Who is running this Church?
On June 3rd the Anglican Synod passed the motion to bless same sex couples in church services, despite widespread opposition which is causing a split in the Anglican communion. Following this, the Church of England appointed Rachel Mann as its first transgender Archdeacon, a move described by LGBT+ campaigners as a ‘beacon of hope.’ Bible believing Christians see it as yet another surrender of the national church to the demands of the LGBT lobby.
The Daily Telegraph (7 July) published a headline article ‘Welby gives backing to trans students on free speech.’ At a time when conservative political and religious views are being cancelled on university platforms, Justin Welby gave his support to the people doing the cancelling, backing trans students amidst a series of free speech issues at universities. He said that vice chancellors should face funding cuts if they allow minority students to be insulted. His comments came in the wake of an attempt by LGBT affirming students at Oxford to block Kathleen Stock, a feminist academic, from speaking at the Oxford Union on her stand that men claiming to be trans females are not women. Prior to this Kathleen Stock had been hounded out of her teaching position at the University of Sussex for her opposition to transgenderism.
Welby also compared anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish students to criticism of trans people, saying ‘Universities that allow it to be tolerated if there is systemic ‘anti’ any category, whether it is Jewish students, whether it is trans people, should have really serious consequences in terms of their recognition of their authority and their funding.’
So the Archbishop is equating anti-Semitism with criticism of the homosexual and transgender lobby. It is always wrong to attack people because of their Jewish identity. God has told us in the Bible (Romans 9-11) to love and respect the Jewish people.
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Romans 10.1-4
It is not wrong to question trans ideology, which is risking women’s privacy and safety, denigrating femininity with its grotesque caricatures of women and ruining young lives with chemical treatments.
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1.26-28
It contradicts basic biblical doctrine that God created humans in His image, male and female, and that marriage can only happen between a man and a woman. Genesis 1.26-28, 2.24
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 2.24
Britain’s passive surrender to the woke minority
Nick Timothy (Daily Telegraph July 9) claims that ‘Britain’s passive surrender to a woke minority risks everything we cherish.’ He writes:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said Jesus Christ. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” And so Jesus taught Christians to pray to God addressing Him as our Father. Now, after two millennia of Christian worship, senior figures in the Church of England believe they know better. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, says the word “Father” is “problematic”. He says this because of “those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive” and “all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life”.
Britain’s passive surrender to a woke minority risks everything we cherish (telegraph.co.uk)
This follows an attempt, made at the General Synod in February, to introduce gender-neutral terminology in worship in Anglican churches. The Reverend Christina Rees, a former member of the Synod, has supported Cottrell, saying “because Jesus called God ‘daddy’, we think we have to call God ‘daddy’.” We can argue about whether this is a respectful way for Rees to make her argument, or if it is right that Cottrell should put concerns about a supposed “patriarchy” ahead of what Jesus taught him to do. But two things are clear.
Britain’s passive surrender to a woke minority risks everything we cherish (telegraph.co.uk)
First, in the Church of England – which came into existence during the Reformation, in which Protestants complained that acquired tradition, or culture, trumped scripture – culture now trumps scripture. Second, in the name of inclusivity, the Church’s leaders are alienating many of its members. This is neither the first example from within Anglicanism, nor a problem limited to the Church. We have seen Muslim prayers read in Westminster Abbey that refer to Mohammed as “the chosen one”, and the adhan recited in Manchester Cathedral, claiming “Mohammed is the Messenger of God” – both, fundamentally, refutations of the divinity of Christ.
Britain’s passive surrender to a woke minority risks everything we cherish (telegraph.co.uk)
We have seen, too, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, get behind the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign, auditing statues and commemorative names in the Church and comparing British figures to Felix Dzerzhinsky, Stalin’s mass murderer responsible for the Soviet Red Terror. Welby has talked of collective sin inherited by white people and by the British, and claimed there can only be forgiveness for the sins of past British generations “if we change the way we behave now.” This position is contradicted by scripture, which teaches that we are responsible for our sins, not other peoples, and that forgiveness is available to those who repent and believe the Gospel.
