Daily Archives: July 21, 2023

A Fall from Grace

These types of headlines have caused many Christians to scratch their heads, wondering how the United States, which was blessed by God in the past, has bowed to such madness of morality and ethics in such a relatively short time.

The United States (USA) was born out of a Christian nation (technically an Anglican nationa protestant denomination that came out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century). The King or Queen of England is still the head of the Anglican Church to this day (the official Church of England).

A USA history textbook from the late 1800s and early 1900s said that the colonists were mostly protestant with a small percentage of Roman Catholics.1 In 1892, US Supreme Court Justice David Brewer ruled that the USA was a Christian nation.2 In 1931, the supreme court again ruled that we are a Christian people.3

Mid-twentieth-century presidents like Harry Truman4 and Dwight D. Eisenhower (who led the military defeat of the evolutionary Nazis in Europe) openly discussed the Christian God and his blessings on America. But today, precious few politicians would dare say such a thing!

Dont get me wrong, there have been plenty of non-Christiansincluding leaders and early American fathers who were not fully on board with the Christian faith and its stated moral code.5 Notwithstanding, the point is that Christian morality held a strong sway in hearts and minds of many peoplenot just in the United States, but across the Western worldfor a long time. Yet the elderly in every Western nation today have seen Christian morality fall like a tree that was suddenly cut off at its roots.

Its no surprise that many liberal (non-conservative) cities in the USA have been repeatedly compared to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19)!6 But again, this is not just a problem in the United States. Sexual immorality, including homosexual actions and gender dysphoria, has now infected much ground in the Western worldEngland, France, Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Spain, New Zealand, Portugal, and the list goes on!

If people are no longer standing on Christian moralitywhich gives us the standard for sexualitythen the obvious question to ask is What religious standard are they now embracing? This brings me to the religion of sexual humanism.

Sexual humanism is a sub-branch of the secular forms of humanism (i.e., secular humanism or its various manifestations). Before we get lost in terminology, allow me to explain humanism first so that you can better understand the religion of secular humanism and thus its daughter, sexual humanism.

The religion of humanism views man as the highest authority, not God. In other words, in this religious framework, mans ideas/opinions/beliefs are elevated to supersede God and his Word (the Bible) as the supreme authority. If you have ever heard the famous mantra Man is the measure of all things, then youve heard humanism preached.

Put another wayhumanism is preached anytime mans ideas are elevated to allegedly be greater than our omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnipresent (everywhere present) holy God of truth. Even if you were to take all the people who have ever lived and combine them together, we have an infinitely small amount of knowledge and power compared to the infinite God of the Bible who created and sustains our very being and existence.

And yet, people have the audacity to think manand hence mans ideas about religion, history, morality, science, and so onis somehow greater than God! Foundationally, there are only two religions in the world: Gods religion and not Gods religion (otherwise known as mans religion, or humanism). Thus, in its broadest aspects, the battle is really just Christianity vs. humanism.

All other religions (which are technically sub-religions of humanism) that do not come from God and his Word (all 66 books of the Bible) have elevated mans ideas one way or another to ultimately take people away from God and his Word. Even if a religion is satanic or demonic, it still comes through the mind of man and is, therefore, humanistic. So, humanism consists of many sub-religions.

In addition to elevating pagan or secular ideas as the ultimate standard, some of these religions are based on various beliefs and ideas of ancient sages. Still other religions come from distortions of Gods Word, such as from alleged prophets (outside the Bible), adding books to the Bible, taking books away from the Bible, trying to change the Bible, and so forth. But regardless, in each case, they take mans variant ideas and neglect what God has to say on the subjectwhether its about origins, God, salvation, the afterlife, morality, etc.

All false religions are humanistic because in every one of these religious systems, mans ideaseither directly or indirectlyhave been used to deceive people into false beliefs. Some of these humanistically influenced religions deviate only slightly from the Bible, whereas others deviate a lot. In general, there are four philosophical categories of humanism.7

In some cases, some of these religions try mixing or syncretizing their view with another sub-religion or even with the Bible (called syncretism or compromise). But the man-made beliefs tend to supersede the plain reading of Scripture in these examples. Simply put, in each instance of humanism intermixing, Gods Word is not the absolute truth/standard in one or more areas.

