John Root writes: Eric Kaufmann’s Taboo (reviewed last week here) is centrally about the damaging slippage in Anglophone culture from ‘cultural liberalism’ (such as equality of opportunity) to ‘cultural socialism’ (such as equality of outcome); a process that requires cancelling the expression of resistant ideas, inflated concern about the dangers of ‘harm’, and an increased level of institutional activism as over Diversity, Inclusion and Equality programmes. It is fairly evident that the Church of England is a culturally liberal organisation. What might be the indications that it is sliding towards cultural socialism?
Following national trends
Kaufmann reports an analysis of newspaper articles which shows that references to racism/racists/white supremacy suddenly shot up from around 2010, tracking earlier attention in academic literature (p 93). An analysis of the Church of England would show a similar spike in attention, for example indicated by a Synod motion repenting for past racist behaviour by the church, the From Lament to Action report, concern over how we respond to past involvement in enslavement, articles in the Church Times, or the appointment of ethnic minority people to senior posts. Obviously there is nothing wrong with the church tracking concerns in the wider society, though it should chasten the hubris of claiming we are being ‘prophetic’. In an earlier blog on ‘The Church of England, Race and the Second Error’ I drew attention to the historic pattern of the Church of England following after secular concerns about social justice, whilst trying to give a theological veneer to conventional established opinion. What is sad that this attention has come too late in the day—we should have been more prophetic in the 70s and 80s when those of us who wanted to draw attention to these matters were largely ignored.
What is ironic is that this increased attentiveness has happened alongside a widely recognised decline in the salience of racism in national life, and growth of much more positive attitudes. Thus increasingly costly measures, such as the West Midlands dioceses project on overcoming white privilege, are being focused on a problem which has declined, and which is likely to continue to decline of its own momentum.
Lack of guardrails for liberalism
Central to Kaufmann’s argument is that liberalism has a problem guarding its leftward flank. Once reasonable moral stances are taken—such as that ‘racism is a sin’—then liberals can find it difficult to resist extensions of that claim since to do so invites the shameful allegation of being a racist. A clear case is accepting moral responsibility for the Church of England’s involvement in slavery. Though the extent, and especially the benefit, if any, of financial investment has become increasingly disputed, nonetheless for two centuries much of the Church of England accepted, and indeed, certainly as individual members benefitted from enslavement. Thus a fund of £100m was set up to aid projects that would benefit descendants of the enslaved. Whereupon the Oversight Group of the ‘Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice’ has subsequently recommended an enlarged Fund of £1 billion, drawn from a wider variety of sources but with a very much wider remit beyond the Caribbean. (See my review of their report here). How can such a claim, made by a very largely black committee, be resisted? Regardless of any attempt to discuss the logic or justice of such a claim, rejecting it would immediately raise the charge of racism, as well as disregard for the hurt and offense felt by black people (which of course is beyond the possibility of any serious objective assessment). The anti-racist juggernaut is beyond containment.
A mark of Kaufmann’s approach (he has called himself a ‘conservative liberal’) is the recognition that every policy brings collateral damage. (A better National Health Service really will mean higher taxes). A just and reasonable response to past collusion with slavery will consider the weight of inter-generational responsibility, the relevance of past contributions and the limit of future ones, and the problem of discerning to whom reparation is justly payable—all set against the requirements of other demands on the church’s money. Liberals will undertake the difficult task of weighing up an ‘optimum’ (a favourite word of Kaufmann) outcome. Cultural socialists can always simply claim that ‘any amount lower than mine is racist’.
A similar ‘progressive’ drift of meaning is held within the word ‘inclusive’. In one sense the word is irresistible. Churches are called to show the welcoming love of God that we see in Jesus Christ. Can any church be unwelcoming? But clearly the word also has the coded meaning of implying that same sex activity is to be affirmed rather than condemned. Here too the question of guardrails arises. Are there limits to inclusive affirmation? It has become likely that transexual procedures will also be affirmed. But are adulterers, who are also deserving of God’s love, to be positively included? Is there any point at which inclusivists would say ‘enough!’ Would they, for example, say that the baptism of Russell Brand was an inclusion too far? When faced with such words of Jesus as ‘Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it’ (Matt 7.13) do inclusivists simply turn away, or recognise that morality causes us to bear in mind several factors, not just one word slogans?
Taboos
A central concern for Kaufmann is that ‘cultural socialism’ inhibits academic freedom, not just by obvious cancelling, but also by putting taboos on what might be said, including self-censorship. Can we question whether appointing a minority ethnic person to a senior post—in business, politics, academia and including the church—was simply responding to pressure for ‘diversity’ rather than because the person’s qualities obviously made them the best person for the job? Or is the disproportionate exclusion of African Caribbean children from school a problem caused by racism in the system, or is it taboo to ask if it is because they are disproportionately badly behaved; and then correlating that with the absence of fathers in the home?
So, in the church some things become unsayable. In a generally well-balanced chapter on ‘Octavius Hadfield: Nineteenth-century Goodie or twenty-first century Baddie? Learnings from the Complexities of Mission and Empire’ (in Deconstructing Whiteness, Empire and Mission, edited by Anthony G Reddie & Carol Troupe), James Butler and Cathy Ross pay tribute to the commendable aspects of Bishop Hadfield’s work, but nonetheless raise disapproving eyebrows at his description of the Maori’s as ‘a formerly barbaric race’ (p 83). But Maoris did practice cannibalism, surely a barbaric practice (as well as slavery and tribal warfare, which of course Europeans also practiced). Sensitivity to our easy mis-readings of cultural hierarchy ought not to rule out the need to make negative judgements.
