Jesus apparently thought things should be the other way round.

However, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has released the results of new research, regarded as “the most comprehensive and systematic review to date into the link between abortion and mental health problems.” This research ” has confirmed that women who have an unplanned pregnancy are at an increased risk of experiencing mental health problems after an abortion” (source: Christian Concern).

In other words, far from improving the mental health of the mother, an abortion is likely to worsen it.

These results imply, furthermore, that the “mental health” grounds for abortion can no longer be justified in law, since they are not supported by the best medical evidence. For doctors to authorise abortions on this basis, according to Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship, would be illegal.

“I think UK Christians ought to dedicate themselves with solemn oaths and vows to be as culturally inappropriate as they can possibly be. Their nation is in peril – it might be past the point of no return – and dithering isn’t going to help anything.”

And there’s more. Get it here.

It’s that time of year again. 1 December 2011 is Not Ashamed Day. Click the logo for more information.

On the subject of who pays how much tax, “Some 60% of households are net recipients from the Treasury … The top 10% of households contribute, on average, five times more than they get back … The top 1% of earners – just 300,000 people – pay 27% of all income tax.”

On the subject of what we pay for, “In 2010-11, we spent more paying interest on our national debt than we did defending the realm.” That’s alarming, since defending the realm is one of the few activities of our government that the Bible actually says they should be doing.

On the subject of debt and deficits, “Deficits have been a feature of British political life for decades. In the early 1990s, for instance, John Major’s Conservative government ran up a deficit of more than £50bn, or £77bn in today’s money. The deficit which the coalition inherited is much bigger.” What – we owe money? Who knew?

On the subject of who’s to blame for the mess, “For much of the last 30 years, our politicians have promised higher spending, and lower taxes – and we’ve encouraged them.” Correct. The reason our rulers have spent years telling us lies about their ability to create wealth ex nihilo is that we have elected precisely those rulers misguided enough to do so.

But now those lies are finally coming home to roost in a big way – in the form of massive public debt. And the Great British Public is turning its ire on… you guessed it… the government. It’s a bit like Israel blaming a famine on Baal.

Here’s the heart of the problem: our rulers are only people, just like us. They’re not God. So they can print fivers, but they can’t produce real wealth out of thin air. By insisting that they attempt the impossible, we have turned the ordinary men and women who rule us into idols, and now we’re surprised that they can’t save us. Whenever you turn a created thing into an idol, you ruin it.

God has given us the rulers we deserve. We have sown the wind, and now we will reap the whirlwind.

However, for what it’s worth (not much, given those caveats), I’m impressed with what this guy says. Not, I hasten to add, because I know anything much about him or his policies. But because he’s got the courage not only to nail his Christian convictions to the mast (that doesn’t take much in Republican America…), but also to connect them to actual policy positions in his manifesto. At one point, he even comes close to saying, “We should do x because the Bible says so.”

Furthermore, when he makes connections of this kind, he makes connections that to my mind seem right. Not the familiarly anaemic “The Bible says we should  ‘Do justice’, therefore let’s tax the rich and give to the poor,” but the rather more robust and controversial “The Bible says we should use honest weights and measures, so printing money in private to give to rich bankers is sinful, even if the printing presses are owned by the government.”

Make your own mind up. Here are a couple of clips from his personal Statement of Faith:

I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, and I endeavor every day to follow Him in all I do and in every position I advocate.

It is God Who gave us life. As He is free, so are those He created in His image. Our rights to life and liberty are inalienable.

As I trained to practice medicine, I became convinced without a doubt that life begins at the moment of conception. I never performed an abortion, and I never once found an abortion necessary to save the life of the mother. In fact, I successfully helped women struggling with their pregnancies to seek other options, including adoption.

We must stand for life – not allow millions of innocent children to continue to be slaughtered with the government’s approval.

We must follow the Biblical mandate of using honest weights and measures – not printing money out of thin air in almost complete secrecy and then handing it over to oppressive dictators.

We must only send our men and women to fight for our country when the mission is clear, every necessary tool needed to win is provided, and we respect the Constitution by declaring war.

Once war is declared, it must be waged according to Just War principles. We should only fight when it’s in our national security interest, and we should no longer do the corrupt United Nation’s bidding by policing the world.

