While putting material together for a forthcoming post, I came across an interview given three years ago to this day which I thought worth sharing. It features Revd Dr William Philip, Senior Minister at The Tron Church in Glasgow, and a member of the HART group:1
The context is the then-recent ending of the covid lockdown of 2021 — six or so additional months of restrictions on people’s freedoms while our authorities tried to persuade as many as they could to take novel technology injections with no long-term safety data.
The subjects covered include lockdowns, Christian leadership, church closures and covid vaccine mandates. The transcript — the auto-generated version corrected as best I could — is below with occasional added information and comments:
Neil Oliver: In these troubled and troubling days I know that uncounted numbers of people are struggling in all manner of ways. People are scared, lonely, feeling hopeless and helpless. I listened to the Reverend [William Philip] speak… and by the end of his interview I simply felt better for having listened to him… William… to me these [times of lockdown] have been days and weeks and months… years now like no others that I’ve known. Do you feel the same way?
William Philip: I do. It’s probably been the most strange and difficult period on a national scale in my lifetime that I can remember. But of course… our lifetime has been a hugely privileged one. I’ve not lived through a war and had to fight in a war like my father’s generation did. The last fifty years have been very peaceful [and] prosperous. And I think… perhaps this crisis has revealed a lot about our nation… not all of it good… about our priorities, about our people… so it’s been a very revealing time.
NO: It’s interesting… when you say that… almost as though times of peace and plenty and relative security, while it sounds and is and feels ideal… do you think it has eroded something else and weakened us in certain ways so that, ironically… [during] sustained periods of peace and security we have to be careful even then for other reasons…?
WP: I think that may be true… there was that famous book back in the 1980s by Neil Postman… Amusing Ourselves to Death… talking about the trivialisation of our culture. And I suppose now we’ve moved into a culture of consuming ourselves to death. I think we’ve not had to think about the great big important questions of life and society perhaps in a way that previous generations have, and it’s been to our detriment. And maybe a crisis like this is a wake-up call to do that.
NO: You’ve taken what I and I’m sure many others would call a brave and a principled stand about lockdown and other restrictions and the impact that they had on the people that you were close with. Why… did you feel that it was necessary to get up on your feet and say what you did at the time?
WP: Well I suppose if Christian leaders don’t give a lead, especially on moral matters, who is going to give us a lead? Because politicians are not leaders are they? They’re followers of the votes, and many of those around politicians [are] following the money and they won’t bite the hand that feeds them. And so in many ways popularity and patronage rules today, and that goes against real leadership and especially moral leadership.
The calling to Christian leadership isn’t to popularity. It’s to witness, it’s to speaking the truth, it’s to doing that in season and out of season2 and suffering for it if necessary. In fact the very word “witness” means martyr in the Greek because truth is very rarely popular with the powers that be. That’s why Jesus said, “Woe to you when all speak well of you because that’s what their fathers did of the false prophets.”3
And so I and many other Christian leaders — not just me — have spoken out on matters to do with lockdown… most recently and very particularly in opposing vaccine passports because we think that’s something that’s very dangerous and detrimental to society. It’s quite impossible theologically for the church to shut people out on the basis of not having a health passport, but in a wider way it’s damaging [and] divisive to society.
Health-ism — some sort of health apartheid — is as ugly and horrible as any other ism [such as] racism or any other kind of apartheid. And all of that… when it’s completely illogical and irrelevant medically because whether you have [got] the vaccine or haven’t got the vaccine doesn’t make you any safer or more dangerous to anybody else. Both can catch the virus [and] both can spread it and so on, but the damage will be done even though the benefit will not be gained.
And so it’s important for the health and the well-being of our nation which we care for… that’s why we've stood up on that particular issue, just as we did when gathering for communal worship was was criminalised. That also was something very damaging and dangerous to society, and we have a duty to God and to the nation to speak out about these things whether it makes us popular or not.
[NO] I so agree with what you’re saying but so much of the focus has been on the virus and nothing else… What are we fundamentally neglecting… through this absolute focus on one problem and one set of answers to that problem? What are we missing and forgetting and allowing to dwindle?