The Church is not the only institution that seems determined to upturn its own beliefs and purpose and repel those loyal to it. From the National Trust, hectoring its members and visitors about our history, to the British Museum, so many of our national and cultural organisations are hostile to the interests and values they were formed to uphold.
Britain’s passive surrender to a woke minority risks everything we cherish (telegraph.co.uk)
The question is why? The answer lies in how zealous anger is met by meek indifference, and destructive ideology by passive pragmatism. It is a clash between the certainty of extremist activists and the passivity of a society that has lost its confidence and belief in truth.
Organisations such as Black Lives Matter and Stonewall are open about their intent and method. Less obvious, however, is the way other campaign groups – Islamist organisations, for example – use liberal principles and identity politics to pursue illiberal objectives. And less visible are the staff representative bodies and individual decision-makers within companies and public services that impose radical values. In a recent ITV News feature on the effects of the cost of living crisis on mothers, for example, the journalist interviewed a trans activist who lives as a woman.
Britain’s passive surrender to a woke minority risks everything we cherish (telegraph.co.uk)
These invisible, unaccountable warriors abuse their positions within businesses and the public sector to advance their ideological causes. But they would not succeed without the passivity of others. In the Civil Service, where senior officials email their staff with homilies about BLM and hire Stonewall to assess their compliance with trans ideology, it is, as with the Church, because many leaders are wet liberals who want to “be kind”, but mistake conforming with extremism for kindness.’
Sadly what we are seeing is the surrender of our history, our culture and the basics of our Christian faith, to a woke minority whose aim is a social revolution that wishes to impose an anti-Christian ideology on society. It is shameful that the leaders of the established church cannot see where all this is heading. The ones who are running the church are also ruining the church.
France on the Verge of Chaos?
This is a summary of an article by Guy Millière, professor at the University of Paris. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19798/france-chaos.
June 27, 2023. Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris, shortly before 8 am. Two policemen on a motorcycle try to stop a car. The driver, 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, is obviously dangerous, driving erratically, barely avoiding people crossing the street. A 15-second video circulating on social networks shows the car stopped, with the two policemen aiming their weapons at Merzouk. One policeman, gun drawn, leans his elbow on the windshield. He tells Merzouk to turn off the engine and place his hands above his head. The car drives off. The policeman shoots at the car. Merzouk is shot and dies shortly after.
Police witnesses, video surveillance, and data show that the driver has been implicated five times for refusing to comply with police officers. He had been arrested a few weeks earlier for disorderly conduct against police and consumption and sale of narcotics, and was shortly to appear before a judge. He was only 17, too young even to have a French driver’s license. That day, he was driving a rented $90,000 Mercedes with fake Polish license plates. All of this information, apart from his age, was glossed over by the media and political leaders.
Before any investigation, and without any respect for the presumption of innocence, French President Macron immediately said that the policeman’s act had been “unexplainable” and “inexcusable”. Yael Braun Pivet, president of the National Assembly asked the deputies to stand for a minute of silence in memory of the young driver. Several lawyers rushed onto television to say they were representing his family, and that the police had committed a “racist murder.”
The police officer who shot Merzouk was indicted by a judge for intentional homicide and jailed. His name and home address were leaked on social media, and his wife and children had to go into hiding. Matthieu Valet, president of the Independent Union of Police Commissioners, spoke on television of the extreme difficulty of police work in dangerous French suburbs. In some neighbourhoods, he said, the police were constantly threatened, and many officers felt betrayed by the president and the government. Many are considering quitting their jobs for this reason.
