I lean, in my angrier moments, to excommunication of unrepentant fascists. In my angriest moments I want to break out bell, book and candles for a full blown rite of anathema.
Maybe an exorcism?
That would imply fascism was something other than a choice they made.
I’d prefer that, obviously. Well, I wouldn’t prefer the possibility that demonic possession was not genuinely rare, but so widespread as that, which would be horrifying in a different way.
I think that saying that Satan misled you is an easy "get out of jail free" card for people who know exactly what they are doing.
I think I would be simply astonished if MAGA people, or technically former MAGA people, particularly a significant number of them, claimed they voted for Trump because of demonic possession.
(I don’t believe that most, or possibly any, people voted for Trump because of that, though I do believe that demonic possession, and exorcism, happen, just very rarely.)
I was thinking more of explicitly fascist-identifying people (which most MAGA people are not), and especially the tendency of those who use born-again status as a way to avoid accountability.
@Gamma Gamaliel@Alan Cresswell I do think you have to take the Nazi bar approach - aside from anything else, unrepetant fascists put other members of the congregation and local community in danger.
Absolutely, but how do we know when someone has crossed that line?
They are hardly likely to draw attention to themselves by goose-stepping around with a swastiki arm band.
I mean you are aware that increasing numbers of people are self-identifying as fascists, right? Many of them will indeed just state that that's their political position. Also, anyone in the congregation or known to them who is in local antifa groups or had run-ins with local fash would be able to identify them.
Sure but although the 'f-word' isn't one I'd bandy around loosely - any more than the 'h-word' (heretic) - as to do so denudes it of seriousness, I'd be more concerned about those who don't self-identity that way but whose views are borderline fascist or likely to tilt in that direction.
Anyone rocking up who is clearly an activist in that direction or openly identifies as fascist is going to be immediately identifiable as such and the parish/congregation can take whatever steps are necessary to protect people.
It's the more subtle forms I'm concerned about, which doesn't mean we should go on a paranoid Mccarthy-style witch-hunt to weed out anyone who might be vaguely right-wing or who don't conform to whatever views we may personally find acceptable.
I lean, in my angrier moments, to excommunication of unrepentant fascists. In my angriest moments I want to break out bell, book and candles for a full blown rite of anathema.
Maybe an exorcism?
That would imply fascism was something other than a choice they made.
I’d prefer that, obviously. Well, I wouldn’t prefer the possibility that demonic possession was not genuinely rare, but so widespread as that, which would be horrifying in a different way.
I think that saying that Satan misled you is an easy "get out of jail free" card for people who know exactly what they are doing.
I think I would be simply astonished if MAGA people, or technically former MAGA people, particularly a significant number of them, claimed they voted for Trump because of demonic possession.
(I don’t believe that most, or possibly any, people voted for Trump because of that, though I do believe that demonic possession, and exorcism, happen, just very rarely.)
I was thinking more of explicitly fascist-identifying people (which most MAGA people are not), and especially the tendency of those who use born-again status as a way to avoid accountability.
I'm inclined to say that if someone was fascist before, and is not now (or later), then I'm going to rejoice that they've changed or been changed, regardless.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that someone in that situation could claim they were possessed, either before or after becoming a Christian. They might even believe they were. Certainly it's possible that demonic influence could be involved (the cruelty and callousness and arrogance, in particular), though I'd personally say only in the way it is all the time anyway, through the usual means of temptation that everyone experiences in any time, place, or culture. I could imagine someone coming from the "seven mountain mandate" end of the spectrum of Christian nationalism realizing that they'd been seriously and dangerously deceived, and concluding that it was literally diabolical (which is, indeed, arguable--such a twisting of the Christian faith into something like that), though perhaps not thinking they were possessed. But misled by Satan, at least on some level? Certainly.
In OT times, of course, Israel's devotion to YHWH was repeatedly appropriated, sublimated and merged into the prevailing culture, to the point where its distinctiveness was lost. It happened subtly and over periods of years, and among the prophets much of the blame is ascribed to the failure of the religious leadership. Incremental drift is very hard to counter - what is the point at which you take a stand? The minister who rebuked Trump for filming an election video on the steps of his church stands out, but such opportunities for public resistance are few.
Whatever else this is, it is not an expression of wholehearted support for democratic forms of government.
I think this is capable of multiple readings, some of them contingent on the time period in which the Feast was inaugurated, it can read as both orthogonal and oppositional to all forms of voernment.
I think there's something to it being orthogonal. But I'm not sure that it's in opposition to all forms of government as such, more that it's indifferent to how government is organised as, ultimately, all earthly rulers come under the supreme authority of Christ.
Back in September in the UK … a demonstration under the title ‘Unite the Kingdom’. A phalanx of demonstrators were carrying crosses and some people who self identify as ministers of religion led prayers. Research reveals that these were people who have no or irregular denominational status.
It also transpires that Jerusalem was, indeed, on the playlist, which shouldn't be the least bit surprising, given its musical origins at a Fight for Right meeting during World War I.
Parry was initially reluctant to supply music for the campaign meeting, as he had doubts about the ultra-patriotism of Fight for Right; but knowing that his former student Walford Davies was to conduct the performance, and not wanting to disappoint either Robert Bridges or Davies, he agreed, writing it on 10 March 1916, and handing the manuscript to Davies with the comment, "Here's a tune for you, old chap. Do what you like with it."
How do you understand the kingship of Christ and, if your church has it, the Festival of Christ the King?
Do you think that God, either as the Trinity or in the person of Jesus endorses your government as an earthly manifestation of that kingdom or favours one nation over any other?
Remember that God has a number of seats in the English Parliament. As Humanists UK points out:
The UK Parliament automatically awards 26 seats in the House of Lords to bishops of the Church of England. These bishops are able to (and do) vote on legislation, make interventions, and lead prayers at the start of each day’s business. … The only two sovereign states in the world to award clerics of the established religion votes in their legislatures are the UK and the Islamic Republic of Iran (a totalitarian theocracy).
For Christians and churches, it seems that an unwanted distinction between two contrasting models of Jesus is being made by recent events.
Christ the King, returning in triumph to rule the earth
Christ the Servant, washing the feet of his disciples
I don't know what worship songs were sung at Unite the Kingdom, but I'd be surprised if they included The Servant King.