[WP] I think we’re missing what is surely one of the great existential questions of our age, which is the question “What does it mean to be human?” What is life and what does really promote human flourishing? The Bible in Christian teaching tells us that human beings are made in the image of God. We are created as spiritual beings for worship in relation to God. We’re created as relational beings in community in relation to our fellows. We’re created as moral beings for responsibility, for stewardship and lordship over creation.
And lockdown has dehumanised people because it removes that personal responsibility, that community… and also it removed worship. That’s why it’s been so very damaging — never mind all of the other multiple harms economically and to health and so on because of shutting down health services… that’s the more terrible because we know now there’s an enormous weight of evidence that tells us that it hasn’t even helped [in] managing the pandemic.
But this key question… “What does it really mean to be human… what is our place in the world?” That’s something I think that people are very, very confused about in our world today. People don’t know who they are, what they are, where their identity is found. We see that confusion increasingly in sexual confusion, in gender confusion, in the whole approach the covid… this whole issue of transhumanism and the relationship between artificial intelligence and humanity. And we’re in real danger I think of losing a fulsome understanding of human life, what it really means to be human… and the biblical view of humanity is much much richer than that.
[NO] Absolutely... And on the strength of what you've had to say, are you receiving contact from people that previously hadn’t looked to the church or to a faith leader? Are you seeing people return to you or… seeking help from you who might otherwise not have sought that help there?
[WP] Yes, I’ve been astonished at the unsolicited contacts that I’ve had from all over the place and from all over the country, all over the world actually. Often people who’ve been formerly atheists, but [as] thinking people they're trying to make sense of what’s going on. They’re recognizing the reality of what they are sometimes calling darkness or wickedness or evil. And they’re seeking an explanation for that, and I think seeing that it’s the Christian worldview that actually explains the world. It chimes with the reality that they are seeing. And so they’re seeking and… many others are trying to to give answers.
In that context, this testimony is well worth a look if you haven’t seen it:
Of course understanding and seeing these things alone isn’t enough. It’s one thing to see that evil is out there. It’s another thing and it’s a big challenge to see actually that evil is in here [points to his heart], and that it’s our own human hearts that are a part of the problem. [There] was that famous story… years back when The Times posed the question… asking people to write in and say what’s wrong with the world. And G. K. Chesterton apparently wrote in and just said two words: I am. Yours sincerely, G. K. Chesterton. And that’s the heart of the issue, and that’s what we’re seeking to explore with people. That’s the rub of course because the call of the Christian gospel is not just to understand these things. It’s a command to repent and to turn away, to recognise that everything we’ve thought and done before has been wrong. And it’s very, very hard to do that, isn’t it? That’s why we find our governments finding it very, very hard to admit mistakes or change attack or anything like that. Repentance — turning — is the hardest thing for the human being to do.
[NO] Yes. I am reminded by what you’re saying of Solzhenitsyn’s great truth about the line between good and evil… not being between political parties and not running through countries or between populations, but running through every human heart. And a fundamental part of understanding what it is to be human and alive is knowing that the monster is not that guy over there but potentially it’s me. And if you’re not mindful of that then you’re the most dangerous person in the room.
[WP] That’s right… somebody was speaking at our church a few years ago and they said, “I’m going to take the very middle verse of the Bible”. Now I don’t know if this really is the middle verse of the Bible or not, but that verse is Psalm 118:8 and it says it’s better to take refuge in [God] than to trust in man. And that actually is the central message of the Bible. It tells you that man is a failure and cannot be trusted. “Put not your faith in princes, in the son of man in whom there is no salvation.”4 Well we’ve discovered that haven’t we in spades over this last year…
Man is untrustworthy, man is a failure. But take refuge in God and there is hope because He is trustworthy and He is a Saviour. And that’s the message that our nation needs to hear in the middle of a crisis. And that’s the message perhaps that hasn’t been heard because the church has been too silent or has been closed down and has been silenced. But that’s a message… of real hope when people are despairing of their governments.
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According to the HART website: “HART is a group of highly qualified UK doctors, scientists, economists, psychologists and other academic experts [who] came together over shared concerns about policy and guidance recommendations relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
