Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
What a great blast this was. From page one you feel Goldberg is a high octane New Yorker who just knows too much and hasn’t got time to get it all out. So loath or love the thesis – that all fascism has its roots in the left – the sheer energy of the writing and volume of fascinating historical detail makes it a ride not to miss. And the thesis has a lot going for it. Socialists and liberals always imply that lurking behind Conservatives and Republicans are ‘right wing fascists’, when ironically all the actual fascism that both Europe and America has experienced has come not from the right, but the left. Mussolini started off as a radical socialist, and then moved to populism; Hitler was the leader of – the National Socialist Party, which had originally been, The German Workers’ Party. And if you look at the manifesto, it’s very left-wing: clause 11, abolition of unearned incomes and rent slavery; clause 13, nationalization of all associated industries; clause 14, division of profits of heavy industries; clause 15, expansion of old age welfare; and much more, such as universal health care. Goldberg shows that the idea big business supported Hitler is a myth. Big business loathed the Austrian. Not only are the fascist policies left wing economically as they want to interfere with the market, they are left wing in terms of always wanting a ‘revolution’, a new age, a third way which is beyond politics - so going against the what Burke, father of conservatism, taught us. He took one look at the terror coming out of revolutionary France and argued it is better to slowly reform the existing order rather than let the mob destroy all in the name of progress. Left wingers and their fascist offspring forget this: they always want to rip down institutions, neuter them to get their ‘expert’ hands on all the power to build a society where the state, for the good of the ‘people’, is allowed into ‘every nook and cranny’ of our lives, or as Mussolini said ‘Everything in the State, nothing outside the State’. That has never been a conservative idea: but it is certainly a socialist one, indeed it is exactly what Lenin and Stalin aimed for.
After proving that European fascism belongs to the left Goldberg crosses the Atlantic and looks at Wilson and Roosevelt, two heroes of ‘progress’ and argues they both brought traces of fascism to the USA. Wilson was a great admirer of Bismarck, and used the First World War as a crisis to justify a great remodelling of society, as the Prussian had done, under the auspices of the War Industries Board which took control of the economy – just as Hitler did later in Germany. For persuading the people, Wilson created a formidable propaganda machine which aimed to create, ‘100 percent Americanism’, helped along by 100,000 four minute men who could deliver passionate speeches in town squares around the nation. The other side to propaganda was silencing dissent – and this happened a lot. In fact Wilson locked up more dissidents than Mussolini, and closed down many papers. Under Wilson, any criticism of the government – even in your own home – could earn you a prison sentence. Behind it all was not xenophobia against Germans – but, as one of their own said, ‘The great European War is striking down individualism and building up collectivism.’ It was all about control – and it was coming not from the conservatives, but the progressives. Or as Goldberg says, ‘To see the threat (of fascism) you must look over your left shoulder, not your right.’ With Roosevelt, who was involved in all that Wilson did, there is more hero worship, akin to what was happening in Europe with Hitler and Mussolini, (‘Every house I visited had a picture of the president’, wrote one journalist) and the same use of a crisis, the depression, to increase state power. Goldberg is pretty scathing about the supposed New Deal, arguing that just as Hitler was doing in Germany, Roosevelt was getting away with whatever was pragmatically possible for the state to do. It was not some grand design, but a hotchpotch of initiatives However shocking the idea that Roosevelt, who later joined Churchill to defeat the fascists, had much in common with them, Mussolini at least thought there was something in it. Reviewing FDR’s book ‘Looking Forward’ he writes, Roosevelt calls his readers to battle…reminiscent of the ways and means which Fascism awakened the Italian people’…in other words, ‘He’s one of us’! And FDR returned the compliments, writing in a long supportive letter to ‘that admirable Italian gentleman….I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he had accomplished.’ Many years later, a man who had been a great supporter of FDR, Ronald Reagan, insisted that Roosevelt’s New Deal smacked of fascism, and refused to back down. With those peace loving hippies of the 1960’s it’s not difficult for Goldberg to show the links with 1930’s fascism. The mystical assumption there was a ‘Wrong Turn’ in history away from tribal/environmental roots into Christian industrialism; a sentimental lurch back to communing with nature; a demand for ‘action’ with a blurring of the lines between revolutionary action’ and violent crime; hostility to marriage, the family; pure hatred for the church; extreme emphasis on victim identity politics – the blacks, the Hispanics, the gays. It’s not very difficult to see the links. And their heroes prove the point even more. Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung were all men of violence: fascists. Goldberg’s pounding of the goody liberal image continues as he looks as eugenics: it is rooted in the left. The Fabians in England, the Webbs, Bernard Shaw, Laski, H.G. Wells were ‘devoted to the cause’, all standing on Darwin, whose cousin was the father of eugenics. And they in turn look back to Malthus, the population control theorist. The bottom line of the movement is exterminate the ‘unfit and darker races’ (Wells) and introduce ‘selective breeding’ (Shaw). All of this went to America and was keenly adopted by the ‘progressives’ so Wilson, a ‘forthright defender’ of eugenics’, became ‘the most racist president of the twentieth century’. And of course it was all soaked up by Adolf Hitler – and tragically implemented. All of this is definitely not history, as Goldberg makes clear as he looks at environmentalism, abortion, health foods, and even an analysis of recent Hollywood films such as Brokeback Mountain with its call for a return to the wild. Fascism ideas are alive and well. And perhaps now its seeds are installed in the White House. He has a fascinating chapter ‘Brave New Village’, which looks at Hilary Clinton’s political philosophy. In a nutshell it is that the village, the community, the state – is more important than the individual and the family. Having spent over three hundred pages explaining where that takes us, this is a bit disturbing. And now we know the hallmarks of fascism three other things have happened since the book was published which should also make us worry. One is the religious like fervour Obama whips up by his outstanding oratory, he is definitely a hero; then there is his talk of a ‘third way’, of moving beyond Washington, as if we can get beyond this mundane business of discussion and political horse trading. Thankfully it seems things are back to normal: but the wish was there. And finally, there is this deliberate attempt of both Obama and Brown to model themselves on Roosevelt and the New Deal. Goldberg shows Roosevelt was making it up as he went along in terms of policy, and you sometimes feel it is the same now. But whether the policy worked or not the state still got more power. In the UK under Brown that has definitely happened. Once there is a majority, parliament has no power to hold the government to account; and in the government all power now resides in Downing Street, cabinet rule went long ago.. And so with hardly anyone noticing, Brown has decided to force everyone to stay in full time education till they are 18. That means the state dictates what someone does for a third of their life! The measure is definitely fascist…and very tragically nobody seems to have noticed. But we drift from Goldberg’s superb book. Though it is packed with history it is primarily about political ideas. And without any appeal at the end, there was for me at least a feeling that a decision had to be made. Goldberg argues that liberals, some fanatically, others cunningly, are intent on building another ‘religious’ bridge, not between God and man, like Christianity, but between men and the state, the new God. This faith in ‘progress’ gives them the right to take power away from the traditional institutions they always attack – marriage, the family, the church, small business - and pass it to ‘experts’ from the state, brick by brick. The intellectual fathers of this mission are Rousseau (loyalty to the state and the divine is the same); Heidegger (good and evil are childish notions, we must reject religion and make our own truth); and Hegel/Darwin (history is about progress, evolution, so expect revolution). And this is where ‘decision time’ kicks in; because we don’t have to look to these false prophets whose ideas have wrecked such havoc. We can look to the fathers of classical liberalism – John Locke (emphasis of equality of all men before God, and role of property), Adam Smith (division of labour, free markets, ‘invisible hand’), and especially Edmund Burke (tradition less blood-thirsty than revolution). Two things are worth remembering about these political thinkers. First of all their ideas have been behind conservatism with a small c, and have on the whole brought stability and prosperity to people. These ideas work. And secondly, all of them are theists, indeed