"Defamation of Religions"

The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) has been pressing (link) for "defamation against religions" to be placed on the United Nations' Human Rights agenda. The trouble here is that it is not overly clear about what this means.

We have seen Pakistan's blasphemy laws used as a blunt instrument against Christians, usually by people with a personal grudge. There are even some Muslims who feel that the central claims of Christianity are an 'insult to Islam', because if the New Testament as we have it today is true, then various claims of the Qur'an are, it follows, false. If Jesus is the eternal Son of God and not just a human prophet, then the Qur'an is wrong when it claims he is not. If Jesus died on the cross, then it follows that the Qur'an is wrong. And if the Qur'an is wrong, then it is not the word of God. At this point the sensible thing to do would be for us to reason together - but it has always been easier to use violence, as centuries of history have taught. And it's not just Muslims, it is found in Christendom as well, Roman Catholics against Protestants and State Churches against Nonconformists. The book of Acts records cases where Jewish and pagan leaders used violence in an attempt to silence opposition - it is always easier to do that than it is to allow true religious freedom.

Not that there is not such a thing as defaming a religion. The first example that comes to mind is the infamous 'Blood Libel" against the Jews, first invented in the Middle Ages. The Blood Libel is the idea that the blood of a Gentile child is part of the ingredients of the Passover matzos - a claim that is patently ridiculous in the face of the prohibition against eating blood that all Jews observe! There have been many lies told about religious groups with the intention of creating hatred against them, and there still are. A few examples that come to mind are the ancient claims that Christians were cannibals (probably based on a misunderstanding of the Eucharist) and committed incest (probably misunderstanding the Christian practice of calling one another 'Brother' and 'Sister'. Paul says that the Apostles had the right to have "a sister as wife', meaning freedom to marry a Christian woman). Modern claims that come to mind include one saying that all Muslim men have to kill a non-Muslim to be considered truly men, and that human sacrifices take place in Mormon temples. These lies really are defamation, and should be punished first of all by society - we should refuse to listen to them and treat those who maliciously repeat such claims as the troublemakers they are.

But to restrain religious freedom - and as an inheritor of the traditions of English Nonconformity wish to extend that freedom as far as possible - because one religious group is upset by another religious group's claims is frankly tyrannical. I do not like the claims of Islam about Jesus, God and the Bible - but they have the right to teach them, and I have the right to challenge them. I find the teachings of Mormonism about God frankly pagan - but I am very glad that they have the freedom to build their temples, as I have the right to give good and true reasons why Mormonism is not Christianity. My feelings - and your feelings - must not be made the basis of restrictive laws. Christianity is not spread by the sword in any way, and the truth will be triumphant over error in a fair contest.

Thoughts on the Atrocity in Norway

We have all been shocked by the terrible crime committed in Norway last week. Anders Behring Breivik, previously an unknown man holding extreme and murderous political views, planted a bomb in Oslo before traveling to an island retreat where the youth wing of the governing party was holding a camp. The details are well-known as to what he did next.

It is quite plain what Christians are to think of such actions. The Bible is abundantly clear that "You shall not commit murder." Yet a word is perhaps necessary since Breivik claims to be a Christian.

That profession is quite false, he claims to be a disciple of Jesus, but Jesus "went around doing good". Jesus did not come to destroy, but to save, and in John 18:36 Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight." So, then, it is clear that a man who seeks to kill people is not a Christian, and cannot be. No murderer can inherit eternal life unless he first repents and believes in Jesus. Breivik is unrepentant, he is therefore still lost and in the gall of bitterness.

He is described by the press as "a right-wing Christian extremist." He is not a Christian, whatever he may claim, because he ignores the law of God. He is said to believe he is in a war. I have my suspicions that Breivik may be insane, but the reality of the matter is that he is not in a war. He is not a soldier except in his own imagination, and he has no warrant for committing the crime that he has committed.

Christians follow the Prince of Peace. No man does God a service by murder, whatever he may think, and the man who kills in Jesus' name is committing an act of blasphemy as he does so. "You shall do no murder" still stands in the Law of God, and the man who says, "I love God" but does not love his neighbour is a liar.

