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The Microcausation and Macrocausation of the Grooming Gang Scandal in England
Grooming
Apparently for fifteen or so years, certain people have sounded a warning or alarm about so-called “grooming gangs” in England. “Grooming” speaks of “sexual grooming,” essentially training children to accept rape or assault as a way of life. They would become then ready facilitators for the predilections of adult perverts.
I had heard the term “grooming” before in years past to push boys toward a future in homosexuality. They do not by nature want or desire that behavior, but through suggestion and promotion in propaganda style, they become increasingly more accepting. Even the federal government talks about this activity in the first paragraph of a presentation:
To keep their conduct secret, perpetrators coerce and “groom.” That is, as sexual contact escalates, they methodically increase the attention and rewards they give to their targets (Robins, 2000). Grooming allows perpetrators to test their targets’ silence at each step. To nurture the relationship, perpetrators make the target feel “special” by, for example, brandishing gifts and/or spending extra time with the target in nonsexual ways, all in an effort to learn whether the target will keep silent (Robins, 2000).
Grooming Gang Scandal
The grooming gang scandal in England I had not heard until less than a week ago, and I was astounded and even shocked by the news. In England it involves mainly adult immigrant males (they are not from England) repeatedly raping young white girls. Apparently there is a racial component to it. It is also socio-economic, because these girls are middle class or lower.
Since I first read about this scandal this last week, I have seen a figure from 10,000 to a million young girls. People actually do not know the number of victims, but I heard Jordan Peterson use the top number, a million. The population of England is about 58 million, so this is an astounding figure. How could a culture, a society, allow this to happen? Why is there not more of an outrage?
The scandal reaches to the present Prime Minister of the UK, Keir Starmer. He was the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Crown Prosecution Service when this criminal activity was rampantly occurring in England. Starmer made a controversial decision not to prosecute certain cases due to perceived issues with victim credibility (this article might also get you up to speed).
Microcausation
As someone diagnoses such a horrific scandal, what is the cause of it? This issue is so gigantic and so deplorable that it signals deep cultural decline that reaches even lower lows than ever. That’s why I’m writing about it. Elon Musk points to authorities who didn’t do enough or tried to cover it up. I would call these types of explanations, microcausation. They are a reason, but not the foundational reason. The microcausation matters, but it isn’t the most significant. The most significant are the macrocausation, which doesn’t change overnight.
The realm of microcausation points to many different causes. The political pressure in England could cause the nation to deal with these. A big voting bloc is angry about this situation. It could even sink the career of Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister.
Leadership
The first and most obvious reason is a lack of courage from a leader. I had not heard of this situation. Maybe you hadn’t either. How? This is kept low profile. Powerful leaders did not want it to become big in England. The media was also complicit. It reminds me of the Roman Catholic Church doing something similar with its priests and their massive number of sexual assaults of children.
Even as I write about Roman Catholicism, I believe the numbers of sexual problems like these are as great or greater in the public school system. It just doesn’t get the attention, because the public schools hold more levers to cover these situations. I’ve seen this first hand.
Absent Parent or Parents
I’m sure, like the United States, England is rife with single parent homes and absent fathers. Even so, do fathers really have the divine right to protect their daughters, even though the state takes away that right. Daughters go running out on their own and parents sit and allow it. I remember a popular fundamentalist preacher in a family conference joking about this: “Where are you going?” Answer: “Out.” Where is “out”? Especially Gen Z think “out” is an appropriate amount of freedom for girls. “Just be careful!”
Part of feminism and women’s rights is the right that moms and girls claim not to listen to the father. They’re big and smart and don’t need to listen to almost anyone. The government very often defends a girls right to become sexual early and then have a secret abortion. They start them young on some kind of pregnancy prevention, anticipating their sexual activity.
This one is the closest to a macrocausation of the microcausations, the break down of the family, but it still is an outgrowth of something more fundamental. Included in this reason is moms outside of the home, so they don’t know what’s happening either. Sadly, some of the moms are at home attempting to self-medicate. Or mom does her hobbies while the kids do who knows what. The first time the mom gets upset is when she happens upon this months later.
Media and Multiculturalism
So the third microcause is the media covering for its political allies. The opportunity for a story is there, but it is punted because it doesn’t help the correct people. The media allows the victims to languish and perish because it doesn’t serve the right political motivation.