Chart Notes:

* Many younger SDA (Seventh Day Adventists) have moved away from Ellen Whites teachings. Ellen White was the founder of SDA and a claimed prophetess. Her writings were originally viewed as the inerrant word of God equal to the Bible within SDA. This cultic view led many astray, but now many in the SDA churches are moving away from her writings and back to the Bible as the sole authority, which is encouraging.

** Unitarianism has Jesus as a created being, but the religion has moved so far from Christianity that it could easily be classified as merely a moralistic religion.

*** Oriental, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches are all distinct from one another in hosts of ways. Each can have the correct Christ and the triune God; however, they often add apocryphal books as equal to Scripture or pronouncements from a Pope or Patriarch as equal to Scripture. In some cases in the Roman church, Mary is worshipped and seen as Co-Redemptrix, which is false.

**** Scientology is a mixture of an Eastern religion and a secular religion; hence, it is denoted in both.

***** Syncretism, whether Latin American-style with paganism or mixed with the modern ideas of big bang, evolution, and millions of years, is convoluted. You can indeed get the correct Christ out of it, but there are so many inconsistencies when you mix opposing religionsespecially at a foundational level.

****** Secular Humanism is obviously a secular religion, but with its manifestos (like many other secular religions), it could also be lumped as moralistic religion. These religions are not denoted under moralistic because of their obviously strong ties to other secular religions.

Sexual humanism comes out of the secular forms of humanism (being another subset of this secular religiona denomination if you will). Sexual humanists not only devote themselves to living sexually immoral lives but also to promoting these sexual sins in the culture. In many instances, they try to force others to hold to their religious views of sex and immorality in every area of culture, ranging from politics to classrooms to public company support. This is a very aggressive religion that pushes their sexually deviant agenda on all ages (including young kids and teens), governments, media, businesses, and even Christian churches.

All forms of sexual immorality (also called unchastity) are lumped under the religion of sexual humanism. This religious system can be further broken down into the following various tenets. As a caveat, not all sexual humanists will adhere to all of these tenetsnevertheless, any form of sexual deviancy is part of sexual humanism. In other words, different sexual humanists will often pick and choose among these various tenets of the list below and to various degrees as wellsome are actively involved and others are merely allies (i.e., giving approval). The Bible condemns both positions equally in Romans 1:2432.

Sexual humanism is nothing new, but it has often been associated with ancient religions that began after sin entered the world in Genesis 3. Prior to sin, sex was perfect (Genesis 1:31) within marriage between Adam and Eve. After sin, sexual immorality began. As a point of note, marriage between close relatives was originally acceptable as Cain, Abel, and Seth (three of Adam and Eves many children) could intermarry with their female siblings (Genesis 5:4).8

Noahs grandchildren could intermarry as well after the flood. At the time of Moses (about 14001500 BC), God forbade close intermarriage (now called incest) in Leviticus 18.

Even so, we also see the following examples of sexual immorality in Scripture:

As you can see, sexual humanism is often mixed with many other false religions, and even the religious can be enticed into its practices. Though sexual humanism is not unified into a single organized body, there are many clubs and organizations that propagate this religion today.

Historically, pagans often had rampant sexual sin in various forms. Islam has child brides (pedophilia/cross-generational sex), wife for a night (prostitution), and so on. Modern LaVeyan satanism (the atheistic form) is loaded with sexual sin and pornography.

The modern movement of deviant sexuality has increased, pushing the religion of sexual humanism to the forefront in our culture. Following the progression outlined in Romans 1 of being turned over to immoral lusts, the Western world has gone through the following stages in history:

This brings us to today where we see the rampant worship of deviant sexual practices, transgenderism, and attacks on biblical marriage and family. God says,

In our culture, not only do we see cross-dressing, but we see the futility of sinners minds going so far as to have surgeries to try to alter their own bodies by mutilations to appear as the opposite sex! Such things are a sign of judgment on unbelievers who have rejected their Creator and his design for humanity and biblical sexuality and who thus have been given over to a debased mind that cannot think properly (Romans 1:1828; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 4:1719; Titus 1:1516; 2 Timothy 2:2326).