Kaufmann notes that 60% of Americans now believe that the indigenous ‘First Nation’ peoples lived in harmony before the arrival of Europeans. Taboos against mentioning the prevalence of evils before the arrival of Europeans and/or missionaries give us a distorted and ultimately patronising understanding.
Building resilience
Kaufmann describes a survey where respondents were asked to choose between two ‘ideal societies’:
a Minorities have grown so confident that racially offensive remarks no longer affect them.
b The price for being racist is so high that no one makes racially offensive remarks anymore.
Black and white conservatives both supported option (a) by 62% and 63%. Amongst black liberals the support was 47%, and white liberals 29%. In other words, for progressively minded whites, taking strong steps to prevent harm is a priority, whilst progressive blacks are divided between the two goals. Conservatives of both races mostly saw building resilience in the black population as the more important (p 318).
So should the Church of England be focused mainly on opposing racism as a way of promulgating ‘social justice’ (for example in the West Midlands dioceses project to dismantle ‘white privilege’, as well as focussing on such issues as reparations for slavery or contentious memorials) or should it be focussing on building up the confidence and size of its black membership? Kaufmann’s posing of alternative ‘ideal societies’ has a similar shape to a question posed to the Church of England in 1985 by the black American James H Evans Jr in Inheritors Together: Black People in the Church of England:
Whether or not the appropriate strategy for black people in the church is to get black representatives into positions of authority or to concentrate on building black base communities within the church (p 67).
Over the past forty years clearly the aim of both CMEAC and the Church of England generally has been the former strategy. Reading Kaufmann’s research suggests the latter is the better aim.
The Church needs reminding here that the overwhelming bulk of black Christianity in Britain focuses on ‘ideal society’ A, whilst the strength of black majority, especially African, and diaspora churches vastly outweighs participation in the Church of England. Rev Dr Stephen Laird’s survey of the African Christian groups at the University of Kent, where they were the strongest Christian presence at the university (see my article ‘Black Majority Christian Groups at University’) indicated that their separate existence was not due to racism in the Church, but a desire to maintain their own traditions, worship style, ethical teaching and commitment to direct evangelism—that is, they were developing the ‘resilience’ not the ‘racial justice’ agenda. When therefore the Church’s policy is increasingly to move minority ethnic clergy into special posts in dioceses, training bodies—that is into offices, and away from parish leadership—then arguably we are reducing our strength amongst minority ethnic populations, and so long term undermining racial justice.
The broad picture is summarised by Kaufmann:
When institutions and activists focus on weakening the strong by attacking ‘oppressors’ rather than strengthening the weak by working to build up their capacities, the costs are considerable (p 303).
So he notes the ‘sins of omission’ stemming from cultural socialism—its policies actually disadvantage black people. He describes a survey where black Americans’ confidence that ‘When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work’ was notably lower amongst those who had been given to read ‘a passage from the CRT firebrand Ta-Nehisi Coates’. Thus Critical Race Theory’s ‘widespread pessimism . . . is a recipe for collective disempowerment’ (p 313).
Concept creep
Inflating the meaning of the word ‘harm’ is a woke strategy according to Kaufmann. When invoked by what have been called ‘expansion’ or ‘opprobrium entrepreneurs’ (p 71) on behalf of ‘fragile’ groups (ethnic and sexual minorities, women) then opponents have to flee. In responding to the Alliance’s criticism of the Church’s liberalising approach to same sex relationships, the Bishop of Oxford countered by pointing to the ‘harm’ it caused to homosexuals. The Alliance responded in kind by pointing to the ‘harm’ that Synod’s policies were doing to the church in Africa. When extended from the body to our feelings, ‘harm’ becomes immeasurable, with no possibility of external evaluation. It turns choices of conviction into acts of aggression—in that sense, my vote in the recent election can be deemed to ‘harm’ all the candidates on the ballot sheet that I didn’t vote for.
Mercifully no Christians sought to cancel Richard Dawkins on the grounds that he was causing them ‘harm’ or ‘trauma’, despite the aggressive edge he showed at times, and even though down the past two centuries until today there are many who can testify to the very acute pain caused by ‘losing my religion’. Rather it has been necessary as a ‘conceptual minority’, like any other minority, to develop the resilience to live with the misunderstandings and injustices that are bound up with minority status.
Of particular relevance here is Kaufmann’s noting that men and women are different. A project over whether people are more concerned about free speech or emotional safety, found that amongst the group that had read a passage about the importance of protecting minority groups from harmful speech…
Reading about harmful speech . . had a much bigger impact on young women than young men, shifting women fourteen points towards emotional safety compared to a mere two points among men (p 241).
More generally he notes that
Younger and female respondents are consistently more pro-PC than middle-aged or older people, even after taking ideology into account’ (p136).
The Church of England may not be young, but it is widely recognised that it is increasingly ‘feminised’, which means that concern to protect the vulnerable from harm may increasingly take precedence over open, free and controversial debate. Pastoral sensitivity to individual needs then takes precedence over clear theological analysis, for example in the current debate over same-sex relationships.
