Building a Free Educational Website

As recommended by a member of the board, the great Russian realist painter Repin shifted the focus of painting in his time to include celebrating the labor of the local people and to famed events that championed the fearless independence of the Cossacks (a term itself that originates from the word free people), as witnessed here in his portrayal of the famous Cossack reply to the Ottoman Turks demand of surrender with mocking rhymes. I thought of it today as the same region of Ukraine saw battle near a nuclear power plant. The Cossacks of the Zaporozhian region challenged power on all sides, the Polish, the Russian and the Crimean power centers of the day. Much like many people, they would like to be free of the yolk of all corrupt and oligarchic centralized governments, and quite assuredly, would have an equal "shove off" approach (likely in equal vulgar and lyrical terms as they did the Ottomans) to both the Ukranian and Russian governments of today, if their ghosts still spirit the land.

~Robert Barnes

 

Pushback Against the Moral Relativism of the West in Poland and Hungry
~R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Some very interesting things happening in many of the nations of Eastern Europe, in particular, the most interesting developments have taken place in the nations of Hungary and Poland. And both of those nations, there have been very interesting conservative counter reactions against the secularizing trends that came during the Soviet era and then the continuation, or even amplification of those secular arising trends as it comes to the influence of other European nations and the general culture of what has become the European union. It is very interesting that those two nations, Poland and Hungary have appeared as interesting political alternatives in that European context and alternatives that are basically openly derided, criticized, and opposed by the more secular and liberal European leadership, and that includes the European Union.

Those interesting developments include a resurgence of moral conservatism in Poland and in Hungary, there are those on the left who argue that it's merely political, not really theological. There are others who argue that this is a revolt against democracy, but actually I think it's best seen as a revolt against the moral progressivism and indeed the radical new morality that has taken hold in so many European context and also in so much of North America, or even beyond that, the English speaking world, think of New Zealand and Australia. In any event, there are many people in Poland and in Hungary, just to take those two examples, who are not willing to redefine marriage, they are not buying into the transgender revolution. And furthermore, they believe in upholding the moral example and the ontological reality of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Now that's not to say that either of those nations is pervasively theological. There is a very clear Catholic tradition in Poland and the Catholic church there was actually very much instrumental in the breakup of the Soviet Union and its domination over Poland, the Marxist communist regime in Poland fell at least in part because of the influence of then Pope John Paul II and Catholics on the ground there in Poland. Remember, of course, that John Paul II was the Polish Pope. He had been Archbishop and Cardinal there in Krakow before being elevated to the papacy.

In Hungary, the situation is a bit more different. You have influences from several different theological traditions and historic Christianity, but the bottom line is that under the leadership of Viktor Orban in Hungary, there has been a resurgence of moral conservatism and a pushback against the moral relativism of the West. But does this mean that in Poland or in Hungary, we see actual counter examples to the moral progressivism that we've experienced in the United States?

In coming days on The Briefing, we will consider those questions. We'll be looking at both Hungary and Poland.

 

Contemporary American artist Daniel Eskridge

 

Summary of the English Monarchy...

PART I
Special Edition of The Briefing in Honor of Queen Elizabeth II and the End of Britain’s Second Elizabethan Age to an End

Indeed, news and events demand a consideration from a Christian worldview, and that's why today, we are giving this edition of The Briefing over to a special edition to consider the life legacy and the meaning of the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and of dominions. We are looking at a major turning point in Western history. We're looking at a turning point in human history, and as we're thinking about the modern age, we need to recognize, those of us who are alive today, to recognize this transition with the death of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

We are actually looking at something that will not happen again in our lifetimes and probably not again in the lifetimes of our children or our children's children. If the Lord tarries, we're probably still not looking at another event like this, because what we are looking at in the grand scheme of history is an unprecedented period of change, not only in the world, but in the history of Great Britain. We're also looking at an unprecedented reign, a reign that will be recorded as enduring for seven decades, for 70 years, but also we should note, a reign that marks a certain age in history, particularly for the United Kingdom, for Britain, but also for the world a second Elizabethan age. That first Elizabethan age is traceable to the Tudor monarch, Queen Elizabeth I. What was her great achievement? Reestablishing the legitimacy and the longevity of the British throne and the aftermath of the tumult that followed the death of her father, King Henry VIII, who had cast such a massive shadow on the world scene.

Of course, you're looking at Henry VIII, who with three other crowned heads, basically ruled all of the known world at the time. It will be Henry VIII of Great Britain, along with Henry I, King of France, Charles V, King of Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor and Sultan Suleiman, the magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. You put the four of those mighty princes together, and most of the people then known to exist in the world were somehow subject to one of those four crowns. The death of Henry VIII came at the very time that Europe was being torn assunder by various forces, but most importantly, the battle between the Protestant princes and the Catholic princes, and within England, the question was whether or not the death of Henry VIII would mean the reestablishment of Catholicism in England. That's not just a matter of religious preference, that would be a matter of history changing significance.

