Posted on 05/28/2008 11:19:35 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Senior Bishop Warns -
Radical Islam is filling a ‘moral vacuum’ in Britain, a senior Church of England bishop has warned.
The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, has said that the decline of Christian values has meant that Britain is now gripped by the doctrine of ‘endless self-indulgence’ which had led to the destruction of family life.
He warned that the ‘newfangled and insecurely founded doctrine of multiculturalism' has led to immigrants creating ‘segregated communities and parallel lives’.
In an article published in the new political magazine Standpoint, Nazir-Ali claimed that the Church lost its influence over the country’s morals during the 'social and sexual revolution' of the 1960s.
'It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves.
'While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.'
The bishop’s comments are just the latest in a long line of combustible remarks he has made over the relationship between Islam and the West.
Earlier this year Nazir-Ali, faced death threats when he said that that some parts of the country had become ‘no-go areas’ for non-Muslims.
Last weekend he also courted controversy by claiming that the Church was not doing enough to convert Muslims to Christianity
In the article the bishop said Marxism has been exposed as a nonsense that radical Islam now posed a real threat:
'We are now confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope.'
The bishop, who was born in Pakistan of Christian parents, said Christianity had knitted together a 'rabble of mutually hostile tribes' to create British identity.
'The consequences of the loss of this discourse are there for all to see: the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together; the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose; the abuse of substances (including alcohol); the loss of respect for the human person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks on people."
'Radical Islamism, for example, will emphasise the solidarity of the umma (worldwide community of the Muslim faithful) against the freedom of the individual.
'Instead of the Christian virtues of humility, service and sacrifice, there may be honour, piety and the importance of 'saving face'."
Bishop of Rochester profile
The Bishop of Rochester has emerged over the past two years as the Church of England's pre-eminent defender of traditional Christianity.
The Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali' is among the clerics who speak most strongly against attempts to remove signs of Christianity from public life.
His outspokenness has put him in the vanguard of opposition to hardline Islamism and made him one of the highest-placed enemies of the gay rights movement. He has set himself against feminism by criticising couples who decline to have children
And he also appears the bishop most at odds with the leading Anglican liberal, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.
The clash between the two men has been sharply illuminated this year: while the Bishop of Rochester has been railing against Islamic no-go areas, criticising the spread of mosques, and calling for Muslims to be converted, Dr Williams dug himself deep into trouble with a call for the constitutional establishment of Islamic sharia law.
Dr Nazir-Ali has two major assets in common with the Church of England's other most widely-heard and popular prelate, Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu.
Like Dr Sentamu, Dr Nazir-Ali is a member of an ethnic minority and a product of Anglican influence in what was once the British empire.
And like the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York, Dr Nazir-Ali, who continues to hold Pakistani citizenship, has first-hand experience of persecution.
The heritage appears to have freed both men from the crippling need to apologise and appease that seems to afflict many Church of England leaders.
He has accused Muslims of promoting double standards by looking for both 'victimhood and domination'; he has called for powers for officialdom to remove veils from Muslim women for security reasons; and he has warned repeatedly over the dangers of extremism.
In particular he has called on Islamic leaders to allow Muslims to abandon their beliefs and adopt other religions.
Dr Nazir-Ali has spoken up for an estimated 3,000 Britons under threat of retaliation for giving up their faith and he has condemned Islamic states that maintain the death penalty for apostasy.
His disapproval of gay rights has led him to anger Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams by threatening to boycott this year's Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world.
He has criticised civil partnerships and opposed the extension of IVF treatment to single women and lesbians.
Dr Nazir-Ali is married to Valerie, whom he met in a church in Cambridge, and has two sons, Shammy and Ross. The boys made him a temporary hero of pop culture a decade ago when he confessed that, thanks to their influence, he could name all five Spice Girls.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it never ceases to amaze me how human arrogance leads so many to assume we can transcend the need for morals or, in the alternative, that we can somehow have morals without God.
Have you read CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity?
It addresses the morals/ethics question in a very convincing manner - even to those who would try to claim that there should be no preference for any set of moral values, because they’re all equal.
They should make this fellow Archbishop of Canterbury. But I doubt they will.
I was blessed to attend several services in cathedrals in the UK last year; what I hadn’t realized before was that they apparently believe salvation is only to be attained through perfect diction.
