Christians can applaud the many advances made in our standard of living over the last 40 years, but at the same time we have to say that something is wrong with the direction of today's society.
There has been a breakdown of Britain. A breakdown in the family, law and order, and authority - with confusion in the church.
Few would deny that the pace of change and breakdown has been dramatic.
Drug addiction
The number of registered heroin addicts has risen from just over 500 in 1973 to 7658 in 1992. These are just the registered addicts for one drug. A recent study in the British Medical Journal of 15 and 16 year-olds found that more than 40% had tried illicit drugs at some time. This represents a sharp increase over the past five years.
Crime
At the end of the 1930s a total of less than 300,000 crimes per year were recorded in England and Wales. Today, violent crimes alone come to more than 300,000 a year out of a total number of 5.3 million crimes a year.
The family
In 1951, some 3% of married couples had divorced before the 10th anniversary of their marriage. Today 25% of marriages are over within 10 years, and overall some 41% of marriages are expected to end in divorce. In the 1970s 10% of couples cohabited before marriage. Today the figure is 70%. Couples who cohabit before marriage are 50% more likely to divorce during the first five years of their marriage.
Values of the intellectual aristocracy
In the earlier part of this century the great intellectual debate was whether it was possible to have morality without a religious belief. The content of Christian morality as such was not challenged. Aldous Huxley, despite his agnosticism, could still write (in 1948) that 'Chastity, then, is the necessary pre-condition to any kind of moral life superior to that of the animal'.
Bertrand Russell's atheism was considered much more extreme. In 1929 he wrote: 'All sex relations which do not involve children should be regarded as a purely private affair'. Russell's friend and fellow 'apostle' Lytton Strachey was at the heart of the promiscuous 'Bloomsberries'.
But their views were not at all typical. An official report by education advisers to the government's Board of Education in 1943 shows the sort of tone commonly accepted in the war years and following: 'We are concerned to see preserved, or born, a genuinely Christian civilisation. This we take to mean, not a civilisation all of whose members are necessarily professing Christians, but one in which the Christian belief in God, and all that is consequent upon it of human liberty and brotherhood, and the preservation of the fundamental ideas of truth, goodness and beauty, set the tone for society.'
How things have changed! The children brought up during the permissive 1960s are now the opinion-formers in our universities, schools, hospitals and electronic media. 'Bloomsbury morality' is now espoused by our intellectual aristocracy.
Polly Toynbee, former Social Affairs Editor of the BBC, recently described divorce as 'our century's great liberator'. She called for a 'celebration' of divorce. Few would go this far, yet during the recent Family Law Bill, the prevailing opinion among lawyers, social commentators and many church spokesmen, was that a husband or wife should be able to get a divorce just by asking for it (without the consent of the other spouse). Even Bertrand Russell thought this was too extreme where children were involved.
Today, calls for the legalisation of cannabis or state registration of brothels come from such 'pillars of society' as chief constables. Instead of being a morally conservative force, opinion-formers are at the leading edge of moral liberalisation.
Change of thinking?
It is now generally accepted that concern about crime cannot be discounted as moral panic. There is growing concern about the breakdown of the family, but unlike the US, it is not a hot political issue and there seems to be an unwillingness to accept research which plainly shows that children from broken homes do less well at school and have higher rates of unemployment and criminal offending. Social policy on the family still continues as if the state was neutral as regards marriage.
While government education advisers in 1943 openly advocated gospel values, their modern-day counterparts, the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), in a report on moral values, could not bring themselves to include any reference to marriage.
Tough political decisions have to be taken. Faddish theories on the family, crime and punishment, and education, must be challenged.
Morality has been relativised. Worse still, individuals who break those moral norms which are generally accepted can be excused on the grounds that they are not responsible for their own conduct. Their behaviour is determined by their social environment.
Relativism
In schools today there are growing problems of truancy and indiscipline.
It is an unquestioned doctrine of the educational establishment that schools must not promote one culture or one religious faith. A call for parents to promote the Ten Commandments would be greeted with enthusiasm by most parents, but with derision by union leaders, teacher trainers and educationalists. The Chief Rabbi highlighted the problem in 1988 when he said: 'In trying to teach all faiths, it's possible we shall succeed in teaching none.'
On questions relating to the family, the social affairs intelligentsia generally assume that any configuration of adults and children comprises a family. It is therefore wrong to discriminate against any one family form in social policy.
The libertarian right and what has been called the 'egotistical left' do not have the answers since both are essentially committed to moral relativism.
Social determinism
It is increasingly held that rising crime, vandalism, hooliganism and drug dependency are in some way due to the fact that 'young men have no stake in society'. Their behaviour is fostered by unemployment and their social environment. The political focus of 'stakeholding' has revolved around economic issues and the concept of relative poverty.
The desire to 'understand a little more and blame a little less' has meant that debates among academic criminologists have focused on the reformation of offenders and deterrence. The protection of the public, and still less, the much-ridiculed concept of retribution are issues much avoided. Criminals are seen as victims who need help or treatment.
In education, child-centred teaching approaches are based on the assumption that children's learning is conditioned by their environment. Teachers are seen as facilitators rather than instructors and discipline is seen as stifling creativity.
The state cannot go on ignoring these important moral issues. For one thing the cost to the taxpayer is unsustainable.
For example, the cost of divorce to the taxpayer is some £5 billion every year. This is at the present divorce rate (which is set to rise). Key institutions and our democratic freedoms are being undermined by the moral breakdown which is well under way in our society.
What must we do?
First, we must pray. Only God can change the hearts of men and women towards himself. Only God can grant revival.
Second, we must speak out. We must expose what is wrong (Ephesians 5.11). Being salt in the world includes speaking out publicly for Christ. This means saying some things are wrong!
Third, we must preach the gospel. A secularised and liberal 'gospel' has been rejected as irrelevant by society at large. Many non-Christians appear to recognise the seriousness of the moral crisis facing our nation. This is leading to new opportunities for the gospel. Now is the time for the church to teach clearly and offer the gospel message which alone has the power to change lives.
Colin Hart is Director of the Christian Institute, based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
EA surveys morality
Some 3,000 congregations are linked to the Evangelical Alliance (EA) and half of these grew in size last year.
A wide-ranging EA survey of 535 congregations, published in November showed that more than eight out of ten churches believe the growing gap between the rich and the poor in Britain is unjust, and that a worthwhile goal for the millennium would be significant reduction in homelessness. The survey also revealed that 96% of evangelical congregations believe homosexual sex to be wrong. The same number say they would not formally accept into membership Christians living in homosexual partnerships.
On abortion, eight out of ten churches agree that the law should be amended to apply only to life-threatening pregnancies. The same number disagreed with the argument that euthanasia is justifiable in cases of personal request. On divorce, 73% believe it should be more difficult to obtain, with 3% believing that Christians who re-marry after divorce should not formally be accepted into church membership.
Nearly half the churches state that if Prince Charles remarried he should not become King, with an identical number believing that the Church of England should be disestablished.
