Thoughts on the Resignation of Tim Farron as leader of the Liberal Democrats

I have been thinking about Tim Farron's assertion that he feels it 'impossible' to be leader of the Liberal Democrats while living as a faithful Christian. So he has stopped doing that (being leader of the Lib Dems, I mean). I'm not all that sympathetic to Mr. Farron....

People who profess Christian belief must expect to be reviled a bit, an even take it as a compliment. As Christ himself said (Matthew 5, 11-12) 'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.'

It should be clear that it's reviling I'm speaking about here. What happened to Tim Farron certainly wasn't persecution, a serious word too often misused.....

...."The consequences of the focus on my faith is that I have found myself torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader....

"To be a political leader-especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017--and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible's teaching has felt impossible to me......."

He closes with a quotation from the last verse of Issac Watts's great Good Friday hymn "When I Survey the Wonderous Cross"......

The issue over which Mr. Farron was tripped up was, of course, homosexuality, the great loyalty test of the modern liberal state. I long ago gave up discussing this in public, as it was quite pointless, nobody who pursued me, on the subject was interested in what I really thought (indeed, the harder they pursued me, the less interested they were, it was just a thought-police interrogation), and it was simply an elephant trap.....

The leader of the "third party" in the UK, Tim Farron, resigned recently citing the conflict between his Christianity and the social liberalism of his political party (Liberal Democrats).

Peter Hitchens comments on the matter and while some religious leaders of the Archbishop of Canterbury have expressed sympathy with Farron, Hitchens offers a less sympathetic opinion.

The long blog post details out social issue positions from Hitchens on both homosexuality and abortion.

Agree or disagree, some interesting and relevant reading on how traditional moral values are being marginalized and how people having traditional moral values and identifying as Christians are being marginalized.

"Ideas have consequences." - Weaver

Decades of liberal/progressive efforts to censor, erase and deny the underlying ideas of liberty upon which the U. S. Constitution was framed have had consequences.

Our Constitution embodied a UNIQUE IDEA. Nothing like it had ever been done before. The power of the idea was in the recognition that people's rights are granted directly by the Creator - not by the state - and that the people, then, and only then, grant rights to government. The concept is so simple, yet so very fundamental and far-reaching.

CREATOR

People

Government

America's founders embraced a previously unheard-of political philosophy which held that people are "...endowed BY THEIR CREATOR with certain unalienable rights.." This was the statement of guiding principle for the new nation, and, as such, had to be translated into a concrete charter for government. The Constitution of The United States of America became that charter.

Other forms of government, past and present, rely on the state as the grantor of human rights. America's founders, however, believed that a government made up of imperfect people exercising power over other people should possess limited powers. Through their Constitution, they wished to "secure the blessings of liberty" for themselves and for posterity by limiting the powers of government. Through it, they delegated to government only those rights they wanted it to have, holding to themselves all powers not delegated by the Constitution. They even provided the means for controlling those powers they had granted to government.

This was the unique American idea. Many problems we face today result from a departure from this basic concept. Gradually, other "ideas" have influenced legislation which has reversed the roles and given government greater and greater power over individuals. Early generations of Americans pledged their lives to the cause of individual freedom and limited government and warned, over and over again, that eternal vigilance would be required to preserve that freedom for posterity.

Footnote: "Our Ageless Constitution," W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.