"...We are part of a culture which dehumanises and devalues many people. Gender-based violence does not happen in a vacuum but is part of an exploitative culture in which poverty, inequality, oppression, anxiety and fear all play their part....." [see here , from GS 193, Gender-Based Violence, A report by the Mission and Public Affairs Council, presented to the Church of England General Synod yesterday]
The first sentence is undoubtedly true. The first part of the second sentence is indisputable, but do the writers of this report seriously believe that the 'exploitative culture' in which we live in Britain is mainly caused or defined by 'poverty, inequality, (and) oppression?'
We have a media wholly dominated by a left agenda, a Government which is increasingly prescriptive in terms of its equalities legislation, and a Church (largely - and rightly, perhaps - disregarded by both as irrelevant due to its declining influence) which produces - unchallenged - the essentially 'marxist- feminist' analysis of western society which seems to underlie this report.
There are many problems in today's society - the growing lack of respect for life both at its beginning and end, the disintegration of traditional family life, to the detriment of young men particularly, cynical and unprincipled advertising which encourages uncontrolled greed, and probably most of the other deadly sins to boot, to the detriment of kindness and continuity and community, a failing state educational system - propped up by all political parties and vested interest groups - in which underhand selection occurs, based, not on academic ability but parental ability to buy into expensive school catchment areas, a culture of egoism and entitlement which affects both those on (sometimes obscenely) high incomes and those in receipt of welfare, a contemptuously intolerant, secularist and democratically unaccountable mass media forcing its own agenda on an entire population ........ the list, of course, is far from exhaustive and in no particular order ....
And the Church of England seems to believe that our problems lie not so much in our contemporary culture's complete disregard for and wholesale abandonment of the Ten Commandments and two thousand years of a Christian social and moral tradition, not to mention a biblical anthropology which emphasises the truth of original sin, but in the context of "an exploitative culture in which poverty, inequality, oppression, anxiety and fear all play their part..... "
Why focus on these few words in a fairly unexceptional, conventionally 'progressive' report? They sum up very well the condition of a Church which is in thrall to the very culture and system of thought it affects to despise. Roll on the utopian Revolution, sisters and brothers!
I happened to catch someone from the synod, female needles to say, who was quoting some report or other from young people who said the church was unfair to women and gay people. To be honest and I hope you are not offended but my first thought was " well it is a human institution, so why should it not follow the world". Speaking to a work colleague recently about religion she said her father disagreed with their pastor so set up his own church. Needless to say I told her he was wrong, but as she never goes to any church she just shrugged.
ReplyDeleteAs you would expect, I'd take great issue with you about your assertion that the Church is ' a human institution.' But I have a great deal of sympathy with any young person who instinctively sides with 'the culture' - they simply haven't heard the argument from Christian orthodoxy put in anything like a persuasive way .. We can blame ourselves for that ...
ReplyDeleteI think the truth is that the Church (at least the CoE) is behaving as though it is a "human institution", and there are probably many people outside the church (and within the CofE) who believe that it is, or can be made so, or OUGHT to adopt purely-this-worldly concerns/values - thus, Seaninn's reported "unfair to gay people" - a purely-this-worldly take on gayness, I'm sure.
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