Britain’s foundations

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But we don’t live in Israel, we live in Britain. So, what about Britain? How does it apply to us?

Now, you’d say that many people think of England and Britain as a Christian country. Is it a Christian country? ‘Yes and No’.

Fundamentally, this is a country which has been heavily influenced by Christianity. You can’t deny that. In the 1970s, they did a survey and found that 70% of the population went to church on Sunday and most of the children went to Sunday school of some form. Therefore, you had a very strong Christian influence in this country.

You have to say that a lot of the institutions of this country whether it’s in the judiciary, the education system, or even in the royal family were based upon Christianity. You have the Queen with the official title as the Defender of the Faith. I understand that this maybe a bit strange for some, but we generally have an idea that, traditionally, protestant Christianity is the faith of this country.

Brisbane – Australia

This country saw great missionary work, it went out around the world and took the Gospel to different places, places like Iran. We have got friends from Iran here, we had great people who went to translate the Bible into Farsi and they all came from England. They went to Korea. I think they went from Wales to Korea, didn’t they? We had Christians from this country going around the world, preaching the Gospel, and God blessed us for that reason.

Gazetteer and Maps (wmcarey.edu)

We also had many failings: slavery for example, bad things happened. But Christians also were at the forefront of fighting against slavery.

We have had nominal Christianity with much hypocrisy, but you have to say that the base was Christian.

I grew up in the 50s, I went to Bedford school. I remember that we had assemblies every day at which we sang Christian hymns, they said Christian prayers: it was all Christian.

Home – Bedford School

I was vaguely aware that there were people who followed other religions, but I didn’t know much about them, and it wasn’t really an option. It wasn’t anything I considered when I was 13. I was confirmed in the Church of England (that was what you did then), and I was vaguely searching for God then and, when it came to the punch, and the bishop laid hands on me and said ‘receive the Holy Spirit‘, nothing happened.

Confirmation | The Church of England

Subsequently, I began to kind of lose interest and, by the time I was in the sixth form, I was studying French and German and reading lots of literature which was quite anti-Christian, especially French existential philosophy.

I began to lose faith and become what I became: a university-based, secular, Marxist-oriented person.

However, you have to say that the structure of society was Christian.

It was also expected, it was understood that nobody questioned that marriage was a union between a man and a woman. I was vaguely aware there was something called ‘homosexuality’ because when I went to a boarding school and the Head of the House used to give us a regular ‘sex lecture’ in which something called ‘homosexuality’ was mentioned.

homosexuality | Meaning, History, & Facts | Britannica

I must say I was a bit confused about it. Basically, he said ‘don’t do it’, but it was not something of which I was aware, and certainly, nobody ever heard anything about transsexuality, it was just not there.

Transsexuality – The Free Dictionary

The understanding was that people could break the commandments and have sex, but the rule was ‘one man one woman’ married to each other, and that it should be the basis of a sexual union, having children; that was understood.

Then, things began to change. By the time I went to university, in the mid-60s, all the changes which were taking place then, the ‘sex, drugs, and rock and roll’ culture became part of my lifestyle as well. And we saw The Beatles going to India, bringing back ideas of Hinduism and yoga.

Home – The Beatles in India

Bob Dylan was singing ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ and I thought: ‘Yeah, the times are changing, let’s change from this traditional society, let’s have a new world order, a new kind of society in which we will live according to new laws’.

And they brought in new laws about homosexuality, about abortion, and we saw a gradual change in society which has had huge implications for modern times.

www.gov.uk

That’s really where we’re at today, isn’t it? We saw that the BBC, for example, was based upon a charter that had Christian values.

BBC – 1960s programming

If you go into the BBC building near All Souls in Langham Place today, you’ll find it has a plaque in Latin (probably no one reads it now) that says,

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

Philippians 4.8

If you know that verse from Philippians, the BBC should do what’s praiseworthy and good, and Christian. Yet, by the time you got to the mid-60s, the BBC became a major channel of anti-Christian propaganda.

