Poetry: A Compass unto Christ

The Slow Write

Judging by the “most read” stats for this website, a lot of people who reach this blog focus entirely on my essays regarding Ann Voskamp. In particular, people want to read my response to criticism of my first essay. Perhaps her beloved fans expect to see me on the back foot and penitent. In which case, they are no doubt surprised to find that my second essay was more adamant than the first.

I waited two years to reply to those criticisms posed by a junior reader. Two years. It was not that it took me that long to consider her words, but I wanted to reply in a way that was more considered than reactive.

Similarly, I have stopped posting regular long essays on this Culture Blog because things worth saying take time to prepare and to compose. They also take time to read and so belong in books.

I have been writing Creedless Christianity for four years next winter. It sounds a long time. But it is no time at all for the journey that it has been to write.

I began with a few idols, cherished by rather wishy-washy Christian publishers. I looked at the idols as people and corrected the myths surrounding them. Some English. Some American. As we move through the 19th century towards the 20th, the historical aspect deepens, for what we observed in the first idols has flourished in the later ones. We see the influence of one nation on another. Heresies that were tiny plants in a corner of England have now cast a shadow over a later generation - even over ourselves. Instead of looking at history for its own sake, we are understanding the mess in which we live and re-evaluating the many lies we have been told.

Just last week I was amazed at what the history books have not told us and I wonder how I will press so much research into my 18th chapter. But by God’s grace I will. Because this is not about writing for its own sake. This is not about publishing in the infantile worldly sense of pandering to an audience. This is about the truth. This is about understanding your history as a Christian: who you are, where you are and what you are supposed to do. I am not reinventing the wheel. Rather I am raising the flag of Protestantism, specifically Calvinism, which has been for too long pressed into the ground. It was not put there by the Johnny-cum-lately atheists or humanists, socialists or anarchists - but by Christians who argued against credal standards.

15 years ago, I would have given anything to have a book picked up by a Christian publisher. They brushed me away for all the wrong reasons and discouraged me for many years. But I am grateful. It took me 15 years, but I am grateful. Because if those publishers had accepted my juvenile efforts and patted me on the head, I would have produced light works for them for the rest of my life. But once you find yourself excluded from such a guild, you are free to think a little longer, a little wider, a little deeper. You do not have to look over your shoulder to please other people. You are not pressed into a box marked “encouraging women’s author” and told to make Christian people feel good about living in Sodom.

Those who have enjoyed being shocked by my analysis of Ann Voskamp had best avoid both volumes of Creedless Christianity. I hope, Lord willing to bring it to a conclusion this year or the next.

"Christian" Focus

On 2nd July 2020, I sent the following message to Christian Focus in response to their post:

Your blog post of 12th May 2020 is a disgrace. Florence Nightingale was vehemently and actively anti-Christian. Any research of her published writings makes that transparent. She tore up the Bible and was frequently blasphemous. Her family was highly dysfunctional so to reimagine them through the prism of a "Chalet School" style of writing is grossly inappropriate and layering myth upon myth. And to crown it all, she refused to believe that germs existed, so the idea of her enforcing scrupulous hygiene is laughable. Under her supervision, she had the hospital with the highest death rate of any in the Crimea. Whether you aim to celebrate her as a Christian or a nurse, a modicum of research would set you straight. You say that you would not consider publishing anything against the reformed faith. Very good, then I trust you will stop selling "Ten Girls Who Made History" and promoting this idol.

At the time of writing, no reply has been forthcoming.

Conformity to whom?

One of the major themes in No Earthly Good? is conformity. Although the book was published in 2014, the principle observations are more timely now, as governments rely on total conformity in a state of crisis order to achieve their goals. The introduction is shared below:

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The Poison of Little Women

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61598613

Having spent most of the summer researching Louisa May Alcott for a chapter in my ongoing project Creedless Christianity (and most of the autumn months writing it), the cinema release of yet another version of Little Women was a salutary reminder that I had not wasted my time. The influence of Alcott has not been measured adequately, nor to my knowledge judged.

