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Questions for the UK church Covid-19 inquiry

We republish the submission below for Affinity’s Covid-19 and the Church symposium. We would also commend an excellent post by Brephos on this matter.

The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.

Proverbs 4:18

I dread governments in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science.

C.S Lewis 1958

Dear Affinity,

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Firstly, we wanted to thank you for your willingness to host this important event. 

Covid was a trauma. A trauma that costs over 100,000 lives in the UK and a trauma that was exacerbated by the strict, sudden and so called “scientific” measures brought in to combat it.  The UK public and the church was exposed to not simply a vicious, and most likely man made virus, but was also subjected to lockdowns, concentrated psychological messaging, an impossible stream of changing guidelines, and a “safe and effective vaccine” which has proven to be neither safe nor effective (and strictly speaking not a vaccine either)!

It is no surprise that when confronted with such a catastrophe, mistakes were made. We are not for a moment saying that we would have done a better job had we been in your position. However, what is important is learning from mistakes before the next global catastrophe hits us. We praise God your event offers a space for this. This said, we are also concerned that the event may not get to the heart of the matter, and therefore may only offer surface level reflections.

In view of this we have labored to compose the following list of essential questions. We hope and pray they will be received in the spirit of brotherly love in which they are written.

Yours sincerely and in the hope of a brighter shining UK church,

Dr Jonathan Bayes, Pastor, Stanton Lees Chapel (& UK Director, Carey Outreach Ministries)
Christian Hacking, Pro-Life Activist
Regan King, Pastor, The Angel Church, England
Steve Lloyd, Pastor, Cranfield Baptist Church, England
David Martin, Deacon, Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church, Newton Abbey, Northern Ireland
Dale Mcalpine, Pastor, Grace Baptist Workington, England
William McCurrie, Pastor, Aughton Park Baptist Church, England
John-William Noble, Pastor, Grace Baptist Church, Aberdeen, Scotland
Paul Sayers, Pastor, ERB Kaiserslautern, Germany (formerly of Norfolk)
Thomas Seidler, Elder, Hambro Road Baptist Church, England
Rt Rev D F Stockford, Protestant Truth Society (Chairman)

Questions

A. Two tier society challenges…

  1. The Nuremberg Conventions forbid the coercion of experimental products. The Covid injections had no long term safety testing, but were mandated for some work. So many refusers lost their incomes. Internationally many such mandates were ruled unlawful. Some Christians (including CMF) legitimised discrimination — but should the church have condemned such civil rights abuses?
  2. Further to this, 1900 church leaders considered that such a two tier approach—just as in Galatians 1—risked “a fundamental betrayal of Christ and the Gospel.” Are all the panel in agreement that segregation based on vaccine status in the church risks such a gospel denial?

B. On the power of science to control and redefine God’s law and thus control the church…

  1. In 1958 CS Lewis predicted tyrannical government in the name of science and the muzzling of real scientists. If we saw signs of this during Covid, how do we better heed his warning going forwards?
  2. Lockdowns quarantined the healthy. Can “the science” redefine God’s second greatest command, to love your neighbor as yourself, as “treating your healthy neighbors like lepers”?
  3. Does Romans 13 indicate the state can tell the church what God’s law means — or does it indicate the state is God’s servant to punish evil and reward good as God alone defines (cf Romans 13:8-10, i.e. not merely 13:1-7)?
  4. The closure of churches proved unlawful in the courts. So, at least some of the time churches closed for, we obeyed Caesar’s unlawful laws and not Christ’s lawful command to gather. This is unintentional sin. How could the church have been better guided to avoid this?
  5. Many criticised church leaders who continued to meet in secret, refusing to obey what proved to be the unlawful edicts of men. Was such criticism mistaken?

C. The church’s Covid holy war?

  1. The government guidelines clearly distinguished between a mandatory ‘must’ and an advisory ‘should’. Why did the FIEC leadership bind the conscience of congregations with a heavier legalistic burden than the government by prohibiting singing, especially given that the Holy Spirit breathed scriptures call us to sing God’s praise?
  2. The church’s “holy war” against Covid looked a lot more zealous than its fight to save the UK’s 250k yearly aborted babies. Do we believe idolatry of State/Gov, health-and-safety, public opinion (fear of man), NHS, “vaccines” and “the experts” impacted our response?

D. Repentance

Finally, do we believe that the only way to rectify and repair these public mistakes (assuming that is what they are) is through A) the blood of Jesus and B) public repentance?

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CS Lewis: Willing Slaves of the Welfare State

Below are grouped excerpts from CS Lewis’ 1958 article.

Technocracy/Scientocracy

“The new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge… This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.

I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.

C S Lewis, The Observer, 1958

“I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants’ ‘science’– they didn’t think much of Hitler’s racial theories or Stalin’s biology. But they can be muzzled.

“We have on the one hand a desperate need; hunger, sickness, and the dread of war. We have, on the other, the conception of something that might meet it: omnicompetent global technocracy. Are not these the ideal opportunity for enslavement? This is how it has entered before; a desperate need (real or apparent) in the one party, a power (real or apparent) to relieve it, in the other. In the ancient world individuals have sold themselves as slaves, in order to eat. So in society. Here is a witch-doctor who can save us from the sorcerers — a war-lord who can save us from the barbarians, a Church that can save us from Hell. Give them what they ask, give ourselves to them bound and blindfold, if only they will! Perhaps the terrible bargain will be made again.

“All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest.