they are Christian, and in their political architecture there is plenty of space for God – and crucially absolutely no attempt to blur the lines between what man can do, and what God can do, which is the liberal fascist obsession. Let’s end this longer than usual review with reference to the apostle. He said, ‘now we see through the glass dimly’. That’s true politically. It’s mainly a mess, and we have to learn to do what we can. Fascists deny this. They claim they can see through the glass clearly to the new earth and so have the right to drag us all there. Let’s stick with Paul and be very wary of these so called liberals who think they have all the answers. The Great War For Civilisation Robert Fisk It’s far too long; the tone often has an annoying self-righteousness; and the violence sometimes borders on the gratuitous: but every page is fascinating. What makes the book so absorbing is the overwhelming sense that Fisk has completely mastered his subject: the wars of the Middle East. From the opening chapter which begins with the tale of his interview with Bin Laden, to the last in post 2003 Iraq, you feel there is not much more to know, or at least, for the time being, not much more you can take in. The chapters on Iran are exceptional. One major reason why Fisk is good is he was there when it mattered. There when the revolution got underway; there at the front-line during the war; there after the Vincennes shot down the Iran Airbus in July 1988. So he brings the history alive. The reality of revolution is a sick scene of a trial in Qom, where the mullah judge allows a crowd of 600 to taunt a royalist policeman and the prosecutor to howl liar in his face before the inevitable execution; the boy soldiers in the war, so shocking to the West, telling him about the glory of martyrdom; and rather than just having the statistics of the air crash, Fisk takes us to the morgue, and to meet the pilot’s brother, where we feel the pain and anger, the author so often displays, at the American insult that somehow this was a terrorist attack. The pilot was from a thoroughly normal middle class family. His chapter on the Armenian massacres is also excellent. It starts with Fisk and a colleague finding the skeletons of the victims in the Syrian desert, continues with a detailed and depressing account of what happened, illustrated by eye witness reports, and ends with a justified indictment on the governments that will not use the ‘g’ word out of fear of upsetting Turkey. These chapters stand out for me because of my personal interest in Iran and Armenia, but the others were equally absorbing, as the mix of history and his eye witness accounts keeps you turning the pages…over a thousand of them. The Death of Christian Britain Callum Brown It happened in 1963. That’s when Christianity in Britain died. Till I read this book I had wrongly thought in terms of a slow erosion of faith. In the late 19th C the unholy trinity of Darwin, Freud, and Marx had injected enough poison into European thought to kill the roots of traditional Christian faith even in Britain, the land of the Puritans and Wesley, and this was speeded up by liberal theology eager to bring religion in line with modern thinking. So by the outbreak of the First World War, the greenery was still visible, but the roots were weak. The first war, followed by the great crash, fascism, another war, and the holocaust then shouted from the rooftops, what the roots had long suggested: Christianity was dead. And so we move into the post Christian era. Brown shows this scheme of things to be wrong. Focusing on the period from 1800 to 1950 both the statistics and more importantly the print media – novels, magazines, tracts – he proves that Christianity was absolutely the dominating cultural force in Britain, and in contrast to the idea of an erosion of faith after the second war, church attendance actually rose in the 1950’s, what he calls between 1945 – 1958, a ‘return to piety’. So what happened in 1963? The Hull librarian poet Larkin has part of the answer: Sex was invented in 1963, between the Chatterley trial and the Beatles' first LP. But it’s a little bit more complicated than more sex and people turning their backs on traditional Christian morality. That has been happening furtively since the beginning of time. What was different in 1963 was the reaction of women. Brown shows that in the Christian culture women had played a crucial role of being the ones who tamed men and brought them into the church. In novels and magazines the women were always the domestic saints, the men the potential prodigals. In the 1960’s women were no longer ready to be the guardians of the Christian home, and this rejection of ‘pious femininity destroyed the evangelical narrative’. Traditional magazines that used the old story of steadfast women taming men failed to sell, new ones like ‘Jackie’ giving women