The new film, like many modern films versions, is a twist on the original. Instead of Jo March being the heroine - the self-sacrificing, hard-working, dutiful Jo, all the publicity is centred on the character of Amy. She is the narcissist in the books, the self-absorbed and frivolous one - all modern virtues to be a heroine in the selfie generation.

Judging by interviews with the actress who plays Amy, the character has now become an ardent feminist, who can express the 20th century’s propaganda about the lot of women in the 19th century. It sounds even more dull and preaching than the original book, which Louisa May Alcott herself derided as “moral pap for the young”. Alcott’s was the 13th chapter I had written for Creedless Christianity and never before had I been forced to spend so long away from the subject to be submerged in the words of her puppet-masters. Louisa May Alcott surrendered her will, her mind and her soul at an early age to Ralph Waldo Emerson, her father Amos Bronson Alcott and writers such as Goethe and Thomas Carlyle. Her exhibitions of resentment against and dissatisfaction with Transcendentalism could not extract her from it. The poison was too deep in her bones. She would laugh at the Roman Catholic priest who offered to share the Gospel with her. She promoted Transcendentalist tenets by not rejecting them and by hating what her teachers hated. This is both implicit and explicit in Little Women. In a traditional film version of Little Women, Jo March is presented as the young woman struggling to break away from the strifling expectations of a society, which is regarded as “Christian”. It is not. It is the worst mongrel form of Transcendentalism. 

Transcendentalism is bald humanism. It denies that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God and asserts the deity of Man. It says that we are not individuals: rather we are mere elements in the Ideal Man and the Ideal Woman. If we conform to agree with other people then we promote this unity. If we have a higher principle in seeking the glory of God (as every Christian should), then we thwart this aim and we become outcasts in society. This is cultural totalitarianism. He who defines the Ideal controls the minds of society. A new version of Little Women is just another opportunity to tell women how to conform to the Ideal Woman, defined for another generation.

This film will be presented as a feminist triumph over patriarchy. And anyone who thinks that was the aim of Alcott’s book is showing their ignorance. Louisa May Alcott knew the standard expected of her by Transcendentalism. She knew that she was supposed to be a submissive milk-sop, a wet-weekend, a frail and fragile lily in the New England pond. Louisa May Alcott’s character of Jo is a girl struggling to achieve this, struggling to become what she ought to be. She wants to be a “little woman”. This is a million miles from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I have set out to write seven more chapters before calling Creedless Christianity complete. It cannot be rushed, as each chapter is a small book in terms of research and scope. The previous release at the cinema to catch my eye was the Frozen sequel, based on Hans Christian Andersen. He is the subject of chapter 5 in Creedless Christianity. As Christmas approaches, I recall the difficulty I had dealing with Charles Dickens in chapter 7.

These people have cast very long shadows over our lives. Dickens, for instance, makes us adopt an artificial jollity at this time of year, a Pelagian fantasy that all the world is one big sugar lump of sweetness. One of my local “vicars” has pretty much said the same in her “Christmas message”:

So if for you Christmas is little more than just a good story, think again, because in the dust and dirt of human existence we all need the jewels; the acts of compassion, love and kindness, signs of hope and joy. Those images of new birth and re-creation are what keep us living our lives to the full.

Wrong. We need the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God in Power, the Lord of All Creation, the Judge, the King.

I had the pleasure to read a very special book alongside my research into Louisa May Alcott. It was a true account written by a young woman in memorial of an invalid sister and the wonderful sister who had nursed her only to die a few years later in childbirth in the 1850s. We have the lives of three Christian women pressed into the pages like flowers from a long ago summer. They do not present an ideal woman - they show us how Christians in adversity live day to day by leaning on the Rock of their Salvation, how they find the strength to work, the courage to hope, the faith to trust, the love to endure - not because they possess any of these qualities in themselves but because they fill their cup daily from their Master’s hand and look to him for everything. Lord willing, I would like to reprint this delightful, encouraging and worthy book in the near future. To God be the glory.