The message of Christianity is the Gospel, the word means Good News. Breivik's twisted ideology is one of hate, and is good news to none. I sincerely doubt whether he even knows the meaning of the word grace, or the meaning of love. For God's love is self-sacrificial, it is the love of Jesus dying on the cross to take away sin. And there is grace even for Anders Behring Breivik if he repents of his sins and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is no Christian who commits murder. But we follow a Christ who was murdered, and who prayed for his killers, "Father, forgive them."

Why I don't think Barack Obama's a Muslim

A friend of mine recently e-mailed me a link to a video on YouTube which he feels gives evidence that Barack Obama is in fact a Muslim. I disagreed with him and pointed to Obama's social policy, particularly his advocacy of homosexuality (evidence here). This is not compatible with Islam, which punishes homosexuality with the death penalty. On the other hand there is one solution that takes all the evidence into account, and that is that Obama is a liberal protestant. I have heard a liberal minister in a British chapel say that "Christians should reverence Mohammed." There was no doubt that the man was not a Muslim, yet he used a service on Ascension day to bewail the fact that Christians did not accept Mohammed as a prophet. Liberals, as we have been reminded by the recent actions of the Church of Scotland and the PCUSA, are accepting of and even promote homosexuality. So, if Obama is a Muslim his promoting homosexuality is inexplicable, but if he is a liberal protestant - which, it must be remembered, is his own testimony - then everything makes sense, it fits.

The reply I received was rather surprising to me, it was in effect "he's hiding the truth". Given that Obama has actually said "I am a Christian", we would have to say that if he is really a Muslim, he is flat out lying most of the time and pretending to be a Christian with a foolishly high level of respect for Islam. We would have to say that he attended Chicago's Trinity UCC for many years as part of an elaborate deception. That make him more than just a liberal Muslim, it would necessitate the conclusion that he is really a villain masquerading as a liberal. It would require him to really be a radical playing a part in order to further Muslim ends. Now of course if you think that he is really a Kenyan-born Islamic extremist who has been systematically infiltrating the Democratic party to further Muslim aims to dominate America, that would make sense, but for myself, I find this hard to believe, given how flimsy the evidence is. It's on a level with believing that the World Trade Centre was not really brought down by a terrorist attack. If you adopt a conspiratorial view of history you can of course believe all sorts of things on the flimsiest of evidence, but I am not sure that this is a good idea. In effect that is to say, "Because of this tiny amount of evidence here (which can still be explained if he is, as he claims to be, a protestant liberal) we should ignore everything else as just deliberate deception and conclude that he is a Muslim."

I'm afraid I can't do that. It is incumbent on us to examine all the evidence, not just that which agrees with our conclusions. To dismiss his voting record on homosexuality as a deception, to claim that his record as "the most liberal senator" is a smokescreen, seems to me a little perverse.

The claim has been made, "well, look at all the things Obama's said about Islam!" Look at these quotes:

"America treasures the relationship we have with our many Muslim friends, and we respect the vibrant faith of Islam which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality. This year, may Eid also be a time in which we recognize the values of progress, pluralism, and acceptance that bind us together as a Nation and a global community. By working together to advance mutual understanding, we point the way to a brighter future for all."

"Islam brings hope and comfort to millions of people in my country, and to more than a billion people worldwide. Ramadan is also an occasion to remember that Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind."

"Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith."

"We see in Islam a religion that traces its origins back to God's call on Abraham."

"All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith -- face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It's a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It's a faith based upon love, not hate."

The answer, of course, is President George W. Bush! The quotes, with many others, can be found here. I suspect that for every pro-Islam Obama quote that can be found we can find a very similar Bush quote - yet no-one is claiming that George W. Bush is a secret Muslim.

I do not know why there are people I regard as otherwise sensible who wish to believe that Barack Obama is in fact a Kenyan-born radical Muslim masquerading as a liberal protestant born in Hawaii. It truly baffles me that anyone would protest that the Hawaii certificate produced by Obama is an obvious fake and then, in the same e-mail promote a couple of clumsy forgeries claiming to be from Kenya as absolutely genuine!If you dismiss the Hawaii certificate (and I am not entering into the question of whether that is genuine or not), you must also dismiss the Kenya certificates.

Conspiracy theories are a form of false world-view, whether they make the great enemy Islam, Roman Catholicism, or the New Age movement. Instead of dealing with the world as it is the conspiracy theorist interprets evidence based on the conspiracy - the conspiracy becomes to him or her the necessary presupposition of his or her thought. Thus the interpretation of facts becomes a sort of game, one is required to "read between the lines", to take sentence fragments out of context, and even to weave them together into new contexts, because the true "context" is the conspiracy. That's not how you do research, that's how Harold Camping was able to say that we can know the date of the end of the world.