Perhaps the most essential book I've read, short of the Bible.
btt
I agree. Radical Islam is a political/religious system not just a religion as is Christianity. The Muslim history has been to take over militarily strong enemies by slowly and quietly infiltrating them and then, once they had the numbers, to strike in the dead of night and slay them.
They are in that process now.
Let me think this through. Before contraception, if unmarried people had sex then they would risk children. Even if abortion was available, it's not a quick fix and you can't do it privately in your own home. So risking children means that there is a fear of/respect for sex. People also therefore respect institutions that restrain sexual desire. It also means that women cannot be expected to not get pregnant. Therefore jobs for women would be restricted to positions that were not essential, because they would have to have maternity leave at minimum, or quit altogether. So men are the primary earners, women (wives) are more or less restricted to the home, not because they can have children, but because they cannot control when they will not.
In comes contraception, and suddenly sex is no longer a fearful/respected act. Religious institutions seen reflexively as protecting children from being born to unwed young mothers are seen as outdated. Women can be hired with the expectation that they will essentially never get pregnant. STD's are largely manageable as far as the workplace is concerned (and AIDS continues to be very rare in the heterosexual population). Divorce gets a lot easier now that women can depend on careers to take them through. Casual sex causes emotional disconnect in marriage to help spur on divorce. Marriage gets diluted and we end up with gay "marriage" and polygamy not looking so bad.
In the end, churches and government have to operate based on the expectation that culture moves on fear of natural consequence rather than any higher moral or legal function. It's sad in many ways, but what do we do now that the genie is out of the bottle and reshaped our culture? Contraception may eventually get banned by law or cultural revolution, but how long can that be expected to stay in place?
I see two possible outcomes:
Check this out. History is truly repeating itself. This time Christians and Jews alike will be targeted as well as conservatives.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/736686/the-universities-witchhunt-against-the-jews.thtml
Many books were written then, like "I'M O.K., You"re O.K, and of course many child rearing books, no spanking just time out, so, Yup I guess you could call it the media and of course the courts, also parents stop being strict like their old world parents.
But I don't think the media would be bought if the culture didn't lead somewhat. Sure, you were in a more conservative subculture, and I was also--if less so (and in the '80s and '90s). But the overarching macro-societal level is different. Ir has *never* turned on a dime like it did in the 1960s in history. The cause has to be unprecedented and to point to unprecedented inventions as a cause is a good idea. Television probably was able to push things along. However, the birth control pill is an unprecedented invention that cuts to the heart of society. That is the big-mover caliber necessary to change things fast.
You are absolutely right. The pill, and then the IUD made a safe means of being promiscuous without paying the penalty of being an unwed mother or having a shotgun marriage. With the introduction of the pill and other means of birth control, came an anything goes society of young people and it wasn't until HIV that some people started being more selective. The courts however had an enormous effect on the society of the sixties and seventies with the most liberal judges ever seen. It truly is such a shame that America lost her way and I believe we as a people will have to apologize to G_d for this time, we make Sodom and Gomorrah look like a birthday party!
Radical Islam - God’s instrument of chastisement in years to come?
The main thing about the sexual revolution is, it ruins things for kids. In a hundred different ways. If people really cared for children they would have said no to the Sexual Revolution; and people who want to see their civilization survive for another generation inevitably see themselves becoming more and more sexually conservative (it used to be called "decent, moral, sane, healthy, honorable") --- moreso and moreso, the more you see and experience in life and the more you think about it.
It's sad, but most people do not think that far. Culture depends far to much on fear of natural consequence than people's rational though and compassion. I'm concerned about what we can do to change it back. Identifying the cause is one thing, but fixing it is a whole other step. One thing that comes to mind is using environmental laws to stop use of the birth control pill. Since there have already been reports of those hormones found in groundwater, it wouldn't be much of a stretch. Do you think the EPA could be the solution to our family problem? What a crazy twist that would be!
the more you see and experience in life and the more you think about it.
Heh, I'm still not 30 yet so I've done more thinking than I should be allowed at my age :-).
I subscribe to his monthly newsletter and have heard him speak in the flesh at a conference in the west country many years ago. A great man God Bless him.
He needs our prayers at present just having undergone back sugery.
This was the message in his May newsletter
“The surgery, though overall successful, bore some complications that will create a longer recovery time for him as well as a longer hospital stay. Yet the hope is that once he is fully recovered, the problems he was experiencing will be alleviated for the long term.”
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