It would also mean, quite literally, that certain heads would roll. England's commitment to the reformation was one political act that the Vatican sought to reverse at just about any cost, and yet, the king had a son, who became King Edward VI, and he was very much a Protestant reforming prince. He actually had correspondence with the Great Genevan reformer, John Calvin. He was a friend of the Reformation, and actually, it was an ongoing conversation with the heads of the Church of England, and he was headed in a more puritan direction in order to try to bring about a more comprehensive reformation of the church in Protestant lines in England, but he died as a teenager, and then the crown passed to his half-sister, who became Queen Mary, and Queen Mary, known throughout Protestant British history as Bloody Mary, was indeed the daughter of Catherine the Aragon, as well as of Henry VIII, and that meant that she was very much a Catholic princess. She sought to reestablish the Roman Catholic church in England, and she succeeded at least insofar as her reach was able, but nonetheless, she also died and she was replaced with her half-sister and she became Queen Elizabeth I, and Queen Elizabeth, who was never to be underestimated, simply dominated an era like no one, including her father had done before. Elizabeth gave her name to an era, the Elizabethan age.

Elizabeth's reign, by the way, established Protestantism in some form as the official religion of the church of England, but the in some form became a debatable matter far beyond the life of Queen Elizabeth, but nonetheless, she established England as a major world power, and England enjoyed a certain season, a peace and prosperity under her reign that it had not experienced before, nor did it for a long time thereafter. That's just necessary background to understanding why the second Elizabeth, now to be credited with an age of her own, why that is a statement of enormous historical significance, a second Elizabethan age that spanned most of the 20th century and extended more than two decades into the 21st, but in order to understand Elizabeth's place in history, we need to go back and understand what had happened in the decades preceding her ascension to the throne. So what did happen? Well, the most important thing to recognize is that the modern age came of age in the late 19th century, and in particular, in the early decades of the 20th century, and the modern age seemed antithetical to hereditary monarchy. More on that in just a moment, but the big issue here was that the prophets who looked to the future thought that the modern age was probably going to do quite well without crowned heads.

You look at the Bolshevik Revolution that brought about the end of the Romanov dynasty in Russia, and then you look at the end of World War I and the collapse of the German Imperial House with Wilhelm II abdicating, and then you look at the collapse of what historically, it was an even more venerable throne than that in Germany, and that was the throne of the Austria-Hungarian empire. That empire basically fell apart, and so did the royal house, but as people were looking at the fall of these royal houses, the question came, "Well, how long can it be before England or Britain's Royal House also falls?" The reason it didn't was, at least, largely due to three monarchs, and the first of them was George V. George V was king in the early decades of the 20th century, and he saw to the monarchy being reestablished upon legitimacy, upon respect, upon duty, and upon the person of the king and the extension of the influence of the royal family, and so you had George V, who basically acted like and saw himself as the father of the nation, and he was in his person, not only the image on the coins, he was also the individual who represented England, who represented Great Britain, the United Kingdom, and that helped to save the monarchy. Then, it was his son, not his first son, who was a disaster that once again, threatened the House of Windsor.

It was, rather, his second son. It became Bertie, as he was known, who ascended to the throne upon the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, and it was George VI, given the throne name that he took, the father of Elizabeth II, who also, by duty and honor and dignity, sought not only to lead the nation during the horrors of World War II, but again, to embody the nation in dignity, and in duty, and in honor, and in patriotism, and service to country. Of course, as you're looking at this, we just have to go back and say that the big issue that brought Elizabeth's father to the throne was the abdication of his brother who turned out, as we now know, not only to be a morally corrupt and emotionally weak man, but in all likelihood, in legal terms, was also a traitor to his nation. That would be Edward VIII. Remember, that the issue that led to the abdication of Edward VIII was his determination to marry a twice divorced American woman. Put all those words together, it was unthinkable in Britain in the 1930's.

The Church of England simply would not stand for the sovereign marrying a divorcee. Now, just hold that thought, because the other meaning of the age of Elizabeth, the second Elizabethan age is the moral transformation and the radical secularization of Britain that took place during those years, and so it was a crisis in the monarchy that brought about the ascension of George VI to the throne, and thus, created the situation in which a 10-year-old princess, Elizabeth became first in the line of succession. Now, here's what's so important. Just consider world history at that time. We're talking about the year 1936. The storm clouds over Europe are horrifying.

Hitler is coming to power and consolidating his war plans. The power of the Third Reich and of Nazi Germany is becoming indisputable, and Britain is entering a dark, dark hour. It is Elizabeth's father, King George VI and her mother, his queen, Elizabeth, who helped so much to build morale for the British people during the war, and of course, they were joined by an unlikely partner given the family relationships, and that was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Winston Churchill was the voice, but in so many ways, it was George VI who was the towering figure of rectitude. Then, you put it again in terms of a 10-year-old girl, who was now first in line of succession, and that 10-year-old girl, the Princess Elizabeth was raised to be queen, in a way very few children in world history ever have been, and in a very dark moment. The big thing to recognize is that when you look at photographs of, say the young Elizabeth, the teenage Elizabeth, the young woman, Elizabeth, the one thing you notice is the seriousness and sobriety with which she carried herself, the grace and the dignity that she bore not only for herself, not only for her family, but for the nation.