Similarly, Kaufmann notes:
A consequence of the shift from full-spectrum cultural flourishing to cultural socialism is that society has become margin- rather than median-focused’ (p 375).
Once more, surely bells ring for the Church of England. Clearly concern for the marginalised in our society is an important aspect of the church’s ministry, but arguably a culturally socialist mentality has pulled that concern into the centre. Often our apologia in the public space is to present our ministry to the marginalised, rather than claiming we have a message of good news for all people, whilst an exegetical sleight of hand means that we focus largely on Jesus ministry to social outcasts rather than noting that ‘the common people heard him gladly’ (Mark 12:37, AV) The massive missional problem of the church of England today is its failure to connect with ‘mainstream’ ordinary people, of all ethnicities and notably men, rather than with possibly sentimentalised ‘marginal’ people.
Kaufmann’s bracing assault on the taboos that cultural socialism has proliferated in our society may make uncomfortable reading for cultural liberals—surely the default position for most of us in the Church of England—but time and again he calls us to see the harms that develop when that liberalism drifts leftwards without the moral and intellectual guardrails to prevent it.
John Root was a curate in Harlesden, led an estate church plant in Hackney, and planted two Asian language congregations in Wembley, before enjoying retirement ministry in Tottenham.
This review was first published on John’s substack here.
Buy me a Coffee
If the Church of England is serious about multiculturalism then it will run separate services – appropriately led – in each church building for black, white and Asian believers.
Reductio ad absurdum?
This is what the Anglican Church in New Zealand does: it has three provinces, each with its own synod and Archbishop and bishops: one for whites, one for Maoris, one for Pacific Islanders. They adopted this model in the 1990s.
Most Maoris used to be Anglicans but they seem to have abandoned religion in the past 50 years, so the Anglican Maori Province is actually very small. The biggest Christian movement for Maoris (outside Roman Catholicism) is the Destiny Church led by Bishop Brian Tamaki. They have made a name for themselves painting over rainbow road crossings and protesting against Drag Queen Story Hours in NZ public libraries, including in Christchurch where Dr Carrell is the Anglican Bishop.
NZ’s woke folk won’t have a clue how to handle them. How dreadful!
Maoris painting over rainbow crossings and protesting drag queens with kids does cause cognitive dissonance among the wokerati in NZ.
‘Multiculturalism ‘ has two opposing meanings. a) Different cultures should exist in their own silos – apartheid, a strong emphasis on identitarianism and ‘cultural socialism’, and seemingly Anton’s understanding.
b) Different cultures should respectfully and positively co-exist within the one institution – ‘cultural liberalism’, the approach of the Church of England and most institutions in our society, and the New Testament. It requires love, understanding, wisdom and respect; and close attention to the detail of how we work it out.And wise resistance to the pressure to move to ‘multiculturalism a’.
Actually the very notion of multiculturalism is incoherent, because it is taken here to mean separate comunities but under an umbrella of English law and the British constitutional monarchy.
The “Racism & Inequality in a Time of Crisis Report’ indicated 92% of Indians, Pakistanis & Bangladeshis felt part of British society as opposed to 86% white British feeling so (p 49).
The point that Kaufmann makes about women (especially young women) and preoccupation with ‘safety’ is a very valid one.
The General Election in the UK this year showed 23% of women 18-24s voting for the Greens way more than men did, and this difference continues through most age brackets.
Central to Green politics is climate catastrophism, the belief that we face imminent disaster unless we immediately reduce carbon emissions.
During the pandemic, the sense of fear and the preoccupation with wearing masks was noticeably higher among females than males.
And the push for internet censorship and the punishment of offensive language is heaviest among women.
So the push for ‘cultural (and political) socialism’ seems to come notably from younger (and childless?) white women who feel especially vulnerable in our modern post-Christian world.
Another side of this has been the reflex pro-Palestinian views of the young, in a quasi-religious way that dovetails with the growing number of Muslims in the west.
Women’s “preoccupation with ‘safety'” also means that where women are involved in safety on construction sites there are few accidents
It is not “Green politics” that says the earth faces imminent disaster, it is good sound science, and very few scientists disagree.
It turned out wearing masks saved lives.
What women want censoring is encouragement to assault or abuse women.
Still, let’s shut women up so that nobody has to think hard thoughts.
thanks Liz. I think yo are right in agreeing that women are more sensitive to danger and keep to protect all from harm, which confirms the research in the article.
I am not sure anyone is therefore saying that women should ‘shut up’…?
It’s a long time since I worked on a construction site and I confess I’ve never seen a woman working on one. But then I’ve never been to China or the Soviet Union either, where this may have been more common.
But I think there is evidence that young females today have heightened anxiety compared to a previous generation- as Jonathan Haidt has repeatedly demonstrated. Haidt, as many may know, links youth anxiety to the sudden appearance of smartphones c. 2012 and the devastating impact this has had on the normal forms of social engagement among young people, isolating them and inhibiting the development of proper face to face friendships with real people, as well as putting all the evils of the internet before them 24/7. And, not to put too fine a point on it, does anyone think mass immigration has made our cities safer for girls? In the world
of doomscrollers and catastrophism a politics of empathy will easily win over a politics of argument.