More generally, repackaging Christian Nationalism for the UK today really doesn't seem difficult, more a case of updating what's already there for a modern audience. It's also not difficult because of the way that it's long been about evoking nostalgia for a reimagined lost past.
Whatever else this is, it is not an expression of wholehearted support for democratic forms of government.
I think this is capable of multiple readings, some of them contingent on the time period in which the Feast was inaugurated, it can read as both orthogonal and oppositional to all forms of voernment.
I think there's something to it being orthogonal. But I'm not sure that it's in opposition to all forms of government as such, more that it's indifferent to how government is organised as, ultimately, all earthly rulers come under the supreme authority of Christ.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
"CRT, the 'Quiet Revival' or "any other vaunted initiative, programme or apparently spontaneous grass-roots movement is going to 'transform our nation' [Gamma's inverted commas]".
Is it within or without the parameters of theological legitimacy to present faith in Jesus as something to choose because it will 'transform our nation'?
This can run the gamut from a vague feeling that more Christians would change the orientation of society somewhat, through Kruger's ideas above which seem to be a combination of this and the idea that the orientation of that society would necessarily then change in a socially conservative direction along the lines he advocates, through to ARC end of things which seem to involve a lot more hierarchy, social conservatism along with libertarian economics and traditionalism.
So it depends on what they mean when they say it, and whether they are aware of alternate meanings.
It has been said that God created humanity in his own image, and ever since Humanity has been returning the favour.
When Christians talk about Christianity "transforming our nation", especially in the context of conversion, increase in bums on pews, etc. what they mean is "people becoming more like me, or at least the idealised image I have of myself". So if a wet pinko lefty like me says it, I mean the nation becoming kinder, more tolerant and rejecting right wing devil take the hindmost libertarianism or theocratic enforcement of social conservatism in favour of a kind, compassionate and welcoming society. Because that's my idealised view of how I'd like society to be, and as a Christian if I thought God wanted something completely different I'd be trying to come round to his point of view.
If someone like Kruger or, God help us, Yaxley Lennon says it, then I suspect they mean something rather different.
Whatever else this is, it is not an expression of wholehearted support for democratic forms of government.
I think this is capable of multiple readings, some of them contingent on the time period in which the Feast was inaugurated, it can read as both orthogonal and oppositional to all forms of voernment.
I think there's something to it being orthogonal. But I'm not sure that it's in opposition to all forms of government as such, more that it's indifferent to how government is organised as, ultimately, all earthly rulers come under the supreme authority of Christ.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
That was rather my point. Putting "indifferent to how government is organised…" in other words: regardless of whether the system of government is democratic, authoritarian or a dictatorship, the leaders (or leader) will ultimately be held to account by the supreme authority, Christ.
Whatever else this is, it is not an expression of wholehearted support for democratic forms of government.
I think this is capable of multiple readings, some of them contingent on the time period in which the Feast was inaugurated, it can read as both orthogonal and oppositional to all forms of voernment.
I think there's something to it being orthogonal. But I'm not sure that it's in opposition to all forms of government as such, more that it's indifferent to how government is organised as, ultimately, all earthly rulers come under the supreme authority of Christ.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
That was rather my point. Putting "indifferent to how government is organised…" in other words: regardless of whether the system of government is democratic, authoritarian or a dictatorship, the leaders (or leader) will ultimately be held to account by the supreme authority, Christ.
Again, I don't think this implies indifference, in the same way that this same idea when held individually can be a spur to both passivity and activism.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
Very much at the core of my understanding of this, is that all those who exercise power of any sort at whatever level are accountable to God for how they exercise that power, and this applies whether they believe in him or not.
If God is, then he is and this is irrespective of whether people believe in him or not. That seems to me to follow automatically.
I think that saying that Satan misled you is an easy "get out of jail free" card for people who know exactly what they are doing.
I rather agree with you on that one. It sounds like an attempt to say that Satan is responsible for my failings. I had nothing to do with them and could not help it.
@ChastMastr I had to look up your 'seven mountains mandate'. I had not heard of that before. Looking briefly at the history, I would interpret that as an example of people taking an idea which may once have had some value, and then running with it to places that it did not belong. I suspect, those that took that run were people who found the idea a convenient excuse to support what they already wanted to think.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
Very much at the core of my understanding of this, is that all those who exercise power of any sort at whatever level are accountable to God for how they exercise that power, and this applies whether they believe in him or not.
Yes, but how this then translates practically can vary depending on the emphasis people place on getting things right vs the final resolution of all things (and those two things don't necessarily have to be exclusive of each other).
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
Very much at the core of my understanding of this, is that all those who exercise power of any sort at whatever level are accountable to God for how they exercise that power, and this applies whether they believe in him or not.
Yes, but how this then translates practically can vary depending on the emphasis people place on getting things right vs the final resolution of all things (and those two things don't necessarily have to be exclusive of each other).
I am not sure that I understand quite what you're saying there.
If I am accountable to God, it is he who decides how this 'translates', not me. So any emphases I might think he ought to place on what, depend on him, not on how I think I should measure my accountability.
I was both intrigued and quite surprised that the Prospect article on Paul Marshall you linked to listed Richard Tice among those with past associations with Iwerne. I would be very surprised if somebody were to tell me he retained any links with either public school evangelicalism or any other sort these days.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
Very much at the core of my understanding of this, is that all those who exercise power of any sort at whatever level are accountable to God for how they exercise that power, and this applies whether they believe in him or not.
Yes, but how this then translates practically can vary depending on the emphasis people place on getting things right vs the final resolution of all things (and those two things don't necessarily have to be exclusive of each other).
If I am accountable to God, it is he who decides how this 'translates', not me.
Okay, so it's devoid of any practical meaning is it ? Because for it to have any kind of significance would imply holding some idea about 'how God decides' what accountability means.
Thank you @Baptist Trainfan for those links. They look really interesting and I had not heard of this organisation before. Alas, I do not think I will be able to watch either of them live. Do you know if they are recorded and available afterwards?
