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More Scottish travels

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At the Duke of Gordon Hotel in Kingussie, a brassy and friendly Scots lady presides over the buffet breakfast. She is the queen of ’em all, having a nice word for all comers and a likeable banter. She is everybody’s friend.

Later, I drive past the ruins of Ruthen Barracks, built on a commanding ancient mound much used for castles over the centuries. John Comyn was here in the time of the Wars of Independence. But these barracks remind us of a much more recent conflict. Here in the Highlands, a blunt and brutal reminder of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 does not sit well to this day.

Past the Insh Marshes, which to my eye as someone who studied geology, is the bed of a huge dried up ribbon lake. Only Loch Insh remains, and the Spey meandering through, rather like the ruined barracks, a misfit in this landscape.

To the top of Cairn Gorm, Britain’s second highest mountain. The little funicular train discounted to £5 return during November. Cheap at three times the price. It is a spectacular mountain railway, but I found it oddly saddening to go be able to go so easily to the summit of a 1200m mountain. All I have written only yesterday about the wild, pure heart of the Cairngorms is arguably undone, at least to a degree, by this development. Yet, it is not crass, not evil, not insensitive. Or at least not too insensitive.

At the top, a sprinkling of early Autumn snow can be seen in the distance. Grey squalls are chasing across the mountains, splashing rain and hail. Far below, Loch Morlich changes in an instant from welcoming cobalt blue to a menacing slate grey, as the rain clouds sweep in. A violently coloured rainbow stops everyone, and everyone peers out, phones ready for that picture. We ought not under-estimate the capricious nature of the weather in these mountains.

Reflections on old coaching inns – II

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Southward over the brown hills, under grey skies, to Pitlochry, where there was light drizzle, and picturesque clouds drifting across the mountainsides.  After lunch in a little cafe, onwards again along Loch Tummel and Loch Rannoch.  Why? Because I can.

Brown and gold, red and orange, the leaves of Autumn.  Mountain and lake vista, and the peace of the empty road through the woods.  The changing scenery: woods of birch and glorious splash of autumn colour, then avenues of oak trees on either side of the road, then English-looking farm land with cows and farmhouses.  Still more lakeside and rolling hills and then still later on, the land rises.  There’s that beautiful, sooth, deep and rich brown of late Autumn, lovely under blue skies or grey.  The winding road climbs up onto the Moor of Rannoch.  I arrived at Rannoch Station in drizzle. Worth the journey just to see this most remote of British railway stations. Here, Fort William is barely 35 miles away by rail – but by road,  more than a hundred.

On the run back I stopped by a B&B whose website said “www.middleofnowhere.com”. I wanted to stay but there were no vacancies. Seems everyone wants to be in the middle of nowhere. I popped into the Kinloch Rannoch Hotel, a grandiose spa hotel, but they wanted £213 for a room.  I left, giggling.  If you need to know how much it costs, you can’t afford it – never a truer word.

Tiring now, I motored back to the A9 and joined the treadmill at 57mph over the Pass of Drumochter.  Pedestrian motoring; no fun at all.  A twenty mile passage more tiring than all the country lane driving of the day so far. And on to Kingussie, another one of those compact Scottish small towns with a neat grey high street.  And I stopped in the first place I went into – the Duke of Gordon Hotel.  A lady called Fran sold me a single room for £40.

So I’ve journeyed along the silver ribbon of highways through the fading glory of Autumn gold.  But it’s not the road that has been important this time:  this November, it is the silence, the holy silence.

Reflections from old coaching inns – I

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Last night I stayed at the Invercauld Arms Hotel in Braemar.  Driving there, in the gathering darkness of afternoon in late autumn, I found the “passing place” signs to be like bright oases against the encroaching night.

The Invercauld is one of those ancient, fading coaching inns, a giant hotel speaking of a bygone age of glory.  This one has reinvented itself as a holiday destination for English pensioners – the “grey pound”, so to speak.  The bar fills with grey-headed English folk, some walking very slowly; none under 60.  A range of Northern English accents can be heard, with perhaps the harsh vowels of the East Riding of Yorkshire, predominant.  Strangely enough I am not ired by the presence of this parade of Daily Mail readers, but  somehow oddly endeared to them.

The place is clean and does not smell of decay – always a start in a hotel of this sort.  The woodwork is thick with old paint.  The staff are polite and upright foreigners, as was ever likely in a place as small and remote as Braemar.   From my room there is a view of the road and the mountains you could look at for hours, even on a misty day, and learn much about the nature of God and man.

