Government Encouragement of Gambling and Drinking
A Government Bill providing for a major overhaul of laws on gambling has come before the UK parliament. Proposals to have slot machines removed from places where children can get access to them are to be welcomed. This is the aspect on which the Government are attempting to focus public attention, but plans to remove any restriction on the size of jackpots offered by casinos seem much more central to the thrust of the proposed legislation. It is expected that up to 40 so-called super casinos, after the fashion of Las Vegas, will be set up as a result of this Bill.
While opposition to the proposals may result in some modifications, this would still be a serious departure from what a government should be standing for. The responsibilities of government extend to the moral welfare of its people, and they ought to have a care for, at least, those whose finances will be ruined by overreaching themselves at gambling tables. One person’s winnings come from someone else’s losses, while the casino itself is sure of a profit – and the Government also is sure of its cut.
Meanwhile in Glasgow, the opening of a new casino has brought objections from local residents who will have to endure disturbance throughout the night – closing time is 6 am.
Proposals for a further casino costing £8 million, and for another with the massive price tag of £162 million, indicate the scale of profits which the gambling companies expect to make. No wonder there are fears that up to 70 000 gambling addicts could be the result.
At the same time the Prime Minister was backing plans to allow 24-hour drinking in England and Wales. He dismissed “the notion that we should stop everybody in the country doing that because there are some hooligans that get fired up with drink on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and go out and beat the place up”. His attitude again is irresponsible. Chris Fox, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, commented on existing problems, and added: “If all we are going to do is to extend the time [licensed premises] are open, this will extend the problem”. He went on to call for a change in behaviour. Indeed!
But how is such a change to come about? No doubt more restrictive licensing laws would help.
But the fundamental problem, to which both Government and law-enforcement agencies close their eyes, is the corruption of the human heart.
And there is only one solution – the preaching of the pure gospel applied by the Holy Spirit. While it is not the duty of the Government to proclaim the gospel, it is its duty to do all in its power to promote Christianity and Christian morality. This, sadly, it steadfastly refuses to do.
Africa Bishops Take a Stand
We do not regard Episcopalianism as the form of church government prescribed in the New Testament but, nonetheless, godly people have lived under it and pious men have been instrumental in administering it. Like Presbyterianism it was, through emigration and missionary activities, exported to other parts of the world, including Africa. These Episcopal Churches, like others in Africa, were dependent on overseas aid, and their pastors received their training in either Britain or North America.
Now the wheel has almost turned full circle and, in the Episcopalian context, North America may now be regarded as the “dark continent”, where homosexuality is condoned and a man who lives in that very sin has been appointed to prominent ecclesiastical office.
The African bishops have been loud in their condemnation, but their voices are not being listened to.
As there is no hope of remedying the situation, they are now preparing to declare themselves independent. Episcopalian they may be, but we cannot but admire their determination to resist this evil. This was made clear at a recent conference held in Lagos, Nigeria, where the official theme was “Africa comes of age” and this, it is said, “was borne out in the rhetoric and resolutions”.
From now on, the African church will have its own institutions and will train its own clergy.
“We feel,” declared Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria, “it would be dangerous for the future of our church to continue to send our own future leaders to those institutions” – in North America and Britain. Jane Little, a BBC Religious Affairs correspondent, comments, “This is a decisive move away from a colonial model of church towards one in which Africans see the roles reversed – that is, where the parent Church of England should learn from them. . . . Many Anglicans in Africa see the decline in Western Christianity as the product of secular decadence and believe it is up to them to uphold the purity of the gospel. . . . The message of this meeting in Lagos appears to be that, whether or not the Americans repent of their actions, African clergy will lead the way with a ‘pure’ home-grown theology.” One would think that the Archbishop of Canterbury and other prominent liberal Anglican ecclesiastics have reason to be alarmed. It is too much to hope that they will be ashamed.
JM
Protestant View
Tony Blair and Roman Catholicism
It would appear that we are being prepared for the announcement that the Rt Hon Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, is to become a full-blown Roman Catholic.
It is just a matter of time, if we accept recent press reports, although Mr Blair has denied them. It seems that a local Roman Catholic priest who ministers to the Blair household when they are resident at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country home, has been conducting mass within its precincts since the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York.
Before then it seems that the entire Blair family attended mass in the village of Great Missenden, where this priest, in charge of the parish of “the Immaculate Heart of Mary”, regularly propagates this “dangerous deceit and blasphemous fable”.
It would appear that Mr Blair realises that no Roman Catholic has ever been Prime Minister and, according to the previously-mentioned priest, that is acting as a restraint on him at present.
“Can the Prime Minister of Britain be a [Roman] Catholic? is the question he is said to have posed to the priest over lunch.
We hope the day will never dawn when a Roman Catholic prime minister will sit in 10 Downing Street, at the centre of Government, but owing allegiance first and foremost to the usurper of Christ’s titles in the Vatican, who blasphemously claims universal rule as Prince of the Kings of the Earth. It seems that we could have a Protestant Queen bound to adhere to the terms of the Bill of Rights, and a Roman Catholic prime minister who would in the nature of things be bound to undermine it. Our prayer for Tony Blair should be that Lord would open his eyes. JM