Mankind was created to be fruitful and multiply, within marriage, and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). But because we are in a sin-cursed and broken world (Genesis 3), mankind throughout history has been enticed to sexual sin. And this has had profound effects even in many local church congregations, ranging all the way from pastors to laymen.

We have seen many pastors and Christian leaders fall from grace into sexual sinand in some cases, weve seen whole congregations promote sexual humanism in their local churches.

Sadly, many local churches and denominations toss aside Gods Word on the subject (usually by heavily reinterpreting the plain meaning of various passages of Scripture) to support sexual sin like homosexuality, fornication, and transgender ideologies. Some pastors or reverends even go so far as to outright deny Scripture (reject Gods authority) in order to justify deviant sexual lifestyles!10 In doing so, Gods Word is demoted, thus allowing certain tenets of sexual humanism to be proclaimed from the pulpit.

When Christianity is mixed with any other religion, Gods clear teachings are mocked. Fundamentally, it is no different than when the Israelites began mixing their godly worship of the one true God with worship of false gods like Baal and Molech. Even Solomon began offering sacrifices to pagan gods due to his sexual deviancy with many pagan women who then influenced him to deny Gods Word. God was not happy with him (Nehemiah 13:26).

For clarification, the terms pagan and paganism are overview terms. They encompass many types of religions, such as mythological and polytheistic religions (e.g., Baal worship, Roman mythology, Germanic/Norse mythology, etc.) as well as pantheistic religions (where the universe or cosmos is all that supposedly exists). Secular religions, like naturalism or materialism, are pantheistic, and so, by definition, they are pagan too. Famous secular atheist Carl Sagan used to open his show Cosmos with the mantra, The universe is all that is, ever was, and ever will be. This statement is outright pantheism, hence paganism.

In fact, when a local church or denomination accepts any form of secular religious views into their church (again, called syncretism) like the big bang, millions of years, evolution, sexual immorality, etc., they are defending paganism and false secular beliefs associated with paganism. Why would a church do this? Consider what God said in Hosea.

Like the ancient pagan religions of the past, the modern secular religious movements commonly deviate regarding sexuality. It is a sad indictment on the church when secular humanistic sexuality (e.g., sexual humanism) is promoted in the church in defiance of God and his Word. And the repercussions of rampant promiscuity, such as abortion and the devaluing of marriage and family, heap further condemnation on those who are involved in false teaching (2 Peter 2).

Jesus Christ is absolutely clear in his Wordrecall that Jesus Christ is the Creator God (John 1; Hebrews 1; Colossians 1) and his Wordthe 66 books of the Biblewas written by the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21).

Some critics call these clobber passages. But note that this nicknaming is only done in an attempt to deceive Christians into tossing these biblical passages aside, thus viewing the arbitrary and fallible opinions of sinful man as superior to God and his Word (again, note the religious aspect of humanism). In other words, it is a subtle method to convince people, especially Christians, to deny God in this particular instance and instead follow the religion of sexual humanism.

But actually, if we look at this claim logically, the term clobber passages is just an epithet/emotive language fallacy.11 There is no logical reason to toss the Bible aside or even reject just these passages. These passages, which are essential to understanding what God is saying on the subject, are not to be tossed aside. And to do so places the rest of Scripture in submission to mans opinion, including other important tenets such as the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus. It is better to clobber with the truth in a gentle and humble effort to help someone come to repentance by the power of the Holy Spirit (e.g., 2 Timothy 2:2426) than for that person to spend an eternity in hell.

From another biblical perspective, God commands purity, and as a result there will be blessing (yes, blessing and encouraging) within sexuality in only one context. We are to keep sexual activity within marriage between a naturally born man and a naturally born woman.12

Today, were seeing the religion of sexual humanism being promoted with little restriction at state schools (schools that are funded by the state and public tax dollars). A dead giveawaythe LGBT flagis waving in grade schools and grammar schools! And with the increasing number of LGBT clubs, homosexuality and transgenderism are not only being encouraged, but now are also being imposed as standard beliefs at many state schools.

Stop and ponder this: adults are talking to children about sex and encouraging deviancyusually without the parents knowledge. Sometimes it is done to help keep it a secret from parents. Normally, such people are called sexual predators. But if it is done under the label of teacher and its backed by administration, then its (somehow) called being loving or compassionate to the student.

Look at a parallel of thiswhat if an intermediary manager at a company was talking about and encouraging pornography use and pushing their employeesoften privatelyto consider new sexual activities and partners . . . and then that manager told them not to inform their supervisor? This is called sexual harassment, which normally results in people getting fired and companies getting sued.

Yet state schools do it openly with young children, and many times principals and school boards encourage imposing this on children, who really should not have to deal with these concepts until they are much older and more mature physically and emotionally. Its no wonder that sexual abuse is rampant in state schools. Research done in 2015 in the US revealed some shocking statistics.

Note, these stats do not include senior year, when many of the kids are turning 18. But surely this abuse doesnt suddenly just stop then, and any sexual contact, regardless of whether the student is supposedly an adult, between a student and a teacher is (as it should be!) a criminal act of sexual predation because the teacher is in a position of power! So as a conservative number, 1 out of every 10 children in state schools in the United States were sexually abusedbear in mind that these were the students that werent too afraid to speak up! If you include the proclamation and encouragement of sexual deviancy, like premarital sex, homosexual behavior, or transgenderism, then this number would likely shoot up drastically. This statistic also doesnt include peer-to-peer issues.

When looking at sexual harassment in state schools, statistics conducted by the American Association of University Women published in 2022 state,

Unfortunately, sexual harassment and violence continue to be prevalent in elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States. According to AAUWs own research, nearly half of students in grades 7-12 experience sexual harassment. . . .

Sexual harassment and assault are also shockingly prevalent on college and university campuses. AAUWs own research revealed that two-thirds of college students experience sexual harassment. Studies have also found that approximately 26% of all female undergraduate students and 6.8% of all male undergraduate students have experienced sexual assault.15

It doesnt take a genius (its not rocket science!) to figure out that teachers talking to kids about all sorts of sexual activity can easily lead to sexual harassment and abuse from both teachers and their peers who are now thinking sexually about those surrounding them. The fact that state-funded government schools are encouraging sexuality at younger and younger ages and LGBT beliefs on children of all ages is a recipe for sexual predation. Parents, beware what you are sending your children into at a government-funded elementary, middle, high school, and college/university level. Parents who dont want their children sexually abused and taught homosexuality and transgenderismbut who send them to state schools where such wicked things are rampantneed to carefully consider how and where their children spend much of their time!16 17

Law is a biblical concept. God is the ultimate Lawgiver, and he has imposed certain laws for man for our good.

It has been like this from the beginning. Even deeper to ponder is that God upholds the laws of nature and the laws of logic for existence to be possible (Hebrews 1:3). As we are made in the image of a law-giving God, he also gave us dominion over the world (Genesis 1:2627).

When man sinned in Genesis 3 and committed high treason against God, we became corrupt in every part of our being. Mans unrighteousness led to judgment with the global flood (Genesis 68). After this, mans heart was still hard (Genesis 8:21). God gave the law through MosesGenesis through Deuteronomy. The law is defined in detail with judges, executives, inheritance laws, marriage laws, laws against sexual immorality, and so on. The Law of Moses is often summed up in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:317, NKJV):

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved imageany likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbors house; you shall not covet your neighbors wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbors.

However, the law can be further summed up as Matthew 22:3540 (NKJV) says:

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Romans 13:910 reiterates this passage of Scripture. With that being said, nations all over the world have laws. The problem is that many of these laws are not the best. When they mimic Gods law, they are good (do not murder, do not steal, and so on). When they have not been modeled around the law of an all-knowing God, they fall short. Simply put, a nation with laws based on mans word will always fall short compared to a nation with laws based on Gods Word.

This brings me to US laws that have deviated from Gods standard over the years. For instance, in the most powerful show of sexual humanistic power, our government has now demoted marriage (between a man and woman) and reinterpreted it to include homosexual relationships, which is sexual immorality!

