FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - L’Eglise et le Diable

Rant Number 351 27 May 2009

The Devil invented the Christian Church. A silly, sophomoric crack? Or an atheist’s cheap joke? Or the priest going gaga? No, a proposition advanced by that tremendous Christian, Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist and social reformer, no less.

In the fable ‘The Restoration of Hell’ Tolstoy shows a devil confiding in Beelzebub, the prince of demons. ‘After the victory of the Cross and Christ’s Resurrection our dear kingdom of darkness seemed doomed. Bad news indeed. It was then I had a stroke of evil genius. Had we tried to restore Satan’s rule openly, under its stock form, humanity would have recoiled from it. They had bought that hideous, unbearable idea of brotherly love… something truly devious was required. An ueber-diabolical trick. I contrived that people would trust themselves to be followers of Christ, of his teachings, whilst in fact they followed us demons. I did it by inventing the Church! Hell is thereby restored and Christ’s victory overthrown. And no one has a clue. What do you say, Master? Wicked, eh?’

Tolstoy’s position is notorious. He believed the Churches to be anti-Christian bodies. They do not have Christ as their founder. They stand opposed Christ and the Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount – Christ’s authentic, core teaching – is antithetical to the Church, in which Tolstoy detected only pride, greed, violence, necrophilia and death. Thus, not only is the Church the betrayer of Christ and a complete travesty of his message, she is the devil’s spawn.

The Orthodox Church not unreasonably excommunicated Tolstoy. He had denied the Trinity, did not believe in Christ’s divinity, mocked the sacraments and the apostolic succession. (Muslims might rejoice but wait: Tolstoy scourged ‘Mohammedanism’ too.) His exclusive focus on the evangelical counsels resulted in a somewhat truncated theology. His repudiations of private property, the State and all types of war are sublime but utopian. Still, I would rather have spent time listening to heretical Leo than to many ‘sound and sensible’ church drones I know.

‘If a devil ever invented the Church of England, he must have been a pretty stupid, bungling and pathetic kind of devil.’ That was my first reaction to Tolstoy’s tale. But, as I ambled my way through the current Henry VIII exhibition at the British Library, I wondered. Horrible Henry looks like fitting the demonic bill all too well. A bloated despot who perverted justice, faith and his country to suit his voracious sexual pleasure. A sick tyrant who, in pillaging and suppressing the monasteries, wiped out a millenarian culture, a piety and a way of life that were part of the national fabric. The butcher of innocent, meek and mild religious men who refused to bow to his evil will. The murderer of saintly heroes like Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. The executioner of two wives. The savage persecutor of many Christians, Catholics and Protestants alike. The usurper of the title of ‘Head of the Church’ - a downright blasphemy, as Christ is the one and only head of the Christian Church. To such a grotesque character we owe the foundation of the Anglican Church. Diable! If that is not evidence of Satanic plotting, what is?

God, however, as St Thomas Aquinas taught, can bring good out of evil. Sincere reformers helped to purify Henry’s foul outpourings. Never mind her origins, the Church of England went on dutifully to minister to the nation race in its epic, worldwide civilising exploits. As the great Duke of Wellington put it: ‘The Church of England made the English people what they are.’ Anglican priests had such a reputation for leaning, they were called stupor mundi. The Church of John Donne, William Law, Thomas Ken, Samuel Johnson, Newman, Keeble, Pusey and George Bell was definitely not spiritually dead, or even anaemic. And this little Italian priest happens to have been ordained in it. Nice, no?

Alas, the devil’s wiles are never-ending. Of late, a mysterious failure of nerve has pervaded the Church’s body. Worse, straight apostasy. ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’, Christ says in St John’s Gospel. Yet the Church shows open contempt for Christ’s commands. She no longer cares for the Word of God. With the ordination of women, the supremacy of Holy Scripture – that benchmark of Anglican teaching since the Reformation – was overthrown. Hence the triumph of the libertines, of the false teachers and of the Laodiceans bent on accommodating the Gospel’s stern demands to the shabby idols of a fetid secular culture. The grace of Christ is thereby severed from his moral injunctions. Restoration of Hell rules OK.

Does the conscience of C of E panjandrums occasionally trouble them? Surely they must know how perfectly rotten they are in Christian terms. Churches are emptying fast and the country is a spiritual desert. ‘We must do something. Something really relevant’ the bishops panicked, semi-awakening from their slumbers. So they just came up urging people to vote against the British National Party. How brave. The tiny, puny BNP, whatever its crimes, is a political pigmy. In fact, a terrible bogey waved about by a discredited political class, in order to change the subject. To make people forget who the real scoundrels are. And the Anglican leaders are happy to help with that.

Courageous German Christians like Martin Bonheoffer, Martin Niemoller and Archbishop Von Galen stood up to Hitler in the midst of his tyranny. The deadly risks they knew. Bonheoffer perished in Auschwitz and Niemoller spent years in concentration camps. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, protested against the obliteration bombing of German cities in the House of Lords during WWII. It cost him the Canterbury see. Conversely, Williams and Sentamu have made sure they picked on an easy, soft and safe target. Risking nothing. The BNP is universally loathed and shunned. It wields no power or influence. Just imagine the bishops taking on, say, freemasons or the animal liberation fanatics or our trendy, influential ecomaniacs? Can you picture it? No. Because it would require real guts. And a bit of real, dangerous prophetic preaching. Actions beyond their ken. Too bad.

‘The devil’, some Protestant fellow once quipped, ‘was the first bishop.’ That’s going too far. However, when I think of our Bishops’ Bench…I am not so sure.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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