I referred to Helen Paynter in my opening post but Sarah Shin is a completely new name to me. In some ways, the Cruddas/Kruger one might be for me the more interesting because both of them are people who represent positions I find it difficult to relate to. Kruger, I have already mentioned, but Cruddas is someone I associate with the fossil part of the Labour tradition.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
Very much at the core of my understanding of this, is that all those who exercise power of any sort at whatever level are accountable to God for how they exercise that power, and this applies whether they believe in him or not.
Yes, but how this then translates practically can vary depending on the emphasis people place on getting things right vs the final resolution of all things (and those two things don't necessarily have to be exclusive of each other).
If I am accountable to God, it is he who decides how this 'translates', not me.
Okay, so it's devoid of any practical meaning is it ? Because for it to have any kind of significance would imply holding some idea about 'how God decides' what accountability means.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say here, which is making it difficult for me to respond to your question. It is possible we are speaking cross purposes.
I would have thought that engaging with God to try to work out the implications of one's responsibility to him is a fundamental part of the spiritual life. A person who does not believe in God presumably sees no reason why they should seek to do that, but that does not let one off responsibility for trying.
Alas, I do not think I will be able to watch either of them live. Do you know if they are recorded and available afterwards?
I don't know, sorry.
... Sarah Shin is a completely new name to me. In some ways, the Cruddas/Kruger one might be for me the more interesting because both of them are people who represent positions I find it difficult to relate to.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
Very much at the core of my understanding of this, is that all those who exercise power of any sort at whatever level are accountable to God for how they exercise that power, and this applies whether they believe in him or not.
Yes, but how this then translates practically can vary depending on the emphasis people place on getting things right vs the final resolution of all things (and those two things don't necessarily have to be exclusive of each other).
If I am accountable to God, it is he who decides how this 'translates', not me.
Okay, so it's devoid of any practical meaning is it ? Because for it to have any kind of significance would imply holding some idea about 'how God decides' what accountability means.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say here, which is making it difficult for me to respond to your question. It is possible we are speaking cross purposes.
I would have thought that engaging with God to try to work out the implications of one's responsibility to him is a fundamental part of the spiritual life. A person who does not believe in God presumably sees no reason why they should seek to do that, but that does not let one off responsibility for trying.
Surely it makes absolutely no sense to work out the implications of one's responsibility to a being one does not believe exists? It'd be like me working out what Vishnu or Cthulhu requires of me.
Does God really expect people to do the logically nonsensical?
I would have thought that engaging with God to try to work out the implications of one's responsibility to him is a fundamental part of the spiritual life.
Yes, and people who do this tend not come to the same conclusions as to what 'working out the implications of responsibility' means. "It is he who decides how this 'translates'" is ultimately refracted through our individual theologies and doctrines of God.
…
Surely it makes absolutely no sense to work out the implications of one's responsibility to a being one does not believe exists? It'd be like me working out what Vishnu or Cthulhu requires of me.
Does God really expect people to do the logically nonsensical?
People - each and every one of us - do logically nonsensical things every day of our lives!
It is quite possible to have no belief that God actually exists, but nevertheless to see the idea of God as being a useful invention of human beings, an imagined hook on which to hang a collection of ideas about meaning and how to live one's life.
…
Surely it makes absolutely no sense to work out the implications of one's responsibility to a being one does not believe exists? It'd be like me working out what Vishnu or Cthulhu requires of me.
Does God really expect people to do the logically nonsensical?
People - each and every one of us - do logically nonsensical things every day of our lives!
It is quite possible to have no belief that God actually exists, but nevertheless to see the idea of God as being a useful invention of human beings, an imagined hook on which to hang a collection of ideas about meaning and how to live one's life.
Yes, but that doesn't sound like what @Enoch said.
Moreover there's a massive difference between observing people do nonsensical things and suggesting they have a responsibility to do so.
Returning to the actual subject of this thread, although the more traditional U.S. type of Christianity advocated for in this article is much more beneficient in its social effects than anything presented either by Yaxley-Lennon/Kruger/Orr in the UK, or the various evangelicals who cling onto Trump's coat-tails, back him or defend his as Cyrus in the USA, I am not persuaded it is not just another of what C.S. Lewis criticised as 'Christianity and ..... ' where the 'and' gradually takes over and supplants Jesus and Christianity.
It is easy to see this in people one does not agree with, like those behind the Patriot Bible or the Revd Hewlett Johnson, the Red Dean of Canterbury, who saw Joseph Stalin as the true manifestation of the Christian faith for the mid twentieth century. From his diary, it appears that even Maisky the Soviet ambassador in London at the time, regarded him as a naive idiot. It is harder for most people to see it in the question whether Christianity endorses the social assumptions they have grown up into. It is much easier to assume Jesus agrees with a package of ideas that already fit one's predispositions and to develop them further in whatever direction one imagines one's sanctified brain could like to take them than actually to ask him whether he has any views on the subject and listen to what he might nudge one towards.
Yes, but that doesn't sound like what @Enoch said.
Moreover there's a massive difference between observing people do nonsensical things and suggesting they have a responsibility to do so.
In practical terms, the alternative to living according to a system of values predicated on a notional deity is developing one's own system of values. Most of the people that I know seem unwilling to do this, even after they have ceased believing in the deity. In practice, they ditch the values they find most objectionable and keep the rest. They also tend to maintain a responsibility to try to live up to those values, said responsibility apparently being largely unaffected by the absence of the deity who they previously believed to be holding them to account.
In other words, for a given person, whether they believe there's a deity looking over their shoulder doesn't seem to make a lot of difference to the responsibility they feel.
The logical nonsensicality doesn't seem to make much difference.
@Enoch, what if he apparently 'nudges' you towards completely opposite positions to those you currently agree with?
There's a guy in our parish who is getting involved with Your Party because he feels Labour has sold out.
Has Jesus 'nudged' him towards that position or is it one he has arrived at through his own volition and convictions?
Equally, there are people in our parish or 'enquirers' who come from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Has Jesus 'nudged' them that way?
I didn't feel any particular sense of divine 'leading' or nudging as it were when I became involved in local and regional politics nor did I do so when I felt it right to step back from it.
I wouldn't claim any particular sense of divine leading were I to leave my own political party and join another.
