England.....and Scotland and Ireland at the time....experienced what became known as its....Restoration....this in 1660. Charles I previously had been beheaded. Oliver Cromwell became the Lord Protector in 1653....but he died five years later....in 1658! Two years after that came the Stuart Restoration. If you think that there is division today....when Charles II became king....(Charles III was recently crowned king by the way)....they dug up Cromwell's body and put his head on a pole. Anyway....it's not that the government in the Restoration closed the church doors....as in a pandemic....rather it just told the preachers how to run their churches. It was estimated that 2500 faithful ministers refused to do that! That became known as....The Great Ejection....and those who were essentially kicked out became known as....nonconformists!
America is facing a restoration of its own....in Donald Trump. We....the roundheads....are long gone. The blockheads are coming back. Puritan divines are dying out one by one....replaced by Johann Tetzels who promise indulgences for a vote in the ballot box.
The pressure is on to support this king....the few royals and nobles around him....his own aristocracy....and the vast gentry notable for their pleasure craft and golf cart parades.
So where are the nonconformists that we so drastically need? Where are the men who would rather be removed from their pulpits than let a king dictate how they are to preach....and what they are not to say....and who they are not to offend?
