After an hiatus – time to take stock again

I have been neglecting this blog for a while now. The reasons are legion, ranging from lack of physical wellbeing to family commitments to intellectual ennui and beyond. But I was surprised when I logged on a few days ago to discover that a steady stream of international viewers still visits my musings, and that my other online publications such as academic articles and books receive ongoing attention and downloads. So although I may have retired from the world the world still takes note of me, surely an existential encouragement! I visibly exist online, therefore I am…

I have dedicated my blog over the years to a Christian, especially Pentecostal, perspective on things, while the Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump fascinated my iconoclastic soul and drew me into the world of socio-political analysis. My inner hippy (and Christian prophetic convictions) rejoiced in the riling and subversion of an until then complacent academic/media/celebrity/political establishment with its quasi-religious “incontestable” narrative consciously tailored to promote a single view of “the truth.” Highlights of this continuing subversive trend for me include:

• Elon Musk’s pragmatic approach to business and innovation (no corporate shibboleth goes ignored) and of course his purchase of Twitter and the subsequent exposure to public scrutiny of its inner workings, bias and complicity with government agencies. Many are urging him to add Facebook and Google to his stock. Imagine the burning of evidence that would take place before that transpired. And, guess what? He went overnight from all round good guy to the devil incarnate among the raucous voices of the establishment. Go, Elon, you South African boy!

• The installation of a Republican majority in Congress and its new focus on investigating “progressive” misdemeanours and narrative-creation. Placing the full 40 000 hours of video footage of the Jan 6^th “insurrection” in the hands of a fearless journalist just yesterday began to bear its first fruit as unedited clips showed exactly what the events were around the “killing” of a Capitol policeman and the movement of hordes of Americans respectfully through the corridors of the building, amiably conducted by Capitol security. Sufficient to say none of it matched the narrative promoted by the previous bunch and their media symbionts, supported by highly selective and edited video clips. Watch this space.

• Donald Trump still lives rent-free in the heads of so many. Nothing negative occurs without him receiving blame, although he inevitably has to share the spotlight of blame with “racism”. He of course revels in this, I suspect him of having a wicked sense of humour.

• The vindication of so many “conspiracy theories”. Yes, the Covid virus probably did originate in a biochemical lab used in producing bio-weapons. Yes, the Hunter Biden laptop provided authentic information on the sins of the father and of the son. Yes, contracting and surviving Covid does provide natural immunity. Indeed, it is even more reliable than vaccines. Yes, forced shutdowns and closures were of little effect, if any, as were masks and mask mandates and social isolation rules. Indeed, nations and states that avoided imposing them thrived, both medically and especially economically. School closures were as unnecessary and have been devastating to an entire generation of children and young people. And so the list goes on.

Pressure to conformity

Ever disconcerting are the new and intensifying government pressures toward ideological conformity, and their ominous implication for practising Christians who base their lives and thinking on a Biblical worldview. Judaeo-Christian thinking, living and commentary is the new heresy, and the imposition of anathemas by secular authorities becoming ever more punitive.

• Dissenters from the new orthodoxy, the LGBT+ narrative, WILL be burned at the stake publicly, cancelled. One is today watching reruns of the mediaeval Inquisition and the French Reign of Terror, not to mention the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It’s religious.

• A few honest journalists have admitted that they supported the anathemising of promoters of the now vindicated “conspiracy theories” because they were “right wing talking points.” The initial advocates of the Prevent Initiative in UK educational institutions against indoctrination of young people with terrorist ideologies, now admit that the Initiative over-emphasises the dangers of Right Wing Extremism (largely non-existent) over those of Islamic Fundamentalism, (which has been behind more than 90% of violent terrorism world-wide in the last three decades.) I sat through one of their sessions at a seminary in the UK some years ago and noted precisely that. The man who blew up a train was “mentally troubled”, the White schoolboy who might one day take a flare to a football game was a major terrorist threat! You can’t make these things up…

• Justice and law enforcement agencies in the USA and many other countries now tend to include committed Christians and vocal anti-abortionists as “terrorism” dangers from the Right Wing. It appears that to be a practicing Christian and/or holding conservative political beliefs and values will mark one as Right Wing, which is BAD, extremist and promoting terrorism. Parents opposing intrusive the political policies of secular school boards have also been so indicated by the Department of Justice.

Below: Arrest of Christian praying silently the vicinity of an abortion clinic – and forcible removal and arrest of a UK street preacher for outlining the Biblical view of marriage

• Folk have been arrested for praying quietly anywhere near abortion clinics. Street preachers ditto for merely reading or proclaiming texts from the Bible which simply state the Judaeo-Christian sexual ethic. Blasphemy against Christianity receives no condemnation, while the ultra-sensitive blasphemy charges of Muslims receive full support. A University in the USA recently retired a lecturer for not considering such charges from a Muslim student, an action affirmed by a subsequent hearing which stated baldly that the religious sensitivities of the Muslim student superseded the requirements of academic rigour and objectivity. (Replace “Muslim” with “Christian” in that statement and see how well that goes down!) Where is “Je suis Charlie” now?

Enforced conformity:

The implacable insistence on compliance with the diktats of governments with regard to Covid lockdowns, closures and social distancing rules – many of which were patently ridiculous – and the immediate response to and punishment of the slightest infringement is seen by many as a trial-run for wider and deeper intrusions into public life and personal freedoms by increasingly authoritarian, supposedly democratic, governments.

The apparent enthusiasm among many politicians (of all stripes) for embarking on a “hot” war against Russia and China (there is no other way to attribute the actions of the Biden administration) could be regarded as their enthusiasm for a home front situation where dissent from the state could be prosecuted as treason in a time of war. A thirst for ever more control over the populace.

Increased policing of private citizens’ language, social media usage, interactions with government agencies, and a host of otherwise pretty normal activities, demonstrates a growing crack-down on dissent.

Dissent from the absurdity of “2 + 2 = 5 if the state says so” now incurs increasingly severe reaction. Several simple matter-of-fact statements can now attract massive penalties, such as:

• Human beings consist of only two sexes (like all other mammalian species.)
• Males cannot get pregnant nor suffer the menses;
• The male rectum was not made for a penis to penetrate;
• A man is not a woman because he says so, nor a woman a man;
• Regardless of all physical interventions and mental assertions, a person claiming to now be of the opposite sex nevertheless retains the DNA of their birth-sex in very cell of their body;
• Fully biological men cannot be housed in women’s medical, penal or shelter facilities without danger to the female residents;
• Biological men participating in women’s sports have a natural and unfair physical advantage
• What a woman is, is not complex and difficult to define (note this amazing statement by a women selected for appointment to the US supreme court precisely for being an easily-defined woman…)
• All humans are born equal
• It’s OK to be White, Christian, straight, conservative, or male…
• Etc .