an independent agenda did. With this rejection came a massive exodus from the church…and so, along with the better known forces of secularisation at work, it was the daughters of Eve who ate the Apple label, and let Christianity die. It’s a stimulating thesis and well worth reading – but I don’t think the author gives enough credit to the impact that two world wars between two ‘Christian’ nations had on everyone’s psyche. It wasn’t just women swapping church for the Beatles. It was also a deep distress that somehow Christianity hadn’t worked which the children picked up from their parents. The tragic irony is of course that in fact Christianity, even the lukewarm Anglican fare of the 1930’s had worked. It had inspired a generation to combat Nazism. This makes the liberal fascist revolt of the 1960’s an even worse betrayal. ‘Orthodoxy’ G.K .Chesterton This is an extraordinary book, a definite ‘must read’ before you die. I was expecting a sort of early version of C.S. Lewis, a robust defence of traditional Christianity. It is much more than that. Whereas Lewis gently takes you along with a persuasive argument, Chesterton pulls you into a room full of mirrors and out of the box thinking, not just in the paragraphs, but almost in every sentence there’s an irony, a contradiction, a reflection saying something you don’t quite expect. Take the opening sentence of Chapter Two, entitled, ‘The Maniac’ – ‘Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely all together on a few cynical maxims that are not true.’ As he gets into the argument, the crackling irony continues. A worldly maxim is that the man who believes himself will go far, the truth: ‘The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums’. Of course he’s right, all the way through, and even if you don’t agree with him, the polemic is superb. In this chapter he establishes that materialism, the void, makes men mad, and what keeps people sane is mysticism, the irony that ‘man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand’. Every chapter is like a glass of cold water in a desert, but probably the best was ‘The Ethics of Elfland’ Again we start with mirrors – ‘The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud.’ And so soon he is turning our clichéd way of thinking on its head by passionately arguing for fairy tales, superior both to religion and rationalism, ‘the sunny country of commonsense’. This is not just to do with the morals you get from the tales, but that they are more accurate in their observations than science. The answer to both why eggs turn to birds, and Cinderella’s mice to horses is the same: magic. There is no inevitable law involved, and to pretend that there is makes you ‘strictly a sentimentalist’. No let up with the irony. At the end he helpfully sums up his fairy story creed. The world does not explain itself; but it must have a meaning which implies someone ‘to mean it’; that meaning, purpose, is beautiful; we owe obedience to whatever this is. There’s a lot more, but if you are bored of reading self righteous politically correct twaddle about stakeholders and recycling, get hold of some Chesterton. One last comment: there is a very silly myth that people who believe traditional Christianity don’t use their brains: I wouldn’t like to be with those people if they meet Chesterton in heaven. Have A Nice Domesday Nicholas Guyatt This is a lot of fun. I remember reading Hal Lindsay’s ‘Late Great Planet Earth’ in the 1970’s at school all about how the Soviets were going to attack Israel, bring about Armageddon and so the end of the world. It didn’t make me a Christian, but left a lingering sense there was something special about Israel and that its creation in 1948 was the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy. But when I did become a Christian and started to meet zealous Zionists I must confess to it all leaving me a little uneasy. Their maps about the end times all seemed like a rather uninspiring geography lesson, detached from the true spirit of Christianity. Then about ten years ago I read Colin Chapman’s ‘Whose Promised Land’ that theologically takes apart Christian Zionism, and more recently Stephen Sizer (see below). So I was definitely up for this delightful book which chronicles the author’s visits to hard line Christian Zionists in America, supposedly yearning for the end of the world – which they are very much enjoying. He doesn’t get to meet all the big names, but doesn’t do badly. He gets a few moments with Tim LaHaye, author of the ‘Left Behind’ series, even less time with John Hagee, the fiery Zionist from San Antonio and none at all with Lindsey. But he gets to talk with plenty of their friends and supporters. And he does get quality time with the failed journalist/political consultant, but new rising Zionist star, Joel Rosenberg. What is most endearing about this book is the tone. The whole