BBC – 1960s programming

All kinds of hostile things coming up.

Mary Whitehouse, does anybody remember her?

Mary Whitehouse: Ahead of her time – The Christian Institute

She was campaigning to ‘clean up TV’, to get rid of all the filth and all the anti-God and antichrist stuff, which was coming through, and she was largely ridiculed and mocked and dismissed by those who were running the organization.

As you see, these things were happening, and the foundation of faith was being destroyed. Therefore, basically, although by the time I was young person much of Christianity was nominal, it was still fundamentally Christian.

BBC – 1960s programming

But, by the time this process had been completed, which is today, we see that the Christian foundation has been more or less destroyed, and we see also that the church has lost its faith.

The church today preaches a liberal theology that accepts evolution, says no to creation, no to miracles, no to prophecy and where even the divinity of Jesus is in question.

Liberal Theology – The Gospel Coalition

The virgin birth, the resurrection are being questioned in some of the churches, and, as far as the Second Coming is concerned, they forget all about it, they don’t even mention it.

And yet, we see the fact that we’re living in a time when all the prophecies are coming to pass, and this should be high on the agenda.

But we see so much of the church today has gone away from the roots, the foundation. It’s open to multi-faith and worshipping of other gods and bringing all the gods together into one place.

So, I’ve said, when I was at school, I was aware that there were people who believed other things and there were other religions, there was something called Islam, but that was what ‘other people’ did and it was miles away from us, and ‘who cares, that was their problem’.

Pew Research Center

Today, we find that it is being imposed upon us, all the time. Back in the early seventies, after I became a Christian, I had a job at a place called Tulsa School in Brixton – I’ve told you a bit about this in the past.

I was teaching RE (religious education) which I had no qualification to teach, but I was teaching RE because they worked out I was ‘vaguely Christian’, and they needed someone to teach RE. So, they gave me the job and, for three years, I taught Christian RE, nothing else. And it was mainly to pupils of Caribbean origin. They were fairly new immigrants whose families came in the 60s from the West Indies, and most of them had some Christian upbringing in their homes. So, though a lot of the boys were going away from it, there was a Christian foundation there.

Ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk

Nevertheless, the school was also a target for Marxist, humanist, white revolutions. They went in there to teach the black kids how to become anti-God, and anti-society, and I had a lot of conflicts with them but one of the things that came out from this was that the Marxists, the humanists said, ‘this is a multi-racial school; therefore, you shouldn’t be teaching Christian education, you should speak multi-faith religion’.

Now, that didn’t come from the Caribbeans, it came from the white Marxists which is basically the trend you’ve seen in this country since. They’ve used immigration and multi-faith as a prop to attack Christianity and to remove Christianity as the basis for our society.

In the end, we had to teach RE from a multi-faith religion point of view and I left.

That’s part of what is happening in our society. You also see that the Left is making alliances with Islam to attack Christianity and to attack Israel.

Speaking about the Left, there’s something called cultural Marxism. Has anybody heard of that?

This is quite interesting. I hope you don’t think I’m getting too political. It’s interesting because back in the 1930s there was a man called Antonio Gramsci. He was an Italian communist in 1930s and he put forward a doctrine that said that the workers revolution was not going to happen as it happened in Russia and that what Marxists needed to do was to take over and capture institutions like education, the media, the judiciary, the social services, even the church, take over them, and make them a means by which they can then use to propagate their ideas.

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) (marxists.org)

In fact, in Gramsci’s time, Europe was taken over by fascism but, in the post-war period, a lot of people moved on to this idea and we saw communism established in Eastern Europe which was atheistic and anti-God.

In Western Europe, you had the opportunity to change Western liberal democracy and Western Marxists saw the relevance of Gramsci’s doctrine and you had what we now call the ‘woke’ ideas used by minority groups (LGBT+ and other groups) to impose their ideas upon society and to get rid of Christianity.