This type of speech and thought control is already dealing out devastation to private lives, professions and careers, and to the practice of modern science in every discipline from the humanities to the physical sciences. Teachers, lecturers and preachers in particular are suffering the ever-more-fervent wrath of the authorities for the slightest dissent from or infringement of the assertions of the new absurd belief system. As are parents, performers and artists. Comedians and academics alike live increasingly in fear of “cancellation” and the associated termination of employment, with self-censoring in educational institutions and entertainment now reaching alarming levels. A simple attribution of the “-ist”, “-phobic” and/or “hate” labels against a person spells the end of careers and professions, and who knows when it will eventually imply a death sentence? A new Reign of Terror has been established in the “free and democratic” West.

Following Jesus Christ while living in unexpectedly perilous times for the faithful.

Simply to maintain being a Christian, and using normal Christian speech and doing normal Christian things, is clearly a threat to increasingly authoritarian state power. When those powers seek to regulate even our thoughts, and to programme our children with their absurdities to the extent that they turn against their parents, ever greater courage is required of us. We can hunker down and hope it will all flow over our heads, hoping no-one will notice. But evil power-holders will sniff out every trace of dissent, much like the forces of the Inquisition in late mediaeval times. Throughout the ages Christians have endured intensive and bitter hate and persecution for dissents such as dissent from publicly acknowledging the emperor’s divine right (later the Pope’s) or refusing to baptise their children or take oaths in the market place. Mildest critique of church dogma or state diktat would bring immediate and severe response…

As an anthropologist (F E Manning in a collection edited by S D Glazier in 1980 “Perspectives on Pentecostalism”) stated in his review of Pentecostalism in the Central American and Caribbean region in the 1970’s: Authoritarian movements act against Pentecostal Christians primarily because they refuse to bow the knee to the party, state or its dogma and idols, blatantly stating that they bow the knee only to one Lord, Jesus Christ. They are then stigmatised by the new elite as lackeys of capitalism, colonialists, right-wingers etc.

Like Elijah, Daniel, Jeremiah, John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth himself, such persons “trouble the king” and are not worthy even of life….

How firm and steadfast can you stand against the ever more permeating demands to conformity with powers and views other than those of your Lord? What price will you pay?

The thrush and the monkey

The end of a nest

We currently live in a quiet complex on an escarpment overlooking the city of Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. Across the road from us and along the hills sweeps a vista of pine, eucalyptus and wattle plantations, and behind us is a tangle of dense local bush typical of the KwaZulu-Natal coastal belt. Bird and animal life abounds, and our outdoors resonates with their calls, cries and wails.

Since we have no pets in the complex, the birds interact with us without fear of cats, and we have lately been thrilled to play host to a pair of cape thrush who built their nest and hatched their chicks on the top of a pillar just 10 feet from where we usually sit for our tea and meals on the verandah.

Cape Thrush

But at seven o’clock one sunny morning we were roused by the sound of loud despairing cries of avian alarm: a troop of vervet monkeys, some two-dozen strong, were undertaking  one of their regular depredations upon the abode of humanity, stealing whatever they could lay their hands on, wantonly destroying fruit and blossoms and plants – and the interior of your home if they can find a way in. And on this occasion, destroying the painstaking dedication of the our thrushes by robbing their nest of its chicks.

Vervet Monkeys

Vervet monkeys are a protected species, a fact which I for one cannot get my head around. Since we are too near an urban area for their natural predator, the leopard, to roam and control their numbers, their population is booming, and I have yet to discover what good they are to man or beast. I think maybe the odd crested eagle enjoys their young from time to time, good for them! Where I grew up in Durban they were destructive pests, and now further inland here in Pietermaritzburg they are no different. In a game park one might possibly consider them cute – until they raid your camp or chalet – but around the suburbs they deserve every discouragement they can get, including a good dose of lead. The hard labour of a pair of beautiful and useful pest-controlling garden birds was brought to a savage end by what can only be termed vicious and useless drones… So dangerous can they be that if they bite you (and the large bulls will do so readily) you face all the joys and agonies of the treatment for potential rabies, a disease endemic among them. Deadly, destructive and poisonous, one does wonder why the Creator bothered.

And how we miss the thrush, who so cheerfully and musically laboured day by day to bring their offspring into our world to make it a better and more beautiful place.

Thrush and monkey in the world of humans

What took place here was a cameo of what happens regularly in the human realm. There are makers and there are breakers, those who labour, build, contribute and aspire to thrive, and those who live off them with no contribution except to take away, steal and destroy. Examples of this are legion: in politics, taxpayers and those who live freely off their taxes; in our places of employment, hard workers and then the free-loaders and suckers-up; in our churches the dedicated and hard working and then those who ride on the back of their efforts to exploit and lord it over them. Truly, the monkeys among us seem to enjoy a great free ride while the hard-working are must repeatedly, as Kipling says, stoop and rebuild what the fools and knaves have destroyed, and that perhaps with only poor and broken tools.

But in the human realm, peopled as it is by creatures who transcend the world of mere instinct-driven beasts, the scenarios may be even more nuanced. We have created and we maintain social dynamics in which the creative, aspirational and worthy can readily become targets of intolerance and hatred simply because they are different. Children demonstrate this brutally in one of the most challenging living-spaces in the human sphere: the children’s playground and school classroom. The child who is different has a target painted on their forehead… Every social space is dominated by a particular constructed narrative – which becomes an implacable, brutal, unbending and savage tyranny. Do not be the one to break or threaten that pattern, shoot the holy cow or fail to reverence its all-important shibboleths. Retribution will be swift, harsh and implacable, you will most certainly pay for it. Ask Socrates, Jesus, Amos, Jeremiah, and a host of other social non-conformists, critics and influencers across the nations and ages.

The effect of this culling tendency, as Plato noted, is that the human realm eventually becomes a realm ruled and dominated by the mediocre, the incompetent, the mob, the parasite, and the breaker. It is their harsh rule that dominates, and you buck their will at your peril. The demagogues who aim and claim to lead them ensure that none may rise above their own social and intellectual limitations. The mob polices itself, like a lawnmower it cuts down every blade that dares raise itself above its peers. They will cultivate and tolerate the productive only as long as, like the monkeys, they can plunder them at their will and exploit them to their own advantage. Conformity and the conventional dominate human discourse as harsh, implacable and unforgiving masters.

This type of tyranny, a dominating narrative that tolerates no subversion or even hint of critique has been described in convincing detail by Orwell in his classic novel, 1984. At its most intense it not only excludes by a natural social process those who dissent, it eventually actively regiments and polices them, spies on them, smells them out and eradicates them. Not only is every aspect of their their behaviour controlled, but even their thoughts and words must be brought under the brutal oversight of big brother, into Right Think and Correct Speak.

