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Dr Joe Boot: Andrew Cain and the flag of revolution

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In this piece, Dr Joe Boot, Christian Concern's Wilberforce Director, writes about Channel Four's "skillful" video collaboration with Andrew Cain. The short video carefully depicts a culturally marxist 'justice' narrative of a victimised homosexual vicar persecuted by his bishops who do not endorse his actions or beliefs. He says it is time for the church to respond to the propaganda of Channel Four and Andrew Cain with the Word of truth, and subject him to church discipline.
 

Channel Four News has recently produced a slick piece of media propaganda of an all-too-common and familiar type today. Its aim? The ongoing promotion of the cause of radical sexual revolutionaries seeking, by war of attrition, to force the Christian church (in this case the Church of England) to celebrate a socially ‘progressive’ journey into a humanist utopia by means of gradual surrender to the queer theory juggernaut plowing its rapid course through our cultural institutions.

The short video features the now notorious Andrew Foreshew-Cain, the first active Anglican clergyman to ‘marry’ his male partner in defiance of both scripture, the churches teaching and the House of Bishops. Andrew Cain, still an ordained member of the Anglican clergy (to the bemusement of many), is fast becoming the new poster-boy for highlighting the churches alleged victimization of the self-styled LGBTI community. Channel Four has skillfully collaborated here in sponsoring the culturally Marxist ‘justice’ narrative of a victimized homosexual vicar being ‘persecuted’ by a nasty church because the bishops won’t support his defiance nor officially ‘celebrate’ a pagan religious movement that seeks the total destruction of a Christian (and normative) understanding of human sexuality, marriage and family, and its replacement with a pansexual, androgynous ideal. Once again the new champions of tolerance will not tolerate any disagreement with or resistance to the new religious orthodoxy of the queer revolutionaries. Heads must roll if the latest idol of human reason and progress is not enthroned in every Christian citadel.

The video claims that Andrew Cain’s church was ‘vandalized’ because someone removed the rainbow and transgender flags – the signs and symbols of the revolution – from outside his (or more accurately the diocese’s) church building. He expresses both anger and shock that anyone would dare to do such a thing, and in the face of their removal he is defiant. Yet at the same time he demonstrates no awareness of the anger and shock many people feel at his open sin and rebellion, nor their astonishment that he would dare to bring such disgrace upon himself and the church by his immoral and presumptuous action. Certainly one might rightly ask who committed the first act of vandalism here. The desecration of the church of Jesus Christ with the open display of the symbols of anti-Christianity is itself an act of vandalism to the property of the Church. There is a strong case to be made that the bishops in the church ought to remove such provocative symbols from the church’s property in their diocese; displaying the flags of the gender-queer movement in God’s sanctuary is as contradictory to the plain message of the gospel as hanging the crescent moon of Islam from the cross on the steeple. But of course such an action would be called bigotry and hate by the numerous elite supporters of the revolution. As far as they are concerned it is fine for businesses, schools and places of work to be required to display such symbols, but the church must not be allowed to remove them from its own buildings, and nor should anybody else. To do so is vandalism.

In a most telling series of images the allegedly victimized vicar is repeatedly depicted – in a brazen act of self-righteous sacrilege – draping the flag of the sexual revolution over the communion table in the centre of the church where the Eucharist is administered, symbolically declaring that sexual perversions are not sinful; that full communion with Christ is open to all unrepentant people living in lifestyles that deliberately violate God’s creational law and purpose; and that no church discipline should apply to him or anyone else for their actions.

Moreover, in the course of the piece Cain shows contempt for the authority of Scripture and specifically for the Church of England’s House of Bishops. He considers the teaching of the Church homophobic (a socially-contrived psychological label designed to silence dissenters), and summarily dismisses the House of Bishops and their ‘silly rules.’ Cain doesn’t care what the church, the bishops or scripture says – his defiance is declared, open and unrepentant. The cultural revolutionaries among the elites are on his side. God himself must not be permitted to stand in the way of the goddess of the new reason and her equalitarian regime.

What this piece does demonstrate clearly is that the placating apologies of weak-willed and theologically aberrant bishops attempting to appease the new cultural priesthood – who simply shout ‘tyranny’ in response from their spiritual Place de la Bastille – have predictably fallen on deaf ears. The church’s attempts at compromise with this massive religious and cultural force is a fool’s errand; it is not only pointless and ineffective, it is an implicit surrender that only encourages the revolutionaries to believe they are on the brink of total victory. According to Andrew Cain, these church apologies are akin to habitual ‘marital abuse’ (an ironic metaphor given his distortion of marriage) and nothing more, because the official policy of the church has not yet changed – as though the basic creational distinctions of male and female, and the institution of marriage, which is a picture of the gospel, were a matter of mere social policy to be reviewed and updated as fashion dictates! For Cain, until ‘the policy’ does change, there will be no peace, but only defiance and an open contempt for biblical authority structures in the church. Indeed this angry revolutionary for the anti-thesis (against God’s thesis), in open violation of his ordination vows and the teaching of the church, will continue to paint himself as the heroic victim and warrior for the new righteousness, displaying the colours of the revolution on the property of God with impunity.

So what will the COE bishops do about Andrew Cain's very public assault on their ‘silly rules?' I suspect, absolutely nothing. When compromise has gone as far as it has in the COE, more useless appeasement usually follows in the hope of escaping the hungry crocodile of elite opinion and social condemnation for another day. Andrew Cain is waving the trans flag but the bishops, in their failure to publically discipline Cain and strip him of his ordination and authority, are already waving a white one. By contrast, the apostle Paul, that great bishop of the church declared:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.… Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.… I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? (1 Cor. 5:1-2, 6-12).

If the COE bishops fail to follow Paul’s example and judge those inside by expelling the flagrantly immoral man claiming to be a brother and priest, the rainbow colors of the revolution will soon unfurl atop of every Cathedral and Parish in Britain and it will not be long before the hold-outs are unceremoniously ejected from their houses of worship. It is time for the church to respond to the propaganda of Channel Four and Andrew Cain with the Word of truth. It is time to replace appeasement with faithfulness. Andrew has gone the way of our ancient ancestor Cain and is already neck deep in the rebellion of Korah ... the wise will not go with him.