CultureWarsPrologue

Cancel Culture: On both sides of the Atlantic the pressures of the gender or race culture warriors has meant that professors, doctors, and the like, have been having to resign because of the pressures put on their institutions (colleges, universities, hospitals and even publishing houses) to sack them when they either dared to say, or inadvertently said, something that offended the culture warriors. These have not been rare examples and I'm only not documenting them to save space, and focus us on the realities.

Although I believe lies are the currency of the sinful world, over the past few years lies and general untruths have become the currency on both sides of the Atlantic. I believe there are a number of instances where the strategies of the enemy have become quite blatant and lies lead to deception and deception to wrong attitudes and wrong attitudes to wrong behaviour. This is seen both inside the Church across the world, and more obviously outside it. Our call is to one of awareness and discernment and then to pray against these things and where opportunity arises, to speak against such things.

Comment on Western Education: If you're still not sure about this, may I quote again from one modern writer, Douglas Murray, who is a clear voice speaking against this outgoing tide in his books

“In 2019, Cambridge University's dismissal of Noah Carl and Professor Jordan Peterson (the latter from a visiting fellowship) amply demonstrated how mobs of ill-informed activists can pressurize an ancient institution into going against the only principles that justify its existence. After all, if a university is going to encourage non-experts to judge experts and privileges people who do not read over those who do, then what is the point of the university?”

Read that quote again. It is just one symptom of a much bigger plague that has been sweeping the western world in recent decades

“ They had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes."

Orwell, some might say, was a secular prophet for our day so accurately describing what is now happening in the West.

So today, courtesy of social media, if you dare to declare a viewpoint that runs contrary to some popular ideology, you will find yourself ‘cancelled'. Now the dictionary definition sounds quite harmless: “ To cancel someone (usually a celebrity or other well-known figure) means to stop giving support to that person. The act of cancelling could entail boycotting that person or their works.” However the reality is that often ‘cancelling' involves a firestorm on social media, the new form of the mob baying for blood, of outright hostility towards that person and pressure put on institutions we referred to above, for that person to be sacked and over recent years that has occurred more than a few times.

And Today? What it creates in academic, medical, or scientific circles, is a fear of ever expressing an opinion that might be contrary to those of the cultural storm troopers. Did this occur in the Bible? Yes it did. Read Jezebel's approach to removing Naboth (1 Kings 21:9-14) or the crowd and the religious establishment before Pilate (Jn 19:6,15). It's still here. Beware. Specifically we are seeing,

- divisive hostility observed in excessive and extreme and often ill-founded verbal abuse,

- untruths and extreme statements posing as truths that need challenging and calling out,

- fear that undermines authority and rational thinking and suggests ‘ducking for cover'.

An Analogy: Like an outgoing tide, truth has retreated leaving a quicksand of subtle and not-so-subtle dogmas posing as new truth that commands submission to its demands. It has sought to shout down rational and traditional thinking, overlaying it with false guilt, and all the time distorting the truths declared in the Bible. Hold fast.

Mt 16:6 “ Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Focus: There are signs that the culture warriors have over-stepped themselves, signs seen in bright and significant people challenging their mantras and behaviour. Take courage.

Beware Blindness: Jesus had just performed two incredible miracles with bread (see ch.14 & 15). In this current section of scripture, “the disciples forgot to take bread,” (v.5) and Jesus makes this comment above about yeast. So often we think of symbolic yeast as sin because it is the ingredient that puffs up bread, like pride puffs up human lives. But in the present context Jesus was really saying be on your guard against the BLINDNESS of the Pharisees. and like the Pharisees, the disciples' blindness failed to learn that Jesus could perform miracles on their behalf.

Misunderstandings come from blindness. If it's not whole-hearted blindness it can be simple confusion or even simple over-emphasis, and because there has been so much media attention to the tirades and activities of the culture warriors in the past decade, it is easy to think they are getting it all their own way. Not so, and we need to have balance that encourages us to face some of these issues of identity, sexuality, gender, and race.

The Outgoing Tide: I highlight two changes that have been taking place in recent decades. First, there is in many places the loss of the church's confidence in the Bible and the Gospel, and indeed, in respect of the whole concept of truth. Second, there have been the culture warriors loudly parading their wares so people in authority (including preachers sometimes) capitulated to their demands to grovel in false repentance. I picture the combined work of these together as ‘the tide going out' that left large areas of quagmire or mudflats of confusion and hurt, or a quicksand of subtle and not-so-subtle dogmas posing as new truth that commands submission to its demands. But is that all there is?