Try today to be a conservative scholar or invited speaker on any Western university campus – as I write this Ann Coulter has again provoked the woke and unthinking mob at UC Berkley. Every tool in the book, from administrative stone-walling to activist violence, is employed to prevent a dissenting voice from being given air, by any and all means possible. Endeavour to innocuously research the shibboleths of the “alphabet people”, the LGBTxxxx activists, by means of responsible empirical methodology and see how long your tenure, supervision or publication will be tolerated and how swift will be your demise in the world of academic “credibility.” And speak not of the unmentionables who dare question “climate science.” Enter politics without having paid your dues to the political system and its media overlords, especially if you have made your own way in the world through the work of your own hands and not by patronage or exploitation of the tax-paying sheep. All hell breaks loose – there are some very notorious names round the world today who are the targets of the outrage (often manufactured) of those who manage the present established narrative held precious by the Swamp, the media, the celebrity corps, and academia.

Conformity to the established paradigm and narrative, embracing the limitations of the conventional and at all costs never making waves – this is the only way to remain accepted and useful. Do the other thing at your peril.

In this my retirement and my last days, viewing mankind through my usual cynical glasses, I find it easy to imagine the monkeys always win, the poor old thrush will always lose. But then, thankfully, as children of the One True God who is also the only Just Judge, we don’t look to the human world for their “Well done, O good and faithful one-who-never-rocked-boat” but to the One to whom every knee will bow and tongue confess that He is Lord, the One who will say to those who pass through the hatred and tribulation the world confers on all who dare to be different: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

Man, monkeys really get my goat! Thank heavens for Jesus, else we would have no hope.

But how we miss the cheerful and hard-working thrush…

Asia Bibi, Mrs S., Lauren Southern and Tommy Robinson – religious provocation and blasphemy

 

Western nations have in recent decades removed most protections of Christianity, including those against the publication of blasphemous material. The nations once known as “Christendom” have permitted films, art and publications that present Christianity, the church(es) and Christ himself in the most destructive and hostile light. This has been done in the name of protecting the cherished human right called “the right to free expression and free speech.” While devout Christians have deplored this, the rulings of the courts against their objections have been implacable. God and religion enjoyed no protection from  pillory, provocation, slander, or any other device that humans felt free to express against them. There was no longer a notion of what blasphemy was or could be, and laws that forbade it were axed – Ireland being one of the last Western nations to do so.

This remained the case until large non-Christian migrant communities became established in the West, and the local notion of “religion” could no longer be equated solely and naturally with Christianity. The notion of “cultural and religious sensitivities” has come into play, often linked to parallel notions of race and minority rights. Where there was no cultural urge to protect the traditional religion of the ethnicities that formed the Western nations, the developing social narrative and sense of “social justice” raised concerns about protecting the religious sensitivities of the new burgeoning communities.

The Muslim riots against the Danish “Mohammed cartoons” and the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris both aroused the secular ire of the Europeans and these nations made it very clear that just as there was no dispensation to protect Christianity from so-called blasphemous attacks, there could be no special dispensation to protect other religions and religious figures from “free expression.” While the de facto situation may have changed considerably under the influence of those who wish to protect religious and cultural sensitivities, this reaction against religious assertion has remained very much the de jure case until recently – the law offered no religion any protection against blasphemy.

Enter Mrs S. of Vienna. In 2009 she held 2 seminars on Islam which reflected no more than the generally-accepted testimony of Islam itself, that Mohammed married a six year old girl (Aisha) whom he deflowered when she was nine. This was labelled or inferred by Mrs S. as being paedophilic behaviour, which by the laws of every Western nation it certainly would be today. The Vienna Regional Court convicted her of disparaging the Prophet Mohammed and she was fined. Her appeals to the Court of Appeals and Superior Court in Austria were rejected, and her final appeal, after 9 years of the marathon process, to the European Court of Human Rights evoked the following assessment and ruling in November 2018:

“We found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria….  that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

The ECHR effectively ruled that Mrs. S had blasphemed the prophet and religion of Islam, and was therefore guilty.

Crucial to understanding their ruling is that they agreed with the lower courts that (1) the religious feelings of others should be protected, (2) the information taught by Mrs S stirred up prejudice and (3) she had put at risk religious peace in Austria. It does not seem that at any point was it noted that the information on the Prophet’s sexual behaviour was historically accurate, as the best available witnesses can attest.

This is a long way beyond the sentiments of the populace and media in the wake of the riots over the Danish cartoons and the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Then there was a sense that “we are all Charlie” and that the secular European nations would not submit to the blackmail of violence when it came to freedom of expression. “You can kill us, but we will still maintain our right to mock your religion and prophet!”  The ECHR ruling has now declared such sentiments “not OK”, and although they refrained from labelling Mrs S’ seminar content “hate speech”, by ruling that religious sentiments (feelings) require protection by the law they have effectively declared it so – and therefore by implication so too are the cartoons of the Danish artist and Charlie Hebdo. “We are all Charlie!” = “We are all haters!”

Enter another Mrs, in this case the Pakistani Christian Mrs B. – Asia Bibi. After an equally long process in the courts of Pakistan, she was eventually acquitted of blasphemy against Islam and released after nine years in prison. Her original sin: drinking from a cup reserved for Muslim workers. Predictably a massive violent public reaction erupted and amid the subsequent riots Mrs B has been kept secluded to prevent her lynching – a murder demanded by the religious fanatics on the streets. She is seeking asylum in the West, and predictably finding this difficult. Indeed, the British government appears to have decided that allowing her asylum in the UK would create massive security and public safety concerns. They have not yet claimed that such a violent reaction would be justified because the religious sentiments of local Muslims would have clearly been violated, but it is not impossible to imagine some sage heads nodding and saying “She (Mrs B) went looking for it…” Other European governments have also preferred not to grasp this particular thistle.

Canadian cyber-journalist Lauren Southern was “moved on” by police in the UK for setting up a road-side stand in downtown Luton declaring that “Allah is gay.” When attempting to enter the UK again at a later date she was arrested (on the basis of anti-terrorism legislation) by Border Force in Calais and among the accusations against her was that she had distributed racist material in Luton and that her presence in the UK represented a “fundamental threat to the interests of society.” Activist Tommy Robinson was given short thrift by means of an immediate arrest and a rushed trial when accused of contempt of court for filming and commenting on members of a paedophilic rape gang as they entered a UK court. The gang members were all Muslims, and were being filmed by “regular” news outlets which (unlike Robinson) rarely mentioned that fact

Presenting art and even ostensibly historical  research that makes  assertions with regard to the sexual orientation or proclivities of Jesus of Nazareth are extremely unlikely to raise the concerns of immigration authorities or local courts anywhere in the world.  One could scarcely imagine ever being banned from any Western nation for setting up a stand or handing out pamphlets stating “Jesus is gay.” And filming and commenting outside a court on a case of perhaps a number of paedophile priests or British public servants – both of which groups have recently been accused of such – would certainly not see anyone rushed away in a police van and issued with a prison sentence within less than 12 hours. Certainly no Christian who has claimed that their religious sensitivities were offended by even the most bizarre representations of Jesus has in recent decades enjoyed the protection of the courts.

