When is a Church not a Church? Leftism and the hollowing-out of institutions

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Any Christian connected with the Church of England, and observing and experiencing its transformation, will be confronted by the teasing question of "When is a Church not a Church?" - but the problem is much more widespread both within churches and within modern society.

The phenomenon is one of hollowing-out an institution, and replacing it with something else; removing the functional reality from the inside of an organization but retaining the shell of appearances and rhetoric.

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I personally don't believe that this has anything significant to do with the abstract strategies of Leftist intellectuals - I think it is simply what happens as a consequence of the long term insidious destructive evil of Leftism when applied to strong and/or necessary social functions.

In the Church of England the contrast between the shell (beautiful architecture, beautiful music, rich vestments, intermittently the use of sublime language) and the rotten pulpy slimily nasty innards can be particularly stark - but it is to the credit of the Church of England that the process of evisceration has been and is, even yet, a constant topic of public discourse.

There is much less discourse about much more extreme eviscerations which have been achieved over the past few decades - Oxford and Cambridge, the Police Force, the Legal profession, Medicine, the BBC... all the major pillars of English society have been hollowed out and all are in much, much worse shape than it apparent from their superficially similar external features.

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So extreme is this that these major institutions have substantially reversed or inverted their functions - especially in terms of changes or 'reforms' which are introduced: 'reforms' have been for many years and continue almost always to be directed towards the destruction of the organizations primary ascribed function.

Indeed, overarching all of these is a fiercely implemented rule that disallows discourse on social primary functions - it is taboo within institutions to discuss the primary role of the institutions and how to achieve it - this is regarded either as crazily day dreamingly idealistic or - when persisted with - mean, nasty and fascistic in its disregard of the sensitivities of... um... vulnerable and oppressed groups... or something.

To discuss primary functions is taboo, because it might upset someone in a protected group; but to upset those who actually perform the primary functions is fine because they are an over-privileged, arrogant, crass elite.

And this the hollowing proceeds - month by month and year by year: no discussion of primary function, endless 'sensitive' debate and change in relation to Leftist political issues. Very soon there is nothing remaining inside of the shell, and the organization is moving with considerable momentum in the opposite direction from functionality, and staffed with a greater and greater majority of people who have no interest in, and may well be incapable of performing, the original function.

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Eventually we get a situation like the Church of England, where the organization as a whole (although within in are individual exceptions, dwindling) is anti-Christian in its net effect - and instead more and more (and more) pro-Leftist in its concerns and activities, to the point that the mass majority of the personnel could not (even if they wanted to, which of course they don't) perform the proper functions of the Church - ditto Oxford and Cambridge, the police, the BBC and so on.

Internally generated reform is beyond possibility, and any reform applied would therefore have the first step of removing a large majority of personnel - especially senior personnel - and would therefore be met by maximal resistance.

Thus reform (incremental change) becomes impossible and the whole organization must be replaced by an institution which actually 'does what it says on the tin'.

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The problem is that this now applies to all major social institutions in the UK. They are all hollow shells filled with amorphous Leftism.

The problem, therefore, is one of total societal collapse due to the purposive functional incapability of institutions.

This is new territory - it has never happened before in human history - because it has never been able to happen before.

And the longer things continue without collapse, the greater the internal rot, the less will remain after collapse and the vaster the scale of institutional rebuilding that would be required.

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But of course that won't happen. There will either be chaos and chaos - or else a much simpler society will be imposed on a much smaller remaining population with what will seem like astonishing speed.

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