What we do have to face, however, is a cultural war against Christianity - the removal of Gideon Bibles from rooms in the Travelodge budget hotel chain [here] is just the latest episode in a long line of similar incidents.
Of course, we're British; we don't like to make a fuss - God forbid, we might even be thought to be taking religion too seriously - but the airbrushing from our culture of any visible manifestations of Christian faith seems now to be the aim of many in our political, legal, media and commercial elites, not to mention those who run our massive state bureaucracy. They should be resisted if the present cultural attrition is not in time to turn into active persecution. At the very least we should think very carefully indeed before giving our custom to any commercial organisations which take this attitude, and we should certainly not invest in them.
The prevailing disparagement of anything which is even mildly suggestive of Christian faith may even go some way to explain the West's appallingly slow reaction to attacks on Christians in Iraq and elsewhere - Christians simply don't qualify for our sympathy or our support. Those who rule over us, often so maladroitly, and who influence our lives in so many ways, are simply embarrassed by our cultural and religious heritage - that is, if they are aware of it at all ....
This is Tim Stanley on the latest Travelodge foolishness
"..... The white, middle-class, over-educated liberals who cry “diversity!” at every damn opportunity make the following specious arguments:
1. “Britain isn’t Christian anymore.”Yes, it is. We have thing called a state church and the Queen is the head of it. If you don't like it, go and live in France.
2. “Fewer and fewer people call themselves Christian.”But if we’re playing a numbers game then Britain is still far more Christian than anything else: 59 per cent are Jesus believers, 4.8 per cent are Muslims.
3. “People of other faiths will be offended.”Really? By a Bible hidden in a drawer?! And more disgusted by a religious book than by the hard core porn you can watch on the TV (for a small price)? The only people who are going to be actively offended by finding a Bible in there are Wahhabi terrorists. And you probably want to discourage that kind of clientele anyway.
4. “You’ve got to cater for everyone.”Yet surely that is an argument for increasing the amount of religious literature available in the hotel room? I suggest a small library: the Koran, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a Buddhist prayer wheel etc. Oh, and a Marilyn Manson LP for the Cthulhu lovers out there. (All hail Cthulhu, by the way. His day is coming.)
Given that there is no sound, logical reason for removing all the Gideons, we are at liberty to infer a motive. And it could be as simple as this: Travelodge succumbing to the anti-Christian mood of elements of the British political and commercial establishment. Maybe they’re afraid of being sued by a cranky atheist professor, maybe they’re run by the same liberal poindexters who gave us airport multi-faith prayer rooms and prayer-less assemblies (because who wants to expose children to things like morality and poetry?). Whatever the cause, they’re now contributing to the creeping crud of cultural disintegration...... "
I shall no longer use Travelodge - and contact the company to explain why.
ReplyDeleteBob Hayes