RODNEY HIDE: Book Review - Pilgrim: Multiculturalism, Diversity and Civil Religion in New Zealand Today by Bruce Logan

I can’t recommend Bruce Logan’s book “Pilgrim” highly enough. It is a wonderful read that has changed my life.  It has made me happier for a start.  The daily news used to leave me bewildered and angry.  Not any more.  Bruce has explained for me what is going on and what I can do about it.   That alone makes his book worthwhile.  But there is much more to his book than that.  My hot-off-the-press copy is much used, already dog-eared, with notes in the margins and much of the text underlined.

Bruce takes us on the journey from what our country once was to what it has now become.  It’s quite the trip.  As Bruce laments, “many things I used to think true and good are no longer considered good or true; at the very least, they are under suspicion.”

“History has been declared unnecessary; tradition is hidden under a shroud, and we must pretend to tolerate the intolerable.”

Yes indeed.  I didn’t just read this book; I felt it deep inside.

“I’m surrounded by lies I must believe.  I am engulfed daily in an ideology that tells me the science defending it is settled and, at last, it knows how human beings should live.”

It’s the lies that get me. I am told that medicine and surgery can make a boy a girl.  And that grown men in skirts may enter my daughters’ changing sheds.  The teachers teach these dangerous lies.  And when I object, I am shouted at and shut down.

“Somehow or other, along with everyone else, I must be persuaded that social and economic outcomes should be the same for everyone.”

That’s now justice.  Everyone leveled and the same.  (With some, of course, more leveled than others.)  

The revolution that Bruce describes seemed to me to happen all at once.  But not so for Bruce.  He watched it unfold up close over decades. 

Bruce grew up in New Zealand in the 1940s and ‘50s, he went to university in the ‘60s, crucially in North America where radical change was bubbling, he was an English teacher, a subject first to be taken over by critical theory, he watched aghast as the Ministry of Education replaced education with indoctrination.

But most importantly, Bruce is Christian.  It’s his Christian understanding that provides his clear insight into what has happened. 

“[T]his book is about the de-Christianisation of Western Civilisation and the failure to find a replacement.”

There it is in a sentence.  The hundreds of problems reduced to one.

Bruce persuasively argues that Christianity is the foundation of Western Civilisation.  Without foundation, Western Civilisation crumbles.

“I have come to believe that since the 1970s, I have lived in a deepening spiritual, intellectual, and cultural maelstrom that pilgrims must fight against.” 

It was the schools and universities that went first.

“The most significant change in the classroom was that teaching English moved away from precision in writing and speaking, and an educated response to literature.  The focus shifted towards the speaking and writing of personal experiences.  Teachers and students were encouraged to believe that social problems are problems of structure, not an essential flaw in the human heart.”

We have dumbed our children down, stripped them of their God-given dignity, and divided them as oppressors and the oppressed.

“[S]ocial justice theory has reduced life to a struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed.” 

The oppressor/oppressed model is how our children are taught, how the news is reported and how our politics is played. 

“To be manly and masculine was to be responsible and courageous….  We were taught to respect girls, even honour them, and dare I say, protect them.”

We did not know that chivalry was toxic and that to be white, male, and heterosexual, was to be the author of the world’s ills.

“We were taught and retained a reverence for the past…..  [now] the past is a roadblock to progress.”

We don’t study history, we correct it, and make reparation.

“[T]he psychological theory of self-esteem gradually replaced the biblical foundation of human dignity, which gave heart, contented confidence, and power to the moral concept of self respect.”

“Self-respect grows out of a belief in and practice of virtue.  Self-esteem is sustained by a belief in the viability and integrity of emotionally perceived values.  Therefore, we should not be surprised that identity or race is more meaningful than virtue.”

There is so much to consider here.  “Rejection of God must collapse into narcissistic subjectivism, a terrible preoccupation with the self”.

“I would even dare to suggest that good mental health is awakened by thinking of others, while bad mental health is evidenced by always thinking of yourself.”

Our duty was once, “to know God and enjoy Him forever.”  It is now, “to know and love oneself”.

“Instead of being the overarching vice, pride becomes the self-evident virtue that supports the conviction of self-realisation.” 

It’s not for nothing that enforcing tolerance is presented as Pride Week in our schools.

