How the West was lost – and what God's people ought to do about it.

Editorial Introduction: In the first of a two-part interview by Randall Hardy, the former Queen’s Chaplain Gavin Ashenden gives his perspective on the spiritual state of Britain.

Part 1: Counting the Cost

RH: Many people/Christians in the West are confused by the rapid changes which are happening in society. What is your understanding of the times in which we live?

GA: We've been used to a period when Christianity has profoundly influenced the world we've lived in, but its influence has ebbed and flowed, so we've had, if you like, almost eddies of influence. To continue with that metaphor and to use tide instead, the tide of Christian influence is in our day running out fast and the extent to which it's run out has surprised everybody.

It's almost as if Christian influence has crumbled overnight for some of us, in the last couple of decades, in a way that would have been shocking if we could have foreseen it. So I think the effect it's had on us is to challenge our assumption that we could take the Christianisation of our culture for granted.

We clearly can't, and its disintegration in our own lives has been a cultural and spiritual shock, and I think also a theological warning.

RH: How far back in history do you see the roots of today's rapid changes reaching?

GA: I think it's helpful to have a bird's eye view of the last 2,000 years…if we do that from the perspective of our island, what we see is Christianity locked in a struggle with autocratic Roman culture and then, as it succeeded in converting the Roman Empire, it found itself facing paganism in Europe.

It converted paganism and set up the foundations for a deeper Christianisation of society. I'm one of the people who look to the Middle Ages as being an immensely impressive period, [when] the Christianisation of society went deep, with houses of prayer at the centre of society's life and the rulers being held to account for Christian values.

Like all life cycles, it was cyclical and the Reformation sought to bring new life to it, but the problem for the Reformation was it was overtaken by the Enlightenment.

The tide of Christian influence is running out fast - and the extent to which it's run out has surprised everybody.

So for the last 300 years we've been struggling with a growing rationalism which has fed human pride and amplified the theological question posed in the beginning of Genesis – ‘Just because you can achieve something, are you sure you can live with the consequences of taking those actions?’

What we discovered in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries is that we can't live with the consequences of our skilfulness.

So from the perspective of the end of the Age of Enlightenment, where we are now, we see that we've been overcome by a love of human cleverness, which has eclipsed people's sense of the need in their own hearts, and that's one of the reasons why it's so difficult to communicate the Gospel at what I think I might want to call the end of the Age of Enlightenment - which is where we live now.

RH: We have seen many churches embracing these changes and seeking to claim they are Christian values. Why do you think this is happening and where do you think it is a leading?

GA: When asked this kind of question, we need to agree what category of diagnosis we are going to use. We have the options of spiritual discernment on the one hand, or an analysis that flows from a reading of political and historical development on the other.

Christianity always needs to interpret itself in a way that the contemporary culture can hear. But that immediately throws up a danger. It makes it more vulnerable to taking on board the assumptions of that culture. It takes a very healthy and confident faith to preserve its roots in revelation, whilst still finding imaginative ways of communicating it to people who don't accept that source.

In our age the Church has become over-impressed by the intellectual and technological accomplishments of the last 200 years. To some extent, it has lost confidence in the miraculous and transcendent. So when society begins to experiment with different ways of understanding gender and sex which have nothing to do with the protection or nurture of the family, a misplaced vulnerability to the unbiblical ideas of social progress combined with a desire to be compassionate can produce a different matrix of theological priorities in the Church. Wanting to be seen as loving, we become instead indulgent and in need of approbation from those we live amongst, instead of challenging and helping them.

Using spiritual discernment, we find in Romans chapter 1 that there is a close correlation between idolatry in a culture and sexual and gender disorder.

It is no surprise that our idolatrous culture is experiencing profound confusion in matters of sexual identity and morality.

If we put these two things together, it is no surprise that our idolatrous culture is experiencing profound confusion in matters of sexual identity and morality. Sexual incontinence and confusion is one of the foremost by-products of idolatry. It is as if the ‘being made in the image of God’ becomes more obscured and society begins to image darker, more dangerous and disordered other ‘gods’ - in other words, the distortions that flow from the gravitational pull of the ‘ruler of this world’.

It will lead further and further away from an authentic Christianity into one of the usual perversions or diminutions of the faith; a ‘Christianity of convenience’. There is always the danger that Christianity becomes a kind of religious or spiritualised veneer used to give a kind of false comfort to genuine religious longings, but one which actually reinforces the selfish wills of the human heart rather than challenges and transforms them.