This research physicist disagrees. 40 years ago there were differing schools of thought as to what caused climate change, but one school (CO2) won all the grant and jobs funding without proof that it was the right one. Today it is looking very shaky, but because it dominates funding remains very influential.
On the theoretical front, we have known how much CO2 causes how much warming on a dry planet for about 100 years. But on a wet planet the calculation is so much more complicated that the error bars are huge even with today’s knowledge – and the IPCC cites the upper end. The reason is because CO2-induced warming causes evaporation of seawater into the atmosphere, and water vapour is itelf a greenhouse gas. That is a positive feedback effect which would act to enhance CO2-only warming. But there is also a negative feedback effect because water vapour condenses into cloud, and the topside of cloud reflects much incoming solar energy directly out to space, cooling the earth. But cloud is seriously complicated – its type, its latitude, its height all matter – and this is the source of the uncertainty.
On the observational front, ‘corrections’ are applied to the raw temperature data to account for factors such as the Urban Heat Island effect. But these corrections are not done honestly, quite frankly. A pause in global warming was observed in real time between 1998 and 2012, even though China and India were opening coal-fired power stations. (“We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment” – IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth, email of 12th Oct 2009 to Michael Mann.) 90 papers were written about the pause at the time it was happening. But no pause can be seen if you look today at the temperature data for 1998 – 2012. The data have been changed! The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the USA asserts record June heat in central Africa in 2024 despite having no data for the region:
https://realclimatescience.com/2024/08/record-heat-in-africa/#gsc.tab=0
In 2010 the co-chairman of the IPCC’s Working Group III on mitigation of climate change, climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer, said in a newspaper interview that “we distribute de facto the world’s wealth via climate policy… One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14th Nov 2010, translated). . Teenagers whose worries about the future are wrecking their lives should ask whether they are being stampeded by activists – for whom climate change is a way to bring down a civilisation that has given people more freedom to criticise and choose their leaders than ever before while raising the standard of living of its poor above that of mediaeval kings, thanks to electricity and powered transport.
You do not have to choose between freezing in winter or boiling in later life. Britain is not being a bad neighbour if we do not reach Net Zero within half a lifetime. There is more to fear in policies that make energy unaffordable and unreliable, and lead to economic collapse and breakdown of society. But you will have to contend against vested interests to secure a decent future for you and your children.
Please watch Climate: The Movie – The Cold Truth for more information. This feature-length documentary is at vimeo dot com/924719370 and it begins with the science, as all treatments of the issue should.
Anton
Every secondary school kid learns the basic science behind how chemicals in the atmosphere retain heat within the atmosphere.
Its not a guessing game and you are provably false that grants went only to people blaming co2. The most influential organization on climate in the UK is the Met Office. All of the scientists there get paid the same if claimed change is caused by pollution or if it is caused by magic liberal fairies.
Peter, understanding the greenhouse effect on a wet planet is an exceedingly complex application of fairly simple physical principles. Do not confuse the two.
Not a guessing game? Even the IPCC admits that there are huge error bars on its estimates, due mainly to its lack of understanding of the effects of cloud.
In summer 1988, US funding for climate science rose 15-fold in 6 years after an alarmist briefing to Congress. Politicians had no reason to disbelieve what scientists told them. Science faculties and job applicants understood that recruitment was in response to the alarm, and knew what proposals and viewpoints would (and wouldn’t) win grants and jobs. Other Western nations followed.
The Met Office is fully on board with climate alarmism. It is a key partner in the UK Climate Resilience program, which like the IPCC sets out Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) due to climate change. In the UK’s SSP2 the NHS gets privatised. SSP3 sees the UK break up and a surge in “right-wing populism”; the police and justice system cease to exist, militias rise to power, and armed conflict, terrorism and riots occur. People resort to subsistence farming. In SSP4, “society is more divided than ever… to keep the general population in line, governments introduce military conscription”. In contrast, in SSP1 – a low-CO2 low-temperature-rise scenario – “the UK re-enters a progressive and expanded European Union”. Is the Met Office for political speculation or actually forecasting the weather?
Apart from all that, you are entirely correct.
Anton
The Met Office would still exist with the same number of scientists if climate change wasn’t happening. I guarantee zero of their employees are there for the salary – each of them could make far more in the private sector.
I agree there are uncertainties in terms of how the climate will continue to change. That’s not the question I was addressing
The MetOffice would do better to stop meddling in politics and direct more of its employees to improve its models for short-term weather forecasting. It does a fair job at that in a country with many microclimates, but thatI’s not the question *I* was addressing.
Liz, I don’t claim to be either a climate or medical scientist. But events over the last few years have stimulated my natural curiosity in both fields, and I can confirm with some confidence that a) both involve immensely complex systems and b) both are prey to human fallibility notably on account of political and financial interests. We lay people have every right to concern ourselves with any issue that may affect our lives and, if we do that, we need to remain open minded in general but also sceptical in particular about any information mediated through political or financially interested parties. We should always beware of viewpoints that seem to be marketed in an ideological manner, and we need to develop a nose for ‘following the money’!