Fourth, there is a religious, ethnic, and immigration component that doesn’t harmonize with leftist values. This fits into the leftist DEI agenda. Related to this is multiculturalism, a comfort with perversity, and globalism. White middle and lower class girls become victims of these corrupt viewpoints.
Islam
Fifth, England is 6.5% Moslem. That might seem like a low percentage, but it is very high when it comes to an invasion of Islam. Islam is not natural to England, but the country allowed this to occur because of its leaders warped views. I’ve read that Islam needs only 25% of the population to take over a country. Seventy-five percent of this 6.5% would be happy with Sharia Law taking over all of England. The other twenty-five percent moderates capitulate like they do in most of the Moslem world. The Moslem communities do not stop this behavior.
I still consider these five and several others (I could have written more) to be microcausation. They are serious, but by far not the most serious. In many ways, they are just a bandaid on what’s the most significant causation.
Macrocausation
A culture that allowed grooming gangs to operate almost unfettered in England also exists in the United States. I see two major macro causes for the grooming gang scandal and these causes also are here in the United States. The United States didn’t make a huge jump to transgender men dominating in women’s sports. Somehow homosexual children are the coolest kids in school. No one can or will criticize what’s happening. It’s much more foundational than that.
Elimination of Objective Righteous Culture
One, the elimination of an objective righteous culture. This is our Father’s world, but the culture is Satan’s. He is the Prince of this world, and the churches capitulated on this long ago. It’s easy to see all over. So many examples exist.
There are some weak intermural skirmishes about the culture. That’s it. Generally, the skirmish is over who can get to the weakest possible position the fastest on cultural issues. I’m talking about everything cultural: music, dress, male and female roles, art, beauty, alcohol, appearance, lifestyle, recreation, entertainment, and more. The grooming scandal is in the realm of a deteriorating, crumbling culture. Hardly anyone will say anything about this in public, because that ship has sailed.
The culture will get worse. It will still only get worse. The culture will not get better. It won’t and it can’t. Not until there is an admission that there is such a thing as a Christian or godly culture, a country will keep going down. New technology and inventions will not improve this.
Grooming Scandal a Cultural Issue
The grooming scandal is a cultural issue. A nation could allow its little girls to be raped by men and do almost nothing about it, because very few are serious about the culture. Look at this as a basic in England. They allow men to rape young girls every day, but they arrest a woman praying silently in front of an abortion clinic. That tells you the condition of the culture.
I could just leave that one macro cause and it would seem like enough, but it actually comes out of something that is even more fundamental.
Loss of Authority and Certainty of Scripture
Two, God’s Word has lost its authority and certainty to people. The cultural issues go away, because people don’t think they can make applications of scripture to the culture. Why? If they’re going to do that, they have to be certain, and they’ve lost that certainty for many reasons.
The Bible is there for people as a kind of therapy. It really can make you feel good, buoy you through bad times as you essentially live for yourself. People overall don’t see the Bible as sure enough any more. The seminaries training pastors go along with this. Churches have lost it too.
Seventy-five years ago, almost all churches made application to cultural issues. They were strong and dogmatic. Preachers could and did apply the Bible. Not long before that, almost everyone would agree on these cultural issues.
Non-Essential
So called preachers today turned the cultural issues into non-essentials. This is not a hill to die on. They would say, keep it on the gospel, even though they’re also watering that down.
Much of this capitulation on truth also relates to pragmatism. How can or will a church grow, while taking a stand on cultural issues? People don’t want to hear it. You’ve got to pick and choose your issues. Today, you can still get away with saying a woman is a woman and a man is a man, and bury your stake right there. That’s today’s culture warrior. Be careful not to stray too far from that though.
The grooming gang scandal is shocking. Don’t think it’s going to get better just because you can identify and maybe complain about the microcausation. It will still get worse unless the priority is the macrocausation of such a scandal.
A Useful Exploration of Truth about Christian Nationalism (Part Two)
Seeds of Christian Nationalism
Scripture teaches nothing about anything remotely Christian nationalism for the New Testament church age. Christian nationalism must arise at the most from principles through scripture that permit Christian nationalism. Is that possible? I think a semblance of that is. True believers in Jesus Christ, Christians, could hope for that. However, before I write about that, I will deal with the Christian nationalism movement in the United States, as I see it.
