Melanie Philips, writing in The Daily Mail, analyzes recent trends in Britain as the momentum builds towards turning the UK into an intolerant, secular, soft totalitarian state totally detached from its Christian and politically liberal heritage. In an article entitled, "Orwellian logic turning the faith Britain was built on into a crime," she begins:
Terrifying as this may seem, the attempt to stamp out Christianity in Britain appears to be gathering pace.
Dale McAlpine was preaching to shoppers in Workington, Cumbria, that homosexuality is a sin when he found himself carted off by the police, locked up in a cell for seven hours and charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour.
It appears that two police community support officers — at least one of whom was gay — claimed he had caused distress to themselves and members of the public.
Under our anti-discrimination laws, such distress is not to be permitted. And so we have the oppressive and sinister situation where a gentle, unaggressive Christian is arrested and charged simply for preaching Christian principles.
It would appear that Christianity, the normative faith of this country on which its morality, values and civilisation are based, is effectively being turned into a crime.
Surreally, this intolerant denial of freedom is being perpetrated under the rubric of promoting tolerance and equality — but only towards approved groups.
Never has George Orwell’s famous satirical observation, that some people are more equal than others, appeared more true.
The Cumbrian arrest comes hard on the heels of last week’s ruling by Lord Justice Laws in the case of Gary McFarlane, who was dismissed as a Relate counsellor because he refused to give advice to same-sex couples on sexual relationships.
The judge not only upheld Relate’s case against McFarlane but went even further, saying in terms that the law could provide no legal protection for Christians who wish to live according to their religious principles.
And how did he arrive at this remarkable conclusion that deprives Christians of their rights? By cherry-picking human rights law.
The judge said merely that this conferred upon believers the right to ‘hold or express’ religious views. In fact, the European Convention on Human Rights goes much further, giving people the right to manifest ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ through ‘worship, teaching, practice and observance’.
Yet the judge chose not to mention this right to put religious beliefs into practice. Instead, he stated that giving legal protection to Christian beliefs was ‘deeply unprincipled’ and ‘on the way to a theocracy’.
You really do have to scratch your head at this. The protection of religious conscience is a fundamental principle of a liberal and free society.
To equate this protection with theocracy — or the imposition of religious law upon a society — displays a remarkable intellectual and moral confusion, and has resulted in a ruling that is frighteningly illiberal and intolerant.
Read the rest here.
Note the very first word of this article: "terrifying." If the idea of a completely post-Christian state does not terrify you then you don't understand what lies on the other side of the completion of the process of de-Christianization. But really, there is no excuse not to know. We had several full dress rehearsals during the dark, violent 20th century: the USSR, Nazi Germany, the Cultural Revolution etc.
It is only possible not to know if one does the equivalent of putting one's fingers in one's ears and humming "I can't hear you" as prophets like Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky shout "Watch out where you are going! Don't go there!"
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