The government, in an obvious abuse of its power, is trying to force this new view of pseudo marriage on Bible-believing Christiansdemanding they acknowledge this new definition over what God says marriage iswhich is a violation of the civil rights of Christians. This is an obvious case of the religion of humanism being imposed in the US at the highest level. This decision was defended by the US supreme court in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015.

In other words, the government is demanding that Christians must bow down and worship their humanistic view of pseudo marriage and deny what God clearly says on this subject. If not, they can be sued and attacked in many ways. This is a clear example of Christians being denied their right to the free exercise of their religion.

My dear Christian brethren, this is no different from bowing down to the golden statue and the threat of the fiery furnace in Nebuchadnezzars day in Daniel 3. Even in the New Testament, Christians in the early church who didnt bow to government-imposed religion were often attacked, beaten, arrested, and tortured, even to the point of death. (And sadly, this type of persecution is still happening to Christians around the world in countries that are very hostile to the Christian faithsuch as Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, North Koreaand even Canada, Poland, and the UK to a certain degree!)

Consider the plundering of the property of Christians and their early struggles and sufferings in Hebrews 10:3234 (NKJV).

To Christians reading this, the secular world is attacking our faith in an effort to impose secular religions on ussuch as with sexual humanisms tenet of pseudo marriage. We must stand firm and keep our eyes on the prize of heaven because this temporary world will one day be destroyed, and sinners will be judged for all eternity if they do not repent and turn to Jesus for their salvation. Consider these verses from Acts 5.

God created and defined marriage, which meansregardless of what fallible/sinful mankind saysany other definition is not marriage. (Rather, its merely a mirage!) The supreme court has made errors in their decisions in the past, like the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision on March 6, 1857 (regarding slavery), or the Roe v. Wade decision on January 22, 1973 (regarding the killing of innocent children).

Thankfully, by Gods grace, these horrible decisions were finally reversed. Pray that God will reverse these attacks on marriage by those who unwittingly (or intentionally) impose the religion of sexual humanism from the highest positions in the US government on Christians (and in other Western nations too)! Oh, how our once-Christianized nations have fallen indeed.

Every king, president, supreme court justice, governor, dictator, and government leader of any nation that disobeys the Lords standards will still stand before our holy God in judgment and give an account for their actions.

But for Christians, those who put their trust in the Lord, be still and know that God is God. For we know that God, who is above these rulings, hates these iniquitous decrees (Isaiah 10:14). And remember, God still sits on his throne with all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). It should be a reminder that we should be crying out to God for help in all matters and continuing to pray for our leaders to do good and repent of their sin and turn to Christ (Philippians 4:67; 1 Timothy 2:12).

Ultimately, it doesnt matter what the government says; we must continue to share the gospel and the commands of Jesus Christ, the King of kingsand Christ is in the position of having all authority on heaven and on earth, above any government official who comes and goes. The fact is that we may face persecution for it. But we can pray for boldness to do what honors God, especially as we see these freedoms eroding. As godliness is eroded in our culture, so are our freedoms (as freedom is a Christian concept emanating from the freedom given to us by our Creator).

If this sexual humanistic religion has influenced you, I encourage you to repent of your sin (this means to turn from it in a humble way and sorrowfully return to Jesus Christ who is the Creator and the Savior). Then find a local Bible-believing church that can help you grow in your faith.

The religion of sexual humanism is permeating our Western culture. We have now had entire generations of kids trained in this religionand yet many of them have no idea this religion was imposed upon them.

Any time mans deviant ideas about sex are elevated to supersede what God says in the Bible, a red flag should immediately go up in your mind as you recognize this as sexual humanism. It is time to get back to Gods Word in every area of life, especially when it comes to sex, marriage, gender, and family, as these have profound impact on society.

Excerpt from:

The Religion of Sexual Humanism - Answers In Genesis

Seven years ago on Friday, a 31-year-old man got behind the wheel of a 19-tonne lorry and purposefully drove it down Nices Promenade des Anglais at speed as crowds celebrated Frances Bastille Day. Eighty-six people were killed, including 14 children, the image of an infants corpse wrapped in foil beside a toy shocking a country that had grown wearily used to violence.