In my judgment, that is exactly the situation the Church of England has got [itself] into today. It refuses to allow its comfortable presuppositions to be challenged by the authority of Scripture and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, without which formative faith becomes relative religion.

RH: What do you believe are the implications for Western societies in the future?

GA: Western society appears to have run out of both inspiration and energy because it has put its eggs all in one basket. That basket is an inflated sense of what it can achieve. Western society has bought into a philosophy of improving utopianism - which is a misdiagnosis - and so Western society at the moment is faced with a choice, because it's challenged by two great religious solutions.

The first one is Christianity, which invites it to have a more realistic sense of its own fragility and to repent and throw itself into God's hand for re-making. And the other is Islam, which requires it to submit to an authoritarian re-ordering of society on theocratic terms, with power rather than mercy at the heart of it.

Secularism, which is effectively self-indulgence and intellectual pride, cannot stand in the way of Islam simply because Islam is so politically ambitious and so militarily equipped that secularists will find themselves unwilling to die for convenience's sake.

In that sense I've always believed that a secular society runs out of steam, unable to sustain its own utopianism. It's faced essentially with a choice between Mohammed and Jesus. It appears to have rejected Jesus, so it looks like it's going to get Mohammed.

RH: You've mentioned Islam and many people are concerned about its influence on Western nations in its variety of forms. You could say in many ways that this has become the fly in secularism's ointment. How do you see the relationship developing between secularism and Islam in the future?

GA: The real problem for secularism is it wholly misunderstands what Islam is. In its reliance on badly-educated secular Religious Education teachers, it's made the category error of seeing Islam as a kind of Arabic form of Judeo-Christianity. It's nothing of the kind. So far from being a cousinly Abrahamic faith, it is in fact the opposite of Christianity.

As a result of that, secularism has entirely underestimated both what Islam's ambition is and its determination to fulfil that ambition in a series of strategies which begin with mass immigration and end in force. By misunderstanding Islam, secular society finds itself undefended against it and worse than that, in its antipathy towards Christianity, it has decided to use Islam and Islamic immigration as a weapon to take what I think is revenge on Christianity.

Secular culture [cannot] sustain its own utopianism. It's faced essentially with a choice between Mohammed and Jesus. In rejecting Jesus, it looks like it's going to get Mohammed.

What it's done is to make a pact with a religious and political force that will in the end overcome it. Not unlike, I suppose, in one sense, the way in which the Anglo-Saxons paid a Danegeld to protect themselves against one enemy, only to find themselves overwhelmed by the very people they were seeking protection from.

RH: You have outlined the reasons you see behind the cultural changes in Western societies in recent decades. Are there any passages in the Bible which in your opinion shed light on these developments?

GA: The Bible ought to shape all our views - and does, of course. But I find myself looking particularly to the Gospel of John and to the Book of Revelation as providing ways to best understand the dynamics of the rapid shifts that we're experiencing during my lifetime.

And so I think I'd want to make a bridge between the Lord's Prayer and Revelation chapter 21, and say that I've increasingly come to see what Jesus taught us to pray for in the words "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done" not as something that can be achieved on the earth, where St John tells us that the main influence is the ‘ruler of this world’ and the Book of Revelation tells us that the earth is, if you like, the remedial Borstal for Satan and his angels after they lost the metaphysical fight with St Michael.

Instead, I see the new Heaven and the new earth as the place that we're being pointed to in Revelation 21 in a way that should direct our prayers and our energies. That's not to say that what takes place in time and space and history is unimportant, but it is to say that the Kingdom of Heaven is beyond time and space, and we're called to make the most direct journey possible towards it, living out all the Gospel values we can as we do so.

Next week: Part II: Paying the price.

Author Biography

Gavin Ashenden read Law at Bristol University, before studying theology at Oak Hill Theological College in London. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1980, subsequently serving in a London parish for 10 years. He spent 23 years at the University of Sussex as a senior lecturer and senior chaplain, lecturing in the Psychology of Religion and Literature.

Over the years he has written occasional newspaper articles and worked for the BBC on a freelance basis presenting a weekly faith and ethics radio programme.

In 2008 he was appointed a Chaplain to the Queen. In 2017 he resigned from this position in order to be free to speak out for the faith in public. Later that year he resigned from the Church of England, convinced that its leadership was replacing apostolic and biblical patterns with the alternative values of Cultural Marxism.

He is now a Missionary Bishop to the UK and Europe in the Christian Episcopal Church.

You can find out more about Gavin’s extraordinary life, journey and ministry on his blog.

