successful and widely used systems known.
Socialists can try to discount centuries of Christian funded science with a few isolated examples of fearful backward thinking, however, we owe most of our enlightened western thinkers to the influence of the Christian Church. Universities that taught the sciences on an equal footing with theology were a concept developed and funded by the Christian Church and up until very recently all universities and most western hospitals were founded by Christians. The University of Toronto itself was founded by the Church of England, and in its charter includes the words “establishment of a College… for the education of youth in the principles of the Christian Religion, and for their instruction in the various branches of Science and Literature”.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:59 am
“It is idiotic to think that Europe became free because it had rivers, weather, and trade, because so did the rest of the world.”
The rest of the world also had religion, much of it Christianity, so it’s obviously not the deciding factor in what makes a society succeed or fail.
The rest of this incredibly white-washed, Arab-free (who preserved the ancient knowledge and brought to mainland Europe again, Brian?), invasion-free, war-free, technology-free, history of Europe speaks to your state of mind more than how freedom evolved. Most advances are out of economic necessity, not divine inspiration and as Wildrose pointed out the church was heavily intertwined with the political institutions of the day. The church was riding shotgun, but Jesus didn’t make Europe enforce the Magna Carta or establish colleges - those were economic decisions driven by a myriad of circumstances including growing discontent of the lower classes, fear of Muslim invasions, need to adapt to increasingly complex economies, etc.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I have only stated that the Christian Church and the freedoms it helped bring played a great part in western success, and I am certain that I have stated more than a few times that Europe, like the rest of the world, remained ravaged by wars. It is true that Muslims had universities, however Islamic theology remained central to all of their teachings, and scientific advance got left by the wayside, while freedom is not exactly fundamental to Islamic cultures. Islamic scholars may have helped preserve some of the ancient texts, but they themselves learned little from them. The myriad of innovations that brought economic advances to Europe came all that much easier in a freer society.
Modern liberal socialism is also a system of beliefs that is failing because it does not value the hard won freedoms that European Christian societies have enjoyed, preferring to think of free speech as an American concept, and prepared to take huge steps backward just to earn a few brownie points among the like minded.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I don’t care what anyone says. Left this, religion that, who cares, it’s all esoteric, rhetorical bull biscuits to 95 percent of the planet.
What matters is that this man has pointed out a profound truth. That given the choice of an “easy” road, humans will take it and will toss aside anything that is “hard”. One can easily see the difference. The West is proud of it’s anything goes, Starbuck swilling, oh I need a makeover, are my boobs nice enough mentality. Look at our involvement in Afghanistan, we take less than 100 casualties over a period of years and it’s the end of the world, at Dieppe we took 900 dead in less then 6 hours and it was another day at the office.
Fundamentalist Islam doesn’t think that way. Like it or not, it takes remarkably deep devotion to strap explosives to oneself and stroll into a cafe. Right or wrong, they believe what they do and that empowers them as a collective and as individuals. They know what they’re all about. We used to but have tossed it aside in pursuit of style and a better dishwasher.
Those that discard observations like those of the Bishop and actively seek to put down all that binds us as a society are directly bringing about the Muslim conquest of the west. Since we won’t defend or protect our values and morality, we’ll have to leave it to others to do so. After all, the Mullahs are really nice guys, right? I’m sure they’ll do it.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Peter,
I believe you have very nicely captured a point I was trying make (clumsily) earlier - that belief in nothing, that is basically nihilism, is not a societal motivator for achievement and civilizational self confidence. We end up with materialism and self indulgence….it just doesn’t work out in the real world. As a societal glue, moral relativism and multiculturalism is not very sticky.