When I read Peter C. Glover’s article about the attack on Christian belief in the UK and the parallel decline in morality, it brought me back to a very dispiriting speaking trip I took there last month.
When I arrived in London, the country was all atwitter over a 13-year-old boy named Alfie Patten becoming a father. Photos of the lad, his 15-year-old girl friend, and their baby were ubiquitous in the newspapers, and the story was the buzz on television. The country was upset: How, commentators demanded, have things come to the pass that so many children are giving birth! Â (There was speculation that Alfie might not be the father since the girl was apparently sleeping with several boys concurrently when she became pregnant. But that is no matter to the point of this post.)
Considering the widespread outrage about Alfie, imagine how fast my jaw dropped when I read a front story in the Sunday Times reporting that a pamphlet to be issued to parents by the government would urge them not to teach their kids right from wrong when it comes to sex . From the story :
Parents should avoid trying to convince their teenage children of the difference between right and wrong when talking to them about sex, a new government leaflet is to advise. Instead, any discussion of values should be kept “light” to encourage teenagers to form their own views, according to the brochure, which one critic has called “amoral” . . .
It advises: “Discussing your values with your teenagers will help them to form their own. Remember, though, that trying to convince them of what’s right and wrong may discourage them from being open.
This is nothing less than a war on virtue, and it leads directly to an amorality that produces 13-year-old fathers and 15- year-old girls who have several boyfriends, all of whom are enjoying sexual “privileges.”
It’s not as if the country’s leadership doesn’t know how to delineate right from wrong. The ruling class certainly isn’t fuzzy about the purported moral wrongness of producing large carbon footprints! Perhaps that is because environmental panic does not support traditional Judeo-Christian moral philosophy.
The concurrent stories of sex education pamphlets and Alfie, the boy father, vividly illustrate the cause and effect consequence of relativism that has so seriously undermined British social cohesion. Glover’s analysis may answer the crucial question of why a once great nation could sink so completely into utter moral befuddlement.
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