The soundtracks of Christendom…and post-Christendom.

This article is part of a series. Click here to read previous instalments.

Last week we saw that humans are designed to be musical creatures and that music is a powerful gift that can be used for good or ill. We saw that it is both an expression and a shaper of human culture – such that what is popular, musically speaking, will always reflect a society’s spiritual condition.

With this in mind, let’s step back in time and consider, in broad terms, how Western music has developed up to the present day.

The Sounds of Christendom

It is difficult to overstate the influence that Christianity has had on the development of Western music – and always in a way that has reflected the state of the Church. In medieval and Renaissance times, when the Bible was still in Latin and religion was largely the domain of priests and monks, a clear division existed between the [Catholic] Church and the people. Accordingly, music was also divided quite neatly into sacred (i.e. church) and secular (i.e. folk, entertainment) traditions, the latter of which varied in its reverence for God and often referenced pre-Christian, pagan themes.

With the Reformation, all of this changed: faith suddenly became available to the masses – a matter for communal discussion, meeting, sharing and singing. Europe’s culture was fundamentally reshaped by Protestantism – and committed Lutherans like JS Bach and George Frideric Handel carried this into their music, devoting their lives to composing expressly for God’s glory.

It is difficult to overstate the influence that Christianity has wielded on the development of Western music.

This meant that through the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, Europe’s musical landscape (just as with its art and architecture) benefited from a broad cultural backdrop of biblical belief. As such, both Baroque and Classical music¹ developed an appreciation for order and the beauty of form.

Music of those centuries reflected Enlightenment ideals, yes, but also the assumption that the universe was divinely ordered and designed to be both functional and beautiful, to the glory of God. Right up until the 20^th Century, the devil remained a macabre figure, referenced in jest or as a nemesis.

20^th Century: Post-Christendom

But as Europe abandoned its Judeo-Christian moorings particularly after World War II, so trends in art, philosophy, architecture and music all tended to reject the former beauty of classical order, in favour of the ‘postmodern’ and ‘avant-garde’.

In music, orderly and even phrases were rejected in favour of abstract forms. Harmonious chords were replaced with dissonance. Just like society, music became disillusioned and cynical.² Instead of music proudly composed to the glory of God, postmodern composers like Alexander Skriabin declared themselves god and dabbled freely in the occult.³

Meanwhile, as ‘popular’ music and culture departed from broadly ‘classical’ music into jazz, rock and pop, and from there exploded into innumerable sub-genres, so these too have become expressions of their background culture: a society embracing anything but Christianity.

Whatever the genre, as people have forsaken a biblical worldview, and as the mass media has exported music to millions in a very short space of time, so the enemy has moved in to fill the spiritual vacuum and wield music’s power to influence the lives of people all over the world.

1960s-1980s: The Popularisation of satanic Music

There has been much debate about how first blues and jazz, and then rock and roll, formed part of a wider rebellion against Christianity and its moral moorings. However, I will jump on here to the deliberate infusion of occult themes into popular music from the 1960s onwards, in tandem with post-war ‘liberation’ movements (political, sexual, drug-related, etc).

Through the 1960s, thanks to celebrity interest in occultists such as Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley, the idea of paying homage to satan through popular music really took off.

Through the 1970s and 80s, in a drug-fuelled haze and helped along by the new age influence of Brian Eno (a self-confessed ‘evangelical atheist’ with a hatred for Israel but a big influence in the music industry), occult imagery and new age/satanic references in pop and rock music became quite fashionable.

As Europe abandoned its Judeo-Christian moorings particularly after World War II, so trends in art, philosophy, architecture and music all tended to reject the former beauty of classical order.

Whether or not artists really believed in what they were referencing (I think both God and satan have taken it very seriously, even if they didn’t!), there is plentiful evidence to suggest satanic influence on many high-profile bands and artists, ranging from 60s rock-and-rollers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard to iconic groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin; from rock bands like The Eagles, U2 and AC/DC (of Highway to Hell fame) to megastars like Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie.

Led Zeppelin logo, making use of occult imagery. See Photo Credits.Alongside this rose heavy metal and ‘death metal’ music, with bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, and later Metallica and Megadeth, all professing occult allegiances. By the late 1980s, this part of the music world had grown so dark that it involved on-stage rituals and the glorification of satanic violence, including rape and murder.