From the moment she was born, very much in the public eye, and already second in the line of succession, because her uncle had no wife or children, from that time until 10, when she became first in the line of succession, with her father the king, it was just so clear that Elizabeth was going to be the destiny of England looking to the future, and that's an enormous burden to put on anyone, not to mention, on a very young girl, and of course, a woman who became queen as a very young woman, at age 25. In 1947, when Elizabeth turned 21, the entire nation knew that eventually, she would become the sovereign, and so there was so much attention to her turning 21. On that birthday, she made a solemn declaration, a pledge to the nation. She said, "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong." Now, she said that in 1947. That is simply decades ago.

That's an entire epic ago, but she said it just a matter of years before she indeed became queen, and that line, whether her life would be long or short, well, let's just understand, her life was indeed very long and her reign was thus very long, and thus, her shadow is also very long. Duty fell to Elizabeth at such an early age, and she carried it so well for so long on behalf of so many. Now, just a few days ago, we were talking about the new British Prime Minister and why Americans should pay attention to that news, and we made the distinction, which is all the more important now, that Britain's Prime Minister is after all the monarch's first minister and is the head of government, but not head of state. It is the monarch, the king or the queen who is the head of state, and so Britain now has a new head of government and head of state in the same week. That is an absolutely stunning and completely unexpected development, a new head of government and a new head of state.

Now, in the United States, it's a very different picture, but we need to understand that our own democratic tradition, our own democratic history, our own constitutional tradition is engrafted onto that of Britain, and so what's happening right now in America still has a unique relationship to the world that Americans also inhabit, but we need to understand that our own constitutional system of government, our own language, culture, democratic traditions, our own textual tradition is absolutely traceable back to England, and thus, what is going on in Britain right now is still a part of our story, even if we're separated by the Atlantic or separated, as Winston Churchill once quipped, by a common language.

PART II
What Sustains the Legitimacy of the State? A Hereditary Monarchy Is One of the Most Influential Ideas in World History

In Christian worldview terms, I want to talk about two particular aspects that demand our attention. One is the question of political legitimacy. That's simply a massive question. It's one of the most pressing questions the humanity is faced throughout all the millennia of human experience, "What makes a government legitimate?"

"How is legitimacy to be grounded when it comes to government?," and that's a huge, huge issue. You could simply say in the personality of a dictator, you could have someone like a Genghis Khan, you could have some kind of tribal definition. The longest-lasting argument for legitimacy in government we need to note is the argument of a hereditary monarchy. Now, again, as you're looking at this, you recognize that if you look through the span of human history, it is a hereditary monarchy or some modification of a hereditary monarchy that has represented the central legitimacy of most governments over time of most states. Now, there's a fascinating testimony to this in the scripture, in 1 Samuel 8, in the experience of Israel, because you'll recall, as 1 Samuel records, nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, "No, but we will have a king over us so that we may also be like all the nations and that our king may judge us and go up before us and fight our battles."

Verse 21 of 1 Samuel 8 tells us, "And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he repeated them in the hearing of the Lord, so the Lord said to Samuel, 'Heed their voice, and make them a king,' and Samuel said to the men of Israel, 'Every man, go to his city.'" What you see there is the issue of political legitimacy that is being experienced by Israel. Now, Israel experiences it and responds in a sinful way. It was God's intention that His covenant people be under His direct rule, not to have a king, but Israel looked at all the other nations and they said, "Look how well they're doing with the king. Now, what are we doing as a nation? How can we be a nation when we don't have a king? We need a king."

And in their rebellion, they demanded a king. Samuel the prophet did not want to give them a king, but God simply said to Samuel, "Look, if they demand a king, let them have a king, but when they have a king, they're going to learn the advantages and the disadvantages of having a king." Now, you just look at that and you recognize Israel was yearning for the political legitimacy of a throne, of a monarchy, of a king, of a crown, and thus, we recognize that throughout human history, this has been the most enduring argument. Now, it's not the argument that won in the United States.

It's not the argument of the American constitutional order, but we need to recognize it is the argument that gave birth to the American constitutional order, even to the American revolution, and we also have to recognize that the most urgent question faced by the young American nation is, "Where, how, and whom is the legitimacy of this government to be determined?" We don't have time to unpack the answers that they considered and the answer they gave there, but let me just say once again, you look at a hereditary monarchy, and indeed, even as the Lord made clear to Samuel and through Samuel made clear to Israel, there are advantages and there are disadvantages.

The point is that as you look at the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, you can see many advantages. Britain was never embarrassed by its queen. Queen Elizabeth was the very model of decorum. She defined the modern monarchy in that way.

PART III
Moral Revolution and Cultural Convulsion But One Great Symbol of Stability: Queen Elizabeth’s Legacy

She also was amazingly adaptable, adaptable to the people, adaptable to modern communications technologies, even to television. She was restrained and she understood the dignity of her office, and she understood that that meant that she had to be careful about how she exposed herself and exposed her family in the media. Another story there, of course coming, but nonetheless, she did understand that in the modern age, the monarchy had to adjust. The problem is that as you look at Elizabeth's life, the second dimension is the amount of social, technological, moral, and cultural change that took place during her long 70-year reign.