How did Western nations get to this point? Rape gangs of a specific culture and religion treated with utmost sensitivity, but not their victims. Thousands of young woman in the UK subjected to female genital mutilation within ethnic communities of a particular religion, with never a successful prosecution against offenders because the police claim such cases are “culturally nuanced.” Speakers and commentators barred from entering a nation for speaking of Islam in a manner which would raise nary an eyebrow if Christianity were their target? Are the adherents of one religion being treated with greater “sensitivity” than others? And if so, why? Because of a sense of social justice? Because criticism of non-Christian religions is racist? Or is it mere pragmatism: Christians are unlikely to disturb the public peace if their God and religion is pilloried – but this is not the case for the other religion. Is it all about keeping the peace? Because if it is, then one religion can overthrow cherished freedom of expression in scores of nations by merely the implicit threat of violence – the hecklers’ veto taken to the nth degree.

But this pragmatism does not come close to explaining an extension of the conundrum: the love affair of the “liberal” West with the religion and culture of Islam. There is not a Muslim nation that upholds the tenets of feminism and the LGBTQxyz lobby anywhere near the extent to which these have been successfully implemented in the West. Yet Western feminists and LGBTQxys’s march arm in arm with fundamentalist Muslims protesting the evils of the West…

Go figure: there is no neutral ground – the West turned its back on the God of its history, and instead of settling securely into a neutral religious stance have come to believe the incredible and declared Christianity pernicious and the imported the religion of peace and freedom.

As my kids would say: Duh!

Trump, Brexit, and a comfortable consensus questioned: the response of a newly-threatened establishment to “populist” influences

 

Some years ago I produced and published a paper for a Pentecostal conference and journal, titled “Questioning every consensus.”  The theme emerged from a study in my Theological College days of Walter Eichrodt’s fascinating distinction between the official leaders of Israel (the kings and priests) and their contemporaries, the charismatic leaders (Moses, the judges and seers, the early prophets and the classical prophets.)

For 1970’s Pentecostalism the challenge for my own studies lay in his description of the degeneration of nabism, the earlier prophets and prophetic bands who, instead of maintaining their radical freedom from the official political and religious powers of the day, were willingly co-opted and absorbed into the cohorts of royal prophets and official liturgical participants in the palaces and sanctuaries of South and North. The insights gained then were applied in my 1980’s thesis as a Pentecostal perspective on Moltmann’s argument for political theology. However, in my later study on the subversion of consensus my interest was, and remains today, on the radical freedom of the charismatically-endowed individual to stand in judgement over every consensus of the powerful.

 In 2017 we are presented with what is an unprecedented confrontation and subversion of a long-standing and hugely powerful social consensus, by what some condescendingly term “populist” dissent. This consensus is the ideological view of the world, of reality, of morality and of rationality that is maintained and often implacably policed and imposed by what can be termed left-leaning liberal secularism (for a certain value of “left” and a certain value of “liberal”.)

The consensus established and perpetuated:

To avoid misunderstanding, I do not believe that this consensus is the product of a conspiracy. Nor do I believe that it is subject to simplistic ethical analysis. However, purely as a phenomenon it can be dispassionately analysed as an entity of social power, a bloc of influential social groupings that have come to co-operate symbiotically in imposing and policing a particular set of beliefs and values on Western society, and which attempts to gain the assent of the wider global community to these beliefs. And as the Old Testament prophetic narratives indicated, power blocs become self-perpetuating  and even tyrannical – those who have power seek not only to impose it as widely upon others as they can, but also to protect and immunise it from every dissenter. For the academic, the intellectual – indeed, for the prophetic Christian and Christian community, such power blocs demand of us a coherent deconstruction.

The current consensus has been established and undergirded by three significant sectors of public influence: firstly, the large media organisations together with the academic and intellectual establishment that provide the “chattering classes”; secondly, the political establishment entrenched in places like London, Washington and Brussels; and thirdly, the world of celebrity entertainers and “stars”. These together have established and maintained their influence by constructing and imposing a vision of reality and its own set of “correct” values, and that by a diversity of means.

Three established powers, immune from serious subversion until today:

The power of the media is obvious, especially where the pen and the sword are at odds. Without the journalistic media, the academic media, and the entertaining media, the consensus could never have been established. Whilst taking refuge in the notion of freedom of the press and of expression, and piously maintaining the myth that their (or any) journalism and entertainment objectively represented “the truth” and “the facts”, they have established a monopoly over what issues and facts are publicised and how they should be interpreted. The political class in particular has recognised this, and generally played their game by courting the press, befriending the celebrities, watching their own popularity ratings, and ensuring they drifted only in the direction of the prevailing wind. Those who challenged the right and might of the media would soon feel its ire, and be effectively demonised or ridiculed out of serious public contention – examples being the Duchess of York (dubbed Duchess of Pork) and Nigel Farage (caricatured as racist, fascist, clown and idiot.) The academic class may have relied less on poplar journalism for its own correctness, but has maintained it through its own rigidly-monitored filter of approved tutorial material, the editorial boards of academic publications, and control over which views and their representatives may have access to schools and campuses. Campus policy set by both administrators and student bodies has also become a powerful enforcer of correctness.

The political establishment has developed its power by asserting ever-expanding and more intrusive government. The state has set itself up as the final ethical and intellectual arbiter of every aspect of public life, and increasingly too of the private and domestic sphere. In the absence or decline of any truly influential Christian institutions in Europe, the state has assumed the value-setting rights previously relegated to local communities, churches, family collectives and parents. Ever-increasing tomes of legislation seek to outlaw even the faintest vestiges of dissent or subversion of this consensus. While the democratically-elected arm of government still remains vulnerable to changes in the popular mood, the established unelected officialdom that fears no such vulnerability ruthlessly manages the consensus by regulation and enforcement.

The power of celebrity entertainers is the most obvious. They have become the unquestioned visual and moral arbiters of fashion, speech, behaviour, style, trends and every aspect of current public and personal values especially (but not exclusively) for younger people and children. Whom they approve is often unthinkingly accepted by the masses, whom they decry is beyond the pale and is deemed irredeemable, anathema forever. Those whom classical Greek philosophers feared as the greatest challenge to rational behaviour, and the Romans despised as disposable (deaths on stage in Rome were real!) have become not only the darlings of the world but also the authoritative arbiters of correct and incorrect, of cool and un-cool.

The consensus of values established by these three symbiotic partners has been ruthlessly maintained by depicting every challenge and challenger, criticism and critic, subversion and subverter as irrational, immoral, deluded and belligerent. Those who dare raise an explicit or implicit voice against it are condemned, ridiculed and marginalised: they are demonstrably racist, sexist, poorly educated, “populist” (when in the history of democracy did that become a bad word?) fascist, particularists, nationalists, anti-social, laughable idiots, contemptible and unethical, unworthy of even a back seat in the discourses of their enlightened betters. The public attitude toward them is taliored to be at best patronising, at worst violently rejective.