And where do you stop? Logically you end up with a vast, world-wide conspiracy, everything that happens is orchestrated by them, and the conspiracy theory becomes un-falsifiable. The conspiracy theorist's world becomes a private construct in which nothing is as it appears. In other words, taken to their logical conclusion conspiracy theories end in madness. Now, I am not saying that all conspiracy theorists are crazy, because most people who hold to some sort of conspiracy theory are inconsistent at some point. It is, however, dangerous, partly because it leads us to take our eyes off the ball. All the world's evils are not the result of Rome, Jack Chick (Jack Chick thinks that the Roman Catholics invented Islam, by the way), there are atheists, there are secular tyrants. The world to more complicated - but God is on the throne.

I don't think Barack Obama is a Muslim because there isn't enough evidence that he is, and the evidence that he is not is far more compelling. That's not the same as saying he's a fine upstanding Christian man - he isn't, he's a theological liberal from the Protestant tradition. It's certainly not the same as saying I think he's wonderful - I don't. But it is to say that I cannot accept the conspiracy theories!

The Challenge of Freedom

On his state visit to the UK, President Obama said that this is a pivotal moment for the west, as we see change in North Africa and the Middle East. It is a challenge, he said. Now, it is a challenge, but may I say that it is every bit as much of a challenge to the Muslim world as it is to the west. There is much that is encouraging about the recent fall of dictatorships in North Africa. There is also much that gives cause for concern. The word 'Freedom' is much in the air, but one is concerned that it has not really been grasped.

Writing to the Galatian Christians, Paul tells them, "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free." This sums up what H.J. Taylor, in his book of the same name, calls "The challenge of freedom." The challenge is to use freedom to promote freedom. The temptation of course is to regard freedom as something that I have, and must guard jealously so that no-one else obtains it because that would be inconvenient. That is simply to replace one tyranny with another, which is a disaster.

Freedom must mean the freedom to speak one's mind or it means nothing. There are points of view that I find utterly repugnant - to give one example, I am disgusted by the shallow and bigoted policies of the British National Party. I am disgusted by militarism and by racism. But at the same time, I would not wish to live in a society where their rhetoric was a criminal offence. Freedom means the freedom to be wrong, the freedom to say things that are revolting and even stupid. Obviously there is a limit - and that is seeking to overthrow freedom, to destroy liberty in the name of liberty. Without free speech, there is no real freedom.

Freedom must mean the freedom of minorities, or it is simply the tyranny of the majority. It is to feared that this is what many in Egypt think freedom is, the freedom of a Muslim majority to persecute a Christian minority. Now, this also means that as Christians we must be prepared to allow for pluralism, and we must resist the temptation (for such it is) to restrict the liberties of others. The Gospel does not win any victories by the sword, and Christ's Kingdom is not of this world. So there must be religious freedom - not an enforced secularism, but a state that is not the instrument of any religious party.

The challenge of freedom is to use it for freedom. I am afraid that I do not see it being used for freedom in Egypt and Syria, and unless freedom is used for freedom, it will end in a new Tyranny even worse than the first.

Why I Don't Believe the Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, today the conspiracy theory in my inbox! I was somewhat shocked to see who the e-mail came from (but probably shouldn't have been, given that he had sent me a series of e-mails about the Obama birth certificate casting suspicions on the Hawaii certificate while championing two forged certificates purporting to come from Kenya). I was not surprised to find that there are people doubting the truth of the news of Bin Laden's death - I would have been more surprised to find that there were none.

So why am I not convinced? Simply because of Occam's Razor - the principle that the simplest explanation is most likely to be true.

Let us lay out the options. The claim that Osama Bin Laden was killed by US special forces the other day is either true or false. If false, then either Bin Laden is still alive, or he was already dead. Now, the claim has been made that the death of Bin Laden was announced to help the Obama re-election campaign - this is what the e-mail in my inbox suggested. If so, Bin Laden must be dead - otherwise Obama has in fact prepared a sword of Damocles to hang over his head - a living Bin Laden would sink the re-election campaign far more surely than a dead Bin Laden would help it. Assuming that Obama is not a gibbering idiot (as a gibbering idiot would not do something as devious as he is accused of), then it follows that Bin Laden must be dead, or at least Obama is reasonably certain that he is dead.