Since both sciences concern the work of our Creator God, we Christians must surely be drawn to ponder how he fits in to what science reveals and how that may shape our view of what human beings should do with their scientific knowledge. So I’d like to offer two questions – not as ‘gotcha’ traps – but out of genuine interest:
Presumably it is God whose creative work caused, over time, vast deposits of fossil fuels to lie beneath our feet around the globe. Do we think his natural foreknowledge that we would one day make good use of them included a human catastrophe of ‘global boiling’? Is the self impoverishment of Net Zero our only option or might we develop better engineering methods of exploiting those undoubted benefits? Or could our ever changing climate actually be inherently self regulating, albeit on a time scale which spooks those of us who are adverse to risk because we don’t believe God’s involved?
Anyone who has looked, even casually, into the way natural immunity protects the human body will discover a mind blowing complexity of processes – systemic, cellular, biochemical – all of which interact. Should Christians have any views on the extent to which we interfere with or try to improve upon how our bodies work? And should medical intervention now become a matter of obedience to socio/political diktats (mandated injections, lockdowns, mask enforcement etc) or should we retain the long held moral principle of the inviolable doctor/patient relationship, with the patient always having the final say on any intervention?
Don,
I learnt a lot about the human autoimmune system as a result of contracting long covid, which may be more than one syndrome but in my case was clearly an autoimmune problem. I was on my own, because the doctors were busy with more acute problems than mine and in any case they knew little about SARS-CoV-2, but I now believe I had a version of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome somewhere between mild and medium. I reckon today to understand the autoimmune system at least as well as anybody who hasn’t had specialist training. (I have a doctorate in physical science but no more than a 1970s O-level in biological/medical sciences, plus much reading about genetics.) I now recognise that our bodies work as an exquisite and complex balance of competing biochemical reactions and needs. (When New Agers talk about ‘detox’ I’ve ditched my irritable response “What toxins?” – which of course they could never answer – in favour of saying that they are changing the balance of their internal reactions slightly, which is both true and more constructive.) Too little autoimmune response and you catch everything. Too much and your body turns against itself. There is both the innate and the adaptive immune system, the former attacking everything unrecognised and the latter learning from past diseases (and present ones if they go on long enough). Between them they have several modes of operation involving differing types of cells that attack bad stuff, and differing types of antibody (attack proteins) that attack bad stuff; these modes of operation may rev up and down on differing timescales. Diet may help in the longer term. I’ve learnt that one has to take responsibility for oneself and never delegate your thinking to others, even doctors, who should be regarded as expert advisors but nothing more. I pity those who do not have the time and the capacity to go on the learning curve that I did, especially in view of the logjam in the NHS today.
As for masks saving lives – complex! SARS-CoV-2 was indeed transmitted primarily through the air, so if you wore a GOOD mask – meaning one so airtight that you could not get the amount of oxygen you need to walk briskly while wearing it – then you were less likely to get infected on a ny given day. But after a couple of hundred days you were still pretty likely to get it whether you wore an average mask or not. So it ‘flattened the curve’ and prevented hospitals being overwhelmed, not that their treatment protocols were much good. Perhaps it made people less likely to get it in early spring 2020 until their Vitamin D levels had been raised by exposure to sunlight to summer 2020 levels, when it would harm them less. Perhaps it delayed people getting it until it had mutated to something less dangerous. Perhaps it delayed people getting it until the vaccines were ready – and that opens another can of worms. Complex, as I said.
In the long term we do actually need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, because (1) there is only a finite amount; (2) we don’t want the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to reach the human drowsiness threshold; and (3) much of it is under regimes that have no love for the West. (Notice I’ve not included global boiling, for the reasons I’ve stated in another comment above.) But at present the choice is either fossil fuels or nuclear power or lights-out. Renewables simply won’t cut it. I expect this issue to come to a head in the lifetime of this parliament and to dominate the next election because, some winter soon, given the government timetable toward Net Zero, prices of electricity will be even higher and power cuts will occur. The people won’t stand for that without mass protests – which I would (peaceably) support.
This is very interesting. I am presuming that as you had long term Covid you are still suffering symptoms….aches and pains ? lethargy? terribly tired? not accomplishing what you were able to do before? Are you OK now? Was diet and exercise the cure…? Mediterranean diet ? No alcohol ,sugar products? No one wears a mask now. I hope you have recovered fully. I believe some people never recover completely. Could depend on your age I suppose. Anyway It many not be appropriate for you to respond to my questions on this site. It is very different to Cranmer’s old blog….a lot more serious and sane communicants here I think. Do you miss Cranmer? I do. Pleased you understand that fossil fuels have to go. People will have to learn alternative ways of living and conserving heat in the winter. They may have to wear a woolly jumper and a beanie instead of wandering about the house in budgie smugglers and a t shirt in the middle of winter with the heating on full blast. There are easy cheap ways of insulating a house as you would know being an old hippie in the past. Good to chat with you again.
Hello Cressida, good to talk to you again! I do miss Cranmer, although I spent too much time there. The good Rev Dr Ian Paul runs a fine blog here, but does not appreciate the kind of knockabout that took place at Cranmer. I do read (but don’t write at) Happy Jack’s blog every now and then, and I see you and others there. Good health to you all.
I was never unable to walk round the village I live in and I never got brain fog, but I was low on energy for a while, I lost my tolerance of cold (which had been very good), and I lost a lot of muscle tone. I had shingles and gout. All fully sorted now except that I still have poor cold tolerance in my hands and feet (only), manifesting as Raynaud’s syndrome in my hands, and numbness on the underside of my toes where they leave the ball of my foot. These were the first symptoms to come so I have hopes yet that they might go, and leave me free to go skiing again without risk of frostbite.