If someone believes their Christian faith is compatible with being Green, Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, Plaid Cymru or SNP then that's a matter for them and for their conscience. I can't imagine our Lord looking down from heaven and going, 'Dang! I wanted them to join Your Party ...'
You'll notice I didn't include Reform on my list.
'Arise Peter, kill and eat ...'
?
I might think that Orr, Kruger and so on are entirely misled but what if they claimed that God had nudged them that way? How would that be any easier to evaluate spiritually than if I said God had nudged me to become a Lib Dem (I don't believe he did, by the way but then he didn't 'stop' me either ...).
I would feel uncomfortable with anyone from whichever end of the political spectrum who claimed some kind of direct divine guidance into this, that or the other political grouping.
... I would feel uncomfortable with anyone from whichever end of the political spectrum who claimed some kind of direct divine guidance into this, that or the other political grouping.
I agree, wholeheartedly and unequivocally.
I am also very suspicious indeed of a retired CofE priest locally who regularly gets themself prosecuted for performative acts of civil disobedience, in their case for Green causes. This has included attempting to damage a glass/perspex case with an original Magna Carta in it, with the claim that Magna Carta was being betrayed by those who were not rallying to the cause. This person has claimed in court that Jesus Christ commanded them to do this because that is their interpretation of what scripture adjures one to do.
Perhaps they are right and I am a slack Laodicean compromiser, but I have my doubts.
I think there are occasions where a political choice can actually be wicked or sinful, but these are very rare. That, though, is a negative thing, the exclusion of an option, not the choosing of one. I would be very suspicious of anyone who claimed that God had nudged them towards a particular politics, or that the politics they were advocating had more divine authority than anyone else's did.
This person has claimed in court that Jesus Christ commanded them to do this because that is their interpretation of what scripture adjures one to do.
Perhaps they are right and I am a slack Laodicean compromiser, but I have my doubts.
Or perhaps it's what they've been led to or a consequence of how their individual conscience has been shaped by faith.
I think there are occasions where a political choice can actually be wicked or sinful, but these are very rare.
Although I doubt if the Almighty is particularly impressed by loud pronouncements of something as 'wicked'.
Unless it accords with what you or I or anyone else here would count as 'wicked'?
I'm reminded of the comment Oliver Cromwell is supposed to have made to Ireton.
'Evety man that wages war believes that God is on his side. I'll warrant God must often wonder who is on His.'
Which perhaps doesn't quite fit with his, 'God made them as stubble to our swords,' comment in a letter after Marston Moor.
I don't know, notions of divine providence popular at the time would suggest that if a victory was won it was because God wanted it to happen. You can certainly get a lot of support for this from Hebrew Scripture. Presumably one could only be sure of whose side God was on after the fact, which then neatly proves the necessity of warfare.
This person has claimed in court that Jesus Christ commanded them to do this because that is their interpretation of what scripture adjures one to do.
Perhaps they are right and I am a slack Laodicean compromiser, but I have my doubts.
Or perhaps it's what they've been led to or a consequence of how their individual conscience has been shaped by faith.
I think there are occasions where a political choice can actually be wicked or sinful, but these are very rare.
Although I doubt if the Almighty is particularly impressed by loud pronouncements of something as 'wicked'.
Unless it accords with what you or I or anyone else here would count as 'wicked'?
I'm reminded of the comment Oliver Cromwell is supposed to have made to Ireton.
'Evety man that wages war believes that God is on his side. I'll warrant God must often wonder who is on His.'
Which perhaps doesn't quite fit with his, 'God made them as stubble to our swords,' comment in a letter after Marston Moor.
That first quote sounds really apocryphal, like the kinda stuff that gets attributed to Einstein and put on inspirational calendars.
Also, while I realize people are often more nuanced than their reputations, I would not expect Oliver Cromwell to have much ambivalence about which side in a military conflict God was on.
Yes. Apparently it was invented for dramatic effect for the 1970 unhistorical historical film, Cromwell starring Richard Harries.
Ah, thanks. I was watching a few clips from that on YouTube the other day, as a matter of fact.
Portraying Cromwell as skeptical on which side of a battle God is on reminds of the end of the Leopold And Loeb movie Compulsion, where their lawyer, a stand-in for Clarence Darrow, says to them something like "May God have mercy on your souls", thus prompting himself into a speech about how, after a lifetime of doubt, he is now more open-minded about the possibilities of faith(*).
(*) In a much later TV movie about the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Darrow figure is shown at the end holding a copy of the Bible in one hand and a copy of Darwin in the other, and doing the weighing motions, apparently undecided about which one he thinks might be more scientifically accurate.
I think that Cromwell was indeed more eirenic and tolerant than some of his contemporaries. He was of course anti-Catholic but he was less fussed than some about exactly what sort of Protestant one should be.
Up to a point. He banned bishops and wasn't keen on the non-Puritan end of the Anglican spectrum.
He was, however, remarkably tolerant of more 'out there' forms of Protestantism such as the Quakers, who were in their formative and 'enthusiastic' stage at the time.
He famously allowed the Jews back into England, not out of largesse but because he wanted to see them converted which would have hastened the end of the world.
I think nationalism is problematic even before religion gets involved. By nationalism I mean the ideology that arose in the 19th century based on the idea that humanity was composed of nations—sometimes called peoples, sometimes races (though that word has fallen out of favor, for good reason)—bound together by ancestry, language, culture (often including religion, which can be a proxy for ethnicity), and a primal bond to an ancestral homeland, and that each nation has a natural right to its own state, on the territory of its ancestral homeland, where the people of the nation can collectively determine their own destiny, free from domination and interference by outside powers.
This inevitably leads to the problem of just who to count as a member of the nation, which lead to either forced inclusion with the suppression of minority identities or to the exclusion of those who for whatever reason are insufficiently authentic members (such as those of "foreign" or mixed ancestry, those who practice a different religion from the majority, those who speak a different language or dialect). And the there is the problem that nationalism assumes that the territory of the world can be neatly divided such that there is an agreed-upon one-to-one correspondence between nations and states. We've seen how that worked out over the past couple of centuries. Nationalism started as a movement to liberate people from the empires that dominated Europe from the Middle Ages, and has been a strategy to resist colonialism and other forms of oppression, but its internal logic seems to lead inexorably to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Once you decide that your nation is divinely ordained and a vehicle for God's will it can only get worse. I no longer identify as a Christian, but when I did I was, to put it mildly, deeply troubled by the failure of American Christians to confront Christian Nationalism (it's not an insignificant factor in my rejection of Christianity, though not the whole deal). In particular, American Evangelical Christians who don't like the CN trend nevertheless get squishy about it and fail to denounce it as the ugly heresy it is, even while expressing general disapproval.
