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And shame it is to see — let
priests take heed -
A shitten shepherd and a clean sheep
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Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400), Canterbury
Tales, General Prologue {Parson}
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Christian Churches continue to exert political power. This
takes many forms, from Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland instructing
their diminishing flocks on how to vote in State referenda,
to US Baptist ministers fund-raising for extreme right-wing
politicians; from English bishops sitting in Parliament to European
Christian Democrats keeping Turkey out of the European Union
explicitly because it is not a Christian country.
Christian Churches are still active throughout the world, fomenting
dissent against governments. By attributing their own political
views to God, they are able to justify any form of illegality.
To subvert an elected government might be treason against the
state, but to fail to do so would be treason against God. Those
who believe themselves to be guided by God inevitably believe
that their divine inspiration supplies a higher authority than
any man-made law. God's law over-rides all others. So it
is that Churches ignore national laws that do not suit them.
They smuggle illegal books into dozens of countries. They continue
the long tradition of vandalising non-Christian religious icons.
They defy court orders in Asia, Europe and the Americas. They
protect war criminals, child molesters and other criminals from
the secular law. They perform illegal ceremonies and hold illegal
meetings. Around the world a stream of adults and children die
through so-called exorcisms and other privations sanctioned
by fringe and mainstream Churches alike*.
Despite their unlawful behaviour, Christian Churches continue
to enjoy significant privileges in countries around the world.
Churches are often state-funded, they run state schools, and
sometimes state universities, they operate their own courts,
and they are exempt from numerous taxes and from certain laws.
In Britain clergymen enjoy personal privileges such as exemption
from conscription and from jury service. Bishops still sit in
the House of Lords, even after parliamentary reforms made in
2000. By favouring a minority in this way other people are penalised:
those others pay more taxes and shoulder a greater burden of
civic responsibility while being under-represented in the legislature.
School children are often taught religious opinions as though
they were established facts, often by schoolmasters who have
been selected for their religious orthodoxy. In Britain schools
are legally obliged to teach school children hundreds of hours
of religion, yet most children leave school without ever having
spent five minutes studying the elements of law, medicine, economics,
politics or philosophy. In the USA they might never learn any
science and leave school without understanding, or even ever
having heard about, the most important ever discovery in biology.
Many will leave school believing the Bible to be the literal
word of God, unaware that hardly any modern theologians share
this discredited view.
Another area of concern is the Church's commitment to
stopping child abuse in its ranks, or lack of it. Widespread
child abuse is now acknowledged in many Churches mainly in English
speaking countries where the matter has been investigated by
secular authorities. Churchmen have acknowledged that paedophiles
will be attracted to Holy Orders by the prospect of easy pickings
and that it is impossible to identify a genuine vocation from
predatory opportunism. Widespread abuse has been revealed in
every country where it has been properly investigated. It is
curious therefore that no Church seems to have thought to carry
out its own global investigations, so that perhaps millions
of children are still being sexually abused around the world
in the countries where the secular authorities are not powerful
enough or not willing to instigate investigations.
State funding of sectarian schools in many countries is widely
seen as another source of scandal — leading in Northern
Ireland for example to the perpetuation of ancient religious
conflicts. The so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland only make
sense when seen as the last vestige of the Wars of Religion
that raged throughout Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
centuries, and the unique sectarian school system in Northern
Ireland explains why this vestige has survived in modern times
from one generation to the next.
As Richard Dawkins has pointed out we allow parents to turn
their children into Christian (or Muslim, or Hindu, etc) children,
but would not contemplate parents imposing other personal preferences
and beliefs in the same way. Some people now regard religion
as a form of child abuse*.
Even in technically secular countries regressive religious ideas
still hold sway — denying legislative, social, medical
and scientific advances and promoting ignorance. Many people
in secular societies are mystified and frightened by the effects
of Christianity especially in the USA where, even in the Twenty
First Century, surveys reveal the continuing strength of fundamentalist
religious beliefs that contradict facts. Over half the population
reject the Theory of Evolution and believe the world to be less
than 10,000 years old — including some 25% of school teachers.
Around 20% of Americans still believe that the sun orbits the
Earth.
Higher up the academic ladder, theologians are over-represented,
particularly in the older universities where anachronistic professorial
chairs are reserved for them. In many countries Churches retain
a stranglehold on certain disciplines. For example, there are
really two distinct sets of university philosophers — the
ordinary university academics and the theologians. In some countries
the theologians enjoy a monopoly in philosophy departments,
a vestige of medieval times when scholasticism, a long discredited
form of theological philosophy, enjoyed a similar monopoly.
In other countries there are parallel structures of theologians
and academic philosophers. In either case theologians are appointed
to university chairs for their orthodoxy, not for their intellectual
ability. To appreciate how bizarre this it, it is rather as
though universities continued to fund pre-scientific disciplines
like alchemy or astrology, and to appoint professors of these
subjects on the strength of their Christian belief.
The grip of the Church is still powerful in other fields. Around
the world Christian laws still limit what other people can do,
especially on Sundays and other Christian festivals. Different
countries suffer different restrictions, but the pattern is
similar, always limiting people's freedom to have fun and
to do what they want to do: restrictions on drinking alcohol;
restrictions on singing and dancing; restrictions on games,
sports and gambling; restrictions on buying and selling; restrictions
on art galleries, exhibitions, music, theatre, cinema, concerts,
circuses and other public performances. In some places it is
still almost impossible to travel by public transport on a Sunday.
Perhaps most worrying is the phenomenon of End-timers in the
USA. End-timers represent a reappearance of an early Christian
movement that imagined that it could help trigger the End Of
The World by promoting events that would presage the Second
Coming of Jesus Christ. Reading works such as the book of Revelation
they set themselves to destroy the Roman Empire. This was the
motivation for their repeated acts of arson, but their ultimate
goals were wars around the world and civil breakdown everywhere.
Just like these early Christians, modern End-timers believe
the end of the world to be imminent, and imagine that they can
accelerate its arrival by arranging to come to pass the same
events that those early Christians looked forward to: world
war and civil breakdown. The parallels are precise, with the
European Community (created by the Treaty of Rome) playing the
role of the Roman Empire. We have no idea how many End-Timers
are currently seeking political office in the USA — certainly
dozens, possibly hundreds or thousands. They represent a real
threat to world peace — potentially occupying high offices
in government and the armed forces. Any internet search will
reveal large numbers of web-sites promoted by End-Timer Christians
of various degrees of virulence, many working to “hasten
the inevitable”, anticipating a Third World War and the
Second Coming.
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