The Christian nationalist movement in the United States arises from the false eschatology of postmillennialism and a false ecclesiology of paedo baptism and communion. I suggest that several factors have contributed to this theonomist style or Christian reconstructionist postmillenial revival.
Recent Embrace of Protestant Theology
Not necessarily in this order, but, one, postmillennialism proceeds from recent new embrace of Protestant theology, some being a new Calvinism, or the “young, restless, and Reformed movement.” Many factors, I believe and have witnessed, led to the attraction to this faction of professing Christianity. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:22: “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.” The latter wisdom, one might also call, “intellectualism.” Perhaps an insipid, superficial evangelicalism swung the pendulum to theological seriousness and the greatest allure to a muscular, Puritanical determinism with heavy historical roots.
Attack on the Male Role in Society
Two, the elimination of and attack on a male role in society and growing egalitarianism pushed young men toward a more masculine view of the world. Postmillennial theonomy embraces not just complementary roles for men and women, but thoroughgoing Patriarchy. This also explains the great popularity of Jordan Peterson, who promotes the significance of the Patriarchy and a unique place for men in the culture.
Other Reasons for the Rise of Christian Nationalism Propositions
Three, men responded to the degradation of the culture. The United States slouches toward Gomorrah. The weakness all around begs for an answer or a reaction. Men don’t like what they are seeing. This corresponds with the decline of the United States on the world stage, a porous border, and decrepit leaders.
Four, the Postmillennials have some effective spokesmen, that contrast with the ineffectiveness of the alternative. I would compare Russell Moore, now editor of Christianity Today, and Douglas Wilson. The former capitulates and whine and the latter puts on the battle fatigues.
Five, even though Trump himself is not a Christian, Christian nationalism dovetails with the rise of Trump. It would take some explaining here, which I don’t think is too difficult, but I’ll leave it at that one sentence.
Premillennialism the Truth
Scripture is plain on the future or how everything will end. It is not postmillennial. Premillennialism represents a grammatical, historical interpretation of scripture. It is how the Bible reads. Premillennialism does not correspond well to a biblical presentation of Christian nationalism.
Based on this understanding of the future, Scott Aniol has written a different position than Christian Nationalism, that he calls Christian Faithfulness (he further argues here). I can’t disagree with anything Aniol says about this and generally agree with his criticism of the positions of Stephen Wolf and Douglas Wilson. I haven’t read Aniol’s new book, Citizens and Exiles: Christian Faithfulness in God’s Two Kingdoms, so I don’t know how far he goes in his vision for the nation.
The Likelihood or Unlikelihood of Christian Nationalism
Without having read Aniol’s book, I’m certain I would go further than Aniol and propose something toward Christian Nationalism without actual Christian Nationalism. I explained some of this in part one. In a refreshing way, Aniol calls himself a Baptist. I am a Baptist. Baptists as one of their distinctives claim the separation of church and state, even if the United States Constitution does not claim that. Baptists have taken strongly a very anti church state doctrine. The Baptists promoted and ratified the first amendment of the Bill of Rights.
Aniol has coined a new position related to the Christian Nationalism debate: Christian Faithfulness. My thinking has not yet congealed into a position. Maybe it won’t get to that and I could hold some version of Christian Faithfulness. I want to and will explain where I am right now.
More to Come
Modernism Is Not an Acceptable Alternative to Postmodernism: Jordan Peterson
Early Experience with Modernism
Growing up in small town Indiana, no one exposed me to modernism. Without anyone telling me, I read the Bible as literal. Everything happened in it just like it read. When I was twelve, my dad took us all off to Bible college in Wisconsin when he was thirty-five years old, but he was never some theologian.
I interacted very little with modernism in college or graduate school. When I wrote papers, I provided alternative views to my position, so I read a little modernism then. Faculty did not assign modernist books to read in a fundamentalist college. The modernist books, I must admit, I used to pad my bibliographies, quoting them in selective fashion.
My theological separation divided the saved from the unsaved. People either received or rejected Jesus Christ. I did not categorize someone a modernist. He just rejected the truth, an unbeliever. Modernism held no attraction to me. If someone was a modernist, through my lens he was just an unbeliever.