On the evening of June 27, riots broke out in all the major cities of France. Hundreds of cars, including police cars, were burned and police stations attacked. Some were robbed by criminals who stole whatever weapons they could find there. Bank branches were ransacked and ATMs opened with chain saws. Hundreds of stores were looted and burned. Delivery trucks were stopped, looted, set on fire, and their drivers were pushed to the ground and beaten. Schools and theatres were destroyed. The buses in the Seine-Saint-Denis bus depot were torched; churches were burned to the ground; graffiti in red paint on a church in Marseilles declared: “Mohammed was the last prophet”. Slogans were shouted: “death to the police”, “death to France”, “death to the Jews!” and “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is the greatest”]. “We are Muslims,” one angry protester shouted, “if the police kill us we have the right to kill; it is written in the Koran!” Hundreds of police were injured, many seriously.
Since the 1970s, France has welcomed an ever-increasing number of immigrants, mainly from the Muslim world. Only a tiny minority have assimilated into French society. The others live as they lived in their countries of origin, according to Sorbonne University Professor Bernard Rougier, author of the book “The Conquered Territories of Islamism”. Radical imams came from the Muslim world and allege that France is guilty of having colonised their countries. So Muslims should continue to live according to the law of Islam and France should pay for its crimes. Many politicians have told the newcomers that France is racist and had exploited them.
Criminal gangs formed and began ruling these neighbourhoods. Radical imams justified the gangs’ criminal activities by claiming that the French must pay for what they did in the Muslim world. French political leaders closed their eyes. Meanwhile, these Muslim neighbourhoods have grown and crime from them increased.
Former President Chirac asked imams to restore calm and promised to give even more money to Muslim neighbourhoods. The police were ordered not to intervene in them at all; they fell entirely under the control of gangs and imams. It was then that these neighbourhoods effectively became lawless “no-go zones” (zones urbaines sensibles), of which there are 750.
France now faces a dangerous situation of growing civil unrest and division, with areas of deprivation, unemployment and despair in and around its big cities. Leftist and Islamist forces are pitched against conservatives and nationalists who are appalled by the riots and opposed to more immigration.
A great European nation with a strong culture (but a weak Christian presence) is in danger of descending into chaos, an ominous result of Europe’s abandonment of Christianity in favour of humanism, Marxism, Islam and multi-faith religion.
WHO wants a Vaccine Passport (Who indeed?)
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is working on a global Pandemic Treaty which would give it power over the decision making of national governments in case of another pandemic like Covid arising. It has also called for the imposition of a global vaccine passport: ‘In June 2023, WHO will take up the EU system of digital Covid 19 certification to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics. This is the first building block of the WHO Global Health Certification Network that will develop a wide range of digital products to deliver better health for all.’ In effect this would control people’s ability to travel according to their submission to the WHO’s vaccination programme and a further way in which globalist organisations are taking control over peoples’ lives.
Kit Knightly has drawn attention to UN plans to tighten the screws on the world’s population in an article entitled “A Global Digital Compact” https://www.gulf-insider.com/a-global-digital-compact-un-promoting-censorship-social-credit-much-more/ This concerns a UN policy document on aims for the future of the Internet. A follow-up to the 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, “A Global Digital Compact” involves creating international legislation that would seek to control and enforce the use of digital technology. This will be linked with financial access and social credit systems connected to environmental issues. Through Public-Private Partnerships they will link up government and businesses to work for ‘Sustainable Development Goals. These are extracts from the ‘Global Digital Compact’:
Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes. Sensors and monitors connected to the Internet of things, cloud-based data platforms, blockchain-enabled tracking systems and digital product passports unlock new capabilities for the measurement and tracking of environmental and social impacts across value chains. Partnerships between States, private sector and civil society leverage the capacity of digital tools to provide solutions for development across the Sustainable Development Goals.
https://www.un.org/en/content/common-agenda-report/assets/pdf/Common_Agenda_Report_English.pdf
Countering online “harm”:
Disinformation, hate speech and malicious and criminal activity in cyberspace raise the risks and costs for everyone online […] we must strengthen accountability for harmful and malicious acts online.
https://www.un.org/en/content/common-agenda-report/assets/pdf/Common_Agenda_Report_English.pdf
While its proposers claim it will use technology to improve people’s lives, opponents see it as a piece of globalist legislation serving the final aim of globalist policy: Control of all aspects of life, achieved by inserting a digital filter between people and reality. Banking, communication, media consumption, shopping, travel, healthcare. Every interaction you have will be through a digital membrane which can both monitor your exchanges with the world and – if deemed necessary – deny you access to that world.