You could put it another way. Queen Elizabeth was the constant, but her nation changed remarkably. It changed utterly. It changed religiously, it changed in terms of the secularization of the culture, Britain secularizing far faster than even some other European nations, not to mention, the United States, and you're also looking at moral change. Now, just remember, it was a crisis over divorce that led to her father becoming king unexpectedly, and thus, Elizabeth becoming the first in the line of succession to become queen. You look at that and you recognize how the morality of Britain has changed from 1936 until the present.

You fast-forward and you recognize not only was it a divorce crisis in 1936, it was a divorce crisis a generation later when one of the most controversial moves made by Elizabeth was her denial to her sister of the opportunity of marrying a divorced man and her sister seriously wanted to marry that divorced man. The Church of England's refusal to allow Edward VIII to marry a divorcee is what set the stage for Elizabeth becoming queen, as she did and when she did, if ever, but it also points to the radical moral change that has accompanied the secularization of Great Britain. Just consider the fact that divorce is now considered there hardly a consequential issue, and the liberalization of divorce laws is one of the results of that secularization, but it's not just a matter of a moral convulsion in Great Britain that includes not only the issue of divorce, but premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, the entire LGBTQ spectrum of issues, but it's also the general liberalization that came home in Elizabeth's own family. In 1947, she married Philip who was a Prince of Denmark and of Greece, and together, they established the Royal family, much as Victoria and Albert did in the 19th century as another picture of rectitude, but only for so long. That picture of rectitude didn't hold.

Elizabeth and Philip had four children. The first of them, Charles became Prince of Wales, but Charles became more than Prince of Wales. He is, of course, now the reigning king. His official throne name is to be released later today, it is believed. It's likely to be either King Charles III, and many are referring to him as that already, although it is still possible that he would claim as his throne name King George VII. Elizabeth and Philip would have four children.

The oldest of them is now King Charles III, and then you had Princess Anne, and then Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. Three of the four of them divorced and divorced in fairly controversial circumstances, even for the modern age. The most notorious, of course, was the then Prince of Wales, Charles, who married Lady Diana Spencer, who became Princess Diana, and it turned out that that marriage was a royal sham and a royal disaster. It also turned out, as we fast-forward in history through numerous chapters of tragedy, that Charles is now married to Camilla Parker Bowles, who is now Camilla Queen consort, who was the very woman with whom he had the affair, and to whom he was married after his divorce from Princess Diana. The Princess Royal also later became divorced, and then came Prince Andrew, who not only became divorced and salaciously so, but he has now become so embroiled in personal moral conflict that the Queen had to order him to cease all royal duties, and he has basically fallen out of the public eye, at least until the funeral and other events of mourning for his mother's death.

By the way, his mother's death almost certainly indicates that very little will ever be seen of Prince Andrew in terms of royal occasions looking to the future. Only one of the queen's offspring, and that way, Prince Edward is still married to his first wife, and so you're looking at the fact that that great moral transformation that so utterly changed the landscape of Britain, also a theological transformation, transformed her family as well, and in a tragic sense, because even as Elizabeth was the picture of dignity and integrity and rectitude, even as she was the picture of stability, you're now looking at a Royal family that is going to be described very differently. No matter how Charles III turns out to rule, the very story of his life before he became king and the very presence of Camilla as his Queen consort is going to be a continual reminder that this is an entirely new and entirely sad chapter, in this sense, in the British monarchy, but finally today, I want us to think about some of the theological dimensions that were certainly on Elizabeth's mind and should be on our mind as well as we think about the meaning of Her Majesty's life and her legacy. Just consider her coronation, and just remember that that coronation follows an ancient and medieval liturgy that includes portions from scripture, and just remember the piece of music that is played as the oil is put upon the monarch in a private ceremony behind a screen there in Westminster Abbey. The music that the entire congregation is hearing is one of my favorite pieces of music in the entire musical tradition, one of the most dignified, one of the most rousing, it is handles great composition, Zadok the Priest, which is pointing all the way back to the anointing of a King of Israel.

Thus, for virtually the entirety of her very long life, Elizabeth saw herself as fulfilling a tradition and fulfilling a role by divine sovereignty that could be traced back, if not, genetically and by hereditary claim, at least trace back to ancient monarchies and, in particular, to the monarchical tradition of the Old Testament. Elizabeth was also, we should note, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the very church that suffered such theological and numerical and moral loss during the 20th century. One of the ironies is that by the end of her life, Queen Elizabeth was almost assuredly more orthodox and conservative than most of her bishops. Her theological convictions came out most clearly in her Christmas messages that were a long tradition of the British monarchy, and it was Elizabeth who saw the transition from delivering them on radio to delivering them on television, and in ways that year by year made more clear her theological convictions, Elizabeth II made very clear that she affirmed the great doctrines of the Christian faith. There were those who ministered very close to her and knew her, who said that the faith for Elizabeth was not merely conceptual, it was personal.