Is the tide turning? Despite, or perhaps because of this, intellectual voices (i.e. clever people!) have increasingly been raised to challenge those demands and in the UK at least even some politicians have been speaking out against the wrong thinking that has been coming from the culture warriors.

I will in the pages that follow, be quoting from a number of modern writers, all of whom are confronting the antics of the culture warriors and calling them out. From my reading over the past year I will be quoting from an ex-chief rabbi, a gay intellectual journalist and author, a black very-anti-woke teacher and author, am anguished magazine editor and a strong feminist, all of whom declare long and loudly, “Enough is Enough”.

In addition, I would note that the London Times regularly hammers out an anti-woke message picking up a wide range of reports with often excellent comment on these subjects. Author J.K.Rowling has earned her place, it seems, as a poster girl for the Times for all the grief she suffered several years back at the hands of social media spite, and now as a wise voice for ‘women' – more later.

So the tide is turning and government figures in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere) have also spoken up in challenge. The tide is being stemmed. Nevertheless the emotional challenges to truth are still there.

Examples: The black anti-woke teacher, although providing multiple examples of people who have been cancelled, concludes his book with nine examples of people or organisations who have stood up against the woke tirade – and survived, and encourages us in his closing words to “Stand up!”

Douglas Murray, who I have already quotes above, as a preface to that quote about Cambridge University declared, “ 'Cancel culture' certainly does exist. And by now it has become clear how it works. It operates most effectively when it can locate a hierarchy above an individual that is itself wobbly, gutless or otherwise vulnerable to mob pressure. Universities have become Exhibit A in all this,” and spends large portions of one of his books seeking to bring sanity and reason.

“where a number of brave women have knowingly or otherwise run at the trans issue. The number of these women has grown significantly in the last year. And their ranks have been significantly swelled by the polite but firm insistence of J. K. Rowling that women exist, are not to be erased, and are not to be referred to (as a headline writer did) as 'people who menstruate'. Today there are a considerable number of people, in increasingly organized groups, who are insisting that biological sex cannot be ignored and is not immaterial. In this and other regards the mainstream backlash against the extremes of trans ideology has undoubtedly begun.”

“the number of legal cases targeting those who advocate the idea of 'trans children' and urge medical and surgical intervention has already begun to grow. In the UK one young person who was guided through transition by the well-known Tavistock Clinic has now been given the go-ahead to take legal action against that institution. Stories of the concerns expressed by some of the clinic's staff in particular are a reminder of one of the truths this book attempts to point to: that our age is doing a number of things which we wouldn't be doing if we had allowed ourselves to continue thinking.”

It is interesting to note that subsequently this clinic, after investigation has been closed down.

The challenge of spiritual blindness: Jesus called his disciples (and us) to avoid the spiritual blindness of the religion-focused Pharisees of his day. It was a subtle call for them to realise who he was and, perhaps, be reassured in that for when he was no longer with them. Yet it was only when the Spirit fell on them did they show a fearlessness that confronted the world. A lesson there surely for us in these days?

Results of our absence: That spiritual blindness can also mean we are blind to the goings on of the world around us and if that is so, then almost certainly we will be having zero effect of combatting the ways of the enemy in our world today, a world that is very different from what it was a hundred years ago. Although, for such differences, we could point to science and technology, perhaps in this light of this present topic, we would do better to focus our understanding on the communication means that we have today. This gives voice to those of the extreme left who, for a number of decades, have been pouring out ideas that have been greedily lapped up by those who feel angry with society. Similarly the arrival of social media has been a primary means of the mob-culture shouting down truth with an emotional tsunami.

I suspect that we, the Church, have been 99% ignorant of these writings and these trends and thus have a) been ill-equipped to counter them, and b) simply not been there in the fight for truth. So it has been that that new ways of thinking and belief have taken the stage. The fact that our Western societies are now largely godless (see the minorities on both sides of the Atlantic who are church-goers) has meant that people in authority – in schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, local authorities, and many other institutions, have no absolutes on which to lean and so have quickly caved in to the demands of the mob at their gates. The outcome has been that our societies have accepted ways of thinking and standards of behaviour that are utterly alien to the culture of the Bible.

Our Goal: That is what these pages are all about and our hope is that if you have the stamina to read them, you will find yourself with a new understanding that will help you be better equipped to pray, to speak, and to act as salt and light in this increasingly polluted and darkening world.

Health Warning: Oh yes, there is a lot to read. You can, of course, jump chapters from the front Contents Page, but if you want the fullest picture, please try and read it all. It may only take a whole Sunday afternoon – if you read quickly!