Review of "The Subversive Puritan: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience" by Mostyn Roberts

The British author Mostyn Roberts has written a hagiography of Roger Williams entitled, “The Subversive Puritan”, published this year by Evangelical Press. The title is erroneous, because Williams was not a Puritan, that is someone seeking the reformation of the established Protestant Church in England. Firstly, Roger Williams left England for America. Secondly, he refused to believe in the legitimacy of any church on earth since none of them had been directly founded by an Apostle (Roberts, p.144). This was not a deep theological statement: this was an excuse. There was no possibility of an Apostle returning to found a Church for Roger Williams and so his position masked a total rejection of the public worship of God, led by a minister, no matter how orthodox the form of service, doctrinal standards and faithfulness to the Holy Scriptures.

Roger Williams’ famous belief in the separation of Church and State was therefore a complete red herring. There is no need to believe in separation if there is no Church. Separation was a Trojan horse to abolish the Church altogether and confine religion to the private sphere. This was facilitated by Williams’ insistence that the only thing that matters is the conscience of the individual. Empower each believer to do what is right in his own eyes, without the guiding hand of a minister and a creed, and soon the Church is abolished because such individualists will never have enough in common to meet together to worship God. You are left with the many cults and cliques of modern America.

With a foul and degrading choice of words, Roger Williams described an established church as “spiritual rape” (Roberts, p.128) and persecution for conscience as “soul rape” (Roberts, p.139). So let us see how far he respected the conscience of someone with whom he disagreed:

He [Roger Williams] entered into a correspondence with Sir Edward Coke’s daughter, Anne Sadleir, in 1652-53. … He sent her a copy of his Experiments of Spiritual Life but it was returned with her recommendation to read some good royalist and high church literature by King Charles, Richard Hooker, Dr. Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Never one to take a hint, Williams wrote again, sending her this time a copy of The Bloudy Tenent, Yet More Bloudy [by Williams]. She ended her reply to this, ‘entreating you to trouble me no more in this kind.’ He did trouble her, with concern for her soul. Anne replied, thanking God that her parents had brought her up in ‘the old and best religion’ it being her ‘glorie that I am a member of the church of England.’ Williams wrote asking her to read her own Jeremy Taylor - he recommended toleration of all religions. Her last known reply ended with a request to ‘trouble no more with your letters for they are very troublesome to her that wishes you in the place whence you came.’ Well, at least he had tried! (Roberts, p.158-9)

In that final flippant quip by Mostyn Roberts we see the lie in all its ugliness. Roger Williams was not content to leave Anne Sadleir in the freedom of her own conscience. He did not show respect for her private religion. He harassed her. He bullied her. In modern parlance, he groomed her. Roger Williams denied kings the right to promote the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he gave himself the right to promote his own books and his own opinions with force. Roger Williams denied the right of ministers to protect the flock of Christians in their care, to nurture the young and weak in faith, to teach with vigour those who must teach their own families, to stand between his people and the wolves who would coax them into danger. Such a wolf was Roger Williams.

Williams denied that the civil magistrate had authority to maintain the lawful keeping of the first four commandments. He would not lift a finger to promote the true worship of God, suppress idols, enforce the solemnity of oaths or the keeping of the Sabbath day. He said that there are only four things that are universally repugnant to men: murder, adultery, theft and lying (Roberts, p.21). He determined these things to be evil, quite aside from the Ten Commandments.

Mostyn Roberts glibly describes Williams’ belief in freedom of conscience as “walking in the truth”.