Breakfast was served in a ballroom with a dance floor, and a bay window larger than most people’s living rooms. The room is deserted, almost.  The dozens of pensioners of last night have all set off somewhere.  Three people come in; hikers.  A youth with the longest hair I’ve seen on a man in years, all down his back.  His hipster buddy with a neatly trimmed but very full beard, and a dark-haired woman with quiet in her face.

The views from the windows are stunning.  Fan heaters rumble to keep the place warm.  In the ceiling, there is modern lighting fitted – a subtle indicator that this hotel is successful in it’s quest to be more than just another old inn.

The Linn of Dee – and the stones of Turin’s pride

At the Linn of Dee, I got out of the car and was struck immediately by the holy silence of the wilderness.  Almost it is like a church; I walk with quiet tread through the woods, mindful that this is God’s front room.

At the falls there is a mighty bridge across the narrowest part of the gorge.  It reminds of me of Ulmo Lord of Waters’ words to Turin in Tolkien: “throw down the stones of your pride”.  For Turin would have things as he would have them, and had caused to be built across the full flood of the Narog river, a mighty bridge, the better to access the entrance of the underground fortress of Nargothrond.  And Ulmo, herald-angel of the Most High, counselled Turin to cast those stones into the water.  For cometh evil that would use that bridge to destroy Turin, lay waste to all that he had created, and bring hideous sack and slaughter to Nargothrond.  And so it happened.

But what means this for us? The bridge at Linn of Dee allows vehicular access more easily so that walkers can get into the remote heart of the Cairngorms – one of Britain’s wildest, purest remaining places.  And rightly so – this bridge should not be thrown down.  But what we might throw down is dependence on stuff – idols.  Technology as our master.  Social media, handsets, tablets, the Cloud – all good things if they are our slaves.  But if we are to hear more clearly what God has to say in the holy silence of the wilderness, then we need to put aside the clamour of our toys, and focus on what is of true value.

Thoughts on the conquest of the American West

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Long have I held a deep interest in the history and development of the American nation state – and most particularly, perhaps, the westward expansion to the Pacific during the nineteenth century.  For a number of interesting reasons, the conquest of the American West holds a peculiar and romantic place in our historical lexicon.

I’m just now reading Hampton Sides’ “Blood and Thunder“, a wide-ranging history of the American south-west based loosely around a biography of Kit Carson.  Apart from some florid descriptive language in places, it is most excellent and readable.  Reading it has begged some questions about the American West, perhaps most particularly about native Americans and their relationship with “European” America both then and now.

Mr Sides reports that Colonel John Washington, leading a US Army expedition into Navajo country in 1847, said this of the Navajo: “they must learn to cultivate the earth for an honest livelihood, or be destroyed”.  This was and is a general principle, rightly or wrongly, true of all hunter-gatherer cultures faced with exposure to technically advanced agricultural societies. The subsequent forcing of those hunter-gatherer nomads into a sedentary and agricultural lifestyle would – and did – destroy much of their culture.

It begs deeper questions about hunter-gatherer nomads in general, and about native American cultures as they were in the nineteenth century.  We in “the west” valued and still value the right to own property – yet we questioned the right of entire peoples to hold land undeveloped and wild, as property through which to roam as nomads.  There are those who would argue that inherited wealth and private property are of themselves bad things: I am not among them. Lennon’s “Imagine” I consider to be a childish dirge, not trenchant social comment.

But those same people who argue against inherited wealth would find no problem in arguing that native Americans (and indeed aboriginal peoples elsewhere in the world) should be able to collectively inherit and hold vast tracts of land in order to facilitate nomadic or hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

In the face of the relentless and inexorable westward expansion of the United States, the native Americans could never have held onto their land by any kind of “right”, only by main force – an area in which they could never have hoped to prevail against the Americans for long.

The Navajo, Sides’ writes, had “no concept of individual land ownership or constitutions or the rule of law or the delegation of political authority”. Their traditions were radically different. They had no point of meeting with the American invaders at all.

Who was right? The concepts of private ownership of property, constitution, the rule of law and political authority are what has enabled “the west” (in the  21st century sense meaning a culture that is broadly Anglo-Saxon yet open to others, Judaeo-Christian yet secular, capitalist yet not against other ideas, and fundamentally based in the rule of law) to prosper and grow so far and so fast.

