The Hump of the Camel

…but the rose itself can mutate

I watched a video, by a YouTuber I’d not encountered before, with some hesitation. It is entitled Why I’m no longer evangelical, and I can live without another apostasy story, or even another defection to Rome or Constantinople. But given that the provider goes by the name “Reformed Pastor,” the contradiction intrigued me.

Prompted by my last post I have dug into Elliott-Binns Religion in the Victorian Era. It confirms my understanding that the re-moralising, and re-spiritualising, of Victorian Britain was quite complex in causation, but did indeed seem to begin with Nonconformist and Anglican Evangelicals campaigning on the abolition of slavery. Maybe Asa Briggs just read Elliott-Binns and took the credit.

We live, now, in a low trust society. We now expect our governments to deceive us into compliance using psychological manipulation. We assume our insurance company will be rewarding our loyalty by quietly escalating our premiums. We have no way of negotiating the cashless world without a bank account, but the banks are free to freeze our account without explanation at any time. And, of course, we take it for granted that abortions, divorces and STD will increase exponentially, that schools and universities will teach our kids perversion and political propaganda, that real wages and jobs will decline as corrupt oligarchs prosper, and that the police and courts will routinely favour critical ideology over truth and justice. And, of course, Christianity has been all but expunged from polite society. Even the organised crime and rape gangs operated by foreign actors have only come about because successive British governments were elected on mandates to cut immigration, but wilfully lied.

Thames Valley Police have (through some legal device or other) cancelled an Oxford Union Debate, promoted by the Union’s female Muslim president, on whether Islam is compatible with Western civilization. She had invited Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox and Rev Calvin Robinson, and reportedly even Jacob Rees-Mogg, to speak.