http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1805007/posts


Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure: ur correspondent on the
moral failure of modernism


timesonline.co.uk ^ | February 26, 2007 | Wlliam Rees-Mogg


Posted on 03/22/2007 8:44:07 AM PDT by Longinus

From The Times

February 26, 2007

Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure
Our correspondent on the moral failure of modernism

Wlliam Rees-Mogg

From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1805007/posts


Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure: ur correspondent on the
moral failure of modernism


timesonline.co.uk ^ | February 26, 2007 | Wlliam Rees-Mogg


Posted on 03/22/2007 8:44:07 AM PDT by Longinus

From The Times

February 26, 2007

Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure
Our correspondent on the moral failure of modernism

Wlliam Rees-Mogg

From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery. In

his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul wrote: "As many of you that have
been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor
female. We were all one in Jesus Christ." Undoubtedly Christians have
compromised with slavery - as with other social evils - in the course
of history, but the orthodox Christian doctrine is one of liberty and
equality.

The Christian belief was the inspiration in William Wilberforce's long
campaign to end the slave trade. His Bill received the Royal Assent on
March 25, 1807, 200 years ago. That was the most important of all the
great reforms of the 19th century; essentially it was a Christian
reform, inspired by the Protestant conversion of Wilberforce himself.
March 25 was the old New Year's Day; it is also the feast of the
Annunciation of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

We live in an age when modernists regard religion with something
approaching panic. It is like the Devil's attitude to Holy Water.
There was a comic example of Christianophobia in The Sunday Times
yesterday. Michael Portillo, who used himself to be seen in Brompton
Oratory, was hyperventilating at the idea of David Cameron going to
church. "I worry," he wrote, "because men of power who take
instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics . . . I would
be more reassured to hear that the Tory leader goes to church because
that is what it takes to get a child into the best of state schools,
not because he is a believer."

Perhaps this neurotic response to Mr Cameron's habit of going to
church reflects Mr Portillo's recognition that religion is again
becoming an important influence on society. Many of the current news
stories show that religion is back in public consciousness; for those
who feel uneasy about religion, that is unwelcome.

Islam is, of course, the alarming religious issue that will not go
away. In the 20th century the world failed to adjust to two major
belief systems, nationalism and Marxism. Now we face a similar global
challenge from Islam, which opposes Judaism in Israel, Hinduism in
India, Buddhism in South East Asia, Christianity in Europe and America
and modernism in the whole advanced world. We certainly cannot say
that all religious influences are benign; al-Qaeda is a religious
cult, but a perverted one.

Religion turned William Wilberforce into a Protestant saint, but
Wahhabism has turned Osama bin Laden into a devil.

The rise of militant Islam in the 21st century is, however, part of a
much broader phenomenon. In the United States there has been the
extraordinary resurgence of fundamentalist Protestantism, sufficiently
strong to win two presidential elections for the Republican Party. In
Britain, an inflow of Catholics from Eastern Europe, particularly
Poland, has revitalised the Roman Catholic Church, which now has the
largest Christian congregation in the country. The worldwide Church of
England has been divided by a battle of moral convictions. All of
these religious movements challenge modernism, that popular mix of
materialism, scientism and political correctness that had seemed to be
carrying all before it.

The modernist attack on religion was based on the victory of science,
and particularly of neo-Darwinism. Yet science was open to the same
challenge as religion; it could explain only half the world. The
scientists, or some of them, sneered at religion for being unable to
explain the developments of nature. Yet science itself was unable to
produce a science-based morality for society. Marxism attempted to
create a scientific social order that ended in monstrous and
bloodthirsty tyranny. Social Darwinism either meant eugenics and the
slaughter of babies who were not thought fit to survive, or it meant
nothing. The Social Darwinism of George Bernard Shaw, or indeed that
of Adolf Hitler, has been rejected by mankind.

The world needs religion to address the moral issues. In the advanced
societies it is these moral issues that now mock us. Europe and North
America are hugely wealthy regions, but they are morally impoverished.
Broken families, drugs, booze, youth gangs, crime, neglect of children
and the old, the sheer boredom of shopaholicism, terrorism, the inner-
city slums, materialism itself, are all the marks of a global society
in decline. Societies can be judged by their care for children. Social
education must start in the family and must have a moral basis.
Children need to be taught to distinguish between right and wrong. A
recent report by Unicef showed Britain as 21st out of 21 advanced
countries in the welfare of children; our national failure is a shame
and a disgrace.

In 19th century England, the revival of Christianity provided the
basis for a century of social reform. The religious revival spread
across all the Christian churches; in the Church of England there was
the Evangelical movement as well as the High Church movement. The
Roman Catholic Church attracted thousands of new converts. The
Methodists and other Nonconformists devoted themselves to the welfare
of the poor and the working class. The Salvation Army took its
trumpets into the pubs and slums and offered a new hope.

The 19th century was an age of social reform based on religious
revival and the Christian faith. The 20th century was an age of
religious decline and of accelerating decline in social cohesion as
well as in faith. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/ When
wealth accumulates and men decay."

These are lines from Oliver Goldsmith's moving poem, The Deserted
Village in the 18th century. If they seem to apply to our modern
societies, religion is not the problem; it is the only possible remedy.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1805007/posts


Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure: ur correspondent on the
moral failure of modernism

timesonline.co.uk ^ | February 26, 2007 | Wlliam Rees-Mogg


Posted on 03/22/2007 8:44:07 AM PDT by Longinus

From The Times

February 26, 2007

Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure
Our correspondent on the moral failure of modernism

Wlliam Rees-Mogg

From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery.