Over the course of the next several weeks, there will be an unfolding of occasions, climaxing in a state funeral there in London, and we're going to be hearing a lot about the British monarchy. We're going to be seeing a lot of retrospective about Queen Elizabeth II. We're going to be hearing a lot about the new king, and we're going to be hearing a lot about the transition in the Royal family. The big thing for Christians to understand is that the legitimacy of government is always an issue, and if you're going to root that legitimacy in a person, you better hope that person turns out to be someone like Queen Elizabeth II.

But Americans need to understand that our interest in what is taking place right now in England and our sense of shared grief and of shared historical moment is not just some kind of celebrity interest from afar. It's because intuitively, we really do know that this unfolding story is still very much a part of the American story.

That is simply not an historical accident.

~ R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR.

 

How Does the British Government Work?

Britain Gets New Prime Minister in the Midst of Much Tumult — The U.S. Better Watch Closely

Few issues are more politically fundamental than constitutional issues, and constitutional issues are right in the forefront of headlines this week. Recent events, not only in the United States but indeed, most importantly in the last several days, elsewhere, we're going to be looking to Great Britain. Then we're going to be looking to Chile.

The big news coming out of Great Britain is that the nation has a new prime minister, a new head of government. In this case, it is Liz Truss. She was formerly the foreign minister. She has been in a succession of more than 10 cabinet posts over the course of the last several years of the Conservative Party government there in Great Britain. Most recently, she did serve as Britain's foreign minister under the administration of the outgoing prime minister, Boris Johnson, a very popular, indeed populist figure who had reshaped much of British politics, won a landslide election in Parliament, but then went down to a personal defeat. Found to have broken party rules and COVID rules, and to have lied about it to the people, he eventually undermined his own political credibility, and the party basically decided that he had to go.

Now, immediately using that language points out, this is a very different system than the American constitutional system of government. More about that in just a moment. The big news is that Liz Truss becomes the new prime minister today, after meeting with the queen in Scotland. The outgoing prime minister, Boris Johnson, will have his audience with the queen who is the head of state, then the audience will be given to the incoming prime minister, and eventually Queen Elizabeth II will ask Liz Truss during that meeting today if she will take the reins of government and to become in effect the queen's first minister. That is why you have the title prime minister. It means first minister. But before giving further detail to the prime minister's role, let's just consider the constitutional issues that are revealed even in just the vocabulary we have been using.

First of all, in the United States, the head of government and the head of state are the same person, the president of the United States, elected officially by the Electoral College, but elected by the votes of the American people translated through the Electoral College. As you are looking at the selection of Liz Truss as the new British prime minister, by the way, the third woman in Britain's history to serve in that role, the fact is that less than one half of 1% of all British voters voted for her. That's because we're looking at a very, very different system, but Liz Truss as the new British prime minister is the head of government. She is decidedly not the head of state. Those roles are combined in the presidency under the United States constitution, but in Great Britain, there is no question that it is the sovereign, the monarch. In this case, Queen Elizabeth II, who is the head of state.

Indeed, she is so much the head of state that government constitutionally meets under her authority. The legitimacy of the British government is not found in elections. At least in historical terms, the legitimacy of the British government, indeed of the British state is located in the Crown, in the reigning monarch and the legitimacy of the monarchy. Now, this leads to some very interesting diplomatic situations in the United States. Our president is head of state and head of government, but when the president goes to Great Britain, he basically almost always has to meet with two different heads, with the head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, and with the head of government, whoever is then the British prime minister. When the prime minister of Britain comes to the United States, the prime minister is generally not met at the landing by the president of the United States because the prime minister is not the head of state, rather someone else does. In many cases, the vice president of the United States.

Well, almost immediately, you might ask the question, well, how old is the British constitution? They claim in many ways that it's the oldest and longest running constitution in the history of Western nations. Does it go back to say the 13th century, the 1215, and the signing of the Magna Carta by King John? Well, it might, but we actually don't know because there is no copy. No one has a copy of the British constitution. The queen doesn't have a copy. Parliament doesn't have a copy. Nobody has a copy because it has never been written down. The British constitution is basically a very long and ongoing tradition of custom law, statutes, all kinds of developments, and at times there have been summaries suggested as to how the British constitution works, or sometimes referred to as the English constitution in a more archaic form, but the reality is there just is no written constitution in Britain.

The head of government, however, fulfills an extremely important role because even as the queen, the current sovereign in the United Kingdom is the head of state, and even as government meets under the authority and legitimacy of the Crown, the Crown incredibly rarely actually intervenes in political affairs. That's the way the British constitutional tradition would have it. The head of government is in some ways, in the government, more powerful internally than the president of the United States, who is both head of government and head of state. Why? It is because under Britain's parliamentary system, the majority party, and that means the prime minister, is at least by custom the leader of the majority party. The majority party cannot lose a vote if it's a party-line vote, thus the prime minister of Great Britain is in the position of being something like a prime minister and the Speaker of the U.S. House rolled together.