Was the culture of 19th century America “better” culture than the native American cultures that were so casually and brutally destroyed? Are we better men and women than nomadic hunter-gatherers? Are we better than those who eschew the rule of law, private property and constitutional politics? Are we in “the west” culturally superior to they?

As individuals, almost certainly not – as John Steinbeck says – “I think we’re just as bright as the cave-men, and that’s pretty bright in the long run”. But collectively, culturally, in the mass, I do think that “the west” – hypocritical, violent, immoral and amoral, wasteful and destructive, IS morally superior to hunter-gatherer societies. The minute we question that inherent superiority, we have already lost.  Too many of us do question it – it is the “lack of civilisational self-confidence” spoken of by right-wing Canadian journalist Mark Steyn.

Why do I think this? Look at how in the last 150-200 years, the lot of the common person has improved. Look at the lives of those Navajo in the 1840’s, and then at the lives of the common folk in America and Europe in the 1840’s.  Then look again at 1910, and 1960, and today, and marvel at how much better off we are.  Lower infant mortality, fewer deaths in childbirth, more disposble income, more leisure. More hygiene, more health, better diet, better living conditions. All of those improvements come through technological innovation, and that technological innovation is allowed and encouraged because we live in a culture that respects private ownership of property, respect for the rule of law, and constitutional political arrangements.

 

 

 

A review of “The Edwardians”, by Roy Hattersley

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A review of “The Edwardians”, by Roy Hattersley

I’m a fan of sweeping accounts of history, those that cover the big, strategic picture.  This book is one such. A. N Wilson’s work on the Victorians is another.

Hattersley has an engaging style, and kept me interested through the whole book. After a few chapters covering the whole time period  (from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914), each of the chapters address different pertinent topics.

Where the work fell down for me, was that towards the end of each chapter, the work got bogged down in rather too much detail, and I lost my focus and had to skim a page or two.  This can happen in some military histories, when writers sometimes include what I consider far too much detail about actual battles and movements of troops on the ground. 

I was particularly pleased to read about the creation of the Daily Mail, and to see how little has changed there since Alfred Harmsworth’s day, and to see Churchill (central to so much of the first half of British  twentieth century history) treated without rancour.

Overall this was excellent: easy to read, informative, entertaining. I learnt much. Mr Hattersley’s politics, whilst implicit in the way he wrote about certain issues, were never on his sleeve, so to speak, but rather, suffused the book with gentle compassion and understanding.

A review of “Endurance” – a life of Emil Zatopek, by Rick Broadbent

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A review of “Endurance” – a life of Emil Zatopek, by Rick Broadbent

This was a good read, particularly encouraging to me as an erstwhile and very amateur 10km runner.  I first heard of the Czech long distance runner Emil Zatopek when I was just a boy.  I used to get “Look and Learn” and “World of Wonder (incorporating ‘Speed and Power’)” which were improving and educating magazines for the boys of the time.  And I recall reading in those magazines about Zatopek’s amazing triple triumph at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. That year, he took the gold medal in the 5000m, 10000m, and in the Marathon. And as he entered the stadium at the end of the Marathon, the magazine told me, he heard the crowd chanting, Zatopek, Zatopek, Zatopek…

I found the book much more interesting in the first half, which dealt with Zatopek’s upbringing and his early success as an athlete.  The second half, dealing with his fame and his struggles with the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, whilst important enough a subject, I confess I found less stimulating.

But it was certainly inspiring.  Zatopek’s training methods (he more or less invented “interval training”), his humble background and his sheer success captured my attention.  I myself have run a little faster and a little harder since reading this book.

 

My ten favourite sci-fi novels

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1.     Robert A Heinlein – Time enough for Love

The story of the healing and recovery of Lazarus Long, a 2000 year-old man, from the ennui and depression caused by living for such a long time. This book has influenced me more than any other book I have ever read, including (probably) the Bible. It is long and complicated with several independent anecdotes, rather like the “1001 nights”, to which the author pays conscious and deliberate homage. There is more wisdom in this book than in any fifty other books I’ve ever read.

