I no longer buy Christian magazines. I tend to buy the Spectator, National Business Review, Runner’s World and Linux Format. Not much more. I’ve had to throw out a fair amount of paper, and bringing more in makes for more clutter.

And that leads to the worship of the current time. We forget that abuse existed in all ages, and the rules Christ bought in were simple: do not divorce apart from adultery, and Paul added one more: if the unbelieving spouse chooses to let you go, do not fight it.

The Reformers defined these as unfaithfulness and abandonment. Walking away and wooing another. Otherwise, work through the issues. But the current world calls that teaching abuse, and the very words of Jesus are now mutable.

Evangelicals are also unlikely to advocate for the rights of abused women because some want to preserve a marriage no matter the circumstances. Roughly 30 per cent of Protestants believe that divorce is a sin, and a LifeWay poll even found that 28 per cent of Protestant pastors believe divorce is a sin even in the case of abuse. This is founded on a faulty understanding of Jesus’ teachings on divorce.

It won’t serve us well to simply drop the teachings of Jesus on divorce into today’s context. At the time of Jesus, women had few rights, and Jewish men were permitted to divorce their wives for the slightest infraction, simply stating in public that they are now divorced. Women were then left destitute with few options to support themselves.

Where would these women live? How would they earn money? How would they arrange to have another marriage?

These concerns, that are quite foreign to us, were at the forefront of Jesus’ teaching (see Matthew 19:1-9). When he limited divorce to marital unfaithfulness, he was intending to primarily limit the men, not the women. Jesus didn’t provide a timeless template. He was providing a culturally recognisable protection for women. The clear implications of Jesus’ teaching on marriage in his context are that the safety and well-being of women is a top priority because a divorced woman in his day was highly vulnerable.

The answer to that in biblical times was (a) return to your father’s home and live as a widow (b) remarry — that is if you had a writ of divorce, and being “put away” was being abandoned without that option (c) beg and (d) become a whore. The Bible is full of stories about Whores, from Tamar to the woman who split nard on Jesus’ feet.

But that is not where the divorcians want to go. They must be approved. And they forget that if the words of Christ are mutable, then our salvation is for naught. For our faith is in the promises of God and the work of Christ.

Would it just not be a lot simpler if they outed themselves and simply ditched The Bible: because that is the end result of their – as they spin it – wanting to escape the 1950s. I recall the 1950s and I greatly resent the idea that the 1950s were somehow oppressive to women (but not to men): at least whenever I came home, either from playing in the road or later from school, I knew that my Mother would be there: no Kindergarten, Nannies or Social Workers; and I only saw my Father on Sundays because he was working in what must have been mind-numbing work, six days a week; too poor for a motor car, thus commuting by Omnibus. If those women are Christians, then (even were I a believer) I would wish to disassociate myself from their self-serving rhetoric: they are not a good advertisement for your Faith. Christians have never had it easy, assayed by both external forces and internal temptation and it seems to me ironic that at a time when women (as you can see from their couture and bouffant hair) have a life – and partly because they are American – easier than ever a woman or man had in the history of The Faith that they should find it harder than ever to live up to their asserted beliefs. Needles and Camel’s eyes comes to mind for truly it would appear the poor are blessed.

What by the way is a Homemaker? Is it the new word for single mother? Is it the new name for Divorcees?

This is simply wrong. It removes the systems and structures that allow a church, or a nation to survive. For the church is the bride of Christ: it is a patriarchy, or to be more precise, a Kingdom with a King. He has given the church prophets and elders and deacons and those who do hospitality well, those who provide for the church, and those who sit in the pews. All have a part: within each family the father is in effect the priest, accountable to the elders.

And this does work. If it breaks, then things collapse.

Burke was very clear about what a European statesman was duty-bound to conserve: the institutions, customs, manners, and prejudices that helped the European people preserve their faith in our Common Hope. All changes in government must be changes to preserve the foundations of a Christian government, just as you would shore up a sacred monument with mortar and plaster, rather than tear it down and put up a new monument. Burke denounced the French Revolution with Shakespearean eloquence and passion, because he saw that the French Revolution was a radical break with the customs, manners, and prejudices of the European people who had believed, for over 1,500 years, in our Common Hope. Henceforth the battle would not only be with the pagans from without Europe, it would also be a battle against the post-Christians within Europe.
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Who are the exceptionally gifted individuals that do not need “moral religion”? They are virtually all the European intelligentsia, both liberal and conservative. And the grazers, the people who should be the Christian faithful, have followed their leaders. For who wants to be ‘as stupid as a rhinoceros’ by subscribing to an intellectually inferior religion and the customs, manners, and prejudices attached to that religion? “Who is here so prejudiced, who will not support the massive influx of negroes and Aztecs into the European nations? Who is here so lacking in compassion that he will not welcome Moslems into the European nations? And who is so racist and illiberal that he wants his nation to be white and Christian while shunning all others? If any, speak, for we will purge that man from cosmic, multi-cultural Europe.”

The Christian churches followed in the train of the European intelligentsia. The liberals abandoned Christ entirely, and the conservatives betrayed Him by refusing to defend that which is essential for the survival of the Christian faith as a vital force in the life of the European people. We need to believe that we saw Christ face to face in the collective face of the antique Europeans. If they, the people who took Christ into their hearts, didn’t know Him, then how can we know Him? “We can know Him by a new, improved method, through the good offices of our intellects,” say the conservatives who have been shooting up with intellectual steroids to bulk up their highly developed brains. But is such a thing possible? What have the people on intellectual steroids produced? A world in which “mankind preys upon itself like monsters from the deep.” The barbarians of color kill whites and themselves with an increasing ferocity, the Moslems have marched right through the open gates of Liberaldom vowing that, “Your children shall be Moslems,” and not one public figure has called for the expulsion of the colored barbarians and the Moslems from the European nations.

I think we need to stop thinking as much about abuse as a besetting sin. Yes, there are violent marriages: there are even more violent couples who are living in sin. But labelling men as oppressors and women as victims does not follow the epidemiology. It is ideological rhetoric.

And becoming a heretic because of the rhetoric of those who hate the gospel is to be one of the most foolish apostates. Christianity Today now finds itself promoting this.

And I no longer buy Christian Magazines.