POP SONGS CONVEYING BIBLICAL MESSAGE

The Simon Mayo Drivetime show on BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday featured six pop songs with a biblical characters' theme. Cranmer's Curate heard four of them - Hey there Delilah by the Plain White T's; Devil Woman by Cliff Richard; Marvin Gaye's version of Abraham, Martin and John; and Lady Madonna by the Beatles.

Delilah and the devil are solidly biblical characters but the biblical references in the other two songs seem somewhat tenuous. Abraham in the Marvin Gaye song refers to Abraham Lincoln rather than the Patriarch and John to John Kennedy rather than the Apostle or the Baptist. Madonna (my lady), being an Italian designation for the Virgin Mary, is also not strictly speaking a biblical name.

This got cc thinking - if the youth group had the opportunity to introduce a pop song conveying a clear biblical message on national radio, what would they choose?

Cranmer's Curate would choose Elvis Presley's wonderful rendition of the hymn How Great Thou Art. The last verse beautifully expresses the Christian hope:

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation and take me home - what joy shall fill my heart! Then shall I bow in humble adoration and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art!

Your curate certainly wouldn't choose I still haven't found what I'm looking for by U2. It seems to exude an ungodly lack of gratitude for God's gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. Yes of course it is true that we await the consummation of our salvation at the Second Coming of Christ but the Elvis hymn articulates the strong sense of biblical confidence surrounding that hope, in marked contrast to the post-modern spiritual ennui of the U2 song.

What would you choose? Any of Johnny Cash's spirituals most welcome.

PUBLIC BENEFIT OF CHARITIES AT STAKE IN BARNABAS FUND COMPLAINT

It would be of grave concern if the Charity Commission upheld the complaint against the Barnabas Fund because its booklet Slippery Slope: the Islamisation of the UK was perceived to have offended against multi-culturalism.

The charities' magazine Third Sector recently reported on the complaint against the UK-based international charity that supports persecuted servants of Jesus Christ for statements in Slippery Slope:

The booklet claims that DVDs featuring radical preachers are "widely disseminated" in mosques and says that on one such DVD a speaker argues that "if a girl refuses to wear the hijab, she should be hit".

It also claims that radical Muslim preachers say "women are created with deficient intellect".

A commission spokeswoman said: "Concerns have been raised with us regarding the Barnabas Fund after recent media coverage of a booklet produced by the charity.

"We are currently considering the issues raised to determine what, if any, regulatory interest there is for the commission."

If the complainant has been challenging the veracity of the Barnabas Fund's claims, then all the charity has to do is produce the evidence for its reporting of Islamist activity, and that should be the end of it. But if the complainant was asserting that the Barnabas Fund should not have reported the statements of radical Muslim preachers, then that kind of complaint should be summarily dismissed.

The Charity Commission's own website asserts that

whilst the charitable sector is enormous and very diverse, the aims of each and every charity, whatever their size, must be for public benefit. Public benefit is therefore central to the work of all charities.

Telling the truth through the exercise of free speech is a vital part of a charity's responsibility to serve the public benefit. Censuring a charity for disseminating veracious information that certain individuals may have felt presented their religion in a bad light would go unconscionably against the public benefit.

This is by cc - The Christian case for capital punishment - appeared on Christian Today.

THANK THE LORD SHEFFIELD SPARED RIOTS BUT NO COMPLACENCY

Here is the letter by Cranmer's Curate in this week's Sheffield Telegraph:

Thank the good Lord Sheffield was spared the appalling criminality that devastated major UK cities last week. But we cannot afford to be complacent.

The attack on the spiritual and moral fabric of UK society since the 1960s, and in particular the undermining of the leadership role of fathers in the family, is a major contributing factor to the disorder our country has experienced. A culture of political correctness also initially inhibited the police from taking the robust action required.

As servants of Christ, we as front-line Sheffield clergy have a responsibility to support the forces of law and order by unequivocally denouncing attacks on businesses and the devastation of people's livelihoods. One sincerely hopes that we will not hear from church leaders any relativising of the sheer criminality of theft and looting by blaming such behaviour on government cuts.

This piece - Gangsta & Mammon - idols of the riots - appeared on Archbishop Cranmer.

MESSAGE OF MORALITY CANNOT STAND UP AGAINST 'GANGSTA' MISSIONARIES

Politicians are right to talk up morality in the wake of the explosion of criminality on our streets and the Church should support them in that. But morality, even in its Judaeo-Christian form, is not the ultimate answer to humanity’s need; the bread of life is and the Church should be proclaiming Him.