2.    Robert A Heinlein – To sail beyond the sunset 

Heinlein’s swansong, published in his dotage in 1989. This fictional memoir of Maureen Johnson, the mother of Lazarus Long, is flawed brilliance. He swoops from inspired fictional family history to some seriously inappropriate incestuous practices. It is both trenchant social comment and exciting adventure, but incest is always off-putting and always out of order, and unfortunately there is plenty of it in here, both father-daughter and mother-son. Though it ties in with many other Heinlein works such as “The number of the beast” and “The cat who walks through walls”, Heinlein’s flaky sexuality at the end of a long and glorious writing career means that I could not recommend this to teenagers, even though this is possibly one of his best works.

3.    Arthur C Clarke – Islands in the sky

One of the very first science-fiction novels I read, this is the story of a young fellow who wins a TV quiz show, and the prize is a free ticket to anywhere in the world. The youngster insists on being allowed to visit an orbiting space station, and this is the story of his adventures whilst up there in orbit.

4.     Alistair Reynolds – Chasm City

Guy Sajer in “The forgotten soldier” has written about the power of forgiveness. In this dark space-opera set in the 28th century, Reynolds tells a compelling story of the power of insanity, bitterness and unforgiveness. A man chases his enemy across space and time, whilst an entire planet remains at war for centuries because one starship captain, Sky Hausmann, committed terrible atrocities in the distant past – (our near future, the 22nd century), in his efforts to get an edge over his fellow man. Even the planet’s name – Sky’s Edge – tells a terrible story.

5.    Iain M Banks – Feersum Endjinn

Difficult to read at first because of the phonetic spelling used by Banks’ character Bascule the Teller, this is the surreal story of a human society living in a giant, kilometres high scale model of a castle, at least thirty thousand years in the future, and the way different parts of that society respond to the approach of a planet-threatening interstellar dust cloud. In my opinion this is his best work.

6.    Greg Bear – Eon

Written during the eighties but set in the late nineties, this is the story an asteroid entering the solar system, slowing down and entering orbit round the earth. Humans fly up to investigate, and find the rock riddled with seven caverns full of high-tech equipment from mankind’s own future. The seventh cavern goes off into infinity – it is the entrance to a different universe. The discovery of the asteroid and the startling seventh chamber triggers a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union.

7.    Frank Herbert – Hellstrom’s Hive

An awful, frightening vision of humankind as hive creatures. The story begins and ends with no-one aware of the danger posed by Hellstrom’s Hive, a hive burrowed miles under the ground in Oregon. None can prevail against the hive economy. This story is finely drawn and ultimately horrifying. Really it’s a horror story with shades of “Brave New World”

8.    Ann McAffrey – Dragons Dawn/The White Dragon

Dragons Dawn is the prequel to McAffrey’s “medieval sci-fi” dragon novels, the story of how star-faring pioneer settlers on the planet Pern addressed the danger posed by lethal fungoid “threads” falling from the skies. The White Dragon is set thousands of years later, when the medieval descendants of the early settlers rediscover high-tech computers buried in a remote place, and make steps to once again become a modern, mechanised society.

9.    Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451

Classic literature which I read before I was 15, the story of Montag the fireman and his discovery of himself, and his turning against a culture that despises knowledge and books. The value of people learning books or parts of books by rote is explained here, as nuclear war overtakes the society and all the knowledge that remains is stored in people’s heads.

10.    Isaac Asimov –  Foundation trilogy

This is Asimov’s central work, a three-part adventure covering the fall of the Galactic Empire and psycho-historian Hari Seldon’s attempts to establish secret institutes that would prevent a 30000-year dark age following that fall. The rise of “The Mule” in the third novel, “Second foundation”, is perhaps the best bit, though like much of Asimov’s fiction, it can all seem somewhat bloodless.

Ten works that have influenced me

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1) Quest for the highest – J.E Church – the story of the East African Revival

2) Mere Christianity – C.S Lewis – a reasoned and sane explanation of my faith

3) The Cost of Discipleship – Dietrich Bonhoeffer – VERY challenging; too difficult to read because I am falling short of the example set by the author

4) The Gulag Archipelago – Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Brilliant. It never fails to amaze me that this book is not banned by the liberal left establishment!

5) The Handmaids Tale – Margaret Atwood – An America that could happen

6) The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand – influential to me at a subconscious and visceral level as I read it before I was 17

7) News from Tartary – Peter Fleming – the book that started my interest in all matters to do with Central Asia

8) Perelandra – C.S Lewis – a beautiful story of the Fall, averted rather than recurring on a watery paradise Venus

9) 1984 – George Orwell – the most important political novel of the 20th century and perhaps one of the most important English language works. Everyone should read it, especially leftists

10) Time enough for love – R.A Heinlein – Heinlein remains the single greatest secular influence on my thinking, though I am a Christian. No-one else can say or has said the things he has said, nor done so in such elegant prose.

