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Today in the UK it is Easter Sunday for most Christians (although not those of the Eastern and Orthodox denominations) and it is the last day of Passover for Jews.
To be celebrated in this Holy season for Jews and Christians – the Feast of Unleavened Bread – is the human potential for freedom, nay, eternal freedom.
This freedom in turn depends on certain constraints, the most important of which is trust, love, and fear of our Creator. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom”, goes the Biblical proverb. The Roman Catholics call this awe-full fear of God filial fear, as distinct from servile fear of man. Of course, historically the Church, Catholic, Reformed and Anglican, has often itself been culpable of totalitarianism, and of creating servile fear in order to achieve its leaders’ goals, including typically at this time of year, demonisation of Jews. ‘Blood Libel’ – in which the Church claimed that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their unleavened bread – was often used by the English clergy on Good Friday to encourage mobs to attack the Jews of England.
Servile fear is what man imposes on us, be it Pharaoh, Atilla the Hun, Ferdinand and Isabella… the Ayatollah, Islamic State, President Erdogan, President Xi-Jinping, or, increasingly and intentionally here in the UK, Chris Whitty, Sage, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Too few have criticised the Government’s fearmongering, including through state-sponsored and state-funded TV (BBC and Channel 4). As is now becoming obvious, the deliberate engendering of fear has been used to achieve the aims of government, reinforced by draconian measures that claim to be ‘the science’, much of which is spurious science and misleading data to maintain the fear. Perhaps most unforgivably of all in our Christian nation, Her Majesty’s Government has been promoting the fear of death. “Death, death, death…” for a disease whose average age of fatality is about the life expectancy, in a year that has not seen an excessive number of deaths. Yes, the health services have been under enormous pressure at times, but that does not excuse the Government’s use of fear to manipulate the public’s psychology and behaviour.
The mainstream media in general has been very much implicated in transmitting the message of fear. But very recently, and not before time, some of the mainstream media has become self-questioning, and has started to question ‘the science’ (and why many dissenting scientists have been ‘cancelled’). And it has started to question the morality of inflicting fear. For instance, in The Daily Telegraph on Good Friday (2 April) Associate Editor Gordon Rayner wrote a piece headlined: State of fear: how ministers ‘used covert tactics’ to keep scared public at home (telegraph.co.uk).
I remember when Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary, calling for a robust response against Russia following the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury and Germany. Johnson warned that our liberal democracy is not some kind of ‘default’, but the exception, hard-won over many centuries, and always vulnerable to attack. But now he is leader, Johnson is failing to defend, and has revealed his own propensity for totalitarian rule through engendering fear. Today, I am far from the only one to recognise that our hard-won Christian civilisation with liberal democracy is reverting to default, and is become defenceless against insidious new and godless ideologies and cults (even doomsday cults, such as Extinction Rebellion), each of which thinks it can redefine the goal of history and the destiny of the nations from those upon which Judeo-Christian civilisation is built.
The default position for mankind, at all times and in all places is totalitarianism, and its most obvious global manifestations since WWII are Communism and Islamism. The Conservative Government, with the full support of the Official Opposition, has taken the UK dangerously close to this default status of totalitarianism. Some Conservative MPs have consistently rebelled, including notably here in Manchester my own constituency MP Sir Graham Brady, but because the Labour Party refuse to provide any meaningful opposition to Boris Johnson, our participative democracy has disappeared before our eyes, and its reinstatement does not seem to be a priority of ‘the new normal’.
In Toby Young’s excellent blog – Lockdown Sceptics – we were recently pointed to an encyclopaedic definition of totalitarianism, which, as Toby says, is ‘scarily apt’ for a new word he has coined: ‘virocracy’:
“The totalitarian state pursues some special goal, such as industrialisation or conquest, to the exclusion of all others. All resources are directed toward its attainment, regardless of the cost. Whatever might further the goal is supported; whatever might foil the goal is rejected. This obsession spawns an ideology that explains everything in terms of the goal, rationalising all obstacles that may arise and all forces that may contend with the state. The resulting popular support permits the state the widest latitude of action of any form of government. Any dissent is branded evil, and internal political differences are not permitted. Because pursuit of the goal is the only ideological foundation for the totalitarian state, achievement of the goal can never be acknowledged”.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apart from the home-grown ideologies that threaten civilisation, such as ‘cancel culture’ and Woke, perhaps the greatest threat to Christian civilisation today is the Chinese Communist Party.
Even before the Covid-19 Chinese/WHO virocracy, Johnson was making all kinds of excuses for appeasing the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions to run British infrastructure, such as nuclear power stations and the next-generation communications network (5G). In early March 2020 – when ‘coronavirus’ was but still but a rumour of war – Boris Johnson saw 38 of his back bench side with the Opposition against his naïve sponsoring of Huawei. And the Government’s own Intelligence experts, not least Colonel Richard Kemp, have warned against Chinese all-pervasive influence, including in this important piece by Kemp a year ago: Coronavirus: Another 9/11 Moment for the West :: Gatestone Institute. And just last week, Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley wrote for The Conservative Woman: We must halt China’s creeping conquest | The Conservative Woman.
No-one can credibly deny that the Chinese regime is totalitarian, in pursuit of the false religion of Communist rule of the world. And yet, ironically, China might just well be our best hope for saving Christian civilisation, as I will explain.
Persecution of Christians in China is now severe, and, according to the Christian charity Open Doors, Covid-19 is being used by the government “as a quasi legitimate excuse to increase surveillance and control of their citizens”. On 13 January 2021 Open Doors, Theresa Villiers MP hosted a parliamentary and online session for the launch of the Open Doors World Watch List 2021 on persecution of Christians. The event was attended by at least 97 MPs, who learned that about 340 million Christians are being persecuted globally.
China, with 92 million Christians, is of particular concern to Open Doors. This year, China has entered the top 20 of the Open Doors World Watch List for the first time in two decades. Religious communities throughout China – including of course the Uighur Muslims – that refuse to worship President Xi Jingping and the Party are being persecuted, and the situation is worsening through ‘Covid’ surveillance.
There is in fact a battle for power and influence in China right now that will impact the world. There are presently more Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party. Party numbers are declining, whereas Christian numbers are increasing by about 7% a year, according to Open Doors. If the trend continues, by 2030 there could be several times more Christians in China than Communists Party members. Already, there are now more practicing (church-going) Christians in China than in Europe. Open Doors tells us that although, ostensibly, Christian worship is permitted in China, on pain of reduced social status, the Party monitors carefully what is being said, preached, and studied in the churches. Ironically, this means that Party officials are inevitably exposed to the Bible, and its messages, and, occasionally, a Party official loses faith in the Party takes an interest in the Christian faith.
This week, fearful Communist Party members are likely to hear of the women at the empty tomb, being told to have no fear, not even of death.
To my fellow Christians: Have a happy and peaceful Easter. To my Jewish friends, Chag Sameach!
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