When the parliamentary system works, it is extremely efficient, but it's efficient in one direction. Whichever party gains the majority of seats in the parliament or can put together a winning majority coalition, basically can push its agenda all the way through the government, in the House of Commons, and particularly in Britain's administrative state. It was by the way, in response to the British system that the founders and framers of the United States constitution put together three different branches of government. Lots of similarity, so much so that it's often referred to as the British, American constitutional continuity. But putting head of government and head of state in an elected office as the chief executive of the nation resolved a host of problems in the American mind, as looking to the operation of the British government. Furthermore, it made very clear that the legitimacy of the American government would be in the political system and in the vote of the people, not in say, a hereditary monarchy.

By the way, another interesting facet is that there is nothing. Remember, the constitution isn't written down. There is nothing that requires the monarch to choose the leader of the party with the majority in parliament as the prime minister, but that has been the custom, and frankly, it's just about the only way the system would work. But let's go back to the vote. I mentioned that less than half of 1% of British voters had anything to say in the selection of Liz Truss as the new prime minister, as the new leader of the Conservative Party. Now, why was that the case? Well, it is because it was not a question presented to the British people. It wasn't a vote presented to the British people at all. It was instead presented to the members of the Conservative Party who met in conference, and that meant that the total votes are something like 160,000 out of a total population of 67 million people.

Now, oddly enough, there were some people saying, "Look, how legitimate is this if less than one half of 1% chose the head of government?" But that's the point. The British people do not directly choose the head of government, nor do they directly choose, to state the obvious, the head of state, the monarch. Furthermore, and here's another wrinkle, Liz Truss was not the first choice of the Conservative Party members in parliament itself. That means that even as she starts out with a win at the Conservative Party conference, and even as the queen ask her to take the reins of government as her prime minister or first minister, the fact is she is in a significant political challenge, a huge challenge, and it's not just within her own party. It has to do with huge issues that Britain is now facing.

Some of them are the fault of Conservative leaders before Liz Truss. Most importantly, the fact that since David Cameron, almost now a half generation ago, Britain's Conservatives had basically been running from conservatism. Liz Truss, perhaps seeking to emulate the first woman prime minister of Great Britain that would be Margaret Thatcher, has sought to identify in a very clearly conservative direction. Now, there's some ironies here. One of them is that she comes from a liberal family and that she had identified as a liberal Democrat during her adolescence, and at least during her college years, even calling for the abolition of the monarchy. Now, in one sense, that means that the meeting between the queen and the new first minister might be just a little tinged with irony there in Scotland today. But nonetheless, for her adult life, Liz Truss has been a decided conservative, basically converted to conservative ideas, even as she was confronted with the arguments back even as she was then a university student.

Under the succession of the prime ministers immediately before her of her own party, the Conservative Party, as I said, departed from conservative ideals and began to be the party of just a little less economic redistribution, than the formerly Socialist Labor Party, which still has very socialist temptations. But looking at this, you realize the structural challenges are massive. Britain is facing ongoing recession and the threat of years of stagnation. That is a stagnant economy matched with inflation. That's a very bad combination and Britain remembers it very bitterly from the 1970s, but you also have other complications.

One of them has to do with Brexit, the vote by the British people to leave the European Union, but the fact is even as the vote was decisive, even Britain's Conservative government has not moved very fast to capitalize on the vote. Furthermore, you have the war in Ukraine and the war in Ukraine is bringing about an energy crisis throughout all of Europe and estimates are that the British people may face no less than an 80% increase in energy costs going into the winter season. That is going to provide an enormous amount of political headwind for any politician, much less, an entirely new prime minister handed the baton and handed a host of problems in the middle of a very difficult political season.

But one thing Americans had better keep in mind, it's not just that we share so much of a common heritage and a common language with Great Britain. We share a great deal more. And over the course of the last 200 years, there have been few allies so close to the United States as Great Britain, thus what happens in Great Britain really does matter here. What happens to them matters to us. One final very odd twist, political developments there often happen just a few years before similar patterns show up here. That raises another very interesting questions for Americans as we look, as they say, across the pond to our friends and allies in Britain.

~ R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR

 

THE HISTORY OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH

Anglicanism came out of the Reformation in the 16th century. The Church of England, Anglican by the way, refers to its Englishness. The Church of England was officially established when King Henry VIII made a formal break with the Church of Rome, and more directly even, with the Pope. Breaking with the Pope, which Henry VIII, by the way, had defended until he needed his divorce and the Pope was recalcitrant, there's a lot to unpack there, but the breach between the English throne and the Papacy eventually led to the establishment of a separate church in England and that in the context of the Great Reformation of the 16th century raised the huge question, what kind of church will it be?

Would it be a Protestant church? It couldn't exactly be a Catholic Church because of the breach with Rome. After all, if it's Catholic as in Roman Catholic, then the Pope in Rome must be recognized as its supreme head. But that's the one thing that Henry VIII, of course, would not and could not do, therefore just driven by historical circumstances, his own ego and ambition, and furthermore, driven by the logic of the Reformation, which was outpacing his own ambition, the reality is that Henry VIII ended up establishing something like a reformed or reformation church known as the Church of England within England during the 16th century.

