Conservatives are losing because they, like society, have lost confidence and don’t stand up for the truth
NICK TIMOTHY follow Nick Timothy on Twitter @Nj_timothy read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion · 10 Lug 2023
Decisionmakers fear the mob more than they fear the moderate, wider public
‘Iam the way, the truth, and the life,” said Jesus Christ. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” And so Jesus taught Christians to pray to God addressing Him as our Father.
Now, after two millennia of Christian worship, senior figures in the Church of England believe they know better. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, says the word “Father” is “problematic”. He says this because of “those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive” and “all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life”.
This follows an attempt, made at the General Synod in February, to introduce gender-neutral terminology in worship in Anglican churches. The Reverend Christina Rees, a former member of the Synod, has supported Cottrell, saying “because Jesus called God ‘daddy’, we think we have to call God ‘daddy’.”
We can argue about whether this is a respectful way for Rees to make her argument, or if it is right that Cottrell should put concerns about a supposed “patriarchy” ahead of what Jesus taught him to do. But two things are clear. First, in the Church of England – which came into existence during the Reformation, in which Protestants complained that acquired tradition, or culture, trumped scripture – culture now trumps scripture.
Second, in the name of inclusivity, the Church’s leaders are alienating many of its members. This is neither the first example from within Anglicanism, nor a problem limited to the Church. We have seen Muslim prayers read in Westminster Abbey that refer to Mohammed as “the chosen one”, and the adhan recited in Manchester Cathedral, claiming “Mohammed is the Messenger of God” – both, fundamentally, refutations of the divinity of Christ.
We have seen, too, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, get behind the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign, auditing statues and commemorative names in the Church and comparing British figures to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the mass murderer responsible for the Red Terror. Welby has talked of collective sin inherited by white people and by the British, and claimed there can only be forgiveness for the sins of past British generations “if we change the way we behave now” – a position contradicted by scripture.
The Church is not the only institution that seems determined to upturn its own beliefs and purpose and repel those loyal to it. From the National Trust – hectoring its members and visitors about our history – to the British Museum – determined, it seems, to surrender the most prized artefacts entrusted to it – so many of our national and cultural organisations are hostile to the interests and values they were formed to uphold.
The question is why? The answer lies in how zealous anger is met by meek indifference, destructive ideology by passive pragmatism, and activists’ exhilaration of believing history is on their side by the fear of cancellation and reputational ruin. It is a clash between the certainty of extremist activists and the passivity of a society that has lost its confidence and belief in truth.
Organisations such as BLM and Stonewall are open about their intent and method. Less obvious, however, is the way other campaign groups – Islamist organisations, for example – use liberal principles and identity politics to pursue illiberal objectives. And less visible are the staff representative bodies and individual decision-makers within companies and public services that impose radical values. In a recent ITV News feature on the effects of the cost of living crisis on mothers, for example, the journalist interviewed a trans activist who lives as a woman.
These invisible, unaccountable warriors abuse their positions within businesses and the public sector to advance their ideological causes. But they would not succeed without the passivity of others. In the Civil Service, where senior officials email their staff with homilies about BLM and hire Stonewall to assess their compliance with trans ideology, it is, as with the Church, because many leaders are wet liberals who want to “be kind”, but mistake conforming with extremism for kindness.
Sometimes the problem is fear. Throughout Pride month, shop fronts were decked out not in the older rainbow flag, but the new “Progress Pride Flag”, which adds new colours and a circle to represent trans people, non-whites, and the intersex. Government buildings, including the Foreign Office and the Bank of England, have flown the new flag. Parliament has used it on its Twitter feed. A Cambridge college published a grovelling explanation for flying the old flag because they had not applied for planning permission to fly the new version.
At a time when trans ideology is risking women’s privacy and safety, denigrating femininity with its grotesque caricatures of women and ruining young lives with chemical treatments, the ubiquity of such displays is for many people oppressive and insulting. Yet the decision-makers fear the mob more than they fear the moderate wider public.
Sometimes the problem is naivety. This explains the decision by the English Cricket Board to commission a report into “equity” – a Left-wing term connoting unequal treatment in the name of equality of outcome – in the game. The report, led by Cindy Butts, an old ally of the race activist Lee Jasper, predictably declared cricket racist, sexist and snobbish – guilty of theoretical, systemic sins invented by American critical race and gender theorists.
Even those who we can surmise know better – such as Ben Stokes, the England cricket captain, or Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister – go along with these conclusions not because they necessarily agree with them but because to dispute them would cause a distraction from their priorities: Stokes winning cricket matches; Sunak, turning around his government.
But this is how the problem builds. If we meet forces that want to destroy the institutions and values we hold dear with indifference, those things will be destroyed.
There is no convenient time for conservatives to defend their values in the culture wars, but every time the battle is deferred we end up weaker than before.