We are experiencing cataclysmic social changes: the erosion of national culture, entrenched left-wing control of institutions, and the rejection of sexual difference. These social, intellectual and moral changes were never asked for by the people but were driven by a tiny minority of metropolitan elites aided by foot soldier activists. Although they see themselves as bold fighters for freedom and speakers of truth to power, in reality, woke activists are merely tools of the establishment.
Foot Soldiers of the Elites
Some, like Greta Thunberg, direct their arguments to national and international leaders. She turns up at the UN, meets political leaders, has an audience with the pope and gets nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is lauded, and her every word listened to. Thunberg is pushing at an open door as our elites are already committed to the climate change agenda. She has achieved nothing and is little more than a compliant puppet of the elites, lauded by the media and used to push their programme.
On the surface, Extinction Rebellion (XR) seems authentically rebellious. XR identifies ‘The Arrestable’, those members who can afford to be arrested. They are dispatched to protests expecting, even planning, to be arrested in order to garner publicity. Their stunts, such as throwing paint on old art-works masters and climbing gantries to stop work annoy the public, and people think that this will backfire on XR. Getting people angry is their tactic. XR deliberately try to cause maximum frustration in order to annoy the public into pressuring politicians and leaders to meet their demands. And the government goes along with them.
XR deliberately try to cause maximum frustration in order to annoy the public into pressuring politicians and leaders to meet their demands
In making their protests, XR have often relied on police connivance at their stunts. In 2019 they parked a large pink boat in Oxford Circus in the heart of London, crippling traffic in major thoroughfares. Actress Emma Thomson was able to cavort on it for the cameras, yet it took the police five days to remove it. Does anyone imagine that it would be possible for an ordinary citizen to take a large pink boat into the heart of London and park it at a major junction without the police taking immediate action?
Just Stop Oil have taken to slow marches on the highway, preventing people getting to work or hospital and other appointments. Only when frustrated motorists began to disrupt and even attack the protesters did the police step in to shield the protestors from public abuse and harm.
Establishment Tools
Many of these organisations, particularly those concerned with LGBTQ etc issues, are government funded and effectively do the establishment’s propaganda work. The UK government gave Stonewall at least £2,616,102 between 2015 and 2019. That was in addition to funds raised through other schemes in which employers, including 250 government departments and public bodies, paid subscriptions to be endorsed as an LGBT-friendly workplace.
The Scottish government funds numerous LGBTQ organisations; in return they give the government acceptable advice on matters such as the Gender Recognition Reform Bill intended to enable self-identification without any medical intervention. Rather than listen to the voice of ordinary Scots opposed to the Bill, the Scottish government listened to its own paid activists.
These organisations are not counter cultural; they are an integral part of the establishment culture which is fundamentally altering the nature of Western society.
Wherever we look, we see that these ‘rebellious’ organisations couldn’t exist, gain notoriety and influence public opinion without the active support of the establishment. These organisations are not counter cultural; they are an integral part of the establishment culture which is fundamentally altering the nature of Western society. There is no conspiracy, merely the woke establishment taking advantage of activist woke warriors. When activists demonstrate, it makes the establishment appear moderate as they pursue the same agenda more cautiously.
Government departments, local government, businesses big and small, even police forces, actively promote Pride month and enforce a culture of exclusion and even criminality against any who would dare to reject its aims. The NHS, the largest employer in Europe, uses terms such as ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘birthing parent’ to accommodate a minute number of trans patients. Partly, this is because virtue signally gains moral status without moral risk. But that should not blind us to the overwhelming acceptance and enforcement of the woke agenda. When you know who you can’t offend you know who is in control.
A New Reformation
In the West today there is only one positively counter-cultural organisation, the body which created the culture being undermined – the Church. Not the mainstream Church, which by and large has sold out to the progressive ideologues and refuses to take a biblical stand on any issue likely to rock the progressive boat.
Only the remnant Church willing to act as the Church and not a spiritual social work agency can show the West the direction to take in recovering from its present destructive malaise.
The West desperately requires a new Reformation, a return to the biblical principles which energised the Church and created an invigorated people who were able to go out into the world and develop its potentials and confront its evils.
The West desperately requires a new Reformation, a return to the biblical principles which energised the Church and created an invigorated people who were able to go out into the world and develop its potentials and confront its evils. Equality before God and the freedoms and responsibilities it brought were accepted; modern science was created, capitalism developed, and billions were dragged out of poverty and darkness. Slavery, suttee1 and other evils were seen for the moral abominations they were and defeated at great cost.
We are told, ‘Go woke, go broke’, and this has clearly been true for the Church. In The Great De-Churching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham examine in detail why many are leaving churches. Two important reasons stand out:
- modern life doesn’t lend itself to living in community, and:
- today’s churches ask so little from their members.
The creation of authentic biblical communities by a Church which expects genuine discipleship of the costly kind is the only hope for reforming the Church and recovering the West.
Christians deeply and passionately committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ are a far more revolutionary force than a group like Extinction Rebellion. The big question is: Do today’s Christians know it, and are they prepared to act on it?
Endnote
1 The historical Indian custom in which a widow would sacrifice herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre.
The Rev. Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister; now a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Check out his many incisive articles on his blog, A Grain of Sand.