business makes me angry. Ignoring Jesus’ blunt statement that no one knows when the end will be, these people twist Scriptures and make money out of gullible and superstitious Christians. End times are certainly big business in the States, and the winners all end up playing golf in Palm Springs. They are also draining millions of dollars away from genuine Christian mission to the absurd business of helping Jews get to Israel. It’s a tawdry nonsense, and I suspect it is also shot through with racism. Unable anymore to practise it in America, these Christians now funnel these dark emotions on to the ‘baddies’ in their end time prophesies – twenty years ago the Soviets, now the Iranians. In fact their whole theology is racist as, contrary to Scripture, they claim the Jews…just by birth…are still the people of God. So I get upset. The wonderful thing about this book is the calm, understated, humorous way Guyatt takes us through this oddity that these Americans who so clearly have a good life, are desperate to have a domesday. He never gets up on to the soap box and starts ranting, but just lets the players state their case. And when it gets into print, it looks pretty silly, but, and here the author challenges my judgemental attitude, he also lets us see most of them as people as well as zealots for their cause, and not just people, but fellow Christians. Zion’s Christians Soldiers Steven Sizer This is on the same subject, a lot more serious, but you can’t help humour slipping in when he gets on to the special red heifer Zionists are looking for once the temple sacrifices are restored. I’ve heard Stephen Sizer speak a couple of times. He is very much the English clergy-man: softly spoken, sincere, excellent mastery of the facts, and a brilliant communicator, with a power point slide for virtually every sentence he utters. Read some of the stuff about him on the internet and you’d think he was a senior demon straight from hell: such is the rage his attack on Christian Zionism incites. In this book he completely dismantles the Biblical case for Zionism. In the first chapter he covers some basic hermeneutics, and then gets to work explaining what the key symbols in the Zionist movement should mean for Christians. The chosen people are the church, not Israel; the land is now the kingdom, open to all regardless of race, not a state smaller than Wales where only one race is welcome; Jerusalem is heaven; to advocate re-building the temple, as some do, is heresy: Jesus’ broken body is the temple; and finally nobody knows about the details of Christ’s return, but there is much to respond to in what we do know. Throughout Sizer makes disturbing references to what the impact of the heretical Christian Zionism is having on politics in the Middle East. Christians are called to be peace-makers, but the tragic irony of our generation is this wrong headed nonsense is perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to peace in the region. And there is continual reference to the Bible, indeed it is ultimately the Bible that shines through in this book, free from the sensationalist fare pedalled by the men with their eye on retirement in Palm Springs. And orthodoxy and so the book fittingly ends with a previously unpublished sermon by John Stott. You can’t get more orthodox than him. To end with this is an absolute triumph, for Stott is the unconsecrated bishop of Protestantism, and if he is against the jamboree of Zionism, it really is time these people quietened down, and got back to some proper Bible study. If you want the lecture notes for this book visit - http://www.sizers.org/zcs.pdf The City of Oranges Adam LeBor This is neither Guyatt talking to Americans who think they know where Palestine fits into the end of the world, nor Sizer correcting their Dispensational theology – this is a book where the people living in the eye of the storm do the talking. The big causes are in the background – much more the holocaust than wacky American preachers – but centre stage are the citizens of Jaffa, the city of oranges, and their usually sad stories. He has a large cast, helpfully credited at the start in case you get mixed up. He starts us off with a wedding where Jews and Arabs attended, and then we are straight into the 1921 Jaffa riots when Arabs lashed out against Jews after their betrayal at Versailles. The violence never stops. We’re soon onto the birth of Zionism, the extraordinary Theodore Herzl and the slogan – ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. Another brilliant proposition – but of course it wasn’t true. There were people there. And in the midst of the tit for tat killings, the rumbling of tanks in old and narrow streets, the forced marriage of old Arab Jaffa with new European Tel Aviv, they tell their stories. LeBor brilliantly also works in family histories that not only stretch from the 1920’s till today, but also