I did kick alcohol for a while, not least because I simply didn’t feel like it. I aim for a ketogenic low-sugar diet but make occasional exceptions for sugar in good coffee, and high-quality milk chocolate. In summer I eat plenty of fruit and don’t worry about the sugar in it.
Don’t worry about the use of fossil fuels as a stopgap. The resulting carbon dioxide won’t cause the earth to heat dangerously, and if we don’t use them then the economy will tank so badly that there will be starvation and rioting. But yes, in the longterm we need to kick them. Macron at last did the right thing and initiated a new nuclear power reactor program in France to replace the ageing 1970s reactors that have provided 70% of France’s electricity; this will stand France in good stead. But regarding the phasing out of fossil fuels, there just isn’t the urgency that the IPCC says. You might be surprised at my views on Greta Thunberg; if I believed what she believes then I hope I’d have the guts to behave as she does, and to disrupt the traffic in central London, etc. But I am confident that she is misinformed. I cannot recommend too highly that feature-length documentary “Climate – the Movie: The cold truth” to which I gave the link above.
All blessings.
Anton, I’m sorry to hear about your ‘long Covid’ experience although I certainly remember you were suffering somewhat from your initial Covid infection. I regularly follow Dr Philip McMillan’s content on YouTube (he posts a new video virtually every day under the title of ‘Vejun’). He has been looking at Covid from an autoimmunity perspective virtually from the beginning and has a wealth of information on his previous videos and his website. To be honest it’s something that I can grasp when he is speaking but which I would struggle to convey in my own words to someone else (which obviously shows that my grasp is rather shallow!).
He is clear that the common assumption that Covid is essentially done with and that the latest strains only give people something like a cold is far from being the whole truth. Rather than severe respiratory problems, Covid now presents with all manner of immune related problems affecting many parts and functions of the body. As you infer, IgG4 is frequently getting in the way of effective immune responses to infections that have crossed the mucosal barrier and become systemic. He is looking for solutions as well as sounding warnings about what may be coming but independent research is not well received by the medical establishment. As he says, ‘Covid-19 is a beast of a virus’.
Personally, I haven’t knowingly been infected but may of course happen to have been spared any symptoms. I’m not a denier; I daily take Vitamin D (plus Vitamin K2 which mitigates against too much calcium). At our latitudes in the UK, even in summer, we don’t produce enough Vitamin D – in winter it’s obviously much worse. During the lockdowns when so little scientific information was publicised, with my useless fabric mask I actually tried to pick up a low viral load of Covid when in shops on the basis that it would start to trigger a useful immune response. Was I right? We’ll never know but I’m still here
Yes, Vitamin D is very important and I follow Dr David Grimes, who was for decades an academic researcher into Vitamin D metabolism. I’d not heard of McMillan and will look at him – thank you. Prof. Angus Dalgleish on the origin of the virus and on the absurdity of much of the government’s advice is also excellent – his extended interviews on John Campbell’s channel are remarkable.
Many people had it far worse than me, although few for longer. I am in no doubt that I caught Covid-19 at Covent Garden on Friday 13th March 2020, at the final performance of Fidelio before the Royal Opera House closed, one week ahead of lockdown. I’d never seen the West End so empty on a Friday night, but I said I was going to see Beethoven’s only opera in his 250th anniversary year if it killed me…
Don,
Philip McMillan doesn’t appear to have posted any videos at his Vejon YouTube channel for many months, and nothing I can see has a title corresponding to what you say about the latest mutations of SARS-CoV-2 causing subtle longterm autoimmune problems. Can you give me a link, please?
Sorry, Anton, I did a typo; it’s Vejon:
https://www.youtube.com/c/VejonHealth
His website is:
https://vejonhealth.com/
And, yes, John Campbell is great too and also does good interviews. Prof. Angus Dalgleish has not pulled his punches on his own previous experience of problems with mRNA technology and now sudden ‘turbo’ cancers in his patients whose cancers had long been in remission.
Sorry, Anton, I did a typo and it’s Vejon not Vejun. Try looking here for his content which is enormous and he’s definitely still releasing regular (daily) updates:
https://www.youtube.com/@VejonHealth
If you click on the ‘Covid vax unintended consequences’ video you will find links in the details below it which expands when you click on more…
I’m a bit pressed for time now so I’m not sure if there’s a specific title on autoimmunity and new strains but he regularly reiterates on this issue in his videos. I can’t seem to include 2 links in one comment here but I hope you can find you way to his website as well as his YouTube channel and find the extensive information he makes available there.
Don
We have an observational record dating back 150 years which shows the climate changing. Our “knowledge” of atmospheric chemistry and physics says that this is due to pollution.
The alternative is that our “knowledge” of science is fundamentally flawed and that the climate is changing for some unknown reason that as yet escapes us (at a greater rate than we have evidence for ever happening before) and that pumping more and more pollutants into the atmosphere has no impact on how it functions.
Furthermore ten years ago there was more scientific consensus for man made climate change than there was for a non-flat earth and those that did dispute it were generally being paid off by Big Oil. Now I think you wouldn’t find any expert anywhere in the world who claims it isn’t happening!