In Congress, I never vote for any piece of legislation that violates the Constitution’s strict limits on government power. I also do not participate in the congressional pension system.

Here goes…

For example:

• Plans to look at whether wider powers of curfew and dispersal orders were needed
• New powers for police to order people to remove facemasks where criminality is suspected
• Courts could be given tougher sentencing powers
• Landlords could be given more power to evict criminals from social housing
• Plans to extend the system of gang injunctions across the country and build on anti-gang programmes, similar to those in the US

All that, coupled with the promise of new “welfare” measures:

• The government would meet the cost of “legitimate” compensation claims and the time limit for applying would increase from 14 to 42 days
• A £10m Recovery Scheme to provide additional support to councils in making areas “safe, clean and clear”
• A new £20m high street support scheme to help affected businesses get back up and running quickly
• Plans for the government to meet the immediate costs of emergency accommodation for families made homeless

Uh oh… we’ve seen this before. And economist F. A. Hayek saw it first in The Road to Serfdom.

Check out the full cartoon version here. We’re at the end of stage 9, and could be about to enter stage 10.

Don’t just blame the police or the politicians – we asked for this in the years following the Second World War when we started to put our trust in Prince Welfare (Ps 146:3).

Now, here’s the challenge: Can you explain what, if anything, Curtis and Leroy did that was dishonest in biblical terms?

If you think you can, reply via Facebook.

Curtis and Leroy saw an ad in a local newspaper: “Donkey for sale – £100.” They paid in cash, and the farmer agreed to deliver the animal the next day.

The next morning the farmer drove up and said, “Sorry, fellers, I have some bad news: the donkey died last night.”

Curtis and Leroy replied, “Well, then just give us our money back.”

“Can’t do that,” the farmer said. “I’ve spent it already.”

They said, “OK then, just bring us the carcass.”

The farmer asked, “What in the world are you gonna do with a dead donkey?”

Curtis said, “Don’t ask questions – just bring us the animal.” Bemused, the farmer agreed.

A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis and Leroy again. “What’d you do with that dead donkey?” he asked.

They said, “We raffled him off. We sold 500 tickets for £2 each, and made a profit of £898.”

The farmer said, “But the donkey was dead! Didn’t anyone complain?”

Leroy said, “Well, the bloke who won was upset. So we gave him his £2 back.”

Curtis and Leroy now work for the government – they’re overseeing the bailout programme.

It ought to be perfectly obvious that everyone should be permitted to work for whatever wages they want.

First, it ought to be obvious morally: Why should I not be allowed to sell my time at the rate of (for example) £2 per hour if that’s what I want to do?

Second, it ought to be obvious economically: no one is helped (except in the very short term) by transactions that take place at a rate above or below what the (free) market determines. Politicians who don’t understand this should go back to school. Actually, on second thoughts, maybe that’s not such a good idea. They should read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson instead.

The economic argument, in brief, is this: Minimum wage legislation simply ensures that anyone whose labour is worth less than the minimum wage will not (except for a short time, in unstable circumstances, and in a minority of cases) be employed at all. Consequently, it causes most harm to those very people (the disabled, asylum-seekers, the very poorest in society) whom it is ostensibly designed to protect.

Those charities and politicians who have spoken out against Mr Davies’ proposal need to actually go and meet some really poor people. I could introduce them to a guy called P___, for example, who told me just yesterday that he would quite happily work for a couple of quid an hour, cash-in-hand. I can guarantee that his life would be considerably improved by a job like that. I can also guarantee than no company on earth is going to pay him the minimum wage to do anything. So he’ll probably just carry on begging.

Here’s an extract from the blurb: “In education, in the media, in politics – the family, as designed by God, faces constant challenge – threatening the wellbeing of our children and the future of our society. There is an urgent need for Christians and churches to respond effectively. But how? Join us for a special day conference for church members and leaders as we examine the key issues and identify practical steps that we can take together.”

The statistics are approximate (compare Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, etc) but the general impression is, I’m afraid, accurate.

• Somewhere between 3000 and 5000 people were murdered during the Spanish inquisition. That’s bad. Really bad – killing innocent people out of misguided religious hatred.