If Osama Bin Laden is dead, then it follows that either he was killed the other day, or he was already dead. So we follow the conspiracy theorists, what if Bin Laden was already dead? Then it follows he either died of natural causes, or he was killed by allied forces. Now, if he died of natural causes while with his own people there is no reason this would not have been reported - it would have denied the West a propaganda coup for one thing. So we have the option that he was killed by allied forces. That Al-Quaeda would not have reported this is unlikely, however - a dead leader is a martyr for the cause, after all, and I have lost count of the number of senior Hamas figures who have been killed and whose deaths were reported at the time. A non-US operation would also have reported this.

Granting for the same of argument that Al-Quaeda would not have reported Bin Laden's actual death, then it must have been by US forces. If it was not the operation reported in the news it would have been an operation that happened some time ago - which means either under the Bush administration or under Obama's. Indeed, there is a conspiracy theory circulating that says he was killed as far back as 2001, and the body was kept on ice until now. This is laughable for the simple reason that there has been a change in US administrations. If Bush had killed Bin Laden, then the death would have been used to back the McCain campaign. Unless one believes that the US is really governed by a secret cabal, and that presidential elections are all shams, in which case nothing really matters at all anyhow. So we are left with the option that Bin Laden was killed by American troops at some point during the Obama administration. In other words, it is all a question of timing.

Now, if Obama is the master-manipulator that the conspiracy theorists claim, the man who covered up the secret of his Kenyan birth in order to become president, surely he must be a very intelligent man. In fact he must be the most monstrous and cunning villain. Thus he would have carefully planned when to release this news if it is in fact faked. The contention is that the news was released now to help Obama's re-election bid.

There is just one problem with this: The date of the next US Presidential election is November 6, 2012, roughly 18 months away. That's an awful lot of time in an era when the public forget so soon. Now, the first Gulf War ended on February 28th 1991 in a resounding victory for America and her allies. Yet President George H.W. Bush lost the Presidential election in November 1992. On the other hand, the Falklands War ended on 14th June 1982, and one year later, give or take a few days. Margaret Thatcher's Conservative administration was returned to office. Given this, it is plainly a good idea to have the victory fairly close to the election date. If Obama had the power to stage the death of Bin Laden at any time of his choosing, to have done so in November of this year, or later, would have made more sense.

Finally, the actual events surrounding the death of Bin Laden are so antecedently improbable. That he should have been found, not in a cave in Afghanistan or in a tribal village, but in a Pakistani garrison town is surely a scenario no competent script-writer would have created. And that is to say nothing of its effect on the Pakistani government. In addition, we are now told by the Pakistanis that there are survivors, including Bin Laden's teenaged daughter, who witnessed her father's death. So we have witnesses. And consider the alternatives - that the US government staged the whole thing and risked antagonising the Pakistani government should it all have gone wrong, or that Pakistan, a nuclear power, knowingly allowed itself to be so humilated by the US for no reason - given that a staged 'killing' could have taken place anywhere with as much, if not more, believeability.

So I do not buy the conspiracy theories. The options are these: either the US government killed Bin Laden at some point in the last couple of years, managed to conceal the fact, and then staged a commando raid and killing in a sensitive part of a friendly country in such a way as to shame that nation internationally, all in order to possibly help the re-election of a president in 18 months' time, or the news story that we have all heard is true. Now, you may believe whatever you want to - it's a free country - but I find the conspiracy account to be so inherently implausible that it ought not to be taken seriously without good evidence in its favour.

I do think, incidentally, that the summary exection of even a man who has done what Bin Laden has done, in front of his teenaged daughter, is highly problematic ethically, but that is another matter!

The Distorting Mirror

This article crystallises certain thoughts I have expressed on other occasions in conversation. One of the great influences on the life of most of the population of this country, and of the world, is television. For this reason, television broadcasters have, potentially, a great deal of power. Television brings both reports of the factual (news and documentaries), and fictional drama, into the home.

As a 'factual' source, the spin that the broadcaster puts on the facts is all-important, and if only one side is shown, it appears to be the only side. Thus television's depiction of an issue is important for the formation of public opinion on it. It as said that the Vietnam war was lost, not in Vietnam, but in the living rooms of America, as the public at home saw a war that seems unwinnable (though arguably no more so that World War 1). It makes some of us wonder what would have happened had the Trenches of Flanders been shown on television in America? Would America ever have entered the First World War?