The previous November, 130 people had been murdered across Paris in a series of attacks which reached their most intense savagery at the Bataclan. This followed earlier atrocities that year at the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish supermarket in the French capital. In all cases the attackers were of North African origin, although often born and raised in France.

Visiting the country that summer felt quite strange, with soldiers stationed at every conceivable public place amid a sense of acute tension. Even in a small villageftein Provence, four soldiers and four armed police walked around guarding all entrances. It brought backchildhood memories of Northern Ireland, and of visiting Israel during the Second Intifada. Indeed, this was the phrase that had started to be used to describe the state of emergency:the French Intifada.

Frances refusal to recognise immigrants as anything but French has often been blamed for the widespread sense of alienation

The recent violence in Paris and elsewhere,which saw attempts to ram the home of a mayor, once again highlighted the trouble the country has with integration. But the French police uniondescribing themselves as being at war with vermin illustrated a different mindset to the English-speaking world, and a far more belligerent approach to the problems of diversity.

Like Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, France has had difficulties assimilating the children of immigrants from beyond Europe, yet its recent history has proved especially violent and troubled. Britain has jihadi terrorism 2017 was especially grim but it has never reached such intensity.Last week, as over 130,000 police officersstood guard to protect the Republic on the day of its celebration, it is worth considering the journey that brought it to such a state.

Analysts have often compared Britains state multiculturalism with Frances system oflacit, which tends to downplay the existence of communities even to the point of not taking demographic statistics. Although neither countrys approach has entirely been a success, Frances refusal to recognise immigrants as anything but French has often been blamed for the widespread sense of alienation. Others point to the housing system, which tends towards concentrations of North and West Africans in suburbanbanlieues, or the less laissez-faire economic policy which results in higher unemployment (in exchange for better social security).

While they no doubt play a part, the biggest single difference is history, asAndrew Hussey recounted back in 2014 inThe French Intifada, in particular Frances history with North Africa. To put it in British terms, imagine that Britains rule in Pakistan had involved not a small number of administrators and soldiers but instead hundreds of thousands of British settlers arriving in the country, many with the intention of making it a new America (i.e. driving the natives out).

That Britain had declared Pakistan an integral part of the country, and that, rather than scarpering in indecent haste when the empire began to disintegrate, Britain had dug in to preserve its rule in a sadistic war of independence, one in which natives and white settlers committed countless atrocities against each other. And that this violence had spilled into Britain with assassination attempts and terrorism, by both sides, destabilising the country to the point where there was talk of a coup. And that this was happening just as large-scale immigration to the colonial power was taking place.

Britain experienced nothing like as much violence in the dying days of empire, and indeed the only real comparison with our history was the moment when there was almost all-out conflictbetween Britains Protestant and Irish Catholic populations before the first world war.

If French politicians so casually talk of civil war between its right wing and the Algerian-descended population, it is because it has already played out this conflict before one that was never healed, and so invites a sequel.

Hussey describes first arriving in Lyon in the 1980s with the typical left-wing worldview of a Manchester University graduate. This was a period when youth politics in Britain was moving firmly to the Left and antiracism was becoming the norm. He was taken aback by the attitudes in his new home.

Lyon, despite being Frances second city, is somewhat insular, having less of an international profile than smaller centres like Marseilles or Bordeaux. It also has a long-standing link with the occult, including necromancy and satanism in 1993Le Pointcalled it Lyon, capitale de letrange. It also has a sense of itself as being in opposition to Paris, representingLa France profondeand with a strong conservative tradition. Indeed, it is home to a university that, by British standards, is very right wing and still has a nationalist strain within its student body (the Anglophone presumption that students are left wingdoes not always hold on the continent).

It was in this city that rioting erupted in the summer of 1981, soon after the election of Franois Mitterrand, the countrys first left-wing president since the war, and a moment that had inspired hope for the countrys progressives. This was the first taste of unrest involving the countrys North African population. More was to come three years later in Vnissieux, a suburb of the city, which led to a week-long occupation and the involvement of more than 4,000 armed police officers. Even then, people talked of a new French civil war.

