Life Matters, July 28, 2021
"Hello you old windbag. Your speech was so exquisitely balanced that no one had the slightest idea where you stood." No, this wasn't me speaking to Biden's press secretary. And no, this for sure was not me speaking to Biden himself. According to Charles Colson in his book, Kingdoms in Conflict, this was Nancy Astor greeting Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his wife at the front door of Lady Astor's Cliveden Mansion in March of 1938 with one of her usual greetings. To which the English Prime Minister responded with a smile and a light "Thank you, I intended that.” Cliveden, Colson writes, was where for years Nancy Astor had gathered the wittiest and wealthiest men and women in Britain for weekend parties.
Cliveden was a comfortable weekend retreat for Prime Minister Chamberlain. Nancy was a devout Christian Scientist. Christian Scientists believe that man is good, that there is no evil that the mind cannot overcome. Chamberlain was of the Unitarian persuasion. Unitarians believe in the universal goodness of all men and reject the deity of Christ. The "wittiest and wealthiest" of Britain who gathered for relaxation at Cliveden were sincerely puzzled about Adolph Hitler. Again and again Chamberlain thought his negotiations with Hitler had been successful only to have the man with his Nazis run rough-shod over another human right or the borders of another country.
The “Christian Church" of Germany, at least a third of the German population, had already collectively failed in its spiritual capacity to hold Hitler accountable for his atrocities that were becoming more and more out in the open and bold. The spiritual authority of the church was being corporately relinquished by its silence. Most remained the "quiet of the land'' and by their very quietness they became unwitting enablers to the increase of atrocities in Germany and eventually capitulated to Hitler's demands. There were those such as Martin Niemoller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and many others who bravely stood against the evil tide of Nazism, but their vehement denunciations of Hitler's agenda seemed as feathers in the wind of change sweeping Germany. The goose was already being cooked.
Will future generations look back upon America and ask, Where was the Christian Church? Where was the Church when prayer was banned from public schools? Where was the Church when the Ten Commandments were removed from schools? Where was the Church when Bible reading was banned from public schools? Where was the Church as Marxism insidiously infiltrated our higher learning institutions? Where was the Church during the covert then overt theft of the rainbow by the perversion of LGBTQ and rainbow colors became the colors of a flag called Pride? Where was the Christian Church as the nuclear family was attacked? Where was the Christian Church during the shift away from personal responsibility? All questions in need of answers.
But the contemporary question is also, where are we now? We can't change history. But together we can correct its failures. We can, together, take a stand against evil including, but not limited to, Critical Race Theory. We can keep its racist teaching from infecting the hearts and minds of our children. We can be more than windbags. Lest our goose is cooked during our evasion of the question and our eventual denunciations swept away by the winds of change. In our attempt to lead souls to Christ and His Kingdom, surely it is time for the “quiet of the land” to speak Truth boldly. With meekness and by the grace of God.