Do you see what’s happening? They even use anti-racism to attack traditional Christian values and to say that we must have all religions becoming equal and then attacking Christianity as a foundation for society.

You have humanism trying to eliminate God and the ultimate goal of this is to remove Christian teaching and the Christian base from society. And it’s been pretty effective.

You now have the Conversion Therapy Bill which is before Parliament. Do you understand what that means? They’re saying that you mustn’t try to convert homosexuals or change homosexuals into being heterosexual.

UK Parliament

There are people who’ve done that in a forceful and a harmful way when you look at what they’re saying. They’re also saying that if you try to even pray with somebody who has homosexual feelings, and pray that they might be set free from these, that is abusing them, their identity, and that it should not be allowed to happen.

If you’re teaching things which you say are sins and you teach that they should repent of it, that’s also something which is wrong and should not be allowed to happen.

If you follow this through, it’s actually saying that you’re not allowed to teach people that they should be converted or that they should turn/change from their sin to following Jesus Christ.

And you can see this as part of the thin end of the wedge to actually prevent evangelism and the teaching of Christianity in our society., the ultimate goal of which is to prevent Christian and biblical teaching.

The Independent

Now, who’s behind that? Whose idea is that? Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

To take control of the opinion and suppress alternatives, control opinion and education in the media and in government and, if you say something else, you find yourself under attack.

That’s what’s happens today isn’t it? If you go against the flow, you’re going against what they want you to say. We have also, in the Church of England, bishops who are pretty much ashamed of speaking the Gospel. They just teach a social agenda, they teach about climate change and racism, and all that stuff, but they don’t teach people the Gospel, about Jesus Christ.

Recently, at the Church of England synod, somebody asked the question: ‘What is the Church of England’s definition of a woman?‘ In his response Dr Richard Robert Innes, the Anglican church’s Bishop of Europe and Chairman of the Faith and Order Commission declared:

“There is currently no official definition of a woman.”

Dr Richard Robert Innes – Anglican Bishop of Europe

In other words, they’re going along with the transgender agenda of sex change as a legitimate option.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Psalm 11.3

What you’re seeing is the foundations of faith being destroyed at every level in our society.

4 Comments

  • Thank you for being so out spoken Tony, I pray more would be like you! but like you say the foundations have been destroyed, and if the foundations are destroyed how can we stand? and now our queen has gone home to be with the Lord, a light, and a Christian, what can we expect now?? Lord Jesus have mercy!

  • This is a very good post. But I think we as Christians sometimes have to discern between all that is worldly and all that is of God. Communism under Stalin was a godless nightmare, but Hitler and his Nazi regime was equally a godless nightmare. We should not assume that because there is a nominal political opposition to PC, Woke and what many perceive as cultural politics, that that opposition is somehow all good. The right and left are merely appendages of the same bird, so to speak. The ‘left’ doesn’t stand for anything, and the ‘right’ may pay lip service to Christian values, but are worshipping money, power and success.

    Also, party politics are different from cultural politics. As a practising Bible believing Christian I find the nonsense you so rightly mention as nonsense, it’s unfounded, without principle and is headed for the abyss. But equally, where has right wing politics taken us? Be honest here. The UKs economy is on its knees because wealth, big businesses and corporations are allowed to profiteer, avoid tax and underpay workers. To assume the right is right just because it isn’t loony left is not only false equivalence but can allow right wing parties off the hook.

    But, I agree with almost all your post and love this site for its honesty and boldness! Tony, many of us Christians come from tough and broken backgrounds. We are not gulled by most of what passes for present politics nor are we scared of standing up for, preaching and living the Gospel! God bless!

    Let us be more bold still, in spite of the growing spiritual darkness in many places.

    • Thank you, Timbo, for your enlightening and heart-felt comments. I agree that we all come from different backgrounds and that we must remain awake and aware about what around us and inside us keeps us true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ – the only measuring rod for our beliefs and our every action. ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ supporters must all come to examine themselves, and sooner or later to understand it, before making the decision to surrender to it.