In St.Paul’s letters, the new creation is to be separate from society at large. Indeed it is to turn its back on society. Apart from the exhortation to work hard with their hands and to be law-abiding, there is no thought or advice to Church members about running a civic society, as opposed to their own society. That was right and proper at the time. It was sufficient for the early Church to fix its eyes on the incarnation of Jesus, until it got firmly onto its feet.
But as soon as the Church was expected to play a part in maintaining a civil society, that was not enough. I believe Gibbon was right that Christianity was a principal factor in the decline and fall of Rome, and therefore a subversive political influence. Why? Because the Sermon on the Mount, despite its wonderful rhetoric and nobility of spirit, is a hopeless Rule-book for anyone involved in the maintenance of Law and Order or the administration of society. I have laboured the point that if you are involved in either of these, you do not go for advice to someone who, very sensibly, washed his hands of the problems. You go to the Creator himself, who of course created these problems for you to solve. And that means in Biblical language, believing that His Incarnation includes us, or you are unlikely to get any sensible answers. You will imagine yourself getting the diatribe that poor Job received, which is not much help. In modern language, you view the evils of society as they are, not through the eyes of political correctness, and then summon up the audacity to cope with them. In the language of modern psychology, you identify with the archetype of God in the subconscious, despite the fearful dangers of doing so. If you are afraid to do this, you will simply find you are “all talk”, and ineffective in action.
“A second birth” does not solve the problems of life; rather it enables one to face the problems of vocation, of when to accept convention and when to depart from it, and of standing upright in a devious world.
Burke’s aphorism remains true today: that nothing more is necessary for the complete triumph of evil, than that men of goodwill should stand by, and do nothing! It is true of the C.of E. in its march towards terminal decline. No-one dare admit that its Gospel of love, essential in the long term, is inadequate in the short term. It stands by helpless, incapable of naming the evils that threaten modern society, even more of doing anything about them. It feels that to do so would be disloyal to Jesus, who wisely left no advice on running a community.
Yet by their own standards they have failed. Percy Dearmer, the noted hymn writer, in his book, “Body and Soul”, published in about 1908, declared that every Church of England parson should be able to perform New Testament style healings every day of the week, as a matter of course. I do not myself think it is as easy as that! But I do think the Gospel they preach says clearly that they should be able to do so, although of course they dare not admit it. Realistically, church-goers should be willing to explore the spiritual world, with discretion, avoiding its sinister side like the plague, and concentrating to begin with on its potentiality for healing. It would be dangerous, because as Jung pointed out, in psycho-therapy the healer must be prepared to accept the disease of the patient. And I suspect that to cure mental illness, by spiritual healing, you yourself must be willing to go mad. And that is a daunting prospect. So it is not for timid souls; but then Jesus never suggested his religion was for timid souls.
One should not, surely, try to be wiser than the experience of mankind? And throughout history, all successful leaders have recognised that Trust is the priceless commodity that all communities must have? It manifests itself as honest dealing between man and man, and in a robust community spirit. Yet in Britain today, technology tries to replace honest dealing between people by machinery, and politically correct multi-culturalism does its best to destroy community spirit. Indeed patriotism is called “institutional racism”! And what does the Church say about the need for Trust? Nothing!