Yes. Apparently it was invented for dramatic effect for the 1970 unhistorical historical film, Cromwell starring Richard Harries.
Question for anyone who would know:
In the movie, is Cromwell portrayed as uttering that within earshot of other people, or is it a private moment where he's talking only to himself?
In conversation as I remember rightly. Not a soliloquy.
Thanks.
The bits I've been watching on YouTube really don't seem written to convey the idea that Cromwell was the kinda guy who'd be undecided about which side God was on. For example, the scene(embellished, I assume) where he goes to a church service with his family and personally starts smashing up the "popish" trappings on the altar.
In the scene portraying the sentencing of Charles I, the judge is shown as stuttering right before announcing the death penalty, presumably to convey the idea that he's hesitant about executing a king, and Richard Harris casts him some wide-eye.
Reminded me of the bit in the western Unforgiven, where a British contract-killer played by Harris brags to Americans still reeling from the Garfield assassination that no one could ever shoot a monarch, because "his hand would tremble before firing the shot", or some such.
They've flogged the building off to Pembroke College now, but I remember donkey's years ago when I went into what was then Emmanuel United Reformed Church in Cambridge and laughed aloud as I noticed they had a stained glass window of Oliver Cromwell.
They've flogged the building off to Pembroke College now, but I remember donkey's years ago when I went into what was then Emmanuel United Reformed Church in Cambridge and laughed aloud as I noticed they had a stained glass window of Oliver Cromwell.
Well, as long as they weren't lighting incense underneath it and kissing his feet...
[By the way, I was able to find that stained-glass window on-line, along with info about the church itself. Apparently, they had six windows dedicated to "Puritan worthies", including Milton.]
I think nationalism is problematic even before religion gets involved. By nationalism I mean the ideology that arose in the 19th century based on the idea that humanity was composed of nations—sometimes called peoples, sometimes races (though that word has fallen out of favor, for good reason)—bound together by ancestry, language, culture (often including religion, which can be a proxy for ethnicity), and a primal bond to an ancestral homeland, and that each nation has a natural right to its own state, on the territory of its ancestral homeland, where the people of the nation can collectively determine their own destiny, free from domination and interference by outside powers.
This is etymologically determined. "Nation" derives from the Latin natio, meaning birth. A good essay on this is Bret Devereaux's My Country Isn't a Nation. Some of the confusion (which he addresses) is that "nation" is very often used in vernacular language as a synonym for "state" when it's actually a metonym.
I think nationalism is problematic even before religion gets involved. By nationalism I mean the ideology that arose in the 19th century based on the idea that humanity was composed of nations—sometimes called peoples, sometimes races (though that word has fallen out of favor, for good reason)—bound together by ancestry, language, culture (often including religion, which can be a proxy for ethnicity), and a primal bond to an ancestral homeland, and that each nation has a natural right to its own state, on the territory of its ancestral homeland, where the people of the nation can collectively determine their own destiny, free from domination and interference by outside powers.
This inevitably leads to the problem of just who to count as a member of the nation, which lead to either forced inclusion with the suppression of minority identities or to the exclusion of those who for whatever reason are insufficiently authentic members (such as those of "foreign" or mixed ancestry, those who practice a different religion from the majority, those who speak a different language or dialect). And the there is the problem that nationalism assumes that the territory of the world can be neatly divided such that there is an agreed-upon one-to-one correspondence between nations and states. We've seen how that worked out over the past couple of centuries. Nationalism started as a movement to liberate people from the empires that dominated Europe from the Middle Ages, and has been a strategy to resist colonialism and other forms of oppression, but its internal logic seems to lead inexorably to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Once you decide that your nation is divinely ordained and a vehicle for God's will it can only get worse. I no longer identify as a Christian, but when I did I was, to put it mildly, deeply troubled by the failure of American Christians to confront Christian Nationalism (it's not an insignificant factor in my rejection of Christianity, though not the whole deal). In particular, American Evangelical Christians who don't like the CN trend nevertheless get squishy about it and fail to denounce it as the ugly heresy it is, even while expressing general disapproval.
I’m very glad to hear The Holy Post denouncing it as heretical, thank God.
Yes. Apparently it was invented for dramatic effect for the 1970 unhistorical historical film, Cromwell starring Richard Harries.
Question for anyone who would know:
In the movie, is Cromwell portrayed as uttering that within earshot of other people, or is it a private moment where he's talking only to himself?
In conversation as I remember rightly. Not a soliloquy.
Thanks.
The bits I've been watching on YouTube really don't seem written to convey the idea that Cromwell was the kinda guy who'd be undecided about which side God was on. For example, the scene(embellished, I assume) where he goes to a church service with his family and personally starts smashing up the "popish" trappings on the altar.
God, he was foul. I hope he’s experiencing redemption now of course.
I have been away for the weekend, and so have only got back today to respond to anything.
Uncomfortable though others may be with the word 'wicked' can you suggest another word that you are less uncomfortable with? Can anybody get through life if they do not form some sort of estimation of what it is that they regard as good and bad ways to live and behave? That inevitably demands some sort of an attempt to discern between the two. From that, however much one might say that one is only exercising that discernment in respect of one's own conduct, inevitably that is going to include some form of evaluation of what other people are doing. It depends on one's beliefs and one's understanding as to how one works out how to do that discernment, whether one does it by one's own mental processes, by attempting to interpret in the abstract what one thinks God might require of one, or whether one tries also to engage with God (e.g in prayer) so as at least to try to gain some impression of his personality and what he might be saying is his approach to this.