The earlier generation of French Arab youth were secular and leftist. They also believed in the right to smoke dope, drink alcohol, chase girls of all ethnic extractions, and form rock bands, Hussey writes. This was quite similar to the experience in Britain with the politicised young Asians of the 1980s, as outlined inKenan MaliksFrom Fatwa to Jihad. In particular, they modelled themselves on black Americans who, with their outsized cultural power and charisma, had since the 1960s become role models for non-white minorities across Europe.

Black French youth today still have a strange sort of Anglophilia, influenced by rap music and Premier League football, which explains why so many kids in the banlieues are called Steeve, Marky, Jenyfer, Britney or even Kevin. He writes that They dont always get the spelling right, but the sentiment is straightforward: we are not like other French people; we refuse to be like them. (Kevin is also popularwith working-class whites inFrance).

The housing situation plays a major part in creating a sense of separation. In all French towns and cities with a significant immigrant population, there has been a singular failure of vision and imagination around the issue of the banlieues. The problem is both simple and complex. It is simple in that the people who live there are angry and unhappy. It is complex in the sense that these people do not necessarily live in tangible, material poverty but rather in a kind of spiritual poverty. This is because they do not belong here. No one does. This is the secret truth of the banlieues of Lyons and its replicas across France.

Living in the soulless housing projects, North African communities rely on traditional structures to help social solidarity, withcads(chiefs) andgrands frres(big brothers) who ensure safety and order. As with elsewhere in Europe, much of the tension comes from the clash between a clannish population and aWEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic) one.

Algeria, despite the war with Islamic fundamentalists, is not an especially religious country way less so than Pakistan and French Muslims are not that observant. But belief and identity are separate things, and as Islamism rose in strength across the wider Middle East, so the Faith of the Other proved to be the most powerful force among people often made to feel ashamed of their ancestry.

The result is a population living in a state of acute alienation. Hussey witnesses a crowd of angry youths at the Gare du Nord, the borderland between these two worlds, in a stand-off with police, an event he describes as thrilling and frightening. This was anti-civilisation in action a transgression of every code of behaviour that holds a society together. They shouted Nik les schmitts (Fuck the cops), or Fuck the police in English, but on occasion he noticed that they were also shouting Naal abouk la France! Fuck France!

It was during the OctoberNovember 2005 riots in Clichy-sous-Bois, on the eastern outskirts of Paris, that the media first talked of the French Intifada. As with recent events, it was sparked by abavure, or blunder, the word given to the kind of police cock-up that regularly ends with an innocent person dying or being injured.

The violence subsided after two weeks, although it helped the career of Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, who called the rioters racaille (which Hussey translates as scum, though others compare it to the milder riff-raff or rabble).

The riots then, as now, attracted a great deal of coverage in the Anglophone world, and it was generally agreed that the severity of the crisis had been exaggerated by the English-speaking media, who knew little of France and used the news of the French riots as a distraction from their own problems with immigration and immigrants in their own countries.

Indeed, in France it is very easy to not know these riots are going on. My mother visited Paris during the recent disturbances and said that you wouldnt have any idea there was anything up. But that, of course, is part of the problem. Its not uncommon for contemporary Parisians to talk aboutla banlieuein terms that make it seem as unknowable and terrifying as the forests that surrounded Paris in the Middle Ages, Hussey writes.

Modern France works under a system oflacit, which guarantees the moral unity of the French nation, the Republique indivisible. The principle of hard secularism dates to the early 20th century and the bitter culture wars over the role of the Catholic Church. But for the children of migrants, he writes,lacitcan seem to resemble the civilising mission of French colonialism. Unlike the British, who were not interested in turning colonial subjects into little Englishmen, Frances empire was motivated inpart by a desire to make colonial subjects French.

For some, the current violence is merely the continuation of a long war between France and its Arabs

In the 19th century, France began to describe itself as une puissance musulmane (a Muslim power), and this system famously reached its most absurd with Berber children in Algeria learning about their Gaulish ancestors. In contrast, the British had an attitude to empire that was effectively more racist, believing that colonial subjects couldnt be like us, but it also carried a certain amount of standoffish respect because, even if inferior, theyre fine as they are.