The subversion: a popular (not populist) revolt – or even worse, indifference:

In the UK and USA, in less than six months, local free democratic processes demonstrated the first major subversion or rejection of this confident consensus: against the counsel, threats, warnings and express wishes of the media establishment, the entertainers and the political elite, the common folk gave a loud raspberry and rude finger to the patronising powerful and voted for the unthinkable – Brexit and Donald J Trump. While the Brexit process provides its own fascination, for this reflection it is the Trump phenomenon that is most riveting.

Anti-idol Trump, like a number of “good” idols before him (Princess Diana and Nelson Mandela are good examples) cannot be discussed publicly with any real authenticity – the conversation is too emotionally-laden. Outside of his own close circle of acquaintances, all that is publically known of him is the image propagated by the three great powers. Apart from Breitbart and Fox, scarcely a major news outlet portrays anything other than the negative about him. Indeed, to the thoughtful nothing is more destructive of the credibility of journalistic media than the almost hysterical intensity with which they now rage against him, utilising every tool in the box and every possible occasion. Every celebrity occasion – Grammies, Baftas, Oscars, you name it – becomes a Trump-bashing fest faithfully reported in minutest detail by the press – except for 2017’s the dysfunctional Oscars! – along with the moral outrage of every establishment figure who finds something fresh in the man and his associatess to disgust them. To these vocal critics, the mere fact that he and his appointees maintain political and moral values contradictory of their consensus excludes them from both credibility and morality – it is now rational and moral to oppose and balk them by all means possible, including violence and law-breaking.

The real threat of Donald Trump to these powers, though, is not that he propounds a contrary ideological agenda to theirs. Reagan and Thatcher did the same, and while the powers were severely disapproving of their anti-progressive ways never did they “rage and imagine a vain thing” as they do today. The massive threat of Trump is that he simply does not need the three powers, he does not owe them anything, and he does not care for their values or their programmes – and outrageously rejoices in it, rubbing their noses in their ineffective opposition to hism progress. By winning the majority of electoral college votes (the US parallel to winning sufficient constituencies in the UK) he demonstrated that he need not genuflect to journalists, nor require the approval of even his own Party establishment, nor their funding, and that even the all-powerful celebrity lobby has its limits of influence. This is iconoclasm of the highest order –and from the point of view of the powerful, it simply has to be destroyed. That is the ultimate outcome of this fascinating confrontation: either Trump is destroyed, or his opponents stand unveiled as out-dated and powerless, emperors without clothes. Trump’s enemies are fighting not just for their own credibility but for their very survival.

And intense the battle is. The wisdom of Trump’s recent wilful provocation of the press can be debated, but love him or hate him, as POTUS they cannot ignore him. His tweets still reach more people in one minute than their professional news items will in days. The nature of his support is such that every line of outraged print and rhetoric against him increases sympathy and support for him and reinforces public scepticism of the powers. He has been slandered with all the usual labels heaped upon dissenters: fool, idiot, clown, racist, sexist, misogynist, cheat (Russian hackers), phony, danger to public security, divisive – and most recently: mentally disturbed, senile and megalomaniac. Celebrities and political opponents alike accuse his administration of being a new Nazi Reich, the Taliban in America (Whoopi Goldberg – does she know what the Taliban would do to a woman dressed as she does?) or up there with Stalin, Mao and Mugabe for evil – especially in his treatment of the media. The border with Mexico is the new Berlin Wall (ignoring the fact that the latter aimed to keep people in, not out) and his selection of cabinet members a contemptible set of plutocrats and/or political amateurs. He is a dangerous sword rattler who will provoke America’s enemies to even more radical action… His support for the only liberal democracy in the Middle East is provocative and sides with the bully Israel against the oppressed Palestinians. How dare such a man live, let alone rule!

While it is almost fun to watch the battle rage, what it has brought to light is ultimately more disturbing than anything else at issue: the effect of the unquestioned consensus upon the young people of the West. When University students need to be counselled for the grief and heartbreak they suffered at Trump’s election, when school children are prompted to declare “It makes me feel sad” when questioned about how Trump’s election makes them feel, when the streets are crammed with young protesters who imagine that there are no limits, legal or otherwise, to their valid public opposition and protest of this awful unethical person who must resisted and balked at all costs, despite being democratically elected – then there is something very rotten in the state. As a university lecturer I have long been aware of the total lack of critical awareness and deconstructive ability among students arriving for 1^st year studies. The restrictions of “correctness” placed on lecturers, course content and research are no assistance in enabling them to grow out of this. What recent research reveals, that in the UK almost 90% of university-based academics are politically and morally liberal, underlines the reality that most “intellectuals” are content with this tyranny. The recent phenomenon of the student councils themselves banishing from campus even the mildest critics of the consensus shows how deeply the unthinking appropriation of the agenda and values of the powers has permeated and rooted itself in the culture of young people. Truly Plato’s fears have been realised – a culture based on manipulated emotion and sentiment rather than on sound reason and rational debate will weaken the character and values of the young.

Prophetic dissent?

Trump is no Micaiah, Amos or Jeremiah, bravely exposing the brutal power of the kings, priests and royal prophets. Neither is he a Jesus, Paul, Luther or Wesley, who all took their principled stand whatever the cost. But what Trump has done, for good or ill, is strip the powers behind the common consensus of their cloak of unquestioned virtue, and demonstrate what every intellectual and true leader knows: power corrupts and tyrannises – but no human power has ever managed to do so interminably. Hopefully the Trump and Brexit phenomena will leave the three powers exposed for a length of time as the temporal aberrations they are – but it will also be a miracle if such powers can be resisted for long. Will Trump himself eventually capitulate and conform or bow out – or even be driven out? As a thinker, researcher, Christian and grand-parent, I can only hope for the vulnerability of the powers to intensify and persist. Certainly I can think of no journalist, entertainment celebrity or politician I could hold before my grandchildren as a role model. Not even Donald J Trump.

The limits of democracy: does the will of the majority always make sense?

Whatever has happened to democracy?

After the 2nd World War the consensus among the nations of the West was that the only hope for a stable world order to replace a society that had been devastated by the dictators, was a world where every citizen had a choice – a vote – in who would lead their nation and how it would be led. Until today there is still no greater and more apposite ideal, for who has more right to determine such things than the people themselves? Authoritarian or even benevolently paternalistic leaders will always be a risk to the freedom of peoples, regardless of how effective they might initially present themselves.