Now let’s compare some other figures – this time where secularists are in the driving seat:

• Approximately 30 million people perished during WW1.
• Approaching 60 million people were killed in WW2. How many of those were innocent civilians? Who knows.
• Since 1973, approximately 45 million unborn children have been killed (sorry – “terminated”) in abortion clinics in the US. That’s over 3000 per day. The current daily figure for the UK is about 500 abortions per day – roughly the same in proportion to the size of the population.

Let’s look at why people do this.

One study in 1998 revealed some of the reasons given by women who seek abortion: 33.4% sought an abortion because they either didn’t want kids yet or didn’t want any more kids; 21.3% said they couldn’t afford a baby; 14.1% put the problem down to the state of the relationship or the partners aversion to children; 12.2% were “too young” (though not too young for sex, apparently) or faced pressure from others; and 10.8% claimed that a child would disrupt their education or career. No kidding.

Only 6.1% of abortions were carried out because of a risk to the health of the child of the mother.

So secularists in Britain and America conduct a Spanish Inquisition every couple of days because the kid is inconvenient.

You know how the games that kids play reflect the world as they see it? Kids living in cities line up all their cars nose-to-tail in a long line; kids raised in the countryside spread them out with room to drive somewhere; and so on.

Well, a few days ago I saw a kid from church playing with lego. He was making a little model village. The village had a total of three residents (one of whom was a police officer), two vehicles (one of which was a police car), and three (yes, three) CCTV cameras.

Out of the mouths of babes and infants.

The list of people who agree with this:

Recent Equalities legislation and its interpretation in the courts has led to several individuals who hold to mainstream Christian teaching being barred from different areas of public life and employment, running counter to our country’s long heritage of Freedom of Conscience, and creating a serious obstacle to the Christian community’s full and active involvement in the Big Society initiative.

We call on the Prime Minister to act decisively to address this situation, securing the change necessary to ensure that the law provides a basis for widespread involvement in serving society whilst properly upholding the dignity of every individual, including those who seek to live with integrity to Christian conscience and teaching.

… is growing by the minute as more and more people sign the petition here.

Apparently Mr Cameron believes that “Owen and Eunice Johns had been dealt with in an ‘appropriate way’.”

This isn’t the place to wade into the details of a debate that has already generated so many misunderstandings that it’s hard to know where to begin untangling them. I do, however, want to make one observation, and to ask one question.

The observation: A couple of generations ago these statements would have been unthinkable.

The question: What currently unthinkable statements do you think the British PM will be making in 2050?

We’re trying to live and work in accordance with our Christian faith … [our] guest house is not just our livelihood; it’s our home. We don’t expect everyone to agree with our beliefs, but we do want the freedom to be able to live by our own values under our own roof. Everyone benefits from those liberties, and everyone loses something when they’re watered down.

In handing down his judgment, the Judge recognised that the decision forces Mr and Mrs Bull “to act against [their] deeply and genuinely-held beliefs.”

The age of religious tolerance is the UK is quite clearly over.

Here’s the relevant clip (HT: Christian Institute):

This comment reveals that the writers of the programme are either ignorant of the facts or deliberately trying to provoke Bible-believing Christians. The simple truth is that no serious scholar of the Old Testament would make such a claim. Sure you’ll find wackos on the fringes, but not among the ranks of people who’ve actually bothered to try to understand what the text says. If such a reading were indeed “obvious” to a “secular reader,” a decent documentary would have immediately pointed out that the claim is also wrong, not merely “controversial.”

This documentary displays one of the classic signs of poor scholarship – misleading, marginal and widely-discredited claims presented as the scholarly orthodoxy in an attempt to be sensational and pull in the punters.

What a shame that the BBC so lacks confidence in its research and programme-making that it doubts its its ability to attract an audience with well-produced, high-quality, accurate material. People who know what they’re talking about (and who therefore deserve to be listened to) don’t resort to this sort of tabloid trash.

The court ruled that Mr Anthony Rollins “was wrongfully arrested, unlawfully detained and his human rights to free speech and religious liberty were infringed. The police had arrested him after receiving a 999 call. PC Bill, the arresting officer,

• failed to make further inquiries before arresting Mr Rollins;
• handcuffed Mr Rollins despite the fact that he was “calm and compliant”; and
• failed to interview Mr Rollins despite holding him at a police station for over three hours.