But from the beginning, it was clear that Henry VIII intended for the Church of England to be something of an ego-centric church and he was the ego at the center of it. He defined Anglicanism more or less by his own needs and wants at the time and it really fell to his three immediate successors to try to hammer all of this out. His successor, his immediate successor became King Edward VI. Edward VI was famously a boy king, he actually died in his teens, but during his very brief reign, Edward VI sought to reform the church in a way that was far more Protestant, far more reformed, far more ambitious than his father had ever been.

One of the most interesting questions is what would've happened to the Church of England had Edward VI continued through a long or at least longer reign? We never will know because he did die as a boy king and he was followed by his older half-sister who became Queen Mary, better known in history as Bloody Mary, and it was Mary who attempted to return England to Catholicism and to the Papacy. It was a bloody struggle to be sure, but she was unsuccessful.

When Mary died, she was succeeded by Henry VIII's other daughter, that would be Mary's half-sister and that would be the queen who became Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth I. Now Elizabeth I is perhaps one of the most famous of all British monarchs and she had a very, very long reign. She saw England through the travails of the 16th century, eventually dying at the advent of the 17th century in the year 1603. But one of the attributes of Elizabeth is that she was of iron mind and iron will to defend England and she understood the necessity of defining the Church of England in a way that would hold together her realm. That was no small challenge.

In order to do that, Elizabeth helped to foster what became known as the identity of Anglicanism as a middle way. A middle way between what? Well, some of the people at the time during the Tudor age felt that the Church of England was threatening to either revert to something like Catholicism, and that meant actually to revert to Rome, or to fall into the hands of more radical and consistent reformers and thus become a thoroughly Protestant nation with a thoroughly Protestant church, exactly how thoroughly became the great debate. And Elizabeth understood, and this was concretized through actions including the development of the famous prayer books during her reign, she fostered an identity of Anglicanism as a middle way, a via media, a way between Roman Catholicism and what she saw as Protestant anarchy.

Elizabeth wanted a church that was genuinely reformed and genuinely Protestant, but just not too much so, certainly not too much so when it came to destroying order and hierarchy within the church, her church. The king, after all and in her case the queen, the monarch was the supreme governor of the Church of England and she intended to act as the supreme governor, and she not only intended to, she did. When the church's bishops were referenced by Elizabeth, she referred to them as her bishops, the same way she referred to her nobles, and that's the way the Tudor monarchs understood the Church of England.

But looking backwards in history, it is clear that the Tudor's insistence upon a via media, a middle way is actually what has defined Anglicanism perhaps better than anything else. If you look at the Anglican communion today, you can look at very conservative, very evangelical churches. You can find very conservative, very Protestant, very evangelical bishops, but you can also find those that are not decidedly Protestant. You can find those who are, to use language that came later, Anglo-Catholic, very traditional, high church. The Church of England underwent various movements including the Tractarian movement in the 19th century.

The bottom line is that both the high church and the low church have vied for influence in the Church of England, but what they didn't see coming is what has basically divided more than anything else the Anglican communion at the present, and that is the advent of theological liberalism and the basic relativization of all Christian theology into something that, at least most orthodox Christians would say, is not even distinctively Christian.

The Anglican communion includes those churches which are identified with the Anglican tradition and with the Church of England, but they are located in other parts of the world, some of them, indeed most of them national churches of one sort or another, but the Church of England is, after all, the mother church and the bishops of the Church of England have inordinate influence over the Anglican communion

R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR

 

A LESSON ON FRANCE

Who’s Going to Pay the Bills in France?
Millions of People Protest in Response to President Macron’s Increase of Retirement Age

BY R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR.

Americans have perhaps taken note that there have been massive demonstrations in two of our allies, and in particular, in France and in Israel. Both of them have amounted to massive acts of civil disobedience and political protests that have not happened in recent decades. Both of them are over big issues, but they are very different issues and both of them really demand our attention. So let's go to Paris first.

What is happening in France? Massive demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even more than a million people in total, they've come out against the current president of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his plan to increase the age of retirement in France from 62 to 64. Now, you might not think that is a big deal, but to millions of people in France, that is a redefinition of France itself. Of course, France has always been very politically volatile. And you go back to the French Revolution, you go back to the successive number of French governments and French constitutions, even just since say, World War I and World War II, France is a relatively stable civilization over a long period of time, but a relatively and notoriously hot situation politically in any short or moderate term.

Macron was considered the Wunderkind, the Wonder Child, a French politics when he was elected to his first term, he was reelected rather overwhelmingly, although with a significant challenge from the right. But now you have Emanuel Macron and a majority in the French legislature being protested by millions of people in France, at least by their voices and the polling data and so many also in the streets. The big issue is the extension or the delay of the age of retirement in France from, as I said, 62 to 64. Now, that doesn't sound like much, it's two years. But the reason the French are so upset is because they take their retirement extremely seriously.

Indeed, I would say from a Christian worldview perspective, one of the big questions to ask here is how this became such a huge issue. It has a great deal to do with the fact that in France, the state takes on an altogether different significance than in the United States of America. The state, after all, in the name of the state and the majesty of the state. What you had taking place in France in successive generations and also successive revolutions was the fact that the absolute majesty of the french monarch that basically got extended to the absolute majesty of the French state and the French government.

