Don't Go Dutch

One sixth of Dutch Reformed clergy are now agnostics or atheists, and they preach their views openly. The unappealing nature of liberal theology, together with the vastly higher birthrate among those who hold to the old-time religion, have combined to make the Orthodox Calvinist heirs of a nineteenth-century secession, once outnumbered six to one, equal to the DRC in terms of weekly churchgoers. But, despite recent disestablishment, it is the DRC that is treated as the norm by the media, with increasingly calamitous consequences for the fundamentally Christian character of the economy, society, culture and polity of the Netherlands. Or, at least, of the historically Protestant North.

Classical Christianity is also the basis of this State and of all three of its political traditions But independent research has found very large proportions of the women among the Church of England’s clergy to be doubters of or disbelievers in key points of doctrine. Two thirds deny “that Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin”. One quarter denies the existence “of God the Father Who created the world”. Assuming a woman on the episcopal “team” in each diocese, of those with privileged access to the media and other organs of national life as the voice of the Christianity professed by seventy-two per cent of Britons, at least one eighth would be agnostics or atheists.

Parliament should just say no.