At a children’s holiday club our local church held last week – following a weekend of devastating rioting in London - we looked at Jesus’ claim in John’s Gospel: ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst’ (John 6v35 - RSV).

The negative word ‘never’ is important in that verse when considering the spiritual and moral plight of the young people who took part in the criminality last week.

The fact has to be faced that they are finding satisfaction and fulfilment in the ‘gangsta’ culture that glorifies defiance of the established forces of law and order. It is their bread of life. They find meaning, fulfilment and a sense of belonging in that culture. And they are enthusiastic missionaries for its values, spreading the word through social media.

Gangsta is their god and they are finding him exciting and satisfying. Or, to be more spiritually accurate, Gangsta and Mammon formed a syncretistic alliance in the riots and that was what proved so attractive to the young people who took to looting.

In stating that those who come to Him will ‘never’ hunger, Jesus was not claiming that there are not alternative gods to Him. There manifestly were when he said those words and there manifestly are now.

He was making a statement that can only be properly grasped in the light of eternity. The eternal Son of God was teaching us that those who resort to alternatives to Him will one day find themselves empty, abandoned and unfulfilled when they stand before Him on Judgement Day.

The rediscovery of civilised morality is manifestly a vital temporal need for UK society and was even before the outbreak of criminality last week; but it is not the ultimate answer for men and women under the sentence of death.

As mortal creatures, one day we will face God at the Last Judgement and unless we have fed on the bread of life and come to the eternal Son of God, we will find ourselves destitute.

That is the eternal message the Church must proclaim. A temporal message that harps on about rediscovering Christian values as the vital social glue cannot hope to stand up to the spiritual zeal of the ‘gangsta’ missionaries.

EVANGELICALS MORE COHERENT IF JOHN STOTT HAD BACKED REFORM

This piece appeared on the US-based orthodox Anglican news service VirtueOnline:

Without the late Revd Dr John Stott, ‘there would be fewer evangelicals in the Church of England today, and those in it would be brash, old-fashioned and a little like the church's version of the US Tea Party,' argued Matthew Creswell in his Guardian article of August 4th.

But a strong case can be made that had Dr Stott backed Reform, the Anglican evangelical group formed in 1993 after the Church of England’s decision to ordain women as priests, UK evangelicals would be a more coherent force.

Dr Stott was uncomfortable with Reform, despite the fact that its leaders had been hugely influenced by his conservative biblical scholarship and shared his controversial commitment to penal substitutionary atonement. Dr Stott magnificently expounded and defended this classic evangelical doctrine in his 1986 book, The Cross of Christ.

He was there looking manifestly uneasy as an observer at a Reform national conference I attended as an Oak Hill ordinand in the mid-1990s. At a conference later in that decade, I heard a member of the Reform Council publicly responding to a particular criticism Dr Stott had levelled against Reform.

Dr Stott had apparently accused Reform of encouraging infringements of ecclesiastical law. This council member pointed out that, when Dr Stott was rector of All Souls’ Langham Place in the West End of London, a post he held from 1950 to 1975, he himself did not observe the letter of the law over the organisation of Confirmations.

Whatever the precise details of this particular case, there is in fact nothing discreditable in an evangelical being less than a stickler for the finer points of ecclesiastical procedure if there are clear advantages for Christian ministry in being flexible.

It is apparent from Dr Stott’s 1996 Bible Speaks Today commentary on 1 Timothy that he was more equivocal than Reform over the appropriateness of women being put in pastoral charge of local churches. But he nevertheless upheld the Pauline principle of ‘male headship’ which underpins the Reform Covenant, the theological basis of the movement.

He remained conservative on the Bible until his dying day.

It is strongly arguable that had Dr Stott been more supportive of Reform, Fulcrum, which formed as a counter to conservative evangelical influence in 2003, would have been less able to claim him as a guiding light. One of Fulcrum’s founders, the feminist theologian Dr Elaine Storkey, currently its president, had been director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, the evangelical think tank Dr Stott set up in 1982.

It is all very well celebrating the growth of evangelical influence in the Church of England since World War II under Dr Stott’s leadership and congratulating ourselves that we are no longer the ‘fusty’ movement we allegedly once were. But if a movement departs from its convictional foundations, then it is no longer an influence even though its leaders may occupy prominent positions in the hierarchy. It becomes a capitulation.

I am personally persuaded that if Dr Stott had identified more closely with the biblically conservative movement Fulcrum set out to oppose, Anglican evangelicals would be a more spiritually coherent force for Christ in the Church of England.

MAY BRITAIN BE GODLY AND QUIETLY GOVERNED TONIGHT

Anglican Christians pray in the intercessions at Holy Communion according to the Book of Common Prayer for God's

servant Elizabeth our Queen; that under her we may be godly and quietly governed.