But this is just an example. More dangerous, in terms of opinion-forming, are dramas that are set in 'the real world'. I have always argued that Eastenders is far more dangerous than Harry Potter for children. Harru Potter, after all, lives in a fantasy world of magic, with dragons and other such magical creatures. Eastenders, on the other hand, is supposed to depict real life. But it cannot. After all, real life is not dramatic enough to hold an audience! The audience do not want their life to be depicted on TV (after all, they already live that!), but excitement, danger and adventure. Now, it is one thing for that excitement to be shown in a thriller, but the Soap Opera is supposed to be a realistic depiction of life. In fact the modern soap (with the possible exception of police soap The Bill) is a distorting mirror. The soaps have adopted ever more improbably storylines over recent years, in one case even bringing a character back from the dead! And so the depiction of a Christian pastor as a deranged killer is only to be expected - after all, the religious nutter is a common trope in sensational fiction (and let us be honest, that is what modern soaps are).

If this were an isolated incident, I would mutter something about a lack of imagination and go and do something else, but this is part of a pattern. The BBC has also been responsible for a number of dramas in which 'Christian' terrorist groups have appeared, despite the fact that no such group has ever existed. It is almost as if in the world these fictional characters inhabit it is Christians, not Muslims, who are making terrorist threats!

Despite the increasing Muslim population of many British cities, and the mosques rising among the chimneys and church towers in these cities, Islam still has the status of a "foreign" religion on TV, and therefore the BBC generally depict it favourably. All well and good. But it seems that there is an undue bias against Christianity, with Christian characters often being depicted in a negative way. What is the danger? It is that this distorting mirror will encourage people to think of Christians as "nutters", and all the while the protest is "we are just being true to life." Nonsense, TV is a distorting mirror. And if what people see on TV does not affect their behaviour, why does anyone buy advertising on commercial TV?

It has been said of the press that they possess power without responsibility. The BBC would do well to remember what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker: "With great power comes great responsibility," namely the responsibility to use that power wisely. As fr the viwers, we must recall that TV does not, and cannot, depict reality. Drama depicts the world the writer creates.

Incidentally, the murderous religious nut is a tired, hackneyed idea as well, and indicates a failure of imagination. Plus the writers of these negative potrayals (I myself saw the offending episode of the dire BBC series Bonekickers, which is second only to the BBC's Robin Hood in terms of direness) seem to have done minimal research on Christianity, leading to their characters acting like no real Christian on earth, mixing Protestant and Roman Catholic practice freely... and now I will be silent, before I burst a blood-vessel.

The Shame of a Drunk Culture

The BBC report the findings of a worrying recent study here. This is deeply worrying. We need no-one to tell us that drunkenness is a serious problem in our cities - at least, those of us who live in cities don't. Stoke on Trent police report that, while there has been an overall drop in crime, there has been an increase in drink-related violent crime.

Contrary to the traditional beliefs of some Protestants, the Bible does not forbid the drinking of alcohol - Jesus turned water into wine, not unfermented grape juice. There is nothing at all wrong with drinking alcohol. But what the Bible clearly forbids is drunkenness. "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whoever is deceived thereby is not wise" (Prov. 20.1). Drunkenness makes a man beastly, it takes away rational thought and leads people to behave foolishly, violently and shamefully. Secondly, while "a little wine" (1 Timothy 5.23) may do some good, drunkenness leads to damaged health: "Who has woe? Who has sorrows? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine" (Prov. 23.29,30). It is these folk who are to be found in the Accident and Emergency unit of your local hospital at the week-end, and these who are going to require serious treatment for their livers in the future. And all because we are trying to escape from the emptiness of our lives. We ought to be reading Ecclesiastes and facing it, not getting drunk and trying to hide from reality. "Do not be drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit." A man filled with wine is the opposite of a man filled with the Spirit.

"Values-Neutral" Sex-Education

Last night on the PM Programme on Radio 4 there was a discussion on the Government's latest plan to make sex-education compulsory. The idea is that the parental opt-out clause should be abolished. There was a furore in some quarters that "faith schools" would be allowed to give the instruction in accordance with their beliefs.