One of the areas in which all this will be very relevant to publications like this is found in the UN programme “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms.” This is intended to help develop an online “code of conduct” that the UN plans to unveil during its Summit of the Future in 2024. It calls for demonetisation and suppressing the spread of what it considers “mis- and disinformation and hate speech.”
Disinformation and hate speech goes way beyond legitimate concerns about hateful attacks on people because of their race or publishing lying propaganda designed to create conflict and violence, or some of the fantastic claims made by some conspiracy theory websites. It includes questioning aspects of the UN’s climate change policy and the WHO’s vaccination programme.
Beyond this it includes those who make a stand against the LGBT agenda in our society and assert the importance of Biblical moral and family values. It also really dislikes those who teach that repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the one way to God, as opposed to the multifaith ‘all roads lead to God’ idea.
WHO wants all this? The one we read about in Revelation 13 who wants to impose a one world government with a means of controlling people’s ability to participate in society through a digital system linked to AI (Artificial Intelligence), advanced computers and microchips.
11 Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. 12 And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
Revelation 13.11-12
Closing down your bank account if you don’t conform
In recent weeks there have been a number of high profile cases in the media of customers having bank accounts closed, including former UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, who had his account with Coutts Bank closed after being declared a ‘politically exposed person’. Rev Richard Fothergill had his account closed after politely expressing his disagreement with Yorkshire Building Society’s promotion of transgender ideology during June’s Pride Month. Various other groups and individuals have revealed that they have had financial services withdrawn from them, including the Free Speech Union and the Triggernometry podcast.
Most banks are signed up to Stonewall diversity schemes raising concerns that activist staff were using their influence to close accounts of people who ‘dared to air a view’ they did not like.
Under the Equality Act, it is against the law to discriminate against customers on the basis of their religious and philosophical beliefs. But banks and other financial services seem to think that they can get away with closing people’s accounts for their views as long as they don’t say why.
This follows the case of ‘Core Issues Trust’ (CIT), a non-profit Christian ministry that supports men and women who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression. According to CIT CEO, Mike Davidson, this organisation
‘had been trying to help people who are attracted to same sex relationships, but prefer their heterosexual side. This could include a listening ear, formal counselling or spiritual support.’
CIT CEO, Mike Davidson
CIT was then accused of engaging in ‘conversion therapy’ by homosexual activists and subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation which resulted in having their bank accounts closed. Mike Davidson said,
‘A coordinated campaign has resulted in our ministry coming under immense pressure and key service providers cancelling their services. The UK is now becoming an intensely intolerant country. Key service providers have cancelled their services to a Christian charity because of a social media mob.’
CIT CEO, Mike Davidson
Christian Legal Centre’s chief executive Andrea Williams commented, ‘
‘If it is Core Issues Trust first, it will be churches next. If banks and other service providers start to placate social media campaigns by unilaterally terminating their accounts then the UK will be a very difficult place for Biblically faithful Christian ministries. We call on the government to assert the rights of Biblically-faithful Christian organisations to be serviced by businesses without facing such intolerant discrimination.’
Christian Legal Centre’s chief executive Andrea Williams
This issue became a front page story in the Telegraph, as the government said it would instruct banks to protect free speech.
Christian Concern for our Nation encourages us to write to our banks expressing concern about this issue. For guidance on this go to https://christianconcern.com/action/stop-banks-discriminating-for-no-reason