Category Archives: History

When public truth becomes subjective

Posted on 09/02/2021 by Jon Garvey

In my last post I wrote about the subjectivisation of truth in the progressive programme. But it would be a mistake to think this is restricted to specific examples like race and gender, because the postmodern element of progressivism extends it to the whole of life. It is all truth that becomes subjectivised to a preferred narrative, not just particular instances. Needless to say, this has profound implications.

Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

On compromise

Posted on 28/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

Looking back on the Soviet era, what Christians do you remember? Richard Wurmbrandt, perhaps, tortured for Christ in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Or Brother Andrew, risking his life to smuggle Bibles to believers. Or the pastor Georgi Vins, allowed out of prison to the west after an intensive campaign by Christians here. Or Solzhenitsyn, whose multiple accounts of believers both widely known and nameless, inside and outside the Gulag, show how the Spirit of Truth suffered under, yet finally triumphed over, Communism.

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Bible Study: The finding of the Book of the Pandemic

Posted on 26/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

34 Boris was fifty four years old when he became king, and he reigned in London for four years… 3 In the third year of his lockdown the famine had become very great in the land, and he began secretly to doubt the advice he was getting from SAGE. In his fourth year he began to scour England and London for whatever remained of any value…

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Whole-cost denialism – wilful blindness or myth?

Posted on 21/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

An historical perspective Fifty years on from that obscure episode in history between 2020 and 2023, now generally known as “The Covidiocy,” it is perhaps now time to reflect on one of its darker aspects. The whole period was one of darkness, of course, largely forgotten now only because of the greater darkness to which it led, culminating in the implosion of the World Equity Government after the sack of Beijing

Posted in History, Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 3 Comments

How Christ released Prometheus (but not like Adam did)

Posted on 18/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

I’m reading a recent book by Carl Trueman, recommended by a Cambridge contemporary who read my e-book, Seeing Through Smoke (and generally liked it). It’s entitled The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Trueman is a Christian historian who seeks to explain the origin of our contemporary moral confusion. To capture his theme, how did a sentence like “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” come to make sense?

Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Prometheus, Theology | 1 Comment

Bird Flu update

Posted on 29/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

I haven’t kept many of my computer files connected with the old life as a GP, but I did recently come across a poster I did for the surgery notice-board in October 2005, on the Big Health Scare of the time, Avian Flu.

Posted in History, Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 1 Comment

Music in Babel

Posted on 23/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

It came upon the midnight clear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth, To touch their harps of gold: “Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, From heaven’s all-gracious King.” The world in solemn stillness lay, To hear the angels sing.

Posted in History, Music, Theology | 2 Comments

Divine right redividus

Posted on 01/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

For non-Brits, today there is a parliamentary vote on bringing in a lockdown disguised as a tier system to replace the lockdown that is ending. Up to a hundred Conservative MPs may rebel, because the cost-benefit analysis that they demanded and were promised, published yesterday (long after the policy decision!) has turned out not to be one. Most of the rebels, on past performance, will not vote against the measures, since they put their careers above the public good. The Government will win anyway, because the equally useless Labour opposition is demonstrating its disapproval for the measures… by abstaining.

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COVID Conspiracy theories are dangerous!

Posted on 24/11/2020 by Jon Garvey

All reputable journalists and scientists dealing with COVID-19 are quick to say, “I am no conspiracy theorist,” shortly before expressing sheer mystification over how things are being handled by the government, by official advisers, and by a fairly monolithic mainstream media.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

Cultural dementia

Posted on 05/11/2020 by Jon Garvey

Yesterday our MPs, deeply conflicted, but not sufficiently so to check out the data intelligently, voted through another national lockdown. This was despite the well-publicized de-bunking of the doomsday projections made to justify it, the data showing that infections and deaths have both peaked and appear to be on the way down, the latest excess deaths report that confirms we have average deaths for the time of year, and above all the clear evidence that no proper impact assessment has been done, let alone made available to parliament or public.

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