Melanie Phillips, in an article entitled "Thank God for Lord Carey" clarifies what is going on in Britain today as the rise of the new religion of homosexuality and its triumph over Christianity. She writes:
The Church and the judiciary are two of the most venerable pillars of the establishment.
But in an explosive development, war has been declared between them over one of the most fundamental aspects of our society — freedom of religious conscience.
In an unprecedented move, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and other church leaders are calling upon the Master of the Rolls and other senior judges to stand down from future Court of Appeal hearings involving cases of religious discrimination because of the judges’ perceived bias against Christianity.
The churchmen believe that because of these judges’ past rulings, there is no chance of a ‘fair’ judgment if they hear the latest such case, which has been scheduled for Thursday .
This involves Gary McFarlane, formerly a Christian relationship counsellor for Relate. He is appealing against an employment tribunal ruling that upheld his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.
According to newspaper reports, Lord Carey has prepared a witness statement in support of Mr McFarlane in which he will apparently accuse the Court of Appeal of making a series of ‘disturbing’ judgments and being responsible for some ‘dangerous’ reasoning which could lead to Christians being banned from the workplace.
In the light of recent events, such fears are scarcely exaggerated. For Christianity is under relentless attack from secular British institutions, as a result of which the freedom of Christians to practise their religion is being lost.
Phillips then gives some examples of Christians being persecuted by British courts and then gets to the heart of the issue:
To prevent discrimination against Christians being set in stone, Lord Carey wants religious discrimination cases to be heard by a special panel of judges with some knowledge of religious matters.
As an insult to some of the biggest wigs in the land, this could hardly be exaggerated. By throwing down the gauntlet to the judiciary in this way, Lord Carey is mounting a full-frontal challenge to some of those who most influence our society.
The last of several final straws for these clerics was the case of Lilian Ladele, a registrar who was sacked by Islington council after she refused to conduct civil partnership ceremonies because they were against her Christian beliefs.
Led by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger — the second most important judge in England — the Appeal Court ruled that it was unlawful for her to refuse to do so.
It might be argued that these judges were merely ruling on the basis of anti-discrimination law and that they were right to do so.
But in fact, these judges had discretion to rule in Ms Ladele’s favour because the law upholds not one principle relevant to this case, but two — and they compete with each other. For enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights is the right to exercise religious conscience.
Why, then, did the judges in this case set aside the Human Rights Convention, which they normally revere as holy Writ? Because, said Lord Neuberger, it only protected those religious beliefs which were ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society and are not incompatible with human dignity’.
So what the Master of the Rolls effectively seemed to be saying was that Christian beliefs are unworthy of respect in a democracy, and incompatible with human dignity — a truly preposterous claim, since Judeo-Christian precepts invented the concept of human dignity
Indeed, such a ruling comes very close indeed to criminalising Christianity. For if putting Christian belief into practice is outlawed, it won’t be long before Christian believers find themselves outlawed.
As Phillips says, although this sort of attack is carried out in the name of intolerance and liberalism, it is in fact illiberal and intolerant. As she graphically puts it:
The result is that Christianity is now in danger of being turned into a despised and marginalised creed practised only by consenting adults in private.
This is exactly the position homosexuality was in fifty years ago. This is why all the happy-clappy talk about "tolerance," "openness," and "diversity" is hollow and meaningless. What is happening is not that society is getting more tolerant and allowing for a wider expression of religious viewpoints; rather, society is in the process of exchanging one religion for another. A new state religion is being enshrined that is even more intolerant than Christianity ever was.
The elites of British society, not just the judiciary, are insisting that Christianity is intolerant and bigoted. Egged on by Muslims, these elites are seeking to make Christianity obscure, hated and barely tolerated - if that. It is incredible to see how the hardline Muslim and hardline leftist attitudes to Christianity converge.
One shudders to think of what will happen when these two tactical allies succeed in eliminating Christianity and then turn on each other. Will it be civil war or a quick and neat surrender to Islam? My money is on the latter. The soft leftists who are now persecuting Christians only dare to do so because Christians don't fight back. Confronted with a determined foe, they will meekly don the hijab and accept servitude. Then they will gradually learn to look back on Christendom as the golden age of tolerance.
Ruth Gledhill is as much the opposite of Melanie Phillips as it is possible to be, just as Archbishop Williams is as much the opposite of Lord Carey as it is possible to be. Gledhill is a wooly headed "liberal" (actually leftist) who is against Roman Catholics who fail to conform to the liberal Anglican model and against Protestants who are insufficiently deferential to their left-wing betters. She trivializes the persecution of Christians in her article in the Times of London today "It Can Only Harm Christians to Bleat About Persecution."
She claims that she does not wear a cross because she does not want to be a victim. She would know about playing the victim card. You see, leftists have a well defined script about who is allowed to play the victim card and who is not. Only those minorities approved in advance by leftists may play the victim card because, you see, it is not about who actually is victimized at all; it is actually about exploiting the category of victim to justify intolerance toward traditional morality and religion.
Archbishop Williams in his Easter message threw away a good opportunity to do what archbishops are supposed to do and protect his flock. He is more interested in protecting his own position of privilege. I can't read the phrase "the Archbishop of Canterbury" any more without hearing in my mind unbidden the phrase from Brave New World "the Arch-Songster of Canterbury." The scene of the Arch-Songster of Canterbury storming out of the dinner party in a huff because he was not able to meet the Savage after all seems to me to capture the depth of character seen in the current Archbishop of Canterbury. I could see him allowing St. Paul's to be turned into a dance hall. Of course, in Brave New World there are no Muslims to prevent it.
Can the new religion of homosexuality ground and sustain a culture for 4000 years like the religion grounded in the Call of Abraham and the Ten Commandments has? Can the new religion of homosexuality be the basis for great cultural achievements like Western classical music, Gothic Cathedrals and the separation of church and state? Is the new religion of homosexuality likely to preserve a tradition over generations that sustains enough faith in the future to undergird reproduction and the continuity of the generations?
If the answer to such questions is negative, then it must be concluded that our future must include either a massive renewal of our culture beginning with a renewal of Christianity or Western culture is nearing the end of the line.
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