The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?

C S Lewis, The Observer, 1958

Longevity vs Quality of Life

“In ‘Possible Worlds’ Professor Haldane pictured a future in which Man, foreseeing that Earth would soon be uninhabitable, adapted himself for migration to Venus by drastically modifying his physiology and abandoning justice, pity and happiness. The desire here is for mere survival. Now I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.

Now I care far more how humanity lives that for how long… mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.

C S Lewis, The Observer, 1958

“I am more concerned by what the Bomb is doing already. One meets young people who make the threat of it a reason for poisoning every pleasure and evading every duty in the present.

“To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death — these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.”

Curative Justice Concern

“One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory ‘cure’? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ The Straightener will reply: ‘But, my dear fellow, no one’s blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We’re healing you.’

Further Reading

The additional quotes below are taken from C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism, it is beyond doubt what he would have thought of our current times, along with Francis Schaeffer who entirely shared his Statist concerns.

“Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear / All that; it is their promises that bring despair.”

Poem, Lines during a General Election, 1951 [Zero Covid?]

“A tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

“The belief that the process which the Party embodies is inevitable, and the belief that the forwarding of this process is the supreme duty and abrogates all ordinary moral laws. In this state of mind men can become devil-worshippers in the sense that they can now honour, as well as obey, their own vices. All men at times obey their vices: but it is when cruelty, envy, and lust of power appear as the commands of a great superpersonal force that they can be exercised with self-approval.”

Under modern conditions any effective invitation to Hell will certainly appear in the guise of scientific planning—as Hitler’s regime in fact did. Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give what they want. The majority in most countries respect science and want to be planned. And, therefore, almost by definition, if any man or group wishes to enslave us it will of course describe itself as ‘scientific planned democracy.’ All the more reason to look very carefully at anything which bears that label.

“A Reply to Professor Haldane”; Lewis, On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, 71–72, 74–75.

A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true… The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Man is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.

C. S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns, 17.

There are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy.

Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Essays, 168–69.

If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

C. S. Lewis, On Living in an Atomic Age
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Francis Schaeffer: The Christian Manifesto

Below are collated direct quotes from Francis Schaeffer’s 1981 book.

“Rutherford presents several arguments to establish the right and duty of resistance to unlawful government. First, since tyranny is satanic, not to resist it is to resist God—to resist tyranny is to honor God. Second, since the ruler is granted power conditionally, it follows that the people have the power to withdraw their sanction if the proper conditions are not fulfilled. The civil magistrate is a ‘fiduciary figure’—that is, he holds his authority in trust for the people. Violation of the trust gives the people a legitimate base for resistance.

tyranny is satanic, not to resist it is to resist God—to resist tyranny is to honor God

Francis Schaeffer, The Christian Manifesto, 1981

“It follows from Rutherford’s thesis that citizens have a moral obligation to resist unjust and tyrannical government. While we must always be subject to the office of the magistrate, we are not to be subject to the man in that office who commands that which is contrary the Bible.

“A ruler, he wrote, should not be deposed merely because he commits a single breach of the compact he has with the people.

Only when the magistrate acts in such a way that the governing structure of the country is being destroyed—that is, when he is attacking the fundamental structure of society—is he to be relieved of his power and authority. 

Francis Schaeffer, The Christian Manifesto, 1981

“In such an instance, for the private person, the individual, Rutherford suggested that there are three appropriate levels of resistance: First, he must defend himself by protest (in contemporary society this would most often be by legal action)…

“This may include doing such things as sit-ins in legislatures and courts, including the Supreme Court, when other constitutional means fail…

The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty, to disobey the state.

Francis Schaeffer, The Christian Manifesto, 1981

“…when there is a ‘long train of abuses and usurpations’ designed to produce an oppressive, authoritarian state, ‘it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government…’

“If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the Living God, because then you are to obey it even when it tells you in its own way at that time to worship Caesar. And that point is exactly where the early Christians performed their acts of civil disobedience even when it cost them their lives.”

Direct quotes end.

Schaeffer, Covid & tyranny?

If you’re not sure if various severe state measures in response to Covid qualify in Schaeffer’s view as tyranny: consider firstly that he already thought tyranny existed in the states on multiple counts in 1981. Secondly, consider that the widespread limitations have impacted who you meet with, for what purpose, at what time,1via curfews in some countries in what place, whether you can speak to them and—with masks and anti-social distancing—have also placed significant limitations on the nature of any communication that does occur.

It’s pretty clear what CS Lewis thought, and Schaeffer’s further writings take very much the same line:

Culture has lost its way and we should now have somebody new to direct it. Who should direct it? Galbraith’s answer was and is: the academic and especially the scientific elite, plus the state. To those who know Plato, it all sounds very familiar. The philosopher kings are to be reinstated.

If we have an academic, scientific, state elite without any controls upon them, without any outside universal to guide them, it will undoubtedly lead in the direction of an Establishment totalitarianism.

The danger is that the evangelical, being so committed to middle-class norms and often even elevating these norms to an equal place with God’s absolutes, will slide without thought into accepting the Establishment elite.

The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, Francis Schaeffer

And us?

“First, resist…”2His second stage is flee, and third is… — this site aims to aid and abet such a noble purpose by supporting it with a clear theological and Christ honouring basis.

If many of like mind gather together we begin to form cohesive “people” power — and as biblical resistance theory teaches, the people are a king-making and responsible body — quite apart from the doctrine of lesser magistrates.

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