We also ask our heavenly Father to

grant unto her whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under her, that they may truly and indifferently (impartially) minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion and virtue.

How very contemporary that prayer and the biblical values it reflects are in the light of the appalling lawlessness in London and in other UK cities in the past few days.

Devastating criminality threatens again tonight. May the good Lord grant the forces of law and order success in restraining the violence.

But they cannot hope to solve the spiritual and moral problems in UK society that have been laid bare by this wickedness.

How desperately our country, and particularly its young people who have been polluted by the values vacuum of the permissive society, need the transforming power of the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Third Collect at Evening Prayer is particularly pertinent for all front-line police officers minded to pray it as they prepare for public duty tonight:

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

On Anglican Mainstream, the Revd Paul Perkin, vicar of St Mark's Battersea Rise, has provided a powerful eye-witness account of the looting in south London last night and this morning.

PRAYER BOOK IS SUPERB SERMON

During his holiday Cranmer's Curate attended St Simon Zelotes in Chelsea, south-west London, and realised what a superb sermon the Book of Common Prayer is.

St Simon's is a church where the BCP is used at all its services. Its vicar, the Revd Michael Neville, was doing a sermon series on the biblical canticles in the Prayer Book.

In a magnificent sermon on the Benedictus - the prophecy of John the Baptist's father Zechariah as recorded in Luke 1v67-80 - Mr Neville showed that its central message is the glory of God's salvation through the remission of sins achieved by the Lord for whom John was going to prepare the way - Jesus Christ.

Mr Neville, an Anglican evangelical, pointed out that the placing of the the Benedictus at the end of the set readings from both the Old and New Testament in the BCP service of Morning Prayer is highly significant. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), who authored the Prayer Book, was thus intentionally proclaiming the fact that the crowning message of the Bible is God's gift of eternal salvation by his forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

With alternative gospels on offer in the modern Church - salvation through socio-political action or therapeutic spirituality or emotionally-charged worship - that is a sermon your curate was very thankful to hear.

This by cc - preaching is the best antidote to violent Jihadism - appeared this week on Heresy Corner.

WHAT IF JOHN STOTT HAD BECOME A NORTHERN BISHOP?

According to his obituary in The Telegraph, the late Dr John Stott, the Anglican evangelical leader who died last week aged 90, had at one time

let it be known that he would like to become a bishop in order to increase his influence and “the opportunities for preaching and defending the Gospel”.

Which gives rise to a 'what if' scenario.

If Dr Stott had become a bishop in a northern diocese, such as Bradford, then the trajectory of UK evangelicalism in the last quarter of the 20th century would have been very different.

And arguably better.

He could have acted as a magnet drawing evangelicals to that diocese and led them forward in biblical preaching and pro-active evangelism. He could have become familiar with ministry in smaller parish churches where, unlike in All Souls Langham Place, the large West End of London church of which Dr Stott was rector from 1950 to 1975, resources are scarce.

In a region where Islam was becoming a potent force, he could have shared his experience of evangelising Muslims with the wider evangelical constituency.

Furthermore, if he had been busy leading a diocese, he would not have had time to devote to the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity and its roadshows. Cranmer's Curate attended one in 1988 when he was training to be a journalist in Cardiff. Dr Elaine Storkey, who subsequently became director of the LICC, used her platform on this occasion to undermine the classic evangelical doctrine of male headship in the family and in the Church.

Four years later in 1992, the ordination of women to the presbyterate, contrary to Scripture, was passed by the General Synod of the Church of England on the back of evangelical votes.

So, this is a significant 'what if' of recent evangelical history.

Who knows? If he had become a northern bishop, Anglican evangelicalism might have been spared Fulcrum, the liberal leaning pressure group of which Dr Storkey is president.

Dr Stott's greatest bequest to the Western Church is his magisterial 1986 book, The Cross of Christ. In it, Dr Stott defended the biblical doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which happens to be faithfully reflected in the Book of Common Prayer, particularly in its service of Holy Communion.

Dr Stott wrote:

My contention is that 'substitution' is not a further 'theory' or 'image' to be set alongside the others, but rather the foundation of them all, without which each lacks cogency. If God in Christ did not die in our place, there could be neither propitiation, nor redemption, nor justification, nor reconciliation. In addition, all the images begin their life in the Old Testament, but are elaborated and enriched in the New, particularly by being related to Christ and his cross (IVP, 1986, p168).

This by cc about the New Testament basis for press ethics appeared on the US-based orthodox Anglican news service VirtueOnline.