Obeying the corrupt conscience may lead to sin but disobeying conscience is sin and is tacit contempt for God, for it is still God’s messenger we are disobeying. … Rebellion against what you believe to be God’s voice (even if your belief is wrong) reveals contempt for God; the remedy is to align conscience more and more with the Word of God. (Roberts, p.190-1, 193)

This is the road to perdition, whereby a man may justify any and every deed of depravity because he was only obeying his conscience. If a man’s conscience deems it righteous to rape a child, blow up a school or shoot all abortionists, according to Williams it is a sin to disobey that conscience. And Williams compounds the error by blasphemously equating man’s wicked conscience with the voice of God. To tell such a rogue that he should conform to God’s Word is surely a sick joke! He has neither the ability to obey God’s law, nor the will to do so. Either a man is free in his conscience and has the world at his feet to abuse it as he likes or he is bound in service to God and must follow the straight and narrow path. He cannot be both. 

It is often hard to distinguish between the voice of Roger Williams and that of Mostyn Roberts, so besotted is the author with his subject. Roberts writes with the complacency of a man who surrendered long ago to the ideology of the U.S.A. and considers everything else to be immature. He has shed his own British history and adopted the prejudices and petulant tone of Roger Williams, inviting us to regard all faithful Protestants as persecutors-in-waiting. (Are we to suppose that the great Protestant martyrs of the Reformation threw themselves into the flames at Smithfield?) Roberts even casts aspersions on the remnant in England today who still cherish their Protestant inheritance:

The American Right is accused of baptising the flag, the constitution and capitalism. British evangelicals are sometimes in danger of dong the same with British Protestant history and Western ‘Christian’ culture more generally. (Roberts, p.228)

This is a lie. It requires great effort today to reclaim Protestant history from the twisting reinterpretation of modern humanists and to remember our true English Protestant heritage. Roberts belittles Church history in order to pave the way for a multi-cultured pluralism modelled on the U.S.A., which he fully admires:

The constitutional arrangement in America, with ‘no establishment of religion’ is healthier for religion; for the church; and for the state. (Roberts, p.207)

The Subversive Puritan is an openly provocative book. It wears a fake smile of fairness, but on closer inspection it is the smile of a man with his foot on his enemy’s neck, whose face is rammed firmly into the dirt. Mostyn Roberts believes the argument is over. He assumes that every right minded person will agree with him in celebrating the pluralism of the U.S.A. and the “progress” of such pluralism in the U.K. The book is intellectually complacent and lazy. He raises points for discussion and then flicks them away lightly, as though the answer is so obvious that to say any more would be demeaning. At no point does Roberts address historical opposition to his point of view.

For example, 150 years ago, the Rev. Thomas Rawson Birks published a brilliant polemic against the separation of Church and State. It was timely, as the Church of Ireland was being disestablished. The Church of England had been dealt a fatal blow 40 years before, with licence granted to Roman Catholics. The Rev. Birks knew that the nation was in a state of apostasy, just as the U.S.A. had been from its inception. The parallel is clear and yet Mostyn Roberts took no notice of the Rev. Birks, who considered in great detail matters that Roberts had ignored.

The Rev. Birks writes:

All men - whether rulers, statesmen, or private persons - are bound to obey the Gospel, and to serve and honour the true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. But many, perhaps, disobey the command, and are rebellious against the voice of their Maker. Hence it is inferred that rulers ought not to profess openly their faith in Christ, nor to make the spread of the Gospel an object of their rule, because it would be unjust to those who differ from them. They would do wrong to atheists, if they pay public homage to the God of Heaven. They would persecute the Deist or the Jew, and inflict on them a sore injustice, if they were to profess allegiance to Christ, and to own the Lord Jesus to be the eternal Son of God, the true fountain of their own authority. They would thus teach that it is socially better for men to believe in Christ than to disbelieve in Him, to worship God than to disown Him, and this would be iniquitous and unjust. What marvellous reasoning, to be adopted for a moment by pious and thoughtful men! Surely Christian faith must be feeble and ready to expire, when such a doctrine is not rejected at once as preposterous and absurd. The root of these sophisms is a disguised and subtle unbelief. Opinions are viewed as everything, truth as nothing. A creed is made a kind of private property, which every one may claim to have protected, like land or merchandise, by equal laws, instead of resolving itself, in every case, into the two alternatives of truth and falsehood. (The Rev. Birks, p.10)