The temptation is, without really thinking about it, to assume that one's own discernment tends towards the infallible. Unfortunately, that can apply just as easily to the faithful believer as it does to Professor Dawkins, Donald Trump or Elon Musk. Despite that, I suspect it is impossible to get through life at all without exercising that sort of discernment at all. I cannot help feeling that it is more wholesome to exercise it with at least an internal awareness that one might be wrong, than either simply to bash on regardless, or to pretend to oneself that one is completely open minded, non-judgemental and not exercising any discernment at all.
Returning to Christian nationalism, one of the many disturbing things that I think it gives people, is an infallible package of opinions, exterior to either themselves or their inner sense of right and wrong, that gives them the illusion that it does that discernment for them.
I think nationalism is problematic even before religion gets involved. By nationalism I mean the ideology that arose in the 19th century based on the idea that humanity was composed of nations—sometimes called peoples, sometimes races (though that word has fallen out of favor, for good reason)—bound together by ancestry, language, culture (often including religion, which can be a proxy for ethnicity), and a primal bond to an ancestral homeland, and that each nation has a natural right to its own state, on the territory of its ancestral homeland, where the people of the nation can collectively determine their own destiny, free from domination and interference by outside powers.
This inevitably leads to the problem of just who to count as a member of the nation, which lead to either forced inclusion with the suppression of minority identities or to the exclusion of those who for whatever reason are insufficiently authentic members (such as those of "foreign" or mixed ancestry, those who practice a different religion from the majority, those who speak a different language or dialect). And the there is the problem that nationalism assumes that the territory of the world can be neatly divided such that there is an agreed-upon one-to-one correspondence between nations and states. We've seen how that worked out over the past couple of centuries. Nationalism started as a movement to liberate people from the empires that dominated Europe from the Middle Ages, and has been a strategy to resist colonialism and other forms of oppression, but its internal logic seems to lead inexorably to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Once you decide that your nation is divinely ordained and a vehicle for God's will it can only get worse. I no longer identify as a Christian, but when I did I was, to put it mildly, deeply troubled by the failure of American Christians to confront Christian Nationalism (it's not an insignificant factor in my rejection of Christianity, though not the whole deal). In particular, American Evangelical Christians who don't like the CN trend nevertheless get squishy about it and fail to denounce it as the ugly heresy it is, even while expressing general disapproval.
The religious nationalism of the US seems to have been there since it the beginning. I certainly see it in the Puritan Writings. While the writers of the constitution purposely left out any mention of God in the Constitution, most schools used books that implied it was ordained by God. Then there was the false doctrine of Manifest Destiny. During the Civil War, both sides claimed God was on their side, to which Abraham Lincoln was reported to have said his concern was whether the Union was on God's side. Big difference. Down to today, where Pete Hegseth is a known member of a Christian Nationalist cult ordering the sinking of alleged drug boats and the killing of everyone on board. Frankly, going more than one step too far, in my book.
I mean, I agree, but that's also a work of fiction.
The last scene of that movie ends with the dissolution of parliament, and has Cromwell inconspicuously entering at the exact moment someone is giving a speech about how MPs have the right to rob the public blind. During the banishing, someone points out to OC that this is the sorta thing that he had Charles I executed for, but this tone is quickly set aside for Cromwell giving a speech about how he's now gonna do lotsa good stuff for the people like open schools and universities. A narrator then intones how all this paved the way for modern democracy.
Comments
I was thinking more of explicitly fascist-identifying people (which most MAGA people are not), and especially the tendency of those who use born-again status as a way to avoid accountability.
I mean you are aware that increasing numbers of people are self-identifying as fascists, right? Many of them will indeed just state that that's their political position. Also, anyone in the congregation or known to them who is in local antifa groups or had run-ins with local fash would be able to identify them.
Anyone rocking up who is clearly an activist in that direction or openly identifies as fascist is going to be immediately identifiable as such and the parish/congregation can take whatever steps are necessary to protect people.
It's the more subtle forms I'm concerned about, which doesn't mean we should go on a paranoid Mccarthy-style witch-hunt to weed out anyone who might be vaguely right-wing or who don't conform to whatever views we may personally find acceptable.
I'm inclined to say that if someone was fascist before, and is not now (or later), then I'm going to rejoice that they've changed or been changed, regardless.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that someone in that situation could claim they were possessed, either before or after becoming a Christian. They might even believe they were. Certainly it's possible that demonic influence could be involved (the cruelty and callousness and arrogance, in particular), though I'd personally say only in the way it is all the time anyway, through the usual means of temptation that everyone experiences in any time, place, or culture. I could imagine someone coming from the "seven mountain mandate" end of the spectrum of Christian nationalism realizing that they'd been seriously and dangerously deceived, and concluding that it was literally diabolical (which is, indeed, arguable--such a twisting of the Christian faith into something like that), though perhaps not thinking they were possessed. But misled by Satan, at least on some level? Certainly.
For me, this looks like a serious issue.
Back at the opening post: It also transpires that Jerusalem was, indeed, on the playlist, which shouldn't be the least bit surprising, given its musical origins at a Fight for Right meeting during World War I. Remember that God has a number of seats in the English Parliament. As Humanists UK points out:
For Christians and churches, it seems that an unwanted distinction between two contrasting models of Jesus is being made by recent events.
- Christ the King, returning in triumph to rule the earth
- Christ the Servant, washing the feet of his disciples
I don't know what worship songs were sung at Unite the Kingdom, but I'd be surprised if they included The Servant King.More generally, repackaging Christian Nationalism for the UK today really doesn't seem difficult, more a case of updating what's already there for a modern audience. It's also not difficult because of the way that it's long been about evoking nostalgia for a reimagined lost past.
Every ruler being ultimately under the authority of Christ doesn't necessarily imply indifference, it can also signal accountability.
It has been said that God created humanity in his own image, and ever since Humanity has been returning the favour.
When Christians talk about Christianity "transforming our nation", especially in the context of conversion, increase in bums on pews, etc. what they mean is "people becoming more like me, or at least the idealised image I have of myself". So if a wet pinko lefty like me says it, I mean the nation becoming kinder, more tolerant and rejecting right wing devil take the hindmost libertarianism or theocratic enforcement of social conservatism in favour of a kind, compassionate and welcoming society. Because that's my idealised view of how I'd like society to be, and as a Christian if I thought God wanted something completely different I'd be trying to come round to his point of view.
