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BBC's Ten Great BritonsBritish readers will not have missed the recent popular BBC series Ten Greatest Britons poll. The downside of this series is the trivialising of history. It is postmodern sentiment that puts Diana Princess of Wales and John Lennon among the greatest Brits. The plus side, and it is considerable when we reflect on it, is that the majority who never give history a thought have watched a well documented series and will know a lot more after this series than they did before. One admitted that he now knew that Cromwell came after Queen Elizabeth I and not before! Large numbers participated. Winston Churchill romped home at the end with 410,000 telephone and Internet votes. Second was the Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel with 350,000, followed by Diana with 211,000. Charles Darwin was fourth, followed in order by Sir Isaac Newton, John Lennon, Queen Elizabeth I, Horatio Nelson, and Oliver Cromwell. This poll shows that the verdict changes with each generation. Darwin would not have been remotely in contention at the end of the 19th century, and with microbiological science advancing I reckon that Darwin's theory of biological evolution is likely, in due course to be blown out of the water, and with it Darwin's popularity. Best programmeMy friend, Phil Arthur, pastor of Free Grace Baptist Church, Lancaster, is an authority on Oliver Cromwell. This is how he responded to the presentation on Cromwell. 'One of the most outstanding programmes in the series was the evaluation of Oliver Cromwell by the eminent military historian, Richard Holmes, of Cranfield University and presenter of the deservedly popular War walks series. Holmes focused particularly on the instinctive military genius that saw Cromwell, a man with no experience of combat when Civil War broke out in England in 1642, become the most eminent of the Parliamentary generals and arguably one of the greatest cavalry generals in the history of the world. Inevitably, it was impossible to evade the oft-repeated charge that Cromwell was guilty of something close to genocide during his Irish campaign, particularly with reference to his actions during the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford. During the course of his programme, Richard Holmes made approving reference to a recent book by Tom Reilly, himself a native of Drogheda, 'Cromwell, An Honourable Enemy'. It is Reilly's contention that Cromwell's reputation has not only suffered at the hands of English historians with royalist sympathies, but that he also became the victim of Irish nationalist historians in the 19th century. This series prompts the question, Who are the spiritual heroes in the history of Great Britain, a nation uniquely blessed with reformations and revivals and that over a period of more than 700 years, more than any other nation on earth? My vote in order of time is: John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, John Knox, John Hooper, Oliver Cromwell, John Owen, John Bunyan, George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, William Wilberforce, Robert Morrison, William Carey, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and for the 20th century, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Erroll Hulse, LeedsLeslie Price© Evangelicals Now - January 2003 |