The court upheld the charges of wrongful arrest, unlawful imprisonment, assault and battery and infringement of Mr Rollins’ human rights. The judge further criticized PC Bill for “a lack of thoughtfulness,” described his demeanour in the court as negative and evasive, and said that his conduct was “incompatible with Mr Rollins’ human rights to free speech and religious liberty.”

I’m delighted to say that I’ve never met a police officer who has behaved in this appalling fashion. I hope I never do.

The song is catchy, though Josh himself would probably be the first to admit that the video production has the occasional glitch. I imagine it was produced on a tight budget – all the more reason why it would be great (not to mention funny – like Psalm 2:4) if it made it to the Christmas number one.

And if it gets 100,000 downloads, that’s probably what will happen. Nice.

You can read more about it at the Not Ashamed website.

When you’ve listened to it (once), click here to buy it on iTunes for a whopping 79p.

According to the BBC, “A radical cleric has promised 500,000 Pakistani Rupees (£3,700; $5,800) to anyone prepared to ‘finish her’.”

Asia Bibi

Read more on the BBC website.

Following today’s visit of the Not Ashamed delegation to 10 Downing Street, a healthy debate is raging on the BBC website under the heading, “Is Christianity under attack?”

Well, yes, of course it is. Like a school of goldfish attacking a whale. And guess what? Jesus ain’t frightened.

Today’s the day – when at 2 pm the Not Ashamed delegation will visit 10 Downing Street.

In case you’ve not done so, there’s still time to sign the declaration.

Welcome to the “Kafka-esque world of state child-snatching … the Frankenstein’s monster created by Parliament in the 1989 Children Act.”

Perhaps this isn’t surprising. What is surprising – no, actually, it’s outrageous – is the manner in which she lost it, in particular the conduct of Judge MacMillan, who passed the verdict.

Christian Concern reports that Judge Macmillan persistently failed to address Dr Matthews by her correct name, instead calling here “Dr Marshall”, and took a mere 15 minutes to deliver his verdict, “giving the appearance after a two day hearing that he had already written his judgment beforehand.”

With justice like that, who needs criminals?

Here’s an extract from the letter:

The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. [They] beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head, mocked me “He’s Jesus Christ”, spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. Every person spat on me and beat me. Also the prosecutor wrote something wrong against me.

View the letter in full here.

Find out who you MP is – and write to them – here.

If you think Jesus Christ is not good news for the United Kingdom; if you reckon that there is some other hope for our nation besides the proclamation of his gospel; if you believe that our government, employers and other leaders have no obligation before God to protect the freedom of Christians to live out the gospel in their daily lives and to promote the gospel of Christ; then you won’t be interested in the Not Ashamed declaration.

If, on the other hand, you believe what the Bible says about these things, you’ll want to sign the declaration, which you can do here.

For the record, here’s what the declaration says:

WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ is good news for our nation. He is the only true hope and solid foundation for our society.

WE CALL on government, employers and other leaders in our country to protect the freedom of Christians to participate in public life without compromising biblical teaching and to promote in our society the values that are revealed through Jesus Christ and that have so shaped our nation, for the good of all.

You can also like Not Ashamed on Facebook and follow Not Ashamed on Twitter.

They say some sensible things, for example: “Parents have the primary duty to ensure that their child receives a suitable education and home education is a well established alternative to school which allows them to fulfil that duty,” and, “The Government respects the right of parents to home educate their children.” View the response in full here.

But there’s one glaring howler that needs to be addressed briefly. The Government issues this warning: Homeschooling parents “must provide their child with an education that is suitable to the child’s age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs they may have.”

Is the government really confident that such an education is provided in state schools? Since when did the government’s educational performance give it the right to start giving advice to homeschooling families?

Perhaps the government believes that the best way to take account of children’s educational needs is to provide access to explicit sex websites while rarely talking to parents about sex ed lessons; to provide the morning-after pill on demand, to require faith schools to teach a position on human sexuality that conflicts with their religious beliefs, and to allow the Christian heritage of Britain’s primary schools to be eroded despite evidence that the Christian ethos of Church schools actually improves their academic standards.

I doubt many Christian homeschooling parents will be keen to take the advice of a government that regards this as a “suitable education.”

