Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, Mark will be hosting another edition of our Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Clubbers live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm Central European.
~Welcome to Episode Nineteen of our latest Tale for Our Time. I was somewhat stunned to see the accusation in our comments section that this is an "abridged" version of Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World. Fortunately, Annie, a Texas member of The Mark Steyn Club, has written to set the record straight:
Hi, I don't think this work is being abridged by MS at all. I followed part 17 with my book and nothing was cut.
Indeed. We don't do abridged versions of anything - except when we're excerpting, say, the Christmas elements of Little Women as a standalone seasonal item. Other than such occasions, when we say we're doing Riddle of the Sands, it means we're doing every single sentence.
With that out of the way, in tonight's episode of Lord of the World a post-Christian west finds that, once real religion has gone, its forms can nevertheless be repurposed for the needs of the new pseudo-religion, whether transgenderism, as with that Episcopal bishop Trump had to sit through, or climate change, or whatever else comes along. The forms of worship remain the same, only the faith has changed:
"I am sure the Government realises the immense importance of all going smoothly. If Divine Service was at all grotesque or disorderly, it would largely defeat its own object. So I have been deputed to see you, Mr. Brand, and to suggest to you that here is a body of men—reckon it as at least twenty-five—who have had special experience in this kind of thing, and are perfectly ready to put themselves at the disposal of the Government... Your speech the other day inspired us all. You said exactly what was in all our hearts—that the world could not live without worship; and that now that God was found at last—-"
Because man is now his own god, so, as with that bishop in Washington, dressing up self-worship as God-worship is the name of the game.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Nineteen of Lord of the World simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We're now well into our eighth season of Tales for Our Time and have built up quite an archive. So, if you've a chum who's a fan of classic fiction in audio form, don't forget the perfect Christmas present: a Mark Steyn Club gift membership.
Please join me tomorrow both for Clubland Q&A and for Part Twenty of Lord of the World.