across the racial divide. The one that stands out is that of the Jewish Chelouches with the Arab Samarra family. The relationship began in the late 19th C with an act of kindness when Aharon Chelouche gave some money to a young boy of the Samarra family who had been robbed. After the Second World War the Chelouches family were in dire straights, and help comes from the boy, now a successful business man. He sends camels loaded with food. And more – he gave the Chelouches enough money to pay his debts, start a business – and for years the loaded camels arrived. The friendship was lost as the violence increased in the 1930’s, but we stay with the Chelouche family, and hear much of the Jewish side of the story from them. After the brutal war of 47-48 the great grand son of the kind patriarch who helped the Arab boy, Aharon Chelouche is the military governor of Jaffa. In 1949 the Jewish policy is to expel all Arabs who are not official residents of the new Israel. As the governor, Aharon was the man who could give the all important exception to the thousands who faced deportation. One day his officials failed to turn away a stubborn supplicant who insisted on seeing the top man. When Aharon opened the file he was stunned. It was a Samarra, and after a few questions he knew it was the Samarras who had helped his family so much. He phoned Tel Aviv and made sure the man was allowed to stay. And this is the brilliance of the book. In the midst of all the brutality, we are never allowed to forget that there are many Jews nor Arabs who have not allowed the demons of tribalism to erase human kindness from their hearts. It would be good reading for Tim LeHaye and John Hagee. They would also find out that the first would be Christian end of the world settlers to the area in the late 19th C were led by an out of work actor, George Washington Adams, who ended up a drunk on the streets of Jaffa. The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independent Martin Meredith This is the most depressing history book I have ever read, apart from accounts of the holocaust. It is a damning indictment on Africa’s political leaders, and the short sighted naïve 1960 liberals, supported by the jealous empire hating Americans, who allowed it all to happen. From north to south, east to West, as the colonialists left, so dictators supported by tribal cronies took over and established regimes specialising in economic rape, terror, and war. Nkrumah, leader of the first country to get independence, was hailed as a saviour, jailed his opponents, turned Ghana into a one party state in 1964 and utterly ruined the economy with useless projects and constant corruption. The army eventually took over, but to know effect. After a string of coups by 1982 the country ‘was a wasteland, crumbling in ruins at every level’. Eventually Rawlings established a viable dictatorship. In the Congo the first ruler Lumumba was brutally murdered by his tribal enemies in 1961, with the connivance of the Belgians. The revenge from Lumumba’s tribe was awful. Over a million died. Out of this blood bath emerged General Mobuto, who ruled by terror from day one and was soon considered a semi god, ‘who grew the trees and plants…’. Actually he bankrupted this rich country, shifting millions to those notorious Swiss banks. Corruption and waste spread, making men in the words on one bishop into ‘assassins’. Kenyatta turned Kenya into a one party state in 1969, but under his watch, apart from the slaughter of 70,000 elephants for the profitable ivory trade, the country stayed reasonably intact. Moi took over after his death and tightened the screws of the dictatorship, and corruption became epidemic and critics disappeared. In Uganda the brutality of Idi Amin is well known, though the suspicion of blood rituals over his victims and even eating their body parts was new to me. At least 25,000 had been killed before he was removed from power in 1979. If Haile Selassie had died in 1972 when he was eighty he would have been remembered as a firm but sensible autocratic ruler: unfortunately he lived on and utterly failed to deal with the famine that killed thousands in 1973. There was an uprising and the old emperor was ousted. Major Mengistu Mariam took over and made Marxism the country’s new religion. The result was economic chaos and constant war, both internally and with neighbouring Eritrea. And then in 1984, while Mengistu’s stooges were preparing lavish celebration for the revolution’s tenth anniversary, famine again struck, not just because of precarious mother nature, but also because of the inefficiency of the new state farms, and most damningly because Mengistu used food as a weapon against rebels. During the anniversary celebrations not a word was said about the appalling famine. But then came surely one of the BBC’s finest hours, or rather ten minutes, when their correspondent