But a 2009 report by Prof David Jesson of the University of York found that faith schools promoted better community cohesion than secular schools.

Don’t the the evidence get in the way of a good bit of prejudice…

There’s a lot of things one would like to say to the pro-abortion lobby, but let’s try to focus narrowly (for now) on the matter in hand.

The logic of the RCOG’s report is alarming. Just look at the reasoning: such young children can’t feel pain (being “unconscious and sedated”), therefore there’s no reason to stop killing them (I understand “terminate the pregnancy” is the preferred phrase, but let barbarous things have barbarous names). Even if this research were accurate (and it’s disputed by other doctors), perhaps the RCOG would be kind enough to explain why the inability to feel pain should have become a criterion for allowing a child to be killed. After all, “a state of induced sleep” can easily be induced artificially. Would the RCOG apply the same logic in those cases? If not, why apply it here?

For the convenience of people living in or around Emmanuel (Southgate, North London), the data for MP’s in this (Enfield Southgate) and the surrounding constituencies can be accessed via the links below. All these MPs are standing for re-election in May.

And here’s a national map of Parliamentary constituencies.

But first, some caveats: Obviously anyone who decides how to vote solely on the basis of this information needs their head examined. Maybe the Christian Institute’s data should have covered other issues. Maybe their assessment of “morally right” or “morally wrong” is mistaken. There are dozens of other relevant factors. And, for the avoidance of all doubt, let me emphasise that all this data is in the public domain. There’s nothing here that you couldn’t find out some other way.

Having said all that, here goes:

David Burrowes (Con), Enfield Southgate

Theresa Villiers (Con), Chipping Barnet

Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dem), Hornsey and Wood Green

Andy Love (Lab), Edmonton

Joan Ryan (Lab), Enfield North

David Lammy (Lab), Tottenham

James Clappison (Con), Hertsmere

Here’s one interpretation of today’s events: The government was forced into a “humiliating U-turn” during negotiations with opposition parties, and abandoned this part of the Children, Schools and Families Bill in order to force the rest of it through in the “wash-up” – that’s the period just before the dissolution of Parliament when (sadly) some (though fortunately not all) politicians seem tempted to abandon the job they’re supposed to be doing (carefully and thoughtfully scrutinising proposed legislation, for example) and concentrate instead on getting re-elected.

That’s one way of looking at it, and it’s true enough as far as it goes.

Here’s another way:

The God who taught his people not to put their trust in princes has answered their prayers and spared them (and the rest of the country) for the time being from one small piece of oppressive lunacy flying in the direction of godly mums and dads who are just trying to bring up their kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The God who taught his people to pray “Your kingdom come” has extended his gracious rule an inch or so further into an area of British public life where the devil was about to get his own way (temporarily) by enlisting the support of the powers that be in pursuit of his (doomed) project to overthrow the rule of the risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.

The God who commands all the earth to pay homage to his exalted Son and worship him with all their heart and soul and mind and strength has mercifully delivered us from being yet more deeply mired in slavery to the idolatrous and self-destructive statism that will one day ruin this nation if her people don’t repent in a big way.

The God whose people are too often tempted to doubt that the hearts of kings are in his hands has gently reminded us that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.

One or two civil rulers who apparently do not realise that they, like the rest of us, are required to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ in every area of their lives, and who have therefore apparently forgotten that their job is to enact the laws that God commands, not to make up their own, have received a less-than-gentle reminder that there is no authority except that which God has established, and that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, and that anyone who thinks he is standing firm needs to take care that he doesn’t fall, and that the Lord drowned Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea, and that with an overflowing flood he will make an end of all his adversaries.

I haven’t checked the facts, but I’m suspicious about the claim that “one in 8 stores has closed down.” And it’s not true that the government has “forcably nationalized all major banks on the island.” Just some bits of some of them. So far. But that aside, the prediction of short-term national decline is probably fairly accurate.

But he’s dead wrong about the solution. Our hope does not lie “in small parties … like the English Defense League.” Pass the band-aids, I’ve got gangrene.

Bizarrely, Mishin is simultaneously too pessimistic and too optimistic. Too pessimistic if he thinks that the present decline is terminal, and too optimistic if he thinks that mere politics can do anything to halt the slide.