“The ordinary British sentence – which is a noble thing”

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I have encountered a rather strange thing in some work I am reviewing. It is deeply displeasing and demotivating to me to see it. But more of that particular strange thing in a moment.

If one is involved in a car crash, then one’s car will be damaged. It will be taken to the garage, and they will effect repairs. They will send the bill either to you or possibly to the insurance company. But if the car is very badly damaged, then the garage or the insurance company may deem that the cost of repairs actually exceeds the value of the car itself. In such cases it is common to say that the car has been “written off”. We use the term “written off”, therefore, to describe something that is damaged beyond economic repair.

An important part of my job is reviewing and revising the writing of others.  In this task, I may encounter sentences that are damaged, or more likely, badly constructed from the start. I may come across concepts that are difficult to understand, and I sometimes read phrases that are simply incomprehensible. Just as garage mechanics repair cars, I repair sentences. But just occasionally, I come across sentences that are so convoluted, so twisted and arcane, that repair is just not possible. We might fairly say of such sentences that like badly damaged cars, they are “written off”; they are beyond economic repair.

The problem is that in revising such sentences you have to understand completely the mind of the author; you need a thorough comprehension of what he or she was trying to say – so that you can then construct an easy-to-understand and comprehensible sentence for the reader.

That is the heart and soul of my job. It is not easy and it is fair to say that it has brought me to my knees, at least metaphorically, on a number of occasions.

The strange thing that I encountered? It is a number of sentences of Pauline intensity and length. (The Apostle Paul is known amongst students of the Bible for having using long and complicated sentences; it is something the student of St Paul’s letters must ever be on the lookout for.)

As writers, what is the longest sentence that we might deliver? I have looked through this short piece and shortened a number of sentences to less than 30 words. I am not wanting to see sentences of 71 words. I am most dismayed at having to read a sentence of 87 words. That saps my strength – for I believe strongly that it is the writer, and not the reader, who should be doing the hard work.

A journey through the Peak District

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“I am returning, the echo of a point in time” – Deep Purple

Brierlow Bar

A pleasant late morning in Buxton brought back thoughts of the past – the echo of a point in time – now sanctified by memory and the blood of Christ. The past, as C. S Lewis writes, becomes heaven even as we approach eternity. We reach heaven, and realise that we were always there….or not, of course.

I pottered around, visiting “the Dome”, flirting with a shop lady whilst buying a Christmas present for my son. The weather was glorious – very cold, clear and blue. The remnant colur of Autumn remains on the landscape, and I’m looking forward to driving down the Via Gellia later in the afternoon. This is what I wanted – this day is as it should be. I spent time last night and this morning with my son in Lancaster. It is true to say that I drove 300 miles to have a pint with my son.

I love this country, this land. I mean the Peak District, the White Peak in particular. I love it so much it hurts. Why in God’s Name do I live in Surrey? Because that’s where the great God above has put me. But my heart is elsewhere – I love this land. The sense of being a stranger in a strange land in East Surrey, an exile, is heightened by coming here on this November day, in this beautiful sunshine. I admit to alienating myself, separating myself from the very East Surrey I have committed to serve as a senior Scouter for the next ten years. It’s not that East Surrey is not a beautiful land; it is full of good people too. It is just not my home.

Scarthin

It’s 3.25p.m and almost dusk and I’ve visited Scarthin Books in Cromford. I’ve not actually bought anything except cake and tea. Scarthin, for all it’s wonderful, quaint nooks and crannies, has not been a particularly productive bookshop for me. Great place to visit though and one day, the right books will be there for me.

It’s a cold blue afternoon and I’m sat looking out across Cromford pond as evening falls. Soon, beer with an old friend. My day off is unfolding as it should – a little image of heaven on earth.