As part of this, there are many stories of musicians genuinely selling their souls to the devil to ensure success, ‘channelling’ demons whilst onstage and ‘receiving’ songs whilst on drugs. Just a few examples:

• "Someone else is steering me. I'm just along for the ride. I become possessed when I'm on stage." (Angus Young, AC/DC)⁴
  
• “I was directed and commanded by another power, the power of darkness, the power of the devil, satan.” (Little Richard)⁵
  
• “I can explain everything better through music. You hypnotise people and when you get people at their weakest point you can preach into their subconscious what we want to say.” (Jimi Hendrix)
  
• “I wanted to marry Lucifer. I don’t consider Lucifer an evil force. I feel his presence in the music. I feel he comes and sits on my piano.” (Tori Amos)
  
• “I’ve sold my soul to the devil. But my joy is when you’re like possessed, like a medium…I’ll be sitting around and it’ll come in the middle of the night or at a time when you don’t want to do it – that’s the exciting part. I don’t know who the *** wrote it, I’m just sitting here and the whole *** song comes out. So you’re like driven and you find yourself over on a piano or a guitar and you put it down because it’s been given to you...” (John Lennon)
  

How far we have fallen since Handel’s Messiah!

There is plentiful evidence to suggest satanic influence on many high-profile bands and artists.

Millennial Pop

Through the 1990s and 2000s, heavy occult rock grew less fashionable as an expression of youthful rebellion against the status quo (though it has never lost its cult following). It was replaced by narcissistic pop, hip-hop and R&B club tunes, pushing messages about personal indulgence, sexual consumerism and, latterly, aggressive feminism – again, reflecting the spirit of the age.

However, through the superficial glitz of 21^st Century me-centred, licentious pop, occult overtones have not been absent. Mega-stars like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Nikki Minaj and Iggy Azalea are just a few household names, followed avidly by millions of teenage girls, who have carried occult or pagan themes into their music and videos. And who can forget Beyonce’s pregnant performance at last year’s Grammy Awards, when she ‘channelled’ a variety of African and Indian fertility goddesses onstage.⁶

Alongside this, electronic dance music (EDM) genres such as house, drum-and-bass and trance have continued the satanic themes of earlier heavy metal, including intense volume (said to induce depression, rebellion and aggression), repetitive rhythms designed to empty the mind, and builds and releases intended to mimic sexual activity.⁷ These kinds of music have carried late-20^th Century rave and drug culture into the millennium and beyond.

Whether we are considering the satanic rock music played at the Bataclan Concert Hall in Paris in 2015 (and, according to Pastor JD Farag,⁸ a recurring influence in the lives of American teen shooters), or the disgracefully immoral lyrics of pop stars like Ariana Grande (who performed at Manchester Arena before the attack last May), we begin to see just how extensive the satanic foothold on the music industry is – and how intently focused it is on shaping the minds of children and teenagers.

Whilst not all music written and performed by non-Christians is necessarily evil, it is certain that the enemy has been given plenty of room within the industry at large. This is simply a result and reflection of the spiritual state of wider society.

There are many stories of musicians genuinely selling their souls to the devil to ensure success, ‘channelling’ demons whilst onstage and ‘receiving’ songs whilst on drugs.

Discernment Needed

This has been a very sweeping analysis and I am aware that there are plenty of anomalies that don’t fit with the broader trends outlined here. That’s why there is great need for discernment in these days, for ourselves and for our loved ones.

The average Briton listens to 3,500 songs per year and spends more than 1/10 of their waking hours listening to music, according to a recent study.⁹ For 18-24 year olds this rises to a whopping 3½ hours of music per day. Christians need to wake up to the music we are allowing to become the backdrop of our lives.

We know that how we use our bodies is important (1 Cor 6:19-20). With our bodies we can glorify God, or we can rebel and be defiled. Just as it matters what we let pass in front of our eyes (Ps 101:3) and what we let come out of our mouths (Matt 15:11), so it matters what we allow to go into our ears (and the ears of our children and grandchildren), how we dance and, if we are musical, what we play. God calls us to focus on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable…excellent or praiseworthy” (Phil 4:8).

With this in mind, next week we will consider how the spirit of the age has infiltrated modern worship music.

References

1 Generally accepted dates for the Baroque period in music are 1600-1750, and for the Classical period 1750-c.1810.

2 E.g. see here.

3 See here.

4 Hit Parade, July 1985. Quoted here.

5 Taken from JD Farag’s update of 18 February, Youtube. All subsequent quotes likewise.

6 For a detailed analysis of the symbolism employed in Beyonce's performance, click here.

7 I am indebted to this article for the details about rock music's components.

8 See note 5.

9 See here.