However, the progress of this democratic ideal, even in the so-called Developed World, has not been without tensions, contradictions, anomalies and even absurdities. The social development of the ideal has been influenced primarily by the juxtaposition in Western thinking of classical Greek philosophy (often considered “humanistic”) and Judaeo-Christian values and ideals. However, even in their own roots these two methodological systems demonstrated a critique of any absolutized democratic system. Plato (in the mouth of his main protagonist Socrates) was scathing in his evaluation of a system with which Athens of the 6th century BC had experimented, to its own military and moral ruin. He argued for a republic ruled by philosophers: professors and academics, in today’s language: a prospect too horrible to contemplate! And at the heart of the Judaeo-Christian worldview is the notion of a kingdom with a sovereign Ruler, namely God himself. The American Republic at its origin recognised this sovereignty, asserting itself as a nation of free men “under God”, and adopting coinage that still today claims “in God we trust.” Most of the non-socialist states that emerged in 20th century Europe initially included similar recognition of a higher power in their constitutions. Most modern secular states and constitutions have since abandoned such terminology and even in the USA it has become a controversial assertion.

Evidence that democracy does not always produce what it seems to offer:

The progress (or otherwise) of the democratic ideal within cultures that lacked this deeply entrenched Graeco-Judaeo-Christian Unterbau for doing philosophy, life and public affairs has further weakened confidence in its relevance. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” that dominated the Communist regions embraced it only dialectically, offering as a consistent whole at the same time both the sense of worth of every person, and the necessity (in the face of reactionary subversion) for the hand of a strong Party on the reigns of statehood. Old Africa hands noted that the winds of change that swept that continent during the decolonisation process merely offered “one man, one vote, once” – as coup d’états, one-party states, “messianic” dictatorships, civil wars, ethnic strife, famine and disease ravaged the continent for decades, with tens of millions suffering and dying while the modern infrastructure of the colonial period was reduced to tatters around them. The last two nations to engage in the democratic experiment in Africa, Zimbabwe and South Africa, have not escaped this. The democratic ideal can still be discerned, since in the last elections the demonstrably corrupt and incompetent leadership of both have each won the popular vote, evidence of the clear trend in Africa of voting one’s ethnicity and culture. The South Africa that rejoiced at the end of apartheid is now fingered as a probable failed state by most knowledgeable political scientists and economists, as its infrastructure deteriorates, the poor have little hope of advancement, and nigh on 50% of the GDP evaporates into private pockets.

The Arab Spring demonstrated a similar catastrophe. The younger, more modernised middle and professional classes attempted to replace tyranny with a Western-style democracy, but at polls either a huge majority of pre-modern peasantry (as in Egypt) or a proliferation of ethnic and religious factions brought such optimism to a shattering end. Egypt has played safe by reverting to military quasi-dictatorship, and many Libyans, Syrians and Iraqis may now consider the years under autocratic rule the good years – or least, better than the chaos they now suffer.

Some obvious absurdities now evident:

The crisis in Western democracies is different. The United States is feeling the uncertainties of an increasingly diverse electorate, with all the old assumptions being put to the test. Its present administration is straining the national fabric by pressing toward a welfare system similar to Europe, and equally attractive to migrants from less economically viable regions. However, in Europe the real limits of democracy are becoming evident on other grounds: what the democratic majority votes for is not always attainable, and indeed may even be patently absurd. In Greece the majority have voted that they had no national debt, that even if they do the debtors do not have to be paid, and that actually there is enough money in the kitty to resurrect earlier unsustainable levels of public spending. The new Greek leadership took their more realistic European creditors to task for not respecting this democratically-expressed conclusion of the Greek electorate. The harsh realities of the next few weeks seem about to demonstrate to the Greek electorate the absurdity of spending what you never had anyway, and then exercising your democratic vote to continue to do so without any of your own money in the bank. The UK electorate this week face something of this dilemma, with an plethora of anti-austerity parties soliciting the votes of those (probably here too the majority) who believe that a nation can spend what it does not have. Western populations are not accustomed to being told that they cannot have what their majority believes is rightfully theirs – indeed, they label the more realistic cool heads who advocate fiscal responsibility as “nasty”.

The absurdities of the will of the majority are nowhere more evident than in the public morality or value systems maintained by the majority of Western populations. In the UK the two socially most destructive and economically wasteful, yet nevertheless treasured “freedoms” of the individual, are the personal sexual freedoms attained in the sexual revolution, and the irresponsible recreational consumption of alcohol. Combined, these two cherished “rights” cost the exchequer (therefore the taxpayer) billions each year, imperil the physical, social, mental and psychological welfare, adjustment and development of the next generation, and further the direct and indirect abuse of millions of vulnerable children and women. Yet in the heart of the electorate there is no desire to control or replace them, or even critique them. As Plato notes, hoi polloi (the many) can usually be relied on to choose the immediate sensual pleasures of the moment, even at the expense of their own and their children’s future. The Romans cynically referred to this as “bread and circuses.” A (hopefully mythological) tale goes: A young child brings a kitten to class. The teacher asks the class how they will decide whether the kitten is a boy or a girl (biology class?) The answer: We’ll take a vote! Sadly, too many adults in our literate and educated Western population seem seriously to imagine that biological, economic, moral and existential absurdities are viable because the majority wish or choose it thus to be.

A Judaeo-Christian alternative:

As a human system of national and social government, there is no realistic humane alternative to democracy. However, the success of the democratic process will depend on the intelligent participation of a literate, discerning and modernised populace. Attempts to export and root it in any other social environment appear doomed to failure. Yet even the most developed populations have demonstrated that democracy pursued on a value-system where entertainers and demagogues are the most visible and influential role models, where domestic relationships are pursued as contracts rather than covenants, where personal rights, freedoms and pleasures – disguised as the “pursuit of happiness” – trump the responsibilities of marriage, parenthood, work ethic and civic responsibility, will sooner or later result in the patent absurdities of the expressed will of the majority ultimately intersecting with the harsh and unforgiving brick wall of reality.

Lord Sacks, retired Chief Rabbi in the UK, noted on BBC Radio 4 a few days ago: the Judaeo-Christian system, where goals, ideals, choices and human pursuits are governed by the great summary of the Law that insists on loving God intensely and loving the neighbour sacrificially, provides the best guarantee of a healthy and beneficial democratic system. As a Christian I would add: even our civic life and choices stand under the judgement of the Cross, where the God who “so loved us” demands of us sacrificial surrender to himself and also to the weal of every man, woman and child he has made. This is tough love, which might withhold the earnestly-desired immediate gratification of the present generation for the health, prosperity and blessing of a later. Not popular, but also not absurd.

Hope for those marginalised by the new church’s thought-police

There is a singular growth industry within Christian ranks in the West today: a multitude of committed Christian disciples whose contribution (indeed, perhaps even their presence) is neither required nor tolerated by a new leadership cohort – a cohort that is committed to imposing brand conformity on all Christian programmes and gatherings under their patronage. Possibly millions of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians have been implicitly or explicitly labelled as “incorrect”, an un-marketable commodity, weird and eccentric cousins that no contemporary “cool” church wants on the shop-floor of the new Christian emporia.

This host of the incorrigibly incorrect are unforgivably guilty of using standard evangelical language, now contemptuously dubbed “Christian-ese.” They speak, for instance, of “giving their testimony” or of singing “hymns” as opposed to “telling their story” or “singing (outdated) anthems.”