The only hope for this nation – like any other nation – is the gospel of Christ. Any nation that refuses to worship the LORD of Hosts will, sooner or later, be brought down to the dust by the God who said, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:12).

So hear the word of the LORD:

3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God. (Psalm 146:3-5)

And:

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. (Proverbs 14:34)

At the same time, we should remember that the true test of Christian integrity comes not when we need to stand against those who hate us, but when we need to challenge our friends. It’s one thing to confront the unbelieving world, whose opinion of us we have rightly learned to disregard. It’s another matter to expose deceit and ungodliness among those close to us, whose good opinion we may be tempted to covet just a little too much.

After all, generations of wicked Israelites managed to summon up contempt for the Pagan nations of the world. But Phinehas received a covenant of eternal priesthood when he slayed the fornicator within the camp (Numbers 25), and the Levites were set apart for Temple service because they put to death their idolatrous brothers (Exodus 32).

The true test of character for an evangelical leader is not public, but private. Frankly, if doesn’t take much to stand up to the predictable and yawn-inducing hostility of the mainstream press, since at this point his Christian friends (his real audience?) can be relied upon to cheer from the sidelines. But will he have the courage to expose the hidden deceit of behind-the-scenes church politics, when to do so may cost him friends (and preferment) he really values?

This is something we in the UK should be worried about, says Warner. For ‘our rulers subscribe to the same tyrannical statist philosophy’ that underlies state opposition to homeschooling in Germany. Whether or not we happen to be homeschoolers – or for that matter, whether or not we even have children – all of us ought to be share the Americans’ concern about ‘the creeping totalitarianism that has engulfed Europe.’

‘Children are being nationalised,’ claims Warner. The British government’s most recent attempt came in the shape of the Badman Report. After that, they might try just about anything.

If this blog had a category called ‘Shameless Appeals,’ I might just think to mention this…

Well, one and a half cheers.

The problem with the Pope’s statement is the reasoning on which it is based. In his view, the bill is bad because it violates ‘natural law’ and therefore compromises the freedoms of ‘religious communities.’ But the real problem with the the bill is that it violates the word of God and compromises the right of Jesus Christ to be proclaimed as the King of the whole earth.

Ironically, the Pope’s reasoning places him squarely in the camp of the liberals he is attempting to oppose. When he says that the proposed legislation ‘violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded,’ he sounds indistinguishable from the Government Equalities Office spokesman who declared, ‘everyone should have a fair chance in life and not be discriminated against.’

So at first glance the Pope looks like he’s standing against the government by defending the gospel; while in fact he’s standing alongside them by defending ‘equality’, and merely claiming that he’s got a better idea of how to achieve it. This was spotted by a sharp-eyed British official, who pointed out that ‘the Pope acknowledges our country’s firm commitment to equality for all members of society.’ So there we are – we all agree really, and the Pope should just be reasonable and stop complaining.

To defend the gospel on the ground that it secures other values (such as ‘equality’ defined in terms upon which we’re all supposed to be able to agree) in effect turns those values into our gospel, transforming the Lordship of Jesus Christ into a means designed to secure some other end. We should defend the gospel on the grounds that it is true (since Jesus is, in fact, Lord), not because a consistent liberal ought to like it.

T. S. Eliot thought not:

The World is trying to experiment with attempting to form a civilised but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilisation, and save the world from suicide. (Quoted in P. J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power, p. 217)

Despite the government’s recent reassurances, I’m still troubled – and for several reasons. Here are just a couple of them.

First, the Badman proposals represent an inversion of the proper relationship between parents and the state. At present, parents have the right to bring up their children in accordance with their own religious and ideological convictions. Parents can, if they choose, delegate some aspects of this (formal education, for example) to the state, but the state has no a priori rights in this area. The state only becomes involved if the parents give them the authority to do so. The Badman proposals imply a reversal of this: parents would need the state’s approval to educate their own children, not vice versa.

Second, the Badman proposals will, if adopted, establish principles that will extend to every other area of family life, not just formal education. All the arguments by which Badman seeks to justify his proposals in the area of education (the ‘welfare’ argument; the ‘quality’ argument; and so on) would apply no less to the less formal aspects of childrearing. In other words, it’s not just home-educating families that should be worried.

