Lyndon November Letter

A415

of servant leadership throughout the nation. We’re longing to extend this initiative to include disadvantaged youngsters. Please can you help us financially to make this a reality?

REV LYNDON BOWRING Chairman

‘WELL DONE!’ I cannot end this letter without mentioning the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for many of us one of the most significant events of 2022. Worldwide over 3 billion people heard Jesus’ words, proclaimed loud and clear at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Justin Welby: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.’ Queen Elizabeth’s life of faith and duty has been heralded as true servant leadership, and has been such a wonderful example for our Leadership Programme graduates to follow. I believe she’s heard from the Master ‘Well done, good and faithful servant … Enter into the joy of your Lord.’

I’m so proud of our CEO Ross Hendry and the team at CARE who are determined to take CARE forward to tell a better story: speaking the truth with courage and compassion as a prophetic voice on your behalf. They need your support more than ever.

So may I thank you in advance for your willingness to continue ‘partnering’ with us in prayer and giving? May God richly bless you and your loved ones.

Yours in His amazing mercy and grace.

CHERISHED CHRISTIAN VALUES Rev Lyndon Bowring CHAIRMAN

Of all the books I’ve read this year, one of the most inspiring has been ‘The Air We Breathe’ by Anglican evangelist Glen Scrivener. It celebrates God’s amazing sovereignty and common grace at work in every generation for the past 2,000 years. He eloquently argues that today’s world is not as post-Christian, as many think! British culture is still categorised by our Christian heritage without most people realising it. Today’s cherished values originate from that first century ‘Jesus revolution’ which turned the world upside down. Values of equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom and progress are all rooted in Christianity.

In the Roman Empire, human lives were unequal. Slavery and cruelty were normal, unwanted infants were routinely abandoned, the sick and destitute were uncared for and women and children were considered inferior. By contrast, the Early Church championed the rights of the most vulnerable and were reviled for caring for outcasts. In every generation since, Christians have spoken up for the rights of what Tim Keller calls the quartet of the vulnerable – widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor.

CAREORGUK

CARE.ORG.UK

CARE (Christian Action Research & Education) | Chief Executive Ross Hendry | Chairman Rev Lyndon Bowring 53 Romney St, London, SW1P 3RF | 020 7233 0455 | mail@care.org.uk | Charity No: 1066963 | Scottish Charity No: SC038911

Christians in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ made huge strides in education, philosophy, law, architecture, commerce and technology. Challenging the ideas of some, that faith and science are opposed, Scrivener points to the core belief of ‘two books’, Nature and Scripture, that complement one another. Christians study the Bible to know God and pursue knowledge of the world to learn about His handiwork. Believers like Copernicus, Kepler and Isaac Newton were forerunners of subsequent discoveries and many scientists today are Christian.

Eighteenth-century British Christians fought to abolish slavery, which had always been ‘a given’ for civilisations; only a strong conviction about the biblical truth of human equality could cause it to be outlawed. Tragically, millions today are still trafficked and abused, but a firm belief in Godgiven human rights has become a cornerstone of modern philosophy.

machines now have the potential of faking life. Mark O’Connell, 2018 winner of the Wellcome Foundation Book Prize predicted, ‘Ultimately, by merging man and machine, science will produce humans who have vastly increased intelligence, strength, and lifespans: a near embodiment of gods…’ This is known as transhumanism.

What an encouraging reminder that Christians can make a difference by being ‘light and salt’!

Thank God for advances in preventing and treating serious medical conditions – ‘making humans better’. But striving for perfection and even immortality by making ‘better humans’ is a completely different and dangerous matter. Enhancing human performance to be something beyond what is natural raises serious ethical questions.

HOW COULD THIS BE? There have been major endeavours to eradicate these precious values. Perhaps the most heinous in the twentieth century was the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ when 6 million Jews including 1.5 million children were exterminated, along with hundreds of thousands of others.

This year I fulfilled a lifelong aspiration to go to Auschwitz in Poland and Terezin in the Czech Republic, having visited the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem and attended Holocaust memorial commemorations in London. At Terezin, 15,000 Jewish children were ‘housed’ and, assured they would re-join their families, loaded into trucks, little knowing that these were mobile gas chambers in which every single child perished. I’ve asked myself time and again, however did this happen in a Christian country – where the Church was so strong and the Protestant Reformation began?