Their personal taste in Christian music and liturgical style is so far off the current radar of correctness that it is incompatible and irreconcilable with what the new leadership cohort imagines are the most effective styles and forms for today.

Their confident and assertive presentation of gospel truth is considered an affront to the gentility and sensitivity of the new “evangelists”, who wish to win a place for “faith” among “the faiths” by gentle consultation and non-assertive discussion, to offer a gradual and seamless transition from scepticism to belief within the context of a new “caring” community.

Their age or other lack of evidence of “cool” and “up-to-date” relegates them, like aging female TV newsreaders, to the shelf of goods no longer marketable, best kept out of sight and definitely out of mind.

Look closely, these marginalised hordes can be found everywhere. Some, of a similar temperament to my own, will be found on the margins kicking and screaming blue murder – but ignored, like the ancient relicts once kept in the attic because their senility was an embarrassment to the family. Others, more passive and probably more gracious, have simply accepted a role as non-participant observer, remaining in their local church because that is where their roots and memories are. Others have retired completely from the lists and simply never go to church anymore – or do so reluctantly, knowing that who they are and what they have to offer is, to the new leadership, as valuable as store rejects hidden in the darkest basements.

Brand conformity by exclusion:

The new standard-bearers of these dominant franchised brands of church and gospel have numerous tools for dealing with the horde of the unwanted. However, the most potent and the most common is the simple tool of exclusion: Keep them outside the door.

The most blatant form of exclusion is the blunt demand of the more authoritative of these new leaders: Have it my way, or choose the highway!  The criterion of this exclusion is often the so-called DNA of the local church – this is who we are, if you cannot fit in with our chosen DNA-profile, find somewhere where you can! This form of exclusion is non-negotiable, there is no appeal against it, you have to submit and conform if you wish to remain.

It is susceptible to the simplest of theological subversions, such as a straightforward reading of 1 Corinthians 12 and also 13 – however, this subversion has no chance of ever being given a hearing – these leaders make their assertions simply because they can.

One of the reasons why the new leaders can make such blunt statements is because of the new orthodoxy in selecting leadership cliques: surround yourself with like-minded people. This is a model taken from politics and business, and it successfully insulates the leader from uncomfortable questions and rational arguments. It also insulates them from any coherent opposition, which in Christian circles could be the presence or example of an alternative style and content in doing church. The development of such alternatives is snuffed out before birth, aborted by the process of exclusion. Like in the days of Ahab, surrounded as he was by his chosen and affirming prophets, the chance of “a prophet of a true deity” raising his voice before the august throne is reduced to nil. Diversity of opinions, like diversity of styles, is unsought and unappreciated.

One of the best theological subversions of this blatantly abusive leadership practice is the military paradigm evoked in the Scriptures: a military leader has to work with the material given to them. Authentic Christian leadership is more likely to develop in a “Dirty Dozen” context than in the insulated and non-challenging context of a circle of yes-men. Squad and platoon leaders can rarely hand-pick their own men, they have to make do with those allocated to their leadership by higher powers.

Exclusion operates in the public context as well: those who reveal a taste for or proficiency in any style of Christian music or hymnody that cannot be embraced under the heading “contemporary worship” will receive no encouragement to take part in the public music and song of a “new” church. Allegiance to this paradigm is total, non-negotiable, and indeed unthinkable. Diversity in music style simply will not be tolerated. Not even the smallest crumbs of an alternative will ever be found under this table – musical triumphalism is complete. The same is true of preaching styles and content – kerygma has been replaced by at best didaskalia, at worst by conversational trivia. The sad result of this is the implicit message that actually, this type of stuff is all that the Christian church has to offer – Christian music is this, and this alone; Christian preaching is this, and this alone.

This criterion for exclusion does not even need to be theologically subverted – any credible phenomenology of society reveals it for the scam it is. Attendance by the thousands at the secular concerts of Andre Rieu and the gospel gatherings of the Gaithers; the serried ranks of hymn-singers at the Royal Albert Hall for the “Hymns of Praise” celebration (where the nations favourite hymn is identified as – surprise, surprise – “How Great Thou Art” for the umpteenth time); multiple millions that still stream to Country Music festivals around the world; wall-to-wall crowds at the Proms and the overflow venues, and at the great European classical music performances in the majestic venues of the great cities – all of these testify to a contemporary society and culture that has a much wider taste in music and musical styles than is presently tolerated in the contemporary evangelical or Pentecostal church. Indeed, stroll though any major city today and the loudest and least tasteful music will predictably emanate from a night-club or a Pentecostal church.

Another criterion for exclusion is a blunt evaluation: Who you are and what you can do does not appeal to younger people. A very understandable criterion – the aging church-going population in Western countries, both in traditional established churches and in evangelical-Pentecostal groups, is of real concern to any thinking Christian. However, this particular blunt instrument is usually applied with the unquestioned assumption that the “young” are Gen X exclusivists, intolerant of any contribution from earlier generations or styles, or even from their more gruntled (as opposed to disgruntled) peers. The implicit effect of this assumption is that the “young” come to believe that they ought to be like Gen X, they ought to be surly and disgruntled, and they ought to have a taste only for the most  simple and tasteless forms of percussive music. After all, that is what it means to be young! I must saying, having taught mainly young students for 3 decades, that I find this a sad underestimation of contemporary youth.

Again, a theological subversion of such simplisticism need not even be formulated. Leaving aside the fact that such a mentality is ultimately insulting to most present-day young people, there is ample and clear empirical evidence that young people have very eclectic and very diverse tastes in virtually everything they do, say, sing, play, or evince an interest in. Sadly, this is not true of the new Christian leadership, nor their chosen supporters, nor those they do include in constructing their mono-paradigmatic, predictable and ultimately rather boring church gatherings.

Thought policing:

Sadly, not only are these criteria existent and employed, they are also very thoroughly policed. No mediaeval witch-hunt, no Party pogrom aimed at eliminating reactionaries, no religious inquisition, has been more thoroughly and energetically pursued than the smelling-out of non-conformists to these new church realities. It only takes a word, a remark, a private confidence, a glimpse into your personal tastes – just the merest whiff of incorrectness – for the Black Mark, the Kiss of Death, to be applied to your presence and participation in the processes of your local Christian community.  And there is no way back…. At most you might expect a delegation to visit you and explain to you the error of your ways and existence, and try to lead you into new and enlightened insights. Far more likely, you will either simply be sidelined or ignored, or in a particularly vicious environment perhaps have public ridicule heaped upon you, the Yellow Star of rejection pinned to your coat as you are condemned to outer wherever.

There is hope! Irrelevance in the church is not irrelevance in the world:

Well, after that rant, of course you have guessed it. My wife and I are through no particular fault of our own, in many churches in our own milieu, just such pariahs and untouchables. This after 40 years of leadership, ministry and musical participation in various contexts and nations, in churches large, small, old and new. For some years it grieved us that we have found no abiding place in the new Christian inn – until we made a tremendous discovery: there are no thought-police outside the church!