I’m not in the habit of making predictions, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception. I predict that if Badman’s proposals are adopted then within 10 years someone will propose that all families should be subject to ’safeguards’ similar to those that are currently being proposed only in respect of home-educating families. After all, children who attend state school are in danger of ‘poor quality parenting’ in the evenings, right? And shouldn’t the government ‘protect’ all children?

Maybe the Right Hon. James Hacker spoke better than he knew… beginning at about 6 minutes, 4 seconds.

Sorry.

Let me just tidy up the loose ends. Shouldn’t take a moment. Here goes.

The fact that the BHA accidentally picked two Christian kids to front their latest advertising campaign does not, strictly speaking, undermine the logical coherence of the BHA’s stance. To address that question, you’d have to point out a bunch of other obvious things. Like this:

1. Atheism is plainly a religious position, since it makes substantive claims about facts materially significant for religious people, such as the affirmation, ‘There is (probably?) no God’.

2. As a religious commitment, therefore, atheism falls by its own attempted critique of religious one-sidedness, since atheism, no less that Christianity, is one-sided on the question of religion.

3. Another way of saying the same thing: there is no such thing as ‘legitimate neutrality’ on any morally significant question. If you don’t believe me, imagine what might happen to a historian who claimed to be ‘neutral’ on the question of whether the Holocaust took place. People (and, amazingly, there have been some) who attempt such ludicrous equivocation soon discover that this is one knife-edge on which it’s pretty hard to remain balanced.

However, their most recent campaign has committed something of an own-goal. It’s one that just goes to show (to the eyes of faith) that the Lord is both (a) utterly sovereign; and (b) blessed (if that’s the right word) with a great sense of humour.

The poster in question pictures two happy, bouncy kids, and declares, ‘Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.’ Presumably this is intended as a blow against the tendency of Christian parents to bring their kids up to worship the one living and true God rather than to bow before the idolatrous false deity of humanism.

Unfortunately (for the BHA), the two (happy, bouncy, smiling) kids they picked ‘just happened’ to be the children of Brad Mason, a Christian who plays drums for the well-known Christian rock musician Noel Richards.

Oops.

It’s like this: Ruth ‘just happened’ to find herself in Boaz’s field (Ruth 2:3); David ‘just happened’ to see a woman bathing (1 Samuel 11:2); an arrow fired at random ‘just happened’ to find the chink in the armour of the King of Israel (1 Kings 22:34); and the two kids chosen by the BHA to demonstrate how happy we can all be without God ‘just happened’ to be perfectly happy with him.

Was I being a bit harsh on San Diego County? After all, even if the State has no right to interfere in this case, there are of course some actions that Caesar ought to prohibit. And, moreover, merely attaching the slogan ‘religious’ to an action is not enough the establish that the State should keep its nose out. The ritual killings of young children that have been uncovered sporadically in the UK in recent years are murder, pure and simple; invoking ‘religion’ as an excuse, and then insisting that the State should not regulate religious expression, doesn’t get the murderers off the hook.

But this exposes the crucial underlying issue. At some point we have to decide what behaviours the State does have the right (and therefore the responsibility and authority) to prohibit, and what behaviours it does not. This in turn requires them to outline and justify the basis for the decision so made.

For more on that, you could do far worse than to look here.

Isn’t there a song about this somewhere? Land of the free and home of the brave, or something?

This one could run and run. Some initial thoughts:

Tyrany of this kind is inevitable as soon as the State starts thinking that freedom of religion is something that it needs to establish rather than something that is simply beyond its remit. For once the State takes it into its head proactively to ‘establish’ religious freedoms (rather than to simply keep its nose out), it always needs to place definitional boundaries around the freedoms so established (after all, we don’t want people to just do anything, right?). You can do this, but you can’t do that. This in turn means that we citizens now have to pass ‘tests’ or apply for ‘permission’ to obtain freedoms we once took from granted.

Furthermore, since administering this kind of system obviously takes time and costs money, these ‘freedoms’ tend to be given in the form of ‘licences’ for which citizens must pay. As in the above case, where San Diego County (yup, you heard right) want to charge this couple tens of thousands of dollars for a ‘Major Use Permit’ so that they can read the Bible with some friends in the comfort of their own home.