More Mature Understanding of Modernism
In graduate school, I took a class, History of Fundamentalism, taught by B. Myron Cedarholm, because the normal teacher, Richard Weeks, was ill. In that class, I heard how that fundamentalism began as a movement in response to modernism or liberalism pervading and then controlling religious institutions. Modernism invaded Southern Baptist seminaries and the Presbyterian, Princeton Theological Seminary. None of this still mattered much for me. It registered as something written on paper, because I had no experience with it.
After marriage and a move to the San Francisco Bay Area to evangelize and then start a Baptist church, I came into recognition of modernism in a personal way, listening to a liberal radio talk show. I listened to the Ronn Owens Show and his interview with Uta Ranke-Heinemann, a female liberal theologian from Germany. She wrote, .Putting Away Childish Things: The Virgin Birth, the Empty Tomb, and Other Fairy Tales You Don’t Need to Believe to Have a Living Faith.
On a regular basis, I then encountered modernists in the San Francisco Bay Area. They went to modernist churches in almost every religious denomination. They often didn’t reject the Bible. Instead, they viewed scripture in a mystical way, not taking it literally. Modernists likely denied the supernatural aspects of scripture. Many times they allegorized the Bible to make it more malleable for their liberal cultural and social causes.
The Arrival of Postmodernism
As years passed, progressivism turned from modernism to postmodernism. Now postmodernists can make modernists seem at least moderate, if not conservative. Postmodernists rejected modernism. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I ask that you consider what I wrote in 2021:
Modernism then arose and said revelation wasn’t suitable for knowledge. Modernists could point to distinctions between religions and denominations and the wars fought over them. Knowledge instead came through scientific testing, man’s observations, consequently elevating man above God. Man could now do what he wanted because he changed the standard for knowledge. Faith for sure wasn’t good enough. With modernism, faith might make you feel good, but you proved something in naturalistic fashion to say you know it. Modernism then trampled the twentieth century, producing devastation, unsuccessful with its so-called knowledge.
Premoderns had an objective basis for knowledge, revelation from God. Moderns too, even if it wasn’t valid, had human reasoning, what they called “empirical proof.” Postmoderns neither believed or liked scripture or empiricism. This related to authority, whether God or government or parents, or whatever. No one should be able to tell somebody else what to do, which is to conform them to your truth or your reality. No one has proof. Institutions use language to construct power.
Postmodernism judged modernism a failure, pointing to wars, the American Indians and institutional bias, bigotry, and injustice. Since modernism constructed itself by power and language, a postmodernist possesses his own knowledge of good and evil, his own truth, by which to construct his own reality. No one will any more control him with power and language.
Dangerous New Acceptance of Modernism
Jordan Peterson
Modernists today very often stand with conservatives on certain principles. When I hear him talk about the Bible, and he does very much, Jordan Peterson sounds like a modernist. In recent days Peterson appeared in a new series on the Book of Exodus and apparently he wrote a book soon published on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. He talked about that in a podcast. In his conversation on Exodus, his interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in a talk about the book of Jonah, Peterson in recent days pushes his modernist position on tens of thousands of especially young men.
What excites many about Peterson’s talks is that he even talks about the Bible at all. He acts enthused about scripture. Peterson thinks the Bible is very important. He puts great effort into communicating his modernist position and interpretations of the Bible. Almost five years ago, I already warned about Peterson, still hoping he might change. He hasn’t and today he’s doubling down on his modernistic approach.
Modernism Versus Divine Verbal Plenary Inspiration
Jordan Peterson does not comment on the Bible like God inspired it. When I say inspired, I mean verbal plenary inspiration. God breathed out every word and all of them in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Perhaps I will put more time into exposing the false interpretations and teachings of Jordan Peterson sometime in the future. In the meantime, please know that Jordan Peterson does not expose what Genesis, Exodus, or almost anything in the scripture actually says. He leads people astray with his false doctrine.
Don’t get me wrong. Peterson says many good things. You and I can rejoice in that. I’m happy he agrees with freedom of speech. He rejects a cancel culture. Peterson accepts a patriarchy. He does not, however, proclaim an orthodox view of God or the Bible, even though he refers to scripture all the time.
Reality and Truth: Celebrity Conservatives Versus True Bible Believers
Perhaps you, like me, as a Christian, pay attention to certain celebrity conservatives, who take many of the same or similar viewpoints as you. You know there are differences. Where is the overlap?
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