Dear Sir,
I was disappointed at CARE’s Gareth Davies’s wholly secular analysis of the issues at stake in the coming EU Referendum (en, April). More helpful was Jim Sayer’s ‘What is a nation’ in the same issue.
Should we not be debating whether being ‘In’ or ‘Out’ promotes the spread of the gospel? Accepting the drawing power of our English lingua-franca and our prosperity, the free movement of people brings us people to evangelise who may return home enlightened by the gospel. Or should we acknowledge that our prosperity is the heritage of God’s blessing us as a once Protestant nation? Reclaim our sovereignty, seek to re-assert Christian principles to show the nations that our God still blesses those who honour him?
At a deeper level, God divided us by languages at Babel to frustrate rebellious man’s grandiose plans, while since Pentecost he has been removing language barriers to unite us in Christ. So, is man’s attempt to unite aside from Christ rebellion against God or, in God’s providence, preparatory, for the triumph of the gospel?
From Saxon times, having the same God as much of Europe, we evolved similar laws, and this was a unifying factor for the Saxon kingdoms. Similarly, after the Reformation, a common culture and values springing from a common Protestantism promoted further union. Our law, while valuing Roman Law, is distinctly different from the European legal tradition which prevails in the EU. Our Common Law is a unique product of Christianity.
At the Reformation, we were told that King John had given our civil sovereignty to the Popes, to which our constitutionalists rightly replied that our Kings have their kingdoms to govern, not to give away. Can any good come of the breach of oaths to uphold our constitutional Christian monarchy involved in every ceding of sovereignty to the EU?
As Abraham Kuyper’s mentor Groen van Prinsterer has pointed out in his lectures on ‘Unbelief and Revolution’ (1845-6): starting with the French Revolution, the constitutional issue at stake has been rule under God’s revealed will or the supremacy of unbridled [man-centred*] Reason justifying force, even Terror, on the grounds of public good or public safety.
The French Protestant, Guizot, contrasted the character of barbarian kingship with that of Christian monarchy as a magistrate ruling under God which, with adjustment, also applies to Christian Republics. Marxism is nothing new. In his lectures Van Prinster observes ‘the supremacy of Reason culminates with atheism and materialism.’ He also asserted: ‘that the principles of the Reformation are the strongest refutation of Jacobinism’ (a reference to the French clubs of revolutionary reason).
Culminating with the settlement following the First World War has been the toppling of Christian monarchies, that unbridled Reason might triumph. In joining the EU project we are subjugating our own Christian monarchy to the same fate, as throughout Europe secularism is ultimately deemed supreme.
The question resolves into: which is the more likely to lead to establishing an enlightened Christian civilisation? – seeking to transform the EU from within, or withdrawing to rebuild and reform our constitutional Christian monarchy?
Ultimately, for either solution, as van Prinsterer noted: ‘Only from a revival of Christian charity and Evangelical spirit can we draw the strength to match unbelief and derive the confidence without which no self-sacrifice, no progress, no improvement is possible. Only through faith in the son of God can the [secu-larist’s] Revolution be vanquished.’
Yours sincerely,