Michael Buerk made a short news film on the famine. The Western agencies (and Bob Geldof) moved in, but were too late to save the estimated million who had perished while Mengistu had sipped champagne in praise of his revolution. And so in country after country – Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Ruanda, Algeria -Meredith takes us on this hugely depressing journey, and there’s no time here to get onto AIDS. He is a superb writer, and while the detail is never lacking, he never loses the wood for the trees and keeps on reminding us of different parts of the stories, so at the end we really have just one depressing canvas of Africa’s last fifty years. There is no political posturing, he just lets the account speak for itself. Sane people should come to two conclusions. First of all the depravity of man is a reality; and secondly benign colonialism operated by people who know how to rule fairly and set up stable institutions is a million times better than rampant tribalism. The rush to get out of Africa was a disgrace caused by the fact Europe could not afford to rule there anymore if it meant keeping down nationalistic insurgencies, and by a woeful naivety on the part of the Americans who on the basis of biased history about the tragedy of their separation from England, had concluded all colonialism was wrong, so a part of the deal for their joining in the Second World War was that Europe got rid of her empires. What a happier place Africa and the world would have been if they had joined the colonial enterprise. They should have taken the mantle from the Europeans; instead they have relied on quick fix solutions that have proved disastrous. But we are straying from Meredith’s outstanding book, an absolute must if you are interested in world history and don’t want to waste money on aid. Spiritual Revolution Ian Randall This is the story of Operation Mobilisation’s (OM) last fifty years. In the summer of 1976 a friend, completely out of the blue, said God had told her to give me £150, but I had to use it to travel with between my taking the Oxbridge examinations and going up to university. The only organisation that would take me was OM. I wasn’t a Christian when I joined them; I was when I left. So I have a great fondness for this group…and am still in touch with some of their leaders. Here is the review I put up on this book on Amazon…in the last para there’s mention of George Verwer, the extremely funny and idiosyncratic founder. He is no longer the leader, but still very active. For those wanting a comprehensive overview of the last fifty years of the work of Operation Mobilisation (OM) this is a superb account, not least because Ian Randall tells such a massive and complicated story in just over two hundred pages and still manages to mention many more people by name than just the leaders; ensures no tragedy or triumph is overlooked; and keeps the whole account in its social and mission context. Such is the author's attention to the nitty gritty details of history (dates, places, names) that his book will be referred to for many years for those wanting to check out the main facts of OM's history. The Sacred Anointing Tony Sargent An exceptional book on the late Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones’ conviction on the need for ‘the sacred anointing’ in the pulpit, by Tony Sargent, surely one of the UK’s greatest living preachers. I remember Sargent once preaching on the ‘height and depth, the length and breadth’ of the love of Christ in Karachi Cathedral and when he finished, there was a deep silence, and the priest announcing the next hymn could barely fight back his tears. This was anointed preaching. There was no shouting, no theatre, just a quiet intensity as he spoke on the cross, and at some point during the sermon there was this sense of another presence. Martin Lloyd Jones, like Sargent, was from the Reformed Tradition, which often translates into being ‘anti charismatic’, the wing of the church where speaking in tongues, divine healing, and the idea of God speaking directly is frowned on. Here it is all careful dry Bible exposition, appealing to the mind first, then perhaps the heart, and very finally the emotions. Sargent’s emphasis on how Lloyd-Jones, the unelected pope of the Reformed Church for many years, believed passionately in the absolute necessity for the Holy Spirit to be active, not just in preparation, but at the point of delivery - shows that caricature to be superficial. Lloyd-Jones was famous for his careful Bible exposition, but, as the thousands who attended his services testified, he never just lectured, indeed he would sometime almost wait, expecting that ‘anointing’ to fall at some point during his sermon. Though the main emphasis of the book is on this subject of ‘unction’, Sargent also skilfully weaves in a brief biography, especially Loyd-Jones’ relationship with