Splendid Isolation

Well now, this is an interesting development:

Polling by a Christian organization, Tearfund, has found that 45 per cent of British adults are planning to attend church this Christmas. This is a sharp rise on recent years. Piety is strongest in Generation Z, 60 per cent of whom (born between 1997 and 2012) will, the poll suggested, be heading for a Christmas service. Baby-boomers and the ‘silent generation’ of older pensioners are only half as devout.

Meanwhile, the late American activist Charlie Kirk’s Christian revival movement, Turning Point, has a British youth ambassador called Young Bob. He is 17, highly articulate and tours campuses and public venues, setting up a trestle table and encouraging members of the public to debate him not only about theology but also its application to contentious political issues such as immigration, nationalism and multi-culturalism. Young Bob, real name Thomas Moffitt, is in some ways a Right-wing version of Greta Thunberg, but without the scowl.

Needless to say, Young Bob is hated not just by the Usual Suspects on the Left, but by the Anglican Church hierarchy.

The Guardian newspaper discerned a ‘far-Right misappropriation of Christian imagery’. The likes of Rowan Williams and the Bishop of Manchester fear that Tommy Robinson may be piggybacking on Jesus to promote nefarious political ends.

But some senior Anglicans are unhappy. Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, talked of the political ‘weaponization’ of Christmas. The Bishop of Manchester said Christmas must not become a ‘prop in a dim culture war’. Giles Fraser, a prominent London vicar, said he would refuse Mr Robinson communion at his altar rail.

That’s very Christian of you, vicar.  And when it comes to “dim”, the Church hierarchy are the absolute dimmest.

Here’s the interesting thing about all this.

I asked a cousin of mine why he and his 20-something university friends had discovered an interest in churchgoing. It was nothing to do with Scripture or tongues or Pentecostal fire. His answer was simply: ‘We want to defend our culture.’ They were fed up with their Christian heritage being ignored and diminished by their university authorities. Dribbly middle-of-the-road Anglicanism won’t cut it for them. They want a religion that is proud of its values and doesn’t shrivel in the face of political correctness.

If only Anglicanism was “middle-of-the-road”.  It isn’t.  It’s a bastion of Leftism and wokist cant.

I always knew that Christianity would at some point rise up against the modern trend of Muslim appeasement and Leftist dogma, in the United States.  (The late Charlie Kirk was emblematic of this resistance, which is why the Left murdered him.)

I had little hope that Christianity would do so in Britain, a nation where well over half the non-Islamic population professes to be atheistic.

All I can say is:  Onward, Christian soldiers.

Addendum:  for those who can’t reconcile the above with the fact that I myself am an atheist, allow me to remind you that while religion itself has little interest for me, I am absolutely firm in my support for the Judeo-Christian culture and heritage.

And I am even more supportive when I consider the alternatives of atheistic totalitarianism (i.e. Communists) and, even worse, radical Islamism.  They both suck big time, without reservation.