There is a saying: “You won’t miss the water till the well runs dry.”

Britain’s wells are running dry.

The caring professions are running dry, which many now view simply as jobs without a sense of vocation.

Speaking truth is running dry in politics and public life Isa 59:14.

Christian conscience is seeping away from the board rooms of Britain’s companies and institutions.

False religion is substituting for Christianity in schools, universities and public life.

NHS

There is a joke that the National Health Service is the nearest that the UK has to a national religion.  The national churches are failing the UK nations [at 21:44 hrs]; possibly “religious” commitment is going elsewhere.  So what about the NHS?

However, the NHS is no longer run by  professionals but by interest groups.  It is so broken that even the Labour Party thinks it needs to be reformed.  Like the national churches, the NHS is no longer fit for purpose in many places in the country.

Many people predicted this years ago, when the NHS turned to managers to run it [at 20:07 hrs], rather than clinicians.  In my local hospital I witnessed consultants being herded into communal rooms while managers took over their former offices.  Shades of Animal Farm! This is small compared to the multiple scandals in NHS Trusts, but what is the relationship between this and the absence or silencing of Christian conscience in the top management of these Trusts?

Giving the NHS  back to clinicals may not be the answer, because the doctors’ and nurses’ strikes demonstrate that many of the activists in these professions simply see it as a job rather than a vocation. Where were the Christians? Has Christian conscience run dry?

Public policy

However, the NHS is only one area of public life.  I chose it because it is viewed as the national religion, from which one might expect devoted service.

What about other areas of life? It is little wonder that disorder is on the streets of Britain when we have leaders who push on with their own agenda regardless.  This is no different from the “catch me if you can” thinking of criminals.  Oh, for some Christian faithfulness.

The UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer carries on with his hidden or at least unpublished agenda, ignoring the protests of pensioners, farmers, employers and others after the recent Budget.  The cries for him to meet with the Farmers’ Union have so far fallen in deaf ears, following the same line as the previous Tory Government with the doctors’ union.

The Scottish Christian Party supports workers and employers and will listen to each side in disputes.

There are, of course, some who are conscientious and it seems that lowly-paid and under-valued carers are now the vocational group. However, even here there have been horrendous stories, demonstrating the lack of Christian conscience and oversight in management positions. Even international charities have experienced workers demanding sex in exchange for charitable aid, exploiting the vulnerable for whom they claim to care. The examples are so many that it requires Wikipedia to list them. So much for secular care filling the void as the wells of Christian care dry up.

It was ever thus. Historically, Christian initiatives have been taken over by the state – education, mission, health care, etc. – and are robbed of their Christian ethos. Christian care is replaced with secular care with its different values. We now have unchristian secularism filling every void, often using Government handouts or quangos paid for by the harding-working section of society.

So much for worldly religion. Have the proponents of secular religion forgotten how to be professional, far less follow Christian values? Is the country able to persuade people to work more than 26 hours per week, the weekly hours of the average General Practitioner, fallen from 40 hours per week in 2010? Where is the former professionalism, or at least vocational care? Is the Christian well drying up?

How will secularism deal with the wicked spirit in those who have so little love for their neighbour that they steal and attack the vulnerable, even attacking care workers and public sector workers going about their work. Is Christian love to one’s neighbour slipping away? It is time to tell them that their wickedness will catch up on them. It is time to tell them that they need a new spirit. It takes Christian love to do so, with the benefits that naturally follow from this. Is this why there is so little said about Christian love, pushed aside by secular love and secular redefining of such basic concepts and basic language?

This is only part of the price of losing Christian values and Christian voices in public life.

It will not always be so. There is no post-Christian era but it is possible to lose God’s favour, manifested in our current society.

It is time to reform Britain, not with a secular agenda but with a Christian one. One day Ps 72:11, national leaders will listen to the Prince of Peace. What a difference it will make. “Thy kingdom come” Mat 6:10 and Lk 11:2.

Links:

1 Jan 2018: the Seven C’s of Christianity.

17 Jan 2018: where are the Christians?

9 Jan 2025: former US President Jimmy Carter’s funeral today reminded us of the importance of Christian faith in the tributes read by grandson Joshua Carter and Stephen Ford, son of former US President Gerald Ford. The two political opponents became lifelong friends during a long airplane journey “that was not long enough” and shared their Christianity with each other. The Ford tribute ended by drawing attention not only to “life after the White House” but to the hope of eternal life and their reunion in that afterlife. More people should consider whether Christianity Made America Great, with a similar consideration for Great Britain’s past. America has modified the English language, sometimes for the better, but it was surprising to hear the Mondale tribute repeat on an international stage the oft-repeated mistake of “for you and I” instead of the grammatically correct “for you and me”, unless this mistake is another imported Americanism whose source I have at last traced. After almost two hours of eulogies the BBC reporter commented: “We are into the religious part of the ceremony.” Thankfully it was very short, religious words mixed with false religion.

11 Jan 2025: last year we thought that the subpostmasters’ scandal was the worst case of injustice in Britain’s recent history, but this has been trumped by the police and council cover-up of the Pakistani rape gangs throughout England as revealed in the GB News documentary tonight Grooming Gangs: Britain’s Shame. Where are the Christians in these institutions? Are there none? We need someone to implement Christian values in the UK.

14 Jan 2025: Professor Alan Sked tweeted on the failure of accountability in Britain and the public pitch in with examples.