Are they [rulers] to believe God’s messages only just so far as the popular voice approves? Is it lawful for them to promote the outward wealth of their people, and to forget all that constitutes their true welfare, as if riches abused were a blessing, not a curse, to those who obtain them? Is it right for them to punish crime, and neglect the means which God himself has ordained for its prevention and removal? (The Rev. Birks, p.13)

Wherever power and influence have been received, so far must the claims of Christ extend. The wisdom which neglects to honour Him is madness. The power which refuses to own His authority is treason against the King of heaven. (The Rev. Birks, p.18)

He [the ruler] cannot serve God and Mammon, nor consent to mind only earthly things, and still do all to the glory of God. No glory can be rendered to Him by a national constitution, where His holy Name is not allowed to enter, and His word is never consulted, and has no acknowledged place; where the scales are weighted so heavily with sugar, and corn, and bales of merchandise, that the welfare of millions of souls is dust in the balance, and not allowed to weigh one feather in the public counsels. From such a base and fatal policy, and the principles which lead to it, may God in His mercy deliver our favoured land! (The Rev. Birks, p.20-21)

Our Lord came to announce the truth to a world of rebels, that He is the true King, whom they are bound to obey, and that no thought or action, either of subjects or rulers, is exempt from His authority. (The Rev. Birks, p.37)

The Rev. Birks spends an entire chapter looking at the New Testament and then another in the Old, to determine what Scripture says. He looks at the responsibilities and complications of having a national Church and how the balance of power is maintained in a Biblical fashion. The Rev. Birks was not afraid to look at the alternative:

If the mere name of conscience is always to prevail, social life becomes anarchy, and every one must be left to do what is right in his own eyes. (The Rev. Birks, p.55)

A State leavened by such principles must become a hotbed of anarchy and atheism, a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. It will guarantee the omnipotence of conscience, and refuse to own the Almighty power of God. The truths of His word will be set aside, and replaced by a new creed; the right of conscience to sanctify every error, and give impugnity to every crime … (The Rev. Birks, p.165)

Where religious truths are set aside, obedience will soon be defamed as a slavish thing, and lawless crime be dignified with the titles of courage and freedom. (The Rev. Birks, p.53)

The history of the last 150 years, both in the U.S.A. and the U.K. has more than proved the Rev. Birks correct. But this condition - termed by Roberts as pluralism and by Birks as atheism - is applauded by Mostyn Roberts, as the legacy of his idol.

… if  we are to continue to have faith in the values of toleration we must have a strong faith in the good that will come of it … (Roberts, p.214)

If Williams can only help us be aware of the possibilities of the days in which we live instead of the downbeat sense of loss that Christians feel, he will have done something for us. (Roberts, p.227)

Roger Williams was a renegade from the Lord Jesus Christ, because he would not live under his authority. When Williams held civil power in the state of Rhode Island, he actively legislated to deny the King of Kings lordship over the people. His “toleration” gave equal time to the Devil. Christians do not need a book to glorify Roger Williams. By promoting him and his beliefs, the author and publisher are both pledging their allegiance to his unbelief, just like the lyrical endorsements that promote the book. Amongst them is The Christian Institute, that great hope of watery evangelicals, who get a thrill in “tut-tutting” over the latest sin in godless Britain and thank God that there is an organisation to stand in the breach and try to keep the world safe for them. The Institute begs for a corner in which to sit and it would keep on doing so until the Day of Judgment. They do not want to live in Christendom. They believe in freedom of conscience and freedom of worship. It is the mindset of the Baptist parent who drops his child at Sunday School and spends the next 40 years hoping he will be saved instead of training his child as a baptised member of the Church, raising him within the covenant, and putting the child under a perpetual obligation to live to the glory of God and to keep his commandments.