This is not “the Deep State” faking something you don’t want to be true. It is the truth.
How then do you explain the plentiful climate change known to have happened in the pre-industrial era? And how can you exclude whatever caused that climate change from being responsible for any present climate change?
Thanks, Peter. Anton’s already commented and I agree with his points. In summary, I don’t deny the possibility of a man-made contribution to climate change but a) We don’t know for certain how strong that effect is and b) Even if that effect makes up the greater part of what is causing such change as is happening, Net Zero is a politician’s and media response rather than a rational scientific and engineering response. Let’s put our brains in gear about this.
And have you considered God’s promise to Noah, sealed with his rainbow sign, that the earth’s processes would never again be so disruptive as to threaten mankind’s existence or deny him of food? Okay, that’s a general promise rather than total exemption from natural disasters in a fallen world. But would Christians do better to call people to faith in God, whom we can trust to keep his promise, rather than join in the charge towards headless-chicken land?
Anton
Natural climate change occurs. What we are seeing now is not explained by Natural processes, but is explained by increased pollutants. What we are seeing now is far more rapid than we have knowledge of ever happening in history or prehistory
That is untrue:
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/09/2500-years-of-wild-climate-change-in-southern-europe-it-was-warmer-in-roman-times-than-now/
And that’s before the massaging of the recent temperature data, with effect of exaggerating any recent increase, has been taken into account. In putting data into climate models, this there might be reason to imput a different temperature from the value actually recorded – if a particular weather station was put up in a green field but has since been built round, causing an Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which should be compensated for. One way to correct for UHI heating is to find weather stations near the one in question which are still in fields, calculate the average warming at those, and use that figure to correct the figure at the weather station that became urbanised. This procedure is called data homogenisation. But homogenisation is often done wrongly, and makes the warming look bigger. Homogenisation should identify the extent to which each individual station has been urbanised, and when. Instead, software is often used, e.g. a ‘majority voting’ algorithm among stations in the same region. But if there are more urbanised than green-field stations, the urbanised ones mistakenly add the UHI heating to the green-field data. That makes recent warming at the green-field stations appear bigger. Or the correction needed to cool data from an urbanised station is applied from before the date at which it was built around. That makes the past look cooler and makes subsequent warming look bigger. Or no correction is applied to urban data, causing UHI heating to be assigned wrongly to CO2. Here are multiple examples of homogenisation that *always* make the warming look bigger:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/tag/Greatest+Scientific+Fraud
Then there is the inconvenient pause in warming between 1998 and 2012 which the IPCC’s own scientists commented on at the time, but whcchh has now been airbrushed from the data (see link in my previous post above), and the NOAA claiming a record hot June in central Africa on the basis of zero observational data (also linked above). So it isn’t actually warming as quickly as you believe. If it was, you might be right – but it isn’t!
That is untrue: see
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/09/2500-years-of-wild-climate-change-in-southern-europe-it-was-warmer-in-roman-times-than-now/
And that’s before the massaging of the recent temperature data, with effect of exaggerating any recent increase, has been taken into account. In putting data into climate models, this there might be reason to imput a different temperature from the value actually recorded – if a particular weather station was put up in a green field but has since been built round, causing an Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which should be compensated for. One way to correct for UHI heating is to find weather stations near the one in question which are still in fields, calculate the average warming at those, and use that figure to correct the figure at the weather station that became urbanised. This procedure is called data homogenisation. But homogenisation is often done wrongly, and makes the warming look bigger. Homogenisation should identify the extent to which each individual station has been urbanised, and when. Instead, software is often used, e.g. a ‘majority voting’ algorithm among stations in the same region. But if there are more urbanised than green-field stations, the urbanised ones mistakenly add the UHI heating to the green-field data. That makes recent warming at the green-field stations appear bigger. Or the correction needed to cool data from an urbanised station is applied from before the date at which it was built around. That makes the past look cooler and makes subsequent warming look bigger. Or no correction is applied to urban data, causing UHI heating to be assigned wrongly to CO2. Here are multiple examples of homogenisation that *always* make the warming look bigger:
manhattancontrarian dot com/blog/tag/Greatest+Scientific+Fraud
Then there is the inconvenient pause in warming between 1998 and 2012 which the IPCC’s own scientists commented on at the time, but which has now been airbrushed from the data (see link in my previous post above), and the NOAA claiming a record hot June in central Africa on the basis of zero observational data (also linked above). So it isn’t actually warming as quickly as you believe. If it was, you might be right – but it isn’t.
James
Man made climate change is undeniable. Just look out your window
Correct statement: local climate change due to at least one of several possible causes is likely.
And it’s not surprising that 60% of Americans think native Americans lived harmoniously in a state of nature until the bad white men came, despite all that anthropologists and historians know about the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas.
This is a reflection of the poverty of their high school education (driven by understandable guilt over the horrific way the US government treated the first nations, and a wish to tell a ‘better story’), but also the great differences in material culture between North American Indians and those of Central America and the Andes. The Aztecs, Mayans and Incas had a much higher material civilisation, with stone buildings, empires and institutions – as well as well documented extremes of cruelty and slavery. School education is not primarily about acquiring knowledge, it’s about inculcating desirable behaviour.
