Ranald Macaulay’s warped history

As someone who has often found the L’Abri crowd a help to my thinking I was disappointed to read “Reaction and Distraction” in the July edition of EN. This was Ranald Macaulay’s sloppy and one-eyed summary of British Christian History.

As a relative pygmy Macaulay is happy to debunk giants Spurgeon, Moody and Lloyd-Jones as misled pietists.

On the other hand he is happy to boost the reactionary William Wilberforce as an example of the kind of man we need to follow.

I have learnt to mistrust Presbyterian and Anglican church historians because they seem to hanker back to the days when their forebears had real power and so they see those times as some sort of “Golden Age”.

With regard to the abolition of slavery these one-eyed historians always fail to give due credit to the Quaker and non-conformist agitators who really shook up the smug Anglican accommodation to mass slavery and created the environment in which a change of law was acceptable. Some of the agitators were deists and “free-thinkers” who had no christian loyalty at all.

These pietist and sceptical agitators needed a member of the privileged classes to speak for them in parliament because only rich men who were Anglicans could buy their way into parliament.

Propagandists like Macaulay also underplay the effect of various slave rebellions which shook up the establishment and the campaigns of free black men to liberate their brothers.

They also do not report the ineffectual nature of the anti-slave trade bill and Wilberforce’s reluctance to press for real abolition which grew from his class based political conservatism. It was up to more “pietist” Methodists and Baptists to truly overturn slavery in the West Indies with the help of a number of insurrections by courageous slaves.

One unintended consequence of the bill was that merchant ships carrying slaves tended to throw the incriminating “cargo” into the water when a British Warship came near. An unfortunate and deadly “own goal”.

William Wilberforce was himself a somewhat self-focussed pietist and this reinforced his intense conservatism and his refusal to help his own oppressed countrymen. He somehow failed to see how sympathising with far-away slaves might have any connection with easing the sufferings of fellow Britons.

In the end selective histories like Macaulay’s are post-modern constructions which reflect the writer’s tastes rather than attempts to connect the reader with either the past or present.

Living and working in East London I am more grateful for the heritage of Spurgeon (our church was founded in the 1860’s) than all the social activists whose monuments are now mosques, museums or demolished. In the same way, the work of Lloyd Jones lives on whereas places like the Mayflower Centre are defunct.

The mystery of healing and prayer

A neighbour of our church asked for prayer for a 2 year old niece who was seriously ill in hospital.  Some of us prayed and it seems she is healed.  We can not call it a miracle because she was receiving treatment at the same time.  It was certainly an abnormally quick recovery though.

The family are Moslems and were doubtless also praying but they credit the prayers of the church with being a crucial factor in the gift of healing.  We have now been asked to pray for another little family member.

Looking back over the years, we have seen a number of remarkable healings in response to prayer and I know some fellowships which would celebrate these much more than we do. and use them to “sell” the church and its message.

We do not dare to do this.  I even suspect that the Lord might not be able to trust us with such gifts in the future.  He is the Lord in these matters and I have never heard a completely satisfactory “theology” of healing which explains why some of these prayers are answered and others are not.  Let God do what is right in his own eyes.

Ease up on the bioethical propaganda please

I have been receiving emails and posted material urging me to mobilise the Lighthouse congregation to join in a concerted effort to stop the latest embryo and fertilisation legislation.

These have been coming from various evangelical groupings who are making common cause with the Roman Catholics and Anglicans who have been grabbing the headlines on this issue.

No hyperbole seems to be too great for my brethren on this matter. The future of mankind is apparently at stake and I will be guilty if I do not raise my voice in protest.

The proposed technology will attempt to place a nucleus or the chromosomes of an adult person into the the embryonic or egg cell of another mammal species in the hope that “stem cells” can be manufactured.

If the cell can be persuaded to grow and divide it is hoped that the successor cells will become predominantly human stem cells suitable for replanting into the original donor of the genetic tissue.

These cells have great healing potential since they can replace crucial cells in organs like the brain, spinal cord, liver etc. which have been destroyed by illness or trauma.

I personally find this proposal a great improvement on using human embryos for this kind of work and I am irritated by the inevitable invocation of Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau’s Island.

I had no such avalanche of junk mail in the long run up to the Iraq war – indeed many of us seemed to see that adventure as a way of “liberating” the Iraqi Christians. I fear the “sanctity of human life” concept has some very strange applications.

I have a post on human nature on the Theology Review which deals with some of the faulty assumptions behind this propaganda.

Was William Wilberforce bad for the churches?

I am am fed up with dear old WW.  It has been impossible to avoid him and I am sure many a church member is tired of the “topical” references to his 200 year old Act by lazy preachers.  Nearly half of all references mistakenly credit WW with abolishing slavery when all he did was to make the trade illegal.

He may have been (marginally) good for some oppressed people but I think he did the churches considerable harm.  They began to see their mission in terms of civilising the British through publicity campaigns and social engineering.  The moral crusading of the 19th and 20th centuries continually hyped and lauded the achievements of the Clapham sect (while generally ignoring the work of quakers and rationalists) as it rushed down the blind alley of social meddling in the name of Jesus.

Everything was cast in terms of abolishing the next “slavery” (child labour, votes for women, even banning alcohol in the name of setting free the slaves of drink).  The current application of the slavery model is things like forced prostitution and chinese manufacturing.

Am I in favour of these bad things?  No, but we already have a criminal code which should be able to deal with wrongs done in our jurisdiction and I doubt whether we can do much about China.

And I do not remember Jesus  calling his disciples to do all this stuff.

The liberation of Black Americans came when THEY began to insist on taking their freedom.  Most liberties have to be taken rather than given.

What is so good about a career?

In the modern world a man or woman with a career is a somebody.  It is the same in modern churches.  Some of the Pentecostals are up front about this – they will tell you 2007 can be the year of your spiritual victory and this will be proved NOT by being found worthy to suffer shame for Christ (Acts 5:41) but by being found worthy to be honoured by promotion.

In other churches career idolatry may be more subtle but is still there.  Who really believes this saying:

You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. [Luke 16:15]

 There is a fascinating article in the London Review of Books on the legacy of Hannah Arendt  which is packed with interesting observations and points out how careerism inspired Adolf Eichmann and so many other energetic servants of evil.  Whenever a career is seen as good in itself then the careerist becomes a danger to himself and other people.  He ceases to walk with God and walks in the light of his own good image.  He is pursuing promotion instead of virtue.

Please note, I am not saying that the mark of a faithful disciple is a failed career!  Self-control and conscientiousness are a sign of spiritual fruit and a repentant believer may be a model employee.  In some organisations these are highly prized qualities which are rewarded with higher status and pay.  But the character is what matters and not the recognition.

May the good Lord save us from the career bureaucrats, the career politicians and, above all, the career Pastors.