Contrary to the undying convictions of the church’s new leadership, people outside the church are far more open to diversity and originality in every aspect of personality, life and religion than these newcomers can imagine. We personally have discovered that we can sing, play, testify, preach, confront, debate, and forcefully profess our convictions to atheists, secular revellers, concert audiences, un-churched neighbours, academics, scientists, youth groups – well, you name it. While our churches remain stubbornly closed to the personal contributions you would expect from our skills-set, our secular peers demonstrate daily by their response that they see in us and our convictions something that they lack and need. While our churches might hang their heads in embarrassment if we were to do it in their midst, we find that un-churched of all ages enjoy it when we play our style of music on our choice of instruments, and listen attentively when we present without apology the reason for the hope that is within us. They often even ask us (when no-one is watching, admittedly!) perhaps after having publicly and stridently rubbished every Christian point we have made, if perhaps we could pray for them… Indeed, I have observed that it is the new pariahs that are more likely to lead someone to Christ through personal testimony than any “correct” Christian I know. Ah, but then the trouble begins – where do you take them to church to be thoroughly grounded in the faith and incorporated into a participative body of believers, safe from the thought police?

To those capable and committed Christian workers who find themselves sidelined in their churches: go ahead, make a lifestyle change. Search for a place and context in the world around you, where what you are good at, and what you have to contribute, can be exercised in the presence of those who most need it. After a time among the intelligent, eclectically-minded, diversely-gifted and multi-interested of this world, where sharing what you know and love about Jesus Christ is an ongoing adventure to which your new companions increasingly relate, you might well find that a return to an allocated place in the programmes and activities of your thought-policed church is the last thing you want. In fact, it might appear as a downright boring prospect!

(BTW, I am a very fulfilled lecturer in a Pentecostal theological college – and although every now and then I might encounter a rather surly Gen X-type teenager fresh from school, my normal interaction with all my students is free, open, appreciative and accepting from both sides. They seem to enjoy my classes and acerbic wit as much as I do. But – you guessed it – I don’t often grace the pulpit or music group at college devotions. Not because it is the students who would find me incorrect… Once that made me quite sad, today I am rarely bothered.)

Jimmy Savile, the BBC, popular culture and vulnerable young girls

If you live in the UK then you will know that our local news has been dominated by the sexual misdemeanours of the late pop star and DJ, Jimmy Savile.  During a celebrity reign of 5 decades he engaged in sexual activity with underage young girls wherever he could, including at charities that he sponsored and even on the hallowed grounds of the BBC herself. Many people seem surprised by this – yet in many ways it is unsurprising.

Some years ago I viewed a BBC interview of a UK woman with three beautiful young daughters. The 15-year old had a baby, the 13-year old was pregnant, the 11-year old just smiled. It was apparent that no-one was unhappy, the pregnancies were not unexpected, indeed one wondered if they had been planned. The female interviewer was complaisant, and the issue discussed was not the underage pregnancies but the inequities of the welfare system toward such. I could not help but wonder: is no-one concerned that criminal acts have taken place with these little girls? Has the statutory rapist been arrested and placed on the Sexual Offenders roll? Or were we simply faced with the free sexual choice of autonomous moral agents, regardless of their age?

Are these two stories related? I reckon so.

Three developments in popular culture since 1950 have had what in hindsight can be seen as a predictable combined effect – although no-one seemed to expect it:

• The sexual revolution of the 50’s declared that a person’s sexual activity was their own private affair – “no-one’s business but my/our own.” There was at that stage a qualifier – “between consenting adults.” Subsequently public morality and legislation lost interest in providing any but the broadest boundaries for private and even public sexual activity.
• “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, so don’t criticise what you don’t understand, the times they are a-changing” – in the protesting 60’s children were liberated from “oppressive” parental control, fathers and mothers received the clear message that they could neither restrict nor discipline their children in terms of moral issues. Indeed, the weight of the State might be against them if they did.
• Celebrity culture produced icons and idols, new gods whose morality and behaviour is beyond criticism, indeed is emulated rather than bemoaned. Not only does celebrity become a new currency of influence, it also becomes the role model for youth, and their most desired achievement If you cannot become it, perhaps you can come alongside it and let some of its fame rub off on you – one way would be through sexual congress.

So:  sexual activity is a matter of personal choice, parents are relieved of any rights in directing the moral or other behaviour of their children, and celebrity culture offers not only hollow role-models for sexual behaviour but the conduct of celebrities themselves is left unquestioned.

The unintended effect of these cultural developments is that an extremely vulnerable group, young girls from 11 to 17 years old, has become exposed to the attentions of the inevitable predators – men who have a taste for under-age sex. These “teeny-boppers” clustered around music, film and sports stars, or walked the night-time streets unaccompanied, or wandered from their own or care homes unhindered – and neither parents nor social workers had the right or the effective sanctions to place boundaries for them lest their liberties be restricted. And in gaining their liberty they lost their protection. The social workers responsible for the girls abused in Rochdale seemed to believe that the girls (as young as eleven!) were simply exercising their free sexual choice of partners.

The young hopefuls of the late 60’s who ran away from home with flowers in their hair to the free-love utopia of Hippy-dom were easy targets for the predators. The groupies around the pop bands and the stars and the DJ’s made similar “easy meat” for the performers and their teams. If today every performer in the UK who once had sex with underage groupies were to be prosecuted, the courts would probably collapse under the load! It simply happened, it was seen as normal, celebrities viewed it as their right if the girls were not protected by convention or law. And no-one felt free to step in and stop it happening, even if some remnant of moral conscience hinted within them that these things ought not to be.

Ironically the Muslim sub-culture in the UK never tolerated the sexual revolution, refused to abdicate parental control over their children, and resisted the influence of the celebrities of film and music in their homes. Denied sexual prey among young girls of their own culture and ethnicity, some young Muslim men could see nothing wrong with preying upon vulnerable young girls outside it, who had been so failed by their own secular liberated culture. Westerners might rightly discern many oppressive aspects to the way women and girls are treated in Islam, but the pragmatic reality is that young Muslim girls are not abused and exploited by strangers to their father’s home.

The sexual code of the Bible may be viewed as restrictive, outdated, and in the eyes of many, oppressive and repressive. But the sexual and social liberties that have replaced it in more supposedly enlightened times have demonstrated that domestic and social boundaries do not only confine and restrict, they also protect. One wonders whether there will develop a new sexual Puritanism in Western culture, based not necessarily on the Christian Biblical value system but more pragmatically on one of the oldest human impulses – to protect those we love, who would otherwise be vulnerable to the predators among us. Pragmatism and the revelation of God may yet arrive at very similar practices – another indication that the wisdom of God always exceeds the wisdom of humanity.