“[G]ood character is no longer the first requirement of a responsible citizen.  The idea that self-respect fosters a particular kind of moral toughness, as exemplified in what we used to call character, has largely faded.  The virtuous citizen now accepts and affirms the identity claims of others, but that moral action is a political act rather than an act of conscience.”

The state of education is captured in a paragraph in the Ministry of Education’s Common Practice Model: Pedagogical Approaches for Literacy, Communications and Maths:

“A critical maths pedagogical approach uses maths to develop critical awareness about wider social, political, ideological, and economic issues.  Critical maths recognises the importance of understanding, interpreting, and addressing issues of power, social justice and equity in the community and in the wider world.  Akonga (students) are encouraged to interrogate dominant discourses and assumptions, including that maths is benign, neutral, and culture-free”.

Our poor, poor children.  And these are the teachers who get angry when questioned. 

“We should not be unaware that a new education system has been set up to reorder how we think about the world.”

Maori rituals now fill public events. 

“The marriage between secularism and the revival of the Maori religion is a ceremonial necessity.  Maori religion is given increasing status, and the secular state purploins ceremonial gravitas from its ritual.”

Western Civilisation is built on the belief that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”.   It’s why each of us counts and commands respect.   It’s why we have choice, freedom and responsibility. 

“I had no idea that human dignity would cease to be a gift from our Creator and instead be declared a right bestowed by one’s tribe and confirmed by an overreaching state.”

What the state gives, the state can take away.

“When the Genesis explanation of human dignity is removed, so is any foundation for universal human rights.  Neither rights nor duties have a foundation other than the power of reason, which has no more authority than communal or personal opinion.”

Free speech and democracy are now on shaky ground.

“[T]he state has become the moral arbiter by default.  Laws are now added to the statute books affirming the state’s power to decide who we are.”

Why, we can even change our history: I can change my birth certificate to certify I was born a girl.

“We are losing any credible conviction about what it means to be human.”

“In our vain attempt to create a new ethic and that elusive new identity, we undermine everything from marriage, family order, and the welfare of children to the meaning of love.”

“Civil religion, by nature, must be about power and social engineering.  Once all the hype is dissolved, its foundation sinks into the swamp of bold assertion.  Its ambition is not to have a free and just society, but one where everything must serve its dogma.  Even here, there is no consistency.  Rules and laws can be changed or suspended by the principles and regulations of multiculturalism’s human rights theory and its criteria for redistributing those rights.  Over the last decade, even the restraints and realities of biology have been questioned within the context of the new religion.  Although the new ‘realities’ are impossible to defend, it’s unnecessary to do so because the priesthood of the established civil religion is so confident and self righteous that it sees no need to legitimise itself."

We have truly lost our way.  We lack gratitude.  We lack humility. We lack forgiveness.  We lack brotherly love.  We lack meaning and purpose.  

We can see it most clearly in our Parliament with Te Pati Maori and the Greens.  There is no gratitude.  There is just an endless whine of victimhood and the demand that the government put things right.

But as Bruce shows it is easy for us to welcome the decent society back.  We just need to attend to the foundations.

“Western civilization is not telling its children that if they are to know who they are, they must find their roots in the transcendent, in revelation of God in Jesus Christ.  If they are not told, it is difficult to see life as an exercise in serving God’s purpose.”

“So, in my eighty-seven years, what have I learned for sure?  The Bible offers the best foundation for understanding and practicing freedom in one’s private life and the outworking of political power.  It uniquely tells us how we were created and for what purpose.  It explains best how men and women should treat each other.  While the mystery of personal suffering remains, we are told quite clearly how suffering entered the world.  We are not left without hope.  And to understand it, we must ask the right person the right question.  That’s not an easy thing to do in a world where relativism rules.”

Bruce’s advice is sound.  I asked the right person the right question.  The result was miraculous.  And the miracle continues every day.

There is so much to this great book. In this poor review I provide just a taste. Get your own copy. You will not be disappointed.  You can read the first chapter on Amazon here https://www.amazon.com/Pilgrim-Multiculturalism-Diversity-Religion-Zealand/dp/1991299869 and you can save dollars by ordering the book directly from brucealogan@gmail.com

We are truly blessed to have Bruce Logan and his wonderful book “Pilgrim”.