In all of this it appears to me that no-one in government has actually bothered to ask a fundamental question - what is the point of sex-education? Is it viewed merely as a subset of biology, a matter of the mechanics of reproduction, or does it include questions of right and wrong?

Of course, what underlies this confusion is the half-formed (and half-baked) idea that the two are one and the same. As a natural science graduate, I think I am better placed than some to say that natural science can only describe what is, not what ought to be. Morality is not derived from biology. A moment's thought should be enough to demonstrate this. Child-abuse is. Rape is. These are facts that we cannot deny. Now, on what solely biologial principle can we say these things are wrong? It is simply not the place of natural science to make decisions about right and wrong, yet this is what many people expect natural science to do! As a society, we have come up with this inexplicable idea that if we merely give the science to people, they will know what to do with it.

Hence the idea of "Values-Neutral" sex-education. Tell kids how to do things, but never tell the certain things are wrong and others right. The result? Girls not yet out of primary school becoming pregnant! And on what biological principle can we say that is wrong? After all, according to biology, when an organism can reproduce, it should.

Morality is the province of religion and philosophy, not natural science. We all have values, and we believe our values to be good. These values by their very nature cannot be simply private matters, because they effect our relationships with others. Yet there are only three options here:
1. Morality is private. I decide for myself what is good or bad. This is the philosophy underlying 'values- neutral' sex-education, give children information, and leave them to develop their own values. This doesn't work, it means that values will be picked up from other sources.
2. Morality is a societal construct. The boundaries of morality are decided by the majority. This actually means that, if applied consistently, there can never be any moral criticism of the majority. Wilberforce, on this model, was wrong. We also face the problem of where to draw the lines between societies. National boundaries? Which majority? It all ends in confusion.
3. Morality is transcendent. There is only one moral law that is true for all people in all places and all times. A transcendent morality requires a transcendent principle, in other words, a single God and creator of all, who is also the law-giver and judge of all, and finally the standard.

That God has revealed Himself in the Bible, and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came don to earth from heaven to save sinners. His standards are absolute. Incidentally, no-one who holds to a merely personal or societal moral authority is actually equipped to express moral outrage against the Bible.

Unless we start teaching an absolute moral authority, we will be stuck in the quagmire of a subjective morality, and the result can only be moral chaos.

The Pitfalls of the Jerusalem Meeting

Anglican Traditionalists are meeting in Jerusalem to try to deal with the problem of discipline in the Anglican Communion, specifically the liberal antinomianism that has practically taken over the leadership of the Episcopal Church in the USA. They intend to build an alliance to force the leadership, especially in England, to listen to them.

Now we agree that the liberal elite leading not only the Church of England but all of the so-called mainline denominations are fatally out-of-touch with the rest of the world and mired in heresy. What is worse, they seem entirely spineless, unwilling to offend anybody, and therefore unable to please anybody. Rowan Williams is seen by traditionalists as too liberal, and by liberals as too traditionalist. The Church of England has become, as a body, too intent on pleasing people to be a credible voice in the moral wilderness of Britain.

But we are not hopeful for this alliance of traditionalists. Why is this? Because it is an alliance that is built on a purely pragmatic, human basis. When Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals band together, their alliance will be fragile and ready to break. On the one hand the evangelicals would hold that the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and other non-episcopal churches are true churches, and hold the Church of England to be a protestant church of the Reformation. On the other hand the Anglo-Catholic holds those same churches to be schismatics and heretics, and the Church of England to be at best a via media (middle way) between the Church of Rome and the Reformation.

J.I. Packer, for all his knowledge of the Reformation, has long been an advocate of this alliance to dish the liberals. We, however, think that such an idea is mere worldly wisdom and politics. True unity is unity in Truth, and if the Anglo-Catholics are right, the Evangelicals are wrong - indeed, as they do not teach baptismal regeneration, prayers for the dead, and the sacrifice of the Mass, they are heretics. On the other hand if, as we think, the Evangelicals are right, those teachings are heresy. So which is it? Or are we to adopt the one principle of sexual morality as our guide? An alliance founded on nothing more than a mutual agreement on morality, even when that agreement is based on the Bible, is still a rope of sand. It CANNOT form a real alternative to the Church of England, for if it ever splits from the Anglican Communion, it will instantly fracture into pieces.

Let others trust in such alliances. We will trust in the Lord our God, for if we are faithful, He will be faithful to His Word that He has spoken.