In
his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul wrote: "As many of you that have
been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor
female.

We were all one in Jesus Christ." Undoubtedly Christians have
compromised with slavery

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1805007/posts

Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure: ur correspondent on the
moral failure of modernism

timesonline.co.uk ^ | February 26, 2007 | Wlliam Rees-Mogg

Posted on 03/22/2007 8:44:07 AM PDT by Longinus

From The Times

February 26, 2007

Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure
Our correspondent on the moral failure of modernism

Wlliam Rees-Mogg

From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery. In

his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul wrote: "As many of you that have
been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor
female. We were all one in Jesus Christ." Undoubtedly Christians have
compromised with slavery - as with other social evils - in the course
of history, but the orthodox Christian doctrine is one of liberty and
equality.

The Christian belief was the inspiration in William Wilberforce's long
campaign to end the slave trade. His Bill received the Royal Assent on
March 25, 1807, 200 years ago. That was the most important of all the
great reforms of the 19th century; essentially it was a Christian
reform, inspired by the Protestant conversion of Wilberforce himself.
March 25 was the old New Year's Day; it is also the feast of the
Annunciation of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

We live in an age when modernists regard religion with something
approaching panic. It is like the Devil's attitude to Holy Water.
There was a comic example of Christianophobia in The Sunday Times
yesterday. Michael Portillo, who used himself to be seen in Brompton
Oratory, was hyperventilating at the idea of David Cameron going to
church. "I worry," he wrote, "because men of power who take
instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics . . . I would
be more reassured to hear that the Tory leader goes to church because
that is what it takes to get a child into the best of state schools,
not because he is a believer."

Perhaps this neurotic response to Mr Cameron's habit of going to
church reflects Mr Portillo's recognition that religion is again
becoming an important influence on society. Many of the current news
stories show that religion is back in public consciousness; for those
who feel uneasy about religion, that is unwelcome.

Islam is, of course, the alarming religious issue that will not go
away. In the 20th century the world failed to adjust to two major
belief systems, nationalism and Marxism. Now we face a similar global
challenge from Islam, which opposes Judaism in Israel, Hinduism in
India, Buddhism in South East Asia, Christianity in Europe and America
and modernism in the whole advanced world. We certainly cannot say
that all religious influences are benign; al-Qaeda is a religious
cult, but a perverted one.

Religion turned William Wilberforce into a Protestant saint, but
Wahhabism has turned Osama bin Laden into a devil.

The rise of militant Islam in the 21st century is, however, part of a
much broader phenomenon. In the United States there has been the
extraordinary resurgence of fundamentalist Protestantism, sufficiently
strong to win two presidential elections for the Republican Party. In
Britain, an inflow of Catholics from Eastern Europe, particularly
Poland, has revitalised the Roman Catholic Church, which now has the
largest Christian congregation in the country. The worldwide Church of
England has been divided by a battle of moral convictions. All of
these religious movements challenge modernism, that popular mix of
materialism, scientism and political correctness that had seemed to be
carrying all before it.

The modernist attack on religion was based on the victory of science,
and particularly of neo-Darwinism. Yet science was open to the same
challenge as religion; it could explain only half the world. The
scientists, or some of them, sneered at religion for being unable to
explain the developments of nature. Yet science itself was unable to
produce a science-based morality for society. Marxism attempted to
create a scientific social order that ended in monstrous and
bloodthirsty tyranny. Social Darwinism either meant eugenics and the
slaughter of babies who were not thought fit to survive, or it meant
nothing. The Social Darwinism of George Bernard Shaw, or indeed that
of Adolf Hitler, has been rejected by mankind.

The world needs religion to address the moral issues. In the advanced
societies it is these moral issues that now mock us. Europe and North
America are hugely wealthy regions, but they are morally impoverished.
Broken families, drugs, booze, youth gangs, crime, neglect of children
and the old, the sheer boredom of shopaholicism, terrorism, the inner-
city slums, materialism itself, are all the marks of a global society
in decline. Societies can be judged by their care for children. Social
education must start in the family and must have a moral basis.
Children need to be taught to distinguish between right and wrong. A
recent report by Unicef showed Britain as 21st out of 21 advanced
countries in the welfare of children; our national failure is a shame
and a disgrace.

In 19th century England, the revival of Christianity provided the
basis for a century of social reform. The religious revival spread
across all the Christian churches; in the Church of England there was
the Evangelical movement as well as the High Church movement. The
Roman Catholic Church attracted thousands of new converts. The
Methodists and other Nonconformists devoted themselves to the welfare
of the poor and the working class. The Salvation Army took its
trumpets into the pubs and slums and offered a new hope.

The 19th century was an age of social reform based on religious
revival and the Christian faith. The 20th century was an age of
religious decline and of accelerating decline in social cohesion as
well as in faith. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/ When
wealth accumulates and men decay."

These are lines from Oliver Goldsmith's moving poem, The Deserted
Village in the 18th century. If they seem to apply to our modern
societies, religion is not the problem; it is the only possible remedy.

Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure: ur correspondent on the
moral failure of modernism

Wlliam Rees-Mogg

From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery.