Ceirion H Dewar, a missionary bishop in the Confessing Anglican Church (CAC), has called upon the people of Britain to repent and return to the Christian faith.
The CAC was founded in 2019 and, although not a part of the Anglican Communion, sees its spiritual roots as going back to the earliest days of Christianity in the British Isles.
Bishop Dewar last month wrote an open letter to His Majesty King Charles III, calling upon him to end the “erosion of Britain’s Christian inheritance”.
In recent days some have criticised the King, who is also Supreme Governor of the Church of England and “Defender of the Faith”, for issuing a special message for Ramadan this year, but declining to do so for Easter.
In his latest open letter, Bishop Dewar noted that the King had “not responded to the plea that was set before him”.
Addressing himself to the British people, the bishop said that Christianity had previously been central to British life, describing it as an anchor of truth around which all of the country’s institutions, morals and customs had been built.
That morality, he argued, is now being replaced by something else.
“The moral language that once shaped them [our institutions] is being systematically redefined. We see it within parts of the Church itself, where the call to holiness is softened, and the demands of the age are too often given greater weight than the Word of God. And we are told that this is progress. It is not progress. It is decline!” he said.
This decline, he argues, stems from the willingness to bend and compromise to the spirit of the age, all done at the expense of eternal truth. The final result is a country which is unrecognisable.
“If you have looked at this nation and felt that something is wrong, you are not mistaken. If you have sensed that we are losing something deeper than politics, you are not imagining it,” Dewar continued.
To reverse the decline the people themselves have to be willing repent and to stand for truth, he argued.
“Stand in your homes, and teach your children what is true, even when the world says otherwise. Stand in your churches, and demand the Gospel in its fullness, not a diluted echo of the age. Stand in your communities, and live with a conviction that cannot be reshaped by passing opinion. Stand in the public square, and speak without fear,” he said.
The bishop concluded his open letter with a prayer that God would grant the people of Britain a heart of repentance and courage, and that God would renew the country.