By objecting to this kind of nonsense, we’re not undermining the biblical insistence that certain acts of religious worship are right and others wrong. But the mistake of many modern States is to assume that (a) they, and not someone else, get to set the rules; and (b) they have the right to administer sanctions for disobedience. God will impose sanctions for misuse of religious freedom on the Last Day. Perhaps the church should do so ahead of time. But whatever gave Caesar the idea that the church needs his permission to worship her Head?

Good question.

There’s a lot that could be said (and, indeed, has been written) on this subject. See for example John Owen, Sermons to the Nation (Works, vol. 8). But here’s one (brief, cursory, incomplete) way of looking at it.

The Bible teaches that God delegates authority to certain categories of people (civil rulers, fathers, husbands, ministers) which is to be exercised prayerfully, in love and in accordance with his word over other groups of people (citizens, children, wives, believers).

Sadly, most of the time this authority is exercised in a manner contrary to the word of God. Either responsibility is abrogated, which leads to anarchy; or it is over-extended, exercised in areas beyond the remit God has given, which is tyranny.

Examples of the former would include a father failing to teach his children about Christ from the Scriptures, a husband too lazy to work to provide for his wife, and a minister too preoccupied with golf and cream teas to devote himself to the ministry of the word and prayer.

Examples of the latter would include a father demanding that his children get up at 4am to clean the house while he lounges around in bed until midday, a husband beating his wife for burning his toast, and a minister threatening to excommunicate church members who failed to attend church every day of the week.

The latter failure (i.e. tyranny) is also exhibited when a government places on its citizens requirements which the Bible gives it no right to impose. That, I’m afraid, is where most modern governments go wrong. They try to do too much – for example, creating a database of all citizens’ emails and phone calls.

Now, here’s the key thing (for our present purposes, at least). Since God has not authorised governments to do this (and lots of other things they try to do as well), he will not equip them to it competently. The inefficiencies and failures of many modern government projects are thus signs from God that they’re trying to do stuff they have neither the right nor (therefore) the ability to pull off. They should concentrate on doing what the Bible tells them to do (see for example Romans 13) and leave saving the world to The Expert.

‘Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.  I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no saviour,’ … declares the LORD. (Isaiah 43:10-12)

Then, this morning, we were woken with an update on the proposed ‘Big Brother database’. The plan was announced last year, and is still being pushed forward. The government proposes to hold ‘details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public’ as part of the fight against terrorism. The content of these communications are not to be recorded, we are told; just their length, number and so on.

Here’s my prediction:

The plan probably won’t go ahead at all – at least, not for a while. Let’s face it, the Home Office, which would apparently have final responsibility for the scheme, has suffered a few dents to its credibility in recent weeks. The Home Secretary has a few other things to be concerned about right now.

But if it does get the green light, here’s how it’ll pan out:

1. The plan will cost far more then the original estimates. (Just to remind you, the cost of GCHQ’s proposal to move its computer systems from one building to another escalated from an original estimate of £20M to a final cost of around £300M.)

2. The promise not to record the content of the communications will be broken within a decade – if not by this government then by one of its successors.

3. Within the same period of time there will be a serious breach of security, resulting in a vast stash of data being left in a brown envelope in a London Gentlemen’s Club. Or something.

A bit like this.

Commentators left and right have been queueing up to gripe at Freddie’s ‘greed’, and Harriet has jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet and an almighty great thump.

Here’s what our Dep MP says:

The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. It might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in.

Check out the logic here: Irrespective of whether Goodwin is legally entitled to keep his pension, this state of affairs ‘will not be accepted’ on the grounds that ‘the Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable’. This, we are told, is ‘where the government steps in’ – not to enforce the law, but to break it (or at least bend it) at the whim of the PM.

Feeling uncomfortable yet?

On an unrelated note, Gordon Brown is out of the country this week, addressing the US Congress. Guess who steps in as acting PM in his absence?

Anyway, back to (deputy PM) Harriet Harman – let’s have a little biblical light on the subject:

You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. (Deuteronomy 1:17)

You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. (Exodus 23:2)

You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice (Exodus 23:2)

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour. (Leviticus 19:15)

Huh.