Pentecostals. He also deals at some length on Lloyd-Jones’ homiletics, a term, the Doctor disliked, as it implied there was some method a preacher could imitate to bring about a result. But, as Sargent shows, he did have his own methods and there is much to learn from them. The central thesis of the book created a conundrum for me. I have been teaching homiletics for several years now to Iranians mainly from an Assemblies of God background where there is a great stress on inspiration, so much so that it is quite obvious that sometimes there has hardly been any preparation. The usual result is a long tedious meandering sermon which bores people, but they have to be forced to believe it is a divinely inspired, so God ends up getting the blame. To counter this I have stressed the importance of preparation and the absolute need to have a proposition, a big idea that demands a verdict from the people. Ironically this book, from a Reformed principal of a Bible College about the Reformed Church’s greatest preacher, confirms the tradition of the Pentecostals…true preaching is all about the Holy Spirit coming. Ultimately it is not about mental preparation or composing fine propositions, but His power…’Seek this power’, wrote the doctor, ‘expect this power, yearn for this power; and when this power comes yield to Him. Do not resist. Forget all about your sermon if necessary. Let him loose you, let him manifest His power in you and through you.’ The Shack Wm. Paul Young This Christian novel has sold over three million copies and we wondered whether it should be translated into Persian: so someone had to have a look at it. Young kept me turning the pages as his story line was unexpected. The young daughter of a Christian couple is brutally murdered after being abducted from a holiday campsite. This part of the novel was like a straight thriller, almost like you were watching a film. Then the twist. At the start of the book the father, Mack, who had taken his children camping gets an odd note from ‘Papa’ to visit the shack where his daughter was killed. When he arrives at the scene of his nightmare and starts to vent his anger there’s a Narnia moment. The shack turns into an idyllic cottage in the woods and Mack’s hosts for the weekend is the Trinity: Papa, a large wobbly ever cheerful black lady; Jesus in jeans; and Sarayu, a thin Asian woman, also in jeans, but with a brightly coloured blouse. I can’t think of any novel that fictionalises the Trinity in this way, so the way they relate keeps one’s interest levels up, even when they almost get into preaching and are unbearably soppy. But though Young pours a lot of theology into his plot, he makes sure the teaching never takes over. There are three main issues he deals and all are given orthodox answers – but they are brought more alive in the context. Why does God allow suffering (free will, he couldn’t stop the murderer); what happens after death (there is heaven – and Mack gets to see both his daughter and father, whom he had had a difficult relationship with); and what’s the key to moving on from unjust suffering. Forgiveness. So we go on quite a journey with Mack, from coming to terms with the murder, to then forgiving the murderer. A sub-plot to these questions is how to stop relating to God as a set of rules, and how to relate to him as a real person, as Mack does during his Alice In Wonderland week-end. Finishing the book I confess I had felt moved, a bit like I did when I watched ET. The author hits all the painful buttons – loss of a daughter, but seen in heaven having a great time; difficult relationship with a distant father, also resolved by the heavenly vision, and a dry relationship with God, very definitely resolved by spending a week-end with the Trinity. And yet…there was some uneasiness in my mind. It was all too neat, too nice, almost too packaged. I know grace is at the heart of the Bible, but I sometimes wonder whether it’s taken too far in book like this and we end up creating a god in our own image. Read almost any page of the Bible and God is wild, unpredictable, out of the box, passionate, ready to love, but also ready to judge. But here God was literally domesticated, Papa was the cook serving up delicious cookies with a motherly smile. There was no talk of hell, or wrath, or holiness. On the front of the book there’s a quote from Eugene Peterson saying the book is comparable to ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. That is a regrettable comparison, because Pilgirm had to escape a burning city, and pass through many trials and temptations. Here there is no sinful city to get out of, just instant access. It all seemed too easy. But…still well worth reading. But we won’t be translating it. Iranians Muslims have enough trouble with the Trinity already without us throwing in the idea that God the father is a large black woman who bakes cookies. |