If someone like Kruger or, God help us, Yaxley Lennon says it, then I suspect they mean something rather different.
Again, I don't think this implies indifference, in the same way that this same idea when held individually can be a spur to both passivity and activism.
If God is, then he is and this is irrespective of whether people believe in him or not. That seems to me to follow automatically.
I rather agree with you on that one. It sounds like an attempt to say that Satan is responsible for my failings. I had nothing to do with them and could not help it.
@ChastMastr I had to look up your 'seven mountains mandate'. I had not heard of that before. Looking briefly at the history, I would interpret that as an example of people taking an idea which may once have had some value, and then running with it to places that it did not belong. I suspect, those that took that run were people who found the idea a convenient excuse to support what they already wanted to think.
Yes, but how this then translates practically can vary depending on the emphasis people place on getting things right vs the final resolution of all things (and those two things don't necessarily have to be exclusive of each other).
If I am accountable to God, it is he who decides how this 'translates', not me. So any emphases I might think he ought to place on what, depend on him, not on how I think I should measure my accountability.
I was both intrigued and quite surprised that the Prospect article on Paul Marshall you linked to listed Richard Tice among those with past associations with Iwerne. I would be very surprised if somebody were to tell me he retained any links with either public school evangelicalism or any other sort these days.
Okay, so it's devoid of any practical meaning is it ? Because for it to have any kind of significance would imply holding some idea about 'how God decides' what accountability means.
I referred to Helen Paynter in my opening post but Sarah Shin is a completely new name to me. In some ways, the Cruddas/Kruger one might be for me the more interesting because both of them are people who represent positions I find it difficult to relate to. Kruger, I have already mentioned, but Cruddas is someone I associate with the fossil part of the Labour tradition.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say here, which is making it difficult for me to respond to your question. It is possible we are speaking cross purposes.
I would have thought that engaging with God to try to work out the implications of one's responsibility to him is a fundamental part of the spiritual life. A person who does not believe in God presumably sees no reason why they should seek to do that, but that does not let one off responsibility for trying.
Ditto.
Surely it makes absolutely no sense to work out the implications of one's responsibility to a being one does not believe exists? It'd be like me working out what Vishnu or Cthulhu requires of me.
Does God really expect people to do the logically nonsensical?
Yes, and people who do this tend not come to the same conclusions as to what 'working out the implications of responsibility' means. "It is he who decides how this 'translates'" is ultimately refracted through our individual theologies and doctrines of God.
It is quite possible to have no belief that God actually exists, but nevertheless to see the idea of God as being a useful invention of human beings, an imagined hook on which to hang a collection of ideas about meaning and how to live one's life.
Yes, but that doesn't sound like what @Enoch said.
Moreover there's a massive difference between observing people do nonsensical things and suggesting they have a responsibility to do so.
It is easy to see this in people one does not agree with, like those behind the Patriot Bible or the Revd Hewlett Johnson, the Red Dean of Canterbury, who saw Joseph Stalin as the true manifestation of the Christian faith for the mid twentieth century. From his diary, it appears that even Maisky the Soviet ambassador in London at the time, regarded him as a naive idiot. It is harder for most people to see it in the question whether Christianity endorses the social assumptions they have grown up into. It is much easier to assume Jesus agrees with a package of ideas that already fit one's predispositions and to develop them further in whatever direction one imagines one's sanctified brain could like to take them than actually to ask him whether he has any views on the subject and listen to what he might nudge one towards.
In other words, for a given person, whether they believe there's a deity looking over their shoulder doesn't seem to make a lot of difference to the responsibility they feel.
The logical nonsensicality doesn't seem to make much difference.
There's a guy in our parish who is getting involved with Your Party because he feels Labour has sold out.
Has Jesus 'nudged' him towards that position or is it one he has arrived at through his own volition and convictions?
Equally, there are people in our parish or 'enquirers' who come from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Has Jesus 'nudged' them that way?
I didn't feel any particular sense of divine 'leading' or nudging as it were when I became involved in local and regional politics nor did I do so when I felt it right to step back from it.
I wouldn't claim any particular sense of divine leading were I to leave my own political party and join another.
If someone believes their Christian faith is compatible with being Green, Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, Plaid Cymru or SNP then that's a matter for them and for their conscience. I can't imagine our Lord looking down from heaven and going, 'Dang! I wanted them to join Your Party ...'
You'll notice I didn't include Reform on my list.
'Arise Peter, kill and eat ...'
?
I might think that Orr, Kruger and so on are entirely misled but what if they claimed that God had nudged them that way? How would that be any easier to evaluate spiritually than if I said God had nudged me to become a Lib Dem (I don't believe he did, by the way but then he didn't 'stop' me either ...).
I would feel uncomfortable with anyone from whichever end of the political spectrum who claimed some kind of direct divine guidance into this, that or the other political grouping.
I am also very suspicious indeed of a retired CofE priest locally who regularly gets themself prosecuted for performative acts of civil disobedience, in their case for Green causes. This has included attempting to damage a glass/perspex case with an original Magna Carta in it, with the claim that Magna Carta was being betrayed by those who were not rallying to the cause. This person has claimed in court that Jesus Christ commanded them to do this because that is their interpretation of what scripture adjures one to do.
Perhaps they are right and I am a slack Laodicean compromiser, but I have my doubts.
I think there are occasions where a political choice can actually be wicked or sinful, but these are very rare. That, though, is a negative thing, the exclusion of an option, not the choosing of one. I would be very suspicious of anyone who claimed that God had nudged them towards a particular politics, or that the politics they were advocating had more divine authority than anyone else's did.
Or perhaps it's what they've been led to or a consequence of how their individual conscience has been shaped by faith.
Although I doubt if the Almighty is particularly impressed by loud pronouncements of something as 'wicked'.
Unless it accords with what you or I or anyone else here would count as 'wicked'?
I'm reminded of the comment Oliver Cromwell is supposed to have made to Ireton.
'Evety man that wages war believes that God is on his side. I'll warrant God must often wonder who is on His.'
Which perhaps doesn't quite fit with his, 'God made them as stubble to our swords,' comment in a letter after Marston Moor.
