COMMON GOOD SERVED WHEN LORDS SPIRITUAL DENOUNCE PERMISSIVE SOCIETY

Every bishop in the House of Lords would claim that he is there to serve the common good. But the common good is manifestly not being served by the permissive society, so why won't bishops in Parliament speak up more prophetically against its various manifestations?

The permissive society is seriously damaging the stability of the United Kingdom and is grossly unjust to the UK tax payer in the following ways:

• The growth in the proportion of children born outside the God-created institution of holy matrimony since the 1960s has fuelled welfare dependency and undermined the moral importance of working for a living;

• The proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases has damaged public health and become an increasing financial burden on the National Health Service;

• The denigration of fatherhood and of the importance of positive male role models has fuelled the growth in criminal activity by teenage boys;

• The culture of easy divorceism has hugely damaged the emotional health of the children affected and undermined their educational performance;

• The refusal to execute justice upon murderers by capital punishment has contributed to the trivialisation of evil and the banishment of the fear of God;

• The decision to allow abortion virtually on demand has fuelled a culture of moral uncertainty over the value and ownership by God of human life.

The virtues the permissive society hates – faithfulness in marriage, sexual restraint, leadership by men in the home, the work ethic, the State wielding the sword of justice, reverence for the image of God in all humanity, including the unborn – are clearly set forth in the New Testament.

So why don't we hear Christ’s ministers of the gospel prophetically commending such virtues more often from their platform in Parliament and denouncing wickedness and vice?

Being clear on the difference between virtue and vice is surely integral to an ordained minister's calling to proclaim God's glorious gospel of eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Without such clarity, how can he effectively proclaim the reality of God’s wrath on sin and the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction the Lord Jesus Christ made on the Cross for the sins of the whole world?

This article by cc about the Anglican Mission in England and the southernisation of evangelicalism appeared in Friday's Church of England Newspaper.

Cranmer's Curate warmly commends this excellent article in support of AMiE by the Revd Richard Coekin, director of the Co-Mission church planting initiative in south London. The three English clergy ordained in Kenya are Co-Mission staff members. Mr Coekin lucidly explains the rationale for these ordinations.

Your curate is not blogging for the rest of July due to his summer holidays. He leaves the youth group with today's BCP Collect (Trinity 4):

O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen.