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The Commentary

Where are we?

I read recently that the essayist and statesman Lord Macauley (1800-1859) said that the world’s greatest democratic nations had a life expectancy of about 200 years.

In a letter to a friend he wrote that they go through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back into bondage. If Lord Macauley’s assessment of the rise and fall of democracies is true, it is not hard, in general terms, to see where our country is located in that progression. What amounts to the criminalising of Christian morality by the House of Lords decision in January to accept the Sexual Orientation Regulations, underlines where we are.

But having mentioned this at a conference, someone asked if I could be more specific about where we are on the downward slope. At that time I could not be more precise.

However, since then alarm bells have begun to ring that we might actually be entering the final phase before losing our freedom.

Called off

Just a few weeks ago Tony Blair said that he took full responsibility for the government’s decision to call off a criminal investigation into corruption during a big arms deal with Saudi Arabia. It was said that it would not have been in Britain’s interest for the enquiry to continue. The Serious Fraud Office had been investigating allegations that the defence firm BAE Systems paid millions in bribes to Saudi officials to secure the Al-Yamamah deal, said to be worth around £40bn to the company. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, explained that to continue the investigation would have caused ‘serious damage’ to UK relations with the Saudis. He especially cited undermining of co-operation over Islamist terrorism with serious consequences for national security. He said that economic interests did not enter into the decision.

Either way you take this, it speaks of our country becoming so dependent on another as to be prepared to set aside the upholding of law. On Lord Macauley’s theory of the rise and fall of democracies, that appears to put us right on the brink of becoming a land back in bondage. This is made even more sinister if we take the government’s own explanation of the decision at face value. Are we not being told that if the investigation went ahead Saudi Arabia would fail to give intelligence about terrorism and so let innocent people suffer when the attacks come? There are some who believe that Saudi Arabia’s stance against Islamic terrorism is only a blind anyway, and that behind the scenes they are actually hand in hand. If this is the case then we really do have a foreign power already beginning to use its muscle to bend Britain to its will.

What to do?

The Bible says that it is not finance or even intelligence services which can provide stability and well-being for a nation. ‘Righteousness exalts a nation’ (Proverbs 14.34), that is, not giving in to corruption. These things should set us to serious prayer and fasting for our land. Going back to his sequence it is worth noting what Lord Macauley saw as the first step on the upward path away from bondage. He called it ‘spiritual faith’. We need to be about the business of evangelism and praying to God that he would yet revive his church in Britain and turn the people to Christ.

John Benton