Social mobility

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I was reading an article in the Economist about social mobility in the USA, and reflecting on my social mobility. I came from dust, from nothing. I have come as far or further than anyone older than I  in either branch of my family, the first person in all the twentieth century to have attained to higher education – the first in many generations.  My dad and my mum were clever enough, but the opportunities were not afforded to them.  I have come further and higher than any before me in my family – and the reason is social mobility.  Social mobility in the 1980’s has got me where I am now.  I got A levels, got into a polytechnic, and got a job – all through either luck or just brains.  This illumines my politics and my beliefs.  It is why I have no patience with public school educated sons or daughters of privilege who have got to top jobs through background and education.  This is why I admire Mrs Thatcher – who got into Somerville on a scholarship, and that by luck rather than anything else.  It is why I can feel a bit chippy about many members of the front bench on both sides of the House – they are in the main, public school educated sons and daughters of privilege.  I’m no socialist, but am a firm believer in social mobility.  I believe opportunities should be available for people from the lower depths to rise to the top – the Clive James’s, the Norman Tebbits of this world.  It is why I have little patience or empathy with those who have a huge weight of generational expectation behind them – four generations a clergyman, or four generations an officer of the Royal Navy. I recall talking to the wife of one such officer at a party. What’s that like to be?

A review of “Mud, blood and poppycock” – Gordon Corrigan

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A review of “Mud, blood and poppycock” – Gordon Corrigan

This alternative or “revisionist” review of the Great War, written by former Army officer Gordon Corrigan, was always going to put a frown on some foreheads.  It’s always readable, though sometimes you find yourself disagreeing with him, and he is never afraid to editorialise and give his own opinion – always a mistake in my view.

He does repeat some tired old lies. “Britain has never been successfully invaded since 1066” is the purest nonsense, forgivable perhaps, from an Army officer but it would not be acceptable from a professional historian.

And his final conclusion on what it is that wars are won by? Again, rather as is to be expected from a British Army officer, he argues that it is not intellect but courage.  There may be a great deal of truth in that, but I disagree. Wars are won, neither with intellect or courage, but with money.

An Anglican temperament?

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A faint disdain for enthusiasm is the mark of a decayed and effete culture

Paul Goodman posts today in Conservative Home on “What Cameron can do next for the churches”. I’m not a natural Tory, I’m too right-wing – but the title caught my eye and so I opened it and started to read. I didn’t finish it; I’ve no slight interest in the details of what the Prime Minister can do for the churches. Some way into the article there was a wonderful statement of what Mr Goodman calls the “Anglican temperament”, which was of interest because it defines almost everything that I am NOT – member of an Anglican church though I am.

He writes of David Cameron that he “brings to politics what might be called an Anglican temperament: a certain moderation of tone, a reluctance to get hung up about doctrinal differences, an attraction to consensus, an aversion to “enthusiasm”, a sense of establishment and his own place in it, and good manners (most of the time).”

It’s worth going through clause by clause!

A certain moderation of tone – I’ve never been accused of moderation of any kind, much less of tone.  I have been accused of being “abrasive”, “alienating”, and “undiplomatic”.  As an older man I acknowledge the importance of moderation of tone, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me – I have to work at it.

A reluctance to get hung up about doctrinal differences – here is the heart of modern Anglicanism and one of the core identifying features of Englishness. The English, Anglicans or otherwise, don’t really think that what they believe matters. But doctrinal differences do matter. What we believe is a matter of life and death – in fact, as Mr Bill Shankly famously said of football, it is much more important than life and death. For me, both as a Christian and as a political animal, I do embrace doctrinal differences – I am partisan. The challenge for me and others like me is to be partisan without being tribal, to allow doctrinal differences without violent disagreement – in other words, agreeing to disagree.

An attraction to consensus – Mrs Thatcher infamously had a low view of consensus. I recall that the vicar that married my wife and I telling us that he required his PCC to be unanimous in their decisions. While consensus has it’s uses in places, at the point of crisis, it is a way to avoid making a decision. Colin Powell says that the true leader will have to annoy all of the people some of the time. At the end of the day, someone has to decide – and “consensus” may have to be over-ridden for the greater good.

An aversion to “enthusiasm” – Having spent 25 years in churches where there is a drum kit and people wave their hands in the air, I am not averse to enthusiasm. Bring it on: in fact, a faint disdain for enthusiasm is the mark of a decayed and effete culture.

A sense of establishment and his own place in it – I owe nothing to the “establishment”; I came from nothing. I am the first person on either side of my family in all of the twentieth century, to attain to higher education. I’m not part of the “establishment” – I went to a comprehensive school and a polytechnic, and many people in the “establishment” would likely cross the street to avoid a meritocrat like me. If I could say anything to the “establishment” it would be this: the status quo is never acceptable.

