“Reimagining Britain” by Justin Welby

The Brexit vote in June of 2016 hit Great Britain like a thunderbolt, not unlike the election of Donald Trump as President hit the United States later that same year. The responses in these two deeply divided countries were also similar. The people who had supported “Remain” in Britain argued loud and strenuously for ways to undo the Brexit vote, much like their counterparts in the U.S. continue to refuse to accept the November 2016 election.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has taken a different approach to Brexit. He accepts the decision by voters and then asks the question, “Where do we go from here?” In Reimagining Britain: Foundations for Hope, he invites a conversation about the country’s future by suggesting a variety of ideas and proposals, all based on his Christian faith. And he makes no apology for that. 

“This book is, unsurprisingly and unapologetically, written from a Christian perspective,” he writes. “Because of the Christian foundations of our society in Britain, it draws frequently on more or less well-known traditions and stories in the Bible.” Those Bible stories include the early church sharing in common, as recorded in the Book of Acts; Jesus’s description of the last judgment, from Matthew 25; the parable of the talents; and many others.

Welby proceeds to tackle some of the thorniest issues facing British society, which are not unlike some of the thorniest in American society. Family, education, health, housing, economics and finance, the environment, and immigration all come under what can only be called a loving scrutiny. He considers each from a Christian perspective, broadening into a larger discussion of what might be possible in a post-Brexit Britain. That’s the idea of “reimagining” a nation aspiring to its best impulses.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

Welby worked in the oil industry for 11 years before entering the ministry. He became a member of the evangelical Anglican church of Holy Trinity in Brompton, in South Kensington, London, and in 1989 experienced a call to the ministry. He was first rejected for ordination by the Bishop of Kensington but later accepted by the vicar of Brompton. He served churches and cathedrals at Coventry, Liverpool, and several other cities, and was appointed Bishop of Durham in 2011 (which also made him a member of the House of Lords). He was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 2012. He has previously published Dethroning Mammon: Making Money Serve Grace(2016). 

Reimagining Britain is not a conservative book. Neither is it a liberal or progressive book. It slips away from political labels, and asks that Britons consider a future based on the values that bind them together. Welby is making a claim for the church in the national debate about Britain’s future. And he’s well ahead of many of Brexit’s critics who are still stuck in a rejection of the decision. 

Top photograph: A view of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London from the Tate Modern.

Judging by the values of another century

I was reading Peter Ackroyd’s Tudors, which by necessity has a heavy emphasis upon the religious turmoil in 16^th century England. I say “by necessity” because the reign of the Tudors coincided – was directly connected to – the English Reformation. Henry needed a male heir, and so he eventually forced the matter (he did wait quite a few years, however, before he married Anne Boleyn, hoping the Pope would grant a dissolution of his first marriage).

Religious affairs in England – influenced by Luther’s Reformation in Germany – inevitably became entangled with dynastic concerns and political affairs. And a lot of deaths. Ackroyd notes that 308 people were executed during Henry’s reign for violation of the Treason Act of 1534; 300 Protestant martyrs were killed during Mary’s much briefer reign; and 200 Catholics (including 123 priests) died during Elizabeth’s reign.

And then Ackroyd says this: “The historian here often pauses to deliver a lament on human bigotry, but the temptation should be resisted. It is not possible to judge the behavior of one century by the values of another” (emphasis added).

What a quaint idea, I thought. What a refreshingly quaint idea. In that one short statement, Ackroyd lays waste to one of the dominant themes afflicting universities in particular and society in general in the 21^st century.

He’s not saying that something like the Holocaust shouldn’t be judged by today’s values; it was judged by the values of the 1940s and every decade afterward, and rightfully so. But he is saying that we in our 21^st century smugness think we are so much more knowledgeable, so much more tolerant, and so much more intelligent that those who lived in centuries past.

My response to that sentiment is this: Consider the leading candidates in this year’s election for President of the United States, in both major parties, and then tell me how much more knowledgeable, tolerant and intelligent we are. Or better still, follow a disagreement on Twitter – any disagreement.

No, Ackroyd is right. We may have more information at our fingertips, but access to information does not equate to knowledge, and it certainly doesn’t equate to wisdom.

We should read read history with a good measure of humility. The human condition has not changed much over the centuries, if it has changed at all.