This approach would continue to some extent as the empires followed Britain and France home. British-style multiculturalism has its downsides: in particular, it helped to promote religious identity through often dubious community leaders but neither has Frances civilising mission created a common sense of nationhood between thegris those children of empire considered neither white nor black and thefils de Clovis, as they call the white French.

The housing system certainly plays a part. Unlike London, where government housing tends to be heaviest in the most central (and expensive) boroughs, France reserves the land insidePariss Priphriqueand its projects are kept outside, especially concentrated to the north-east. These used to be white indeed they had a significant Jewish presence but they have since fled, often complaining of intimidation.

Many British cinema viewers were introduced to thebanlieuesby the 1995 filmLa Haine, which starred Vincent Cassell as Vinz, a young Jewish man in a multiracial gang. But Hussey finds the film unconvincing, because I suspect that a Jew could never be friends with blacks and Arabs in this way. Also, although I know plenty of Jews in Paris, I dont know a single Jew who lives in the banlieues, even though at one time the Jewish community flourished in the suburbs there are still synagogues in Bagnolet and Montreuil which date from the 1930s.

Indeed, Frances Jews, whose numbers were hugely depleted by the Holocaust, have probably suffered most in this conflict. In January 2006, Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old mobile phone salesman, was invited out on a date with a French-Iranian woman called Yalda; he was seized by men in balaclavas and found, three weeks later, naked and tied to a tree. He died on the way to hospital. She later crowed that, when their victim was seized, he screamed for two minutes with a high-pitched voice like a girl.

Halimi had been tortured for three weeks, and residents of the block had heard his screams and the laughter of those torturing him, but had done nothing. No one called the police.

Fifteen youths from the Bagneux district of southern Paris were arrested, a group calling themselves the Gang of Barbarians who expressed a hatred of rich Jews. The leader, an Ivorian who had doused his victim in petrol and set fire to him, said he was proud of what he did.

What gave this horrific story an extra chill was how few came to the Jewish communitys defence. In a country where historical guilt about wartime trains to the east hangs in the air, perhaps most memorably related inAu revoir, les enfants, they just went quiet all the way to the top.

After Ilans murder the Chirac government disassembled about social problems in the banlieues, and only Sarkozy, of partly Sephardic heritage, called it an anti-Semitic crime. One Tunisian-French Jew told Hussey of the historic echoes of the Nazi period, when Jews died and everybody pretended everything was all right.

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Hussey finds anti-Semitism widespread in the banlieue, residents bandying around phrases such assale juif,sale yid,sale feuj,youpin,youtre this latter term dates from the 1940s and so, with its echoes of the Nazi deportations, contains a special poison. All of these racist epithets were widely used. I heard all about the crimes of the Jews, yet it was hard to find anyone who had met a Jewish person.

Husseys book title was prescient, published just as the violence began to intensify into something much more serious, fuelled by the chaos of the Syrian war and the rise of Isis. The first victims were Jews.

In March 2012, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler was dropping off two boys, aged 5 and 3, at the Ozar HaTorah school in Toulouse, when a gunman approached and shot all three dead. Nearby, teachers and pupils thought the shots were fireworks. The killer then grabbed an 8-year-old girl, Myriam Monsongo, and blasted a bullet through her temple.

The media at first believed the killer to be a neo-Nazi, as the previous week two soldiers of North African origin had been killed in a similar way.But then a journalist took a phone call from a man claiming full responsibility for the attacks, saying it was revenge for Afghanistan and the treatment of the Palestinians. The killer, Mohammed Merah, was soon confronted by police while heavily armed and shot dead by a sniper.

Toulouse was followed, after the publication of Husseys book, by a series of horrors that led the President to declare a state of emergency. This was not just the Hebdo massacre, Bataclan and Nice, but numerousstreet rammings, church attacksand other acts of terror both by organised groups and lone wolves.

The Intifada has died down since, but the rage at its heart remains an anger that runs deep to the first arrival of the French in Algiers in 1830. And if many young French of North African descent see their revolt as revenge for colonialism, it is an idea not lost on the countrys Right, either. Indeed, for some, the current violence is merely the continuation of a long war between France and its Arabs.

This article first appeared on Ed Wests substack, the Wrong Side of History.

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The rise of the French Intifada - The Spectator