Americans are very patriotic, but Americans would never speak of the state with the terms of reverence that you find in France. And of course, this was at least at certain stages, a deliberate substitution not only for the king, but also for Christianity because the Union of Throne and altar, the unity of historic Christianity with historic French culture is a part of what modern secularist and liberation were protesting and revolting against.

So one thing to note theologically is that a lot of the allegiance and a lot of the honor and a lot of the majesty that would have traditionally been poured into religion, and in particular French Catholicism, it is now translated into adoration for and commitment to the state.

But the problem is that the state in terms of this majesty is an idealized state. In the modern era of France, it was largely invented by one person, and that is the late former French President, Charles de Gaulle, who after all's name refers to a certain idea of France, as he said, and who became himself and intended to become the personal embodiment of France. And his sense of the majesty of the French people translated into the majesty of the French state. That's just something very, very foreign from the proper patriotism, the constitutional patriotism that you would find in the United States of America.

But the French go beyond the state as just government and consider the state the entire society in one sense, and that society includes a welfare state, which is to say that at a certain point, it is simply considered a matter of right, that the French having worked for a certain number of years are taken care of by the state, and rather generously. The President would say now too generously. The actuarial tables don't work. There are too many people who are living too long and there are too few workers paying into the system. Now, if that sounds somewhat familiar, it's because the social security system in the United States faces a similar kind of actuarial problem. But the social security system in the United States has been adjusted in ways that the social contract in France has not.

You're looking at age 62 taking on, and this is not a joke, what amounts to almost a sacred significance. Now, the fact is that when the French welfare state was put into effect with its very generous pension system, very few French workers actually lived long after age 62. That was actually key to the success of the program. But now the French, as a part of the modern age with the gifts and advantages of modern medicine are living much, much longer.

Sometimes, by the way, considerably more expensively. But the point is that the pension system is now required to pay out more than it's going to be taking in and by any kind of math that amounts to a form of incipient collapse and insolvency. The French are going to have to do something, but the French people are saying, "You can't do this." Now, the fact is that those who are protesting the rise of the age of retirement from 62 to 64, they really don't have an answer for how to avoid the problem. But it seems like many of them are simply willing to leave it to the next generation to try to figure out. In other words, "I want mine."

Now, this gets to a problem from the Christian worldview perspective that we need to look at. You do have an understanding consistent with Christianity that every society becomes, at least at some point, something of a social contract. And that's particularly true in a more democratic form of government and society where you have citizen involvement in the election of political leaders and even the establishment of the constitutional order itself. That social contract, and by the way, it was a French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who most famously talked about that social contract, that social contract found in every modern society is up for a rather continual renegotiation, a recalibration. That is exactly what the French protestors are decidedly against.

This is another problem of modern Western societies. Almost every single one of them has made economic promises it cannot sustain under current economic conditions. And that leads to a moral question, "Then who's going to pay the bills?" In the United States, no less than in France, although the decision points a little less acute at this point. In both societies, it is basically right now the default position that future generations who are going to be handed bills they can't possibly pay, they're going to have to work it out on their own when all of those are receiving benefits right now are safely dead.

From a Christian perspective, this also leads to a political problem, and that political problem is that there is inadequate political gain to be found on the part of politicians for solving a painful problem now. Far easier for politicians right now to give some kind of vague assurances of corrections in the future, and again, leave it to someone else serving in another term, another congress, another presidency to try to figure out how to resolve this problem.

But the Christian worldview also points to another big issue here and a big issue with the secular society of France that's translated so much of its theological attention to the majestic state and has also transferred so much of its hope to a welfare state. One of the things we need to note is that according to the biblical worldview, human beings are made to work. Now, that doesn't mean that we want to find eight-year-olds and 88-year-olds in the factory line. It does mean that the default position for adults should be working rather than not working, contributing to society rather than dependent on society. What is the magic age? Because in a large society, you're going to have to have some age, which is stipulated as the age in which you can retire and draw upon these benefits. The reality is that the working period for healthy people should be longer rather than shorter.

Or let's put it another way. There's nothing wrong with a certain kind of retirement as a certain kind of reward for a lifetime, an adult lifetime of significant work and contribution. There's something imbalanced about a society that really honors retirement more than it does work. You can just imagine the social contract that comes out of that. If you honor retirement rather than work, you shouldn't be surprised that there are more people who demand retirement than employment.

Now, Emanuel Macron and others are kind of doubling down on this, the French president, because they really don't have any choice. I mean, after all, this is a financial crisis. There is too much going out, not enough coming in. Something's going to have to give. But here's something else that is a sad reminder of politics and government in a fallen world, oftentimes reality just doesn't get you very far in politics. But as Christianity reminds us, reality is very tough to dispense with, and eventually reality is, well, after all, reality. Someone's going to have to pay the bills or someone's going to have to pass out the news that there's no more money to pass out.

But then again, you can understand why politically the advantageous thing would be to raise the issue and to say, you're drawing a line, but then, well, just to negotiate that line and get the best you can for now and let somebody else come back and make the harder decisions later.