No, that’s what parents are for. At my grammar school I regarded my teachers as there to teach me things I didn’t know that they did, and anything beyond that was none of their business provided that I behaved.
Yes, yes, I know – but that was another country. I was describing what has come to be the expectation today. The new Stalinist government of Britain is setting out to deal with wrongthink among the young, as the parents can no longer be trusted.
I think somebody wrote a book about this.
Actually the mind control you describe also went on – in a different direction – in the great public (boarding) schools.
Native American history in a nutshell?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXWmOVbu9rM
60% of Americans aren’t really aware that America even existed before the US and certainly don’t consider Native Americans to be full citizens, let alone original inhabitants of the land.
Former bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has criticised Britain’s “naïve” approach to multiculturalism, which he said has led to a sense of “isolation” and “separateness” instead of integration.
@/www.christiantoday.com/article/after.riots.britain.must.work.to.foster.integration.and.shared.values.nazir.ali/142030.htm
Trevor Phillips did a spectacular repentance of multiculturalism, having been influential in promoting it.
He didn’t repent, he said it needed ‘managing’ – that is thoughtful, attentive policy making, not simplistic affirmation or repudiation responses.
According to his Wikipedia page he stated in a Times interview in April 2004 that the government should stop supporting multiculturalism, saying it was out of date and legitimised “separateness” between communities, and instead should “assert a core of Britishness”.
There’s a core of Britishness in all of the colonies. Of course with multiculturalism less so nowadays but it still exists. I suppose eventually it could be phased out. No way of knowing this. Multiculturalism is here to stay . There is no turning back the clock. In fact multiculturalism will increase and traditions and identity of nations are changing and will continue to do so. Younger people and the future generations may be more accepting and even welcome this inevitable situation.
My own experience (of homophobia) leads me to conclude that people without characteristic X should try not to make any grand pronouncements about it because we tend not to see an “ism” unless we are the target of it.
Is this the shape of things to come in the processes of discipline and doctrine?
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/sacked.chaplain.seeks.judicial.review.into.cofes.handling.of.his.case/142040.htm
Welby squashing Bernard Randall’s action against Libby Lane is another disgrace to be laid at his door.
Will no-one rid us of this turbulent priest?
Welby is a disgrace who has failed orthodox clergy like Bernard Randall. His retirement to France to spend his very large inheritance cannot come too soon. No doubt he will continue to lecture the world, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’
So much for pastoral ‘guidance’!
Yes he is, but any bets on who will replace him?
King Charles would slot into the combined role of prophet, king and priest to cement the church formed in its establishment.
It is suggested that Don Carson draws together much of what is described in the articles written by John Root, without using the contemorary language and categories, identities under a different, scriptual framework, ‘Apostacy’ here as a podcast and transcript :
Apostatasy and its Effects on the Church: Matthew 24:1-28
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/carson-center/apostasy-effects-church/
It offers a diagnosis and response.
Thanks, Geoff – I will give this a listen soon.
It cannot be denied that there is a Great Shaking happening at the moment. that Humanism, Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism and Democracy has no solutions for.
Nations are being shaken along with the foundations of Morality;
the very Earth Climate is being shaken, Institutions, Society, Mental health, facts;
Religion, Churches are being sifted, shaken.
“What is the world coming too”?? Well one last cumulative Heaven and Earth Quake !
I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place , at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger. (Isaiah 13:13)
So there’s coming a day, the Day of the Lord, of fierce anger and retribution and justice upon the earth for its sin
, and the earth will be shaken out of its place.
The foundations of the earth tremble. The earth is utterly broken, the earth is rent asunder , the earth is violently shaken. The earth staggers like a drunken man, it sways like a hut;
its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again. (Isaiah 24:18–20)
There again, a decisive prophecy that this world is going to totter on its foundations
someday and collapse as we know it; and it will be over. And only God and his people will stand.
I looked and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood . . .
The sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong,
and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks,
“Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come , and who can stand before it?”
(Revelation 6:12–17)
See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. His voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of shaken, as of what has been made, in order that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews12:25-29 RSV)
Thank God we have a place of rest and peace to stand on!!
Ray Stedman expresses it with greater clarity and encouragement for the saints
@ raystedman.org The Shaking of the Earth (Hebrews 12:25-29)
Shalom.
Jesus answers his frightened disciples again and again: “Be not troubled.” “Let not your hearts be troubled.” “Be not afraid.” “Fear not, for I am with you.”
“Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”
He envelops life like a great flame, burning away — either destroying us or purifying us.
Love is a fire. The love of God, touching our lives, is either going to burn us up and destroy us, break us apart in the shaking of the foundations, or it will steady us, strengthen us, establish us, and purify us, burning up the dross in our lives.
Worship is the whole man aimed at God, the whole man looking toward him in thanksgiving and praise.
“The Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid;
what can man do to me?” (Hebrews13:5-6 RSV)
“The Church of England may not be young, but it is widely recognised that it is increasingly ‘feminised’, which means that concern to protect the vulnerable from harm may increasingly take precedence over open, free and controversial debate. Pastoral sensitivity to individual needs then takes precedence over clear theological analysis, for example in the current debate over same-sex relationships.”
The outcome of egalitarian ideals?
In my experience even the strongest and most able to debate complementarianism among female clergy eventually takes it to be doing women harm, and usually decline the controversial debate.