Good manners (most of the time) – As my kids would say: weeeell. Mr Cameron is well known as someone who can be quite breathtakingly rude to people below his station – yet without once being guilty of what he would call “bad manners”. Being decent and courteous to others and “good manners” are not the same thing.

The creeping secularism that permits no dissent

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“Nyarlothotep…the crawling chaos…I will tell the audient void” – H.P Lovecraft

Today the Scout Association has published a new Scout Promise that permits atheists, or those of no faith at all (although it seems to me they are two different kinds of people) to be Scouts without having to lie about what they believe. It all sounds rather fine. On the surface this looks like rather a grand gesture to make, all about inclusivity, all about ensuring that everyone who wants to can have the chance to be a Scout.

Surely, anyone who opposes this, is opposing inclusivity? You might think that to oppose this development would be reactionary and inappropriate in the modern world. It is rather like that classic old question with no right answer: “When did you stop beating your wife?”

In today’s Metro, the Chief Scout has published an article with rather interesting wording.

He says: I see this as a positive and inclusive way of allowing young people who do not have faith in their lives still to enjoy the Scouting adventure…

As regards young people who have “no faith” – do we not think that we as adults should be teaching young people to have faith? Do we not think that it is our duty? Oh…just me then.

And you can see in here the real issue underneath – it’s not about “inclusivity” or anything like that. It’s about creating a secular society – it is about actually stamping out faith and removing it from the public arena.

I’ll steer clear of any discussion of Scouts as such, as it is not really the issue here, except to say that to be fair, Scouts is not faith-based or church-based youth work. It never has been and nor should it be: at Scouts we have never really required young people to have faith – not really. It’s always been secular, right from the start. All very relaxed and anglican and it doesn’t really matter what you believe – until you make an issue of it. And then, of course, you are in trouble. We English have never really got on with people that “make an issue” of faith matters.

The real issue is creeping and insidious secularism. Writing very much as a Christian now, I think secularism has a spiritual origin and needs opposition. It is evil. This is why I opened the article with a quote from a H.P Lovecraft horror story.

Alice Bailey (1880-1949) was a 20th century “new age” guru who proposed a ten point plan to destroy Christianity. Some promoters of secularism remind me of the the expression Stalin used – “useful idiots”. They are going unwittingly about the work of the likes of Alice Bailey. If they are not careful they will place themselves and others in our society into the hands of one who is very much more dangerous than Josef Stalin. But then, secular liberals don’t believe in the devil any more than they believe in God.

Collectivism and Christianity

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I’m no collectivist and have always struggled with what I see as rampant collectivism in the charismatic church, particularly the house-church movement and New Frontiers.

We’re asked to make an offering publicly, i.e put money in a box at the front of church where everyone can see us. It is a right, good and noble offering the church is taking up. But why would I give money publicly unless I wanted there to be a public witness to the fact that I was doing so? Why would I be concerned what anyone else within the household of faith sees or thinks about my giving? Does it matter? I think it does. Jesus warns us in Matthew 6:3 that when we give, we should give in secret, not letting our right hand know what our left hand is doing.

So to me, giving money publicly – and being seen to do so – is a big no-no. That’s not Christianity – that’s collectivism.

But being against collectivism puts me on the back foot both in church and the wider world. People say I am selfish and care only about myself, merely because I argue that the individual is generally – by no means always – more important than the community.

“Collectivism can refer to any ideal, social, or political thought that puts emphasis on interdependence and the group above individuality or identity. Collectivists seek to be part of a greater whole–a larger scheme that is greater than the individual parts of that whole.”

And that is right and good – as Christians we are indeed part of a greater whole, and we should and do place emphasis on interdependence and the group. That is what small groups are about. But…

Individuals matter. Communities are made up of individuals, just as tables and chairs are made up of individual molecules. The properties of the materials used to make tables and chairs comes directly from the qualities of those molecules. And unless I am very much mistaken, we stand before God as individuals, and we were and are redeemed by Jesus Christ as individuals. There will be no communities judged at the Great White Throne – just individuals.

The importance of the individual over the community, over the collective, is what separates modern western cultures (i.e those arising since the Reformation) from the feudal societies they replaced, and what makes them more open to democracy, more open to freedom, stronger and more flexible that the Confucian cultures of the East (like China) and the Collectivist culture of Russia. All these cultures have strengths – but I believe the West is stronger, because of the importance of the individual.