EUGENICS The nineteenth century German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche had promoted eugenics, the selecting of desired heritable characteristics to improve future generations – creating ‘a super race’ eradicating anything that was imperfect and unproductive. Nietzsche despised Christianity’s ‘poison of pity that took the part of all the weak, the low, the botched’ and he inspired Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ manifesto and the Nazi 1939 Aktion T4 Programme that killed almost 300,000 patients with disabilities.

It wasn’t just in Germany. In Britain a ‘Feeble-Minded Control Bill’ came before Parliament in 1908 seeking to implement Royal Commission recommendations that the 271, 607 ‘lunatics or persons of unsound mind, idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded or otherwise’ should be segregated in asylums, and marrying them be made a criminal offence. The bill failed, but in July 1912, 800 delegates met in London for the First International Eugenics Congress. Liberals and socialists agreed with right-wing racists on policies to rectify what they regarded as the low quality of some of the population. Former British prime minister Arthur Balfour attended with Winston Churchill and William Beveridge, founder of the welfare state! Beveridge wrote in 1906 that men ‘who through general defects’ are unemployed should suffer ‘complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights’.

Even the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral supported enforced birth control, fearing that ‘the urban proletariat may cripple our civilisation, as it destroyed that of ancient Rome’. It was only after the war, realizing that eugenics had culminated in the Holocaust, that people completely rejected such ideas.

Every generation brings its own challenges to God’s design and purposes for human flourishing.

Today’s bioethical issues have been described as ‘the taking, making and faking of human life’.

Taking life was made legal in 1967, since when, tragically, 10 million abortions have taken place.

Making life began in 1978 with the birth of the first ‘test tube’ baby Louise Brown and continued with experimentation on embryos, and even efforts to create animal-human hybrids and to clone humans. Emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, biological enhancement and sophisticated

CARE’s vision is to bring a distinctly Christian influence on these vital debates to encourage what is good and resist what undermines human dignity. We want to expand our research work, deepen our relationships within Parliament, and equip the Church to speak out confidently.

We’re deeply grateful for your ongoing generous support. You probably know I try only to make one direct financial appeal a year and only to consider giving to CARE after you’ve responded to family needs, your local church and other ministries close to your heart. However, we would benefit so much from extra financial support. It would be a great help if you felt able to donate online - simply done by visiting care.org.uk/donate. Of course, if this isn’t your preference, please continue sending your deeply appreciated cheque by post or by phoning us. To meet growing challenges we want to raise up more advocates in the corridors of power, develop more effective resources, and produce first class, biblically rooted research to inform public debates.

TWO KEY ANNIVERSARIES Next year marks 40 years since CARE’s launch in March 1983, when I was appointed Chairman.

Looking back at the challenges we faced then, it’s astonishing how God provided for our work and enabled us to see successes. You may remember that our work began in a rent-free basement office in Down Street, Mayfair. CARE now owns our offices in Romney Street just a few minutes’ walk from the Houses of Parliament and at the centre of where much of the think-tank research affecting government policy is done. This could never have happened without your generous support.

At the core of CARE is a passionate belief that society benefits when Christian values are upheld. Just as in the Roman Empire, when Christians stood alongside the most vulnerable, our heart is to do the same today. In recent years, we have taken a stand on abortion, assisted suicide, online pornography, gambling harms affecting vulnerable people, free speech and religious freedom. We’ve championed the rights of modern slavery victims and called for a fairer tax system for single-earner families. CARE is for people, particularly the most vulnerable, and for the legislation that protects our God-given dignity.

Right now, in Scotland, yet another assisted suicide bill has been lodged and, if it proceeds, MSPs will be debating whether Scotland will be first in the UK to legalise assisted killing. Please pray for God’s favour and wisdom as we work with others to see this legislation stopped.

Entering our 40th year, we are asking what God wants us to address and how best to use our resources to stand up for the most vulnerable in society.

2023 is also the 30th anniversary of our Leadership Programme - regarded by many as ‘the jewel in CARE’s crown’ - committed to training and equipping each new generation to take up positions