Earnest and devout Christians are ready to despair of hearty allegiance to Christ in the high places of power. They think it prudent to bargain, if possible, for a bare neutrality, as their best safeguard from direct and positive mischief, and from the risk of a direct persecution of the truth of God. (The Rev. Birks, p.39)

It is no wonder that Mostyn Roberts wants us to forget our Protestant history because in it we would learn of godly men and women who suffered the most appalling injuries for Christ’s sake, even to death. We talk of persecution today as something that happens in foreign lands and we send money as though it will help. We want to secure for those poor Christians the same rights that we enjoy: the right to a private religion. If this is the best that can be hoped for in a Muslim country, it should not be the best than can be hoped for in a country such as England with a rich Christian heritage!

We are not called to lead a revolt against the powers-that-be and put a Christian King in his place, to set up ourselves and whip the nation into submission. The Church has been cowering in the corner of society for so long that it is no longer fit to run a fish and chip shop. But we have to wake up to the wickedness of the current state of affairs and pray for reformation to restore Christendom. We must look for the day when Christian ministers will walk hand in hand with the civil magistrate to glorify God in the nation. Since that day has not yet come, Christians must continue to fear God and not men; regarding the curses on the nation around us as justified; living under the authority and protection of the King of kings, to whom we will render all service, like Daniel in a foreign land; singing the Psalms which proclaim the glory of the Lord God who will annihilate his enemies and before whom every knee will bow. This is Christian liberty. 

Believers in the U.S.A. cannot disown Roger Williams without undermining their belief in America, founded as it is on the same godless principles as Rhode Island. This is a problem and it is their problem, by inheritance and by continued practice. But there is no excuse whatsoever for Mostyn Roberts to wave the American flag over the British Isles and tell us to worship Roger Williams and his idol of freedom from God. It is a lie from start to end. The truth is that which we see around us, a truth that the Rev. Birks could see in prospect 150 years ago:

Perseverance in this course against human laws, as those must often do who obey God rather than man, will resemble direct rebellion. Meetings for worship, from which strangers are excluded, such as Christian fellowship may require, will be suspicious signs of treasonable conspiracy. The application of private funds to promote a creed or a system, which breeds contention, will seem a dangerous perversion of part of the national wealth. The claims of conscience and religious faith, and the instincts of social peace, will be in collision at every turn and thus the Ruler who would be neutral, while content to be ignorant, and impartial to all creeds without caring for any, will soon be found to tolerate every pliant form or error that will bend to his will, and to persecute, as a dangerous adversary, the unbending Word and Truth of God. (The Rev. Birks, p.60)

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The Subversive Puritan: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience

By Mostyn Roberts

Published by Evangelical Press, 2019

Church and State: Or, national religion and church establishments

By Rev. Thomas Rawson Birks (1810-1883)

Published in 1869

"BROAD OAK: A Father's Legacy" (15th Anniversary)

It is 15 years this summer since the production of BROAD OAK: A Father’s Legacy, a 30 minute documentary on the life and work of Philip Henry, father of the acclaimed Bible commentator Matthew Henry.

The film was entered into the SAICFF in 2004 and its selection for a prize meant that all distribution rights immediately became the possession of Vision Forum, without any buy-out, prize money or subsidiary remuneration. This was not a fair deal.

Since the organisation is no longer in existence, I judge the contractual obligation to be over. And I am very pleased to share my little film, produced on a tiny budget at the age of 19, with the patient support of my Dad and my older brother. I am well aware that it did not deserve to win any prizes but the subject matter is worthy of a wider audience.

Wisdom Speaks

When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:

For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:

They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.

Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.

For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.

Proverbs 1.27-33