Recently the Archbishop of Canterbury hopped off the fence where he had been perching for quite some time and landed with his feet on the side of “inclusiveness is not a Christian virtue”.

In this current age many have adopted a religion of equality, and of human rights. This modern religion abhors the fact that the Christian God is an absolute monarch who demands to be honoured as supreme. In these postmodern times the meaning of the word “honour” has made a subtle shift from “respect given for superiority, for having greater qualities” to something more like “grant acceptance for being similar”. For instance, I respect and honour your differences not necessarily because they are superior in some way to mine, but because we have an equality one with each other. We shall celebrate pluralism and multiculturalism in such a way that we become an amorphous mass of individual differences bobbing around in a plasmic sea of universalism - as all of us are equal. Today the message is to believe in yourself, to worship your self. Your own perception is the truth, as truthful to you in equal amount as mine is to me. Objectivity went out the window as relativism came in the door. The great human melting pot, with evil intolerance neutralizing as it bubbles and brews, gives off the aroma of a new spirtuality that all can accept and thus we will all be One with each other and with the gods.

Considering universalism in its more religious context, it is the unbiblical doctrine that states that God will eventually bring everybody who has ever lived into a saving relationship with Him. In other words, it states that everybody will be saved, and that God will condemn nobody to Hell. It is understandable how such a doctrine could gain wide acceptance among today’s pluralistic, liberal society, but it is not in any way compatible with Biblical Christianity.

While Biblical Christianity does not have “inclusiveness” as a Christian virtue, it is true that we are to love one another including our enemies - it is most certainly inclusive as to whom we are to love. But otherwise it is exclusive at its very core. It is unique. That is an objective fact.

So today we have the new religion of Human Rights where, unlike Biblical Christianity, equality and inclusiveness are both virtues to embrace. Since the attempt to strip the God of Love of all other aspects of His character we are now left with the proposition that He is merely something ineffectual that must be improved upon by human hands. Human Rights will mend the errors of that God. Forget it if you choose, but the God of Love is also the God of Truth, that He is holy and righteous, and as Monarch reigns over an exclusive hierachy of inequality. Although He is supremely just, He is far from politically correct. Forget and you will be sorely in need of His forgiveness.

With rights come responsibilities. Responsibilities? What are those? Yes, and just one small reason why this new religion is far from whole.

That companion volume was nudged off the shelf quite long ago, left to be swept up and thrown out with litter from the new adulescent twixter generation. Those young golden people are now plump and sadly clever from suckling on the rewards of work-worn parents. But Justice, these days mistaken for Revenge, will one day exercise this given alter-ego and take exactly that for having been so wrongfully reframed. Father Time still wraughts woes on Mother Nature just as it was before, these little gods and godesses returning to the dust with souls lost forever to their damnation. Pity them, but spare a thought for what it was that brought them to that place. Christians must turn about and tear asunder the modern philosophical backdrop of their lives, and standing in His scorching light with sword unsheathed do battle for their very souls. The myriad myths of wanton mischief spawned by our modern notions move stealthily afoot. Under whose banner next will we find them ready to unfurl their lies?

So, strangely I heard no great applause when the Archbishop finally decided just which way to jump. They who would ordain as clergy those living unrepentantly in sin must surely be dismayed, yet all others would be quite relieved. But wait… with both Judaism and Islam hovering in the wings, I wonder has our Rowan changed his heart and soul or merely just his mind, and what allegiances are now forming together with the shuffling of ecclesiastic slippers before the burning logs of Lambeth’s hearth?