Excerpted from his Church of England
Newspaper piece, filed 27th December 2013. By the Rev Dr Peter Mullen (not available online)
Even the drowsiest people recuperating from Christmas and
New Year revels must have been jolted into wakefulness by the loud crash. Have you
heard it yet? It’s the sound of the penny dropping – at last. I’m talking about
the persecution of Christians throughout the world. Even Labour shadow
ministers have mentioned it. Prince Charles – would be “defender of faiths” –
has written about it. Most surprising of all – and welcome – the BBC has joined
in, albeit very belatedly. Over Christmas there was an excellent and shocking
report by File On Four which for once
told a straight tale about the murderous persecution of Christians in half a
dozen African states, from Somalia to Sudan, from Mali to Nigeria and from
Libya to Egypt where Copts are in danger of being wiped out.Moreover, the BBC report did not mince words when it came to
placing the blame squarely where it belongs. ... The
atrocities taking place are religious persecution. This is a rare phenomenon
for usually where there is sectarian strife – as there was in Bosnia in the
1990s and in Northern Ireland for forty years and continuing – the religious
element masks the true causes of grievance which tend to be about land,
resources and political freedom. But in much of Africa, in Syria, Iraq, Iran
and Pakistan, Christians are being slaughtered and dispossessed, their homes
and churches burnt to the ground, merely because they are Christians.It is a relief finally to see that the political correctness
which has for so long obsessed the western media and caused them to play down
the persecution of Christians has abated somewhat, allowing a clear picture of
the horrors taking place to emerge at last. ...In his book Without
Roots, the philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate says:“Christianity is so consubstantial with the West that any
surrender on its part would have devastating consequences.” And he proceeds to ask the crucial question:“Will the Church, the clergy and the faithful be able to and
want to be purified of the relativism that has almost erased their identity and
weakened their message and witness?”Many times in the past – thank God – Christians rose up to
defend the faith against its enemies...We must pray and so nerve ourselves that such courage will not be found wanting
in us to repel the threats we are facing today. But there is another feature,
insidious and most worrying. This is best illustrated by citing historical
precedent.When the barbarians were bent on sacking Rome, the emperor called
into his private chambers his philosopher Sidonius and told him: “I know what I
will do, Sidonius. I will close and fasten the gates of the City.” To which
Sidonius replied, “Too late, Sir. There are too many of these enemies inside
the gates already.” We must draw the moral from that precedent and not lapse
back into our suicidal political correctness.There is a terrible sense in which this persecution of
Christians is beside the point. We can resist any number of external enemies,
but once we lose our confidence in our own civilisation and way of life, then
nothing on earth can save us from destruction. Former Archbishop Carey and
Bishop Michael Nazir Ali have spoken fearlessly about this greater danger. But
these courageous men are scorned by our liberal prelates, the Synod’s
progressive bureaucrats and the cultured despisers of our religion. No one puts
this more starkly than Pastor Wale Babatunde in his new book Great Men and Women who made Great Britain
Great. He speaks prophetically about our national apostasy and the secular
terrorism which seeks to obliterate Christian culture from our national life.
This, he says, has been largely achieved by a ten points strategy:1: Remove
God and prayer from state education2: Reduce
parental authority over their children3: Destroy
the Judeo-Christian family structure4: Make sex
free and abortion universally available5: Make
divorce easy6: Make
homosexuality an alternative lifestyle7: Use the
mass media to enforce this new secular mindset8: Create an
interfaith movement9: Debase
art10: Get
governments to make all these laws and the churches to endorse the changes. This was largely the agenda of the Frankfurt School of Marxist
intellectuals who sought to “…undermine national institutions from within and
so extinguish the spirit of Christianity in western man.”Job done, I would say – and shamefully largely owing to the weakness
and cowardice of the “liberal” hierarchy which rules throughout the church. ... *
"Peter Mullen - A glimmer of legitimate optimism?"
1 Comment -
Hmm, Destroy Family Structure and Make Divorce Easy - then have the Mass Media promote it...
How about an article talking about how wonderful it is for women to run away from their children and husband and not bother with raising them?
http://www.salon.com/2011/03/01/leaving_my_children/
Goal achieved!
27 December 2013 at 16:02