Work continues in the kitchen, the old floor being ripped up and excavated, and then the surface prepared for new tiles to be laid tomorrow. With the kitchen out of use, we're eating sandwiches in the living room and generally enjoying the chaos and disorder erupting around us. More happily I am eating out tonight at Kerrachers, an excellent fish restaurant at which you can pay lots for their fancy menu or just tuck into their £15/head set meals. Tonight it's the latter - one of the best value for money quality meals available around here. A positive note is that this is to be shared with our church housegroup, the negative is that The War Department can't come as she's working.
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Sermon for The Guild of Air Pilots
with the Rev'd Dr Peter Mullen,
Chaplain to the stock exchange
It’s a couple of years since I addressed the Guild from
this pulpit, so I think I ought to begin by bringing you
up to date about a few goings-on at St Michael’s. But if
you think the Rector makes the rules here, you’re
mistaken. For I’ve just been informed that from next
year I shall be obliged to put up NO SMOKING notices in
church. So, if this sermon gets tedious and you feel
like a fag, light up now – ‘cos next year it’ll be
against the law.
Now I have never ever seen anybody smoking in church –
not in thirty-seven years as a priest and ten years an
altar-boy before that. But this doesn’t deter the
fascist political bureaucracy which now misgoverns this
country: the same bureaucracy which has its doubts about
the renewal of our weapons systems and whose latest
gimmick to fight crime in our streets is to set up
“mini-jails” in supermarkets. “That’ll be six months
hard labour madam – and 250 points on your Tesco card!”
This is the state bureaucracy which wages war on
smokers, chubby people, foxhunters and anyone who drinks
more than the whiff of the barmaid’s apron and has just
invented a series of tests which babies under a year
have to take to measure their “social development.”
We used to be guided by the Bible. Now there is a new
book of commandments and it is written in the language
of political correctness. The first and great
commandment is Behold, in all things thou shalt be
compliant and especially in Health and Safety. I
sometimes wonder how we ever managed before health and
safety came along to save us from ourselves. How did
Douglas Bader get by without a wheelchair ramp for his
Spitfire? Well of course at St Michael’s we are very
keen on compliance and so we took seriously the advice
from the Gestapo that we should have a handrail by the
side of our front steps.
And lo in those days there cometh politically-correct
persons from the Diocesan Advisory Committee, from The
Council for the Care of Churches and even from English
Heritage. And they spake unto the churchwardens and
said, “Take care that thou makest not the handrail at
the one side of the steps for behold it hurteth the
stonework. Thou shalt put the handrail up the middle of
the steps and then shalt thou be exceeding compliant.”
When they heard these things, behold the churchwardens
stood up and spake unto the bureaucrats and said, “You
gotta be joking mate. A handrail up the middle of the
steps will just be in the way. And what happens when we
need to get a coffin up the steps? We’ll look as daft as
Laurel and Hardy with that piano!”
But this was only the start of it. We then had to find
the money to pay for the handrail. There is a charitable
institution in London called The City Bridge Trust and
the Trustees will often pay specifically for disabled
access projects. I applied and they sent me the
“information package”, a foot thick. Its main
requirements make instructive reading. The Trust might
pay for disabled access to a church providing this
funding is understood as being used only for
secular purposes.
So the physically (or mentally?) disabled at our Monday
organ recitals, City workers come in to eat their
luncheon sandwiches, and blundering tourists come to
gawp at the ceiling are all deemed worthy recipients of
the charity of the City Bridge Trust. But the Christians
are excluded. In other words, the Trust will give
charitable assistance to churches provided that on no
account is the money used to ease the passage into
church of those who wish to worship God.
The scandal is, of course, that the very idea of charity
was originally a religious idea and that organisations
such as the City Bridge Trust owe their ethos to the
religious commitment of their Founders. But now they
have been so captivated by aggressive secularism that
they oppose Christianity with all the practical means at
their disposal.
And this leads me into the most serious part of my
sermon. So please don’t nip out for a smoke at this
point. People laugh about Political Correctness. I have
written a satire about it and people respond by smirking
and telling me how naughty I was to write such a book.
But my satire is one of the most serious books I’ve
written – because Political Correctness is not a joke:
it is the means by which secularisation is inculcated
throughout society.
Three out of four firms refused to put up Christmas
decorations last year. The majority of Christmas cards
no longer featured the Nativity scene. More shops and
stores than ever opened for business on Christmas Day.
These are just the outward signs of an increasingly
militant secularism, for the fact is that the
progressive elite in Britain today detests Christianity
and wishes to destroy it. The country is not being
destroyed by alien terrorists but our traditional way of
life and self-understanding is being undermined by
aggressive secularisation.
It may surprise you to learn that teaching Christianity
in state schools is now illegal. It is permitted only to
teach about religions. Absolute relativism rules OK. All
religions must be taught as equal. The only perspective
from which you can teach such equality is atheism.
Christianity used to be at the centre of public life and
it was strongly represented in the mass media,
particularly in broadcasting. What we have now on the
BBC is only a veneer of religion glossing over a soft
left political agenda – secular social conscience as if
there could be such a thing - a whiff of Third-worldism;
the aroma of Fair Trade coffee and the infallible dogma
of global warming.
At the centre of the secular atheistic project is the
destruction of the historic basis of our way of life:
marriage and the family. This has been achieved by the
secular doctrines of rights and egalitarianism according
to which childbearing and adoption procedures are
extended to homosexual couples. Government economic and
social policy consistently discriminates against
marriage and in favour of any alternative cohabiting
arrangement. It is getting to the stage when the Vicar
will have to watch out for the politically-correct
commissar before he ventures to preach against adultery.
The Christian era which held sway in this country for
2000 years was not oppressive – unlike the totalitarian
secularism which threatens to replace it. After the
Restoration in 1660, various Acts of Toleration allowed
dissenters leeway provided they kept the peace. But it
was always tacitly understood that you belonged to the
Church, to Christian civilisation unless you opted out.
All that has changed. And as if to emphasise the fact
that the European Project is blatantly atheistic, all
mention of Christianity was left out of the draft EU
Constitution. But Europe was built out of the Christian
faith: the great cathedrals, a parish church in every
village, Dante, Aquinas, Leonardo, Bach…. And if
Christianity goes, European civilisation goes with it
What can be done? The antidote to the destruction of our
society by rampant secularism is for the church to
recover its wits and its confidence. The philosopher and
President of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera, spells
it out: “Christianity is so consubstantial to the West
that any surrender on its part would have devastating
consequences. Will the Church and the clergy and the
faithful be able to be purified of the relativism that
has almost erased their identity and weakened their
message and witness?”
The bishops and the synod will do nothing of course.
They have themselves adopted the secular gospel for
forty years now. The restoration of Christianity in
public life is up to the clergy and the faithful: that’s
you and me folks. You come up our front steps. You
believe with all your heart and mind. And you vote with
your feet.
The Reverend Dr Peter Mullen
For The Daily Reckoning
Editor's Note: The Reverend Dr Peter Mullen is rector of
St Michael's Church, Cornhill and chaplain to the stock
exchange. If you're interested in reading more of his
sermons and thoughts, or wish to visit his weblog, go
to:
http://www.st-michaels.org.uk/index.htm
Er...., thanks.
Derek, WHO???!
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