Illustration: The depiction of the burning of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the stake in Oxford, England in 1556, during the reign of Queen Mary; from the Book of Martyrs by John Foxe (1563).

Related: My review of Tudors.

Against the Flow: How Daniel Speaks to Us Today

The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament is filled with prophecies: the kingdoms which followed Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar; the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by Antiochus IV Epiphanes; the rise of Rome. The book also included prophecies of the end-times, dovetailing with the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.

In the last three chapters of Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism, author John Lennox describes the fourth and final vision, a kind of survey of the times that would follow Daniel. The information is detailed and in-depth, once again emphasizing the accuracy of what Daniel saw – and what the angel told him would happen.

Prophecy is an important study, and I’ve read the prophetic Old Testament books, read the Book of Revelation, and studied the Book of Revelation. I’m no expert, however, and if someone asked me what my favorite part of the Bible was, I would have to say it’s not prophecy and the study of end-times.  (If you want to know, my favorite books are the Gospels of John and Luke and the Book of Acts.)

So while I’m interested and intrigued with what Lennox writes about in these concluding chapters, I’m not completely riveted. What interests me most is what he had to say in the earlier chapters.

Despite some 2500 years, Christians today have a number of things in common with Daniel and his times.

Here in the United States, the last 50 to 60 years have seen a phenomenal shift in culture and values. It’s not so much a shift “away from the church,” although that’s certainly part of it. Instead, what more describes what has happened is an enormously significant shift in how we understand individual freedom. That freedom has become our Holy Grail, our expectation, our entitlement, what we demand. And that freedom has come largely through the impetus of the federal government, and especially through the federal court system.

What the Supreme Court says and decides has become so important, so wrapped up in this cultural concept of individual freedom at all costs, that we don’t mind the baggage these decisions brings with them as long as “our side” is vindicated and “wins.” (This also says something about the political polarization happening in the United States as well.)

Some of that baggage includes the court having to make up stuff in order to write the decision the majority wants. Harry Blackmun searched the Constitution long and hard in writing his opinion in Roe v. Wade and finally gave up using the Constitution to justify abortion. Instead, he turned to Roman law. Justice John Roberts was only able to uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act by declaring it to be exactly what the Obama Administration and the Congress that passed it said it wasn’t – a tax. In fact, it was such a badly written law (which even most of its supporters didn’t read) that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was right – they had to pass the law to find out what was in it. And the administration has had to rewrite key provisions of the law, not once but several times, to make its programs actually function.

What has happened with these court decisions and laws is that gradually, almost without notice, our society has been dismantling anything that could potentially stand between us and the federal government. All of the mediating institutions – the states and state legislatures, cultural and social organizations, even Congress – are becoming increasing superfluous.

I’ve heard many people compare these times to the end of the Roman Empire. If you read Roman history, you’ll find these people are wrong. Our times are not like the end of the Roman Empire; they do, however, resemble the end of the Roman Republic.

And the times of Daniel. Daniel lived under a succession of autocracies, where the king was essentially considered an absolute god. Because of his skill, competence and intelligence, he rose in position under both the Babylonians and the Medo-Persians.

More importantly, he had to learn how to navigate those autocracies and still remain faithful to God. He managed, through his own skill and wits as well as more than a little supernatural help. He had to make choices and decisions, hard ones, facing problems that could have been solved so easily – just bend the knee to the king; just worship the king for 30 days – that’s all, just 30 days.

Daniel couldn’t, and didn’t. He understood the consequences. He decided that being thrown into the lion’s den was less onerous than worshipping a false god.

He was a man of conviction and courage. He accepted God at His word. And he knew that God could save him, or not, but that regardless, he would still remain faithful and accept God’s plan.

In the times that are coming, that are now just arriving, we Christians will need the conviction and courage of a Daniel. That, to me, is the significant lesson of the Book of Daniel.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been discussing Against the Flow. This concludes the discussion. But the lessons learned go on.

And we do have another example, one closer to our times, that's worth considering. In February of 1974, a man was arrested by his country's secret police and then expelled from the country. This is what he was writing the day he was arrested: Live Not by Lies. 

He was blessed in that he lived long enough to see the downfall of the regime that arrested him. That, however, is not always the promise, as Daniel well knew.

Photograph by Xoan Seoane via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.