I don't know, notions of divine providence popular at the time would suggest that if a victory was won it was because God wanted it to happen. You can certainly get a lot of support for this from Hebrew Scripture. Presumably one could only be sure of whose side God was on after the fact, which then neatly proves the necessity of warfare.
That first quote sounds really apocryphal, like the kinda stuff that gets attributed to Einstein and put on inspirational calendars.
Also, while I realize people are often more nuanced than their reputations, I would not expect Oliver Cromwell to have much ambivalence about which side in a military conflict God was on.
Ah, thanks. I was watching a few clips from that on YouTube the other day, as a matter of fact.
Portraying Cromwell as skeptical on which side of a battle God is on reminds of the end of the Leopold And Loeb movie Compulsion, where their lawyer, a stand-in for Clarence Darrow, says to them something like "May God have mercy on your souls", thus prompting himself into a speech about how, after a lifetime of doubt, he is now more open-minded about the possibilities of faith(*).
(*) In a much later TV movie about the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Darrow figure is shown at the end holding a copy of the Bible in one hand and a copy of Darwin in the other, and doing the weighing motions, apparently undecided about which one he thinks might be more scientifically accurate.
He was, however, remarkably tolerant of more 'out there' forms of Protestantism such as the Quakers, who were in their formative and 'enthusiastic' stage at the time.
He famously allowed the Jews back into England, not out of largesse but because he wanted to see them converted which would have hastened the end of the world.
Question for anyone who would know:
In the movie, is Cromwell portrayed as uttering that within earshot of other people, or is it a private moment where he's talking only to himself?
This inevitably leads to the problem of just who to count as a member of the nation, which lead to either forced inclusion with the suppression of minority identities or to the exclusion of those who for whatever reason are insufficiently authentic members (such as those of "foreign" or mixed ancestry, those who practice a different religion from the majority, those who speak a different language or dialect). And the there is the problem that nationalism assumes that the territory of the world can be neatly divided such that there is an agreed-upon one-to-one correspondence between nations and states. We've seen how that worked out over the past couple of centuries. Nationalism started as a movement to liberate people from the empires that dominated Europe from the Middle Ages, and has been a strategy to resist colonialism and other forms of oppression, but its internal logic seems to lead inexorably to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Once you decide that your nation is divinely ordained and a vehicle for God's will it can only get worse. I no longer identify as a Christian, but when I did I was, to put it mildly, deeply troubled by the failure of American Christians to confront Christian Nationalism (it's not an insignificant factor in my rejection of Christianity, though not the whole deal). In particular, American Evangelical Christians who don't like the CN trend nevertheless get squishy about it and fail to denounce it as the ugly heresy it is, even while expressing general disapproval.
In conversation as I remember rightly. Not a soliloquy.
Thanks.
The bits I've been watching on YouTube really don't seem written to convey the idea that Cromwell was the kinda guy who'd be undecided about which side God was on. For example, the scene(embellished, I assume) where he goes to a church service with his family and personally starts smashing up the "popish" trappings on the altar.
In the scene portraying the sentencing of Charles I, the judge is shown as stuttering right before announcing the death penalty, presumably to convey the idea that he's hesitant about executing a king, and Richard Harris casts him some wide-eye.
Reminded me of the bit in the western Unforgiven, where a British contract-killer played by Harris brags to Americans still reeling from the Garfield assassination that no one could ever shoot a monarch, because "his hand would tremble before firing the shot", or some such.
Well, as long as they weren't lighting incense underneath it and kissing his feet...
This is etymologically determined. "Nation" derives from the Latin natio, meaning birth. A good essay on this is Bret Devereaux's My Country Isn't a Nation. Some of the confusion (which he addresses) is that "nation" is very often used in vernacular language as a synonym for "state" when it's actually a metonym.
I’m very glad to hear The Holy Post denouncing it as heretical, thank God.
God, he was foul. I hope he’s experiencing redemption now of course.
Uncomfortable though others may be with the word 'wicked' can you suggest another word that you are less uncomfortable with? Can anybody get through life if they do not form some sort of estimation of what it is that they regard as good and bad ways to live and behave? That inevitably demands some sort of an attempt to discern between the two. From that, however much one might say that one is only exercising that discernment in respect of one's own conduct, inevitably that is going to include some form of evaluation of what other people are doing. It depends on one's beliefs and one's understanding as to how one works out how to do that discernment, whether one does it by one's own mental processes, by attempting to interpret in the abstract what one thinks God might require of one, or whether one tries also to engage with God (e.g in prayer) so as at least to try to gain some impression of his personality and what he might be saying is his approach to this.
The temptation is, without really thinking about it, to assume that one's own discernment tends towards the infallible. Unfortunately, that can apply just as easily to the faithful believer as it does to Professor Dawkins, Donald Trump or Elon Musk. Despite that, I suspect it is impossible to get through life at all without exercising that sort of discernment at all. I cannot help feeling that it is more wholesome to exercise it with at least an internal awareness that one might be wrong, than either simply to bash on regardless, or to pretend to oneself that one is completely open minded, non-judgemental and not exercising any discernment at all.
Returning to Christian nationalism, one of the many disturbing things that I think it gives people, is an infallible package of opinions, exterior to either themselves or their inner sense of right and wrong, that gives them the illusion that it does that discernment for them.
The religious nationalism of the US seems to have been there since it the beginning. I certainly see it in the Puritan Writings. While the writers of the constitution purposely left out any mention of God in the Constitution, most schools used books that implied it was ordained by God. Then there was the false doctrine of Manifest Destiny. During the Civil War, both sides claimed God was on their side, to which Abraham Lincoln was reported to have said his concern was whether the Union was on God's side. Big difference. Down to today, where Pete Hegseth is a known member of a Christian Nationalist cult ordering the sinking of alleged drug boats and the killing of everyone on board. Frankly, going more than one step too far, in my book.
The last scene of that movie ends with the dissolution of parliament, and has Cromwell inconspicuously entering at the exact moment someone is giving a speech about how MPs have the right to rob the public blind. During the banishing, someone points out to OC that this is the sorta thing that he had Charles I executed for, but this tone is quickly set aside for Cromwell giving a speech about how he's now gonna do lotsa good stuff for the people like open schools and universities. A narrator then intones how all this paved the way for modern democracy.