Healing for the Nation

An English judge, Lord Denning, spoke the following words during an address to the Lawyer's Prayer Union in 1952:

“It is, I suggest to you, a most significant thing that a judge should draw… his principles of justice from the Christian commandment of love. I do not know where else he is to find them… The common law of England has been moulded for centuries by judges who have been brought up in the Christian faith. The precepts of religion, consciously or unconsciously, have been their guide in the administration of justice.”

Compare these words, from sixty-five years ago, with those spoken recently by High Court judge, Sir James Munby, in a lecture to the Law Society in London:

“Religion is no longer the business of judges… The courts should not try to be guardians of morality because there is no longer one definition of right and wrong in the wake of the sexual revolution… Judges should now take people as they find them... Beliefs about matters such as sex outside marriage or homosexuality held by the majority in the early 1960s are as distant to modern Britain’s as ancient civilisations such as Nineveh or Babylon.”

At this season of celebrating the birth of Jesus, there can be no doubt that the Christian foundation of the justice system in Britain is now being replaced by a confusing mixture of ideologies based in secular humanism. It would be a hopeless situation but for the fact that God is in ultimate authority, is unchanging, and is always ready to hear the prayers of His people, if we humble ourselves.

Prayer: Father, we humbly confess that our nation is sinning against You as we increasingly reject the ways of justice that You have given us in Your word. We are rapidly abandoning a Christian heritage that has sustained our country for hundreds of years. Father, forgive us and heal our land. Amen.