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Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. Well, a new Robin Hood adaptation for TV is more fanciful than the older Disney cartoon version that featured talking animals. At least that one got the history right. But the new series, which will air on mgm, pretends that Christianity was an alien religion to England in the late 1100s. Poor part of the plot is that the villainous Normans attempted to force Christianity down the throats of the noble pagan Anglo Saxons. That, of course, is nonsense. Though the Normans were not the nicest people, forcing Christianity on the Saxons was certainly not on their agenda. The Saxons were already Christians, and had been for quite a long time. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to what's now England in the first century. And even if that is just legend, there is evidence of believers there as early as the second century. It's likely that merchants brought the faith to what's now England before Constantine. By the time the Romans Left in the 400s, Britain was basically Christian. St Patrick, after all, was in fact British, not Irish. Starting in the 5th century, Anglo Saxon tribes overran southern and eastern Britain, calling it Angle Land and naming the days of the weeks after their gods. Celtic Christian culture was suppressed, though it remained on the fringes. And in Ireland and in Scotland at the end of the 6th century, missionaries reintroduced Christianity, some from Europe, others from Celtic areas to the north and west. By the end of the 7th century, the Anglo Saxons were basically Christian. Beowulf was one of the earliest Anglo Saxon books, and it has Christian elements. Christian saints like the Venerable Bede, Boniface and Alcuin of York all worked as Christian missionaries and scholars long before the Normans. In fact, they'd been Christian longer than the Normans were. Normans is a contraction of Northman, as in the Vikings. They became Christian in the 10th century, just a few decades before they came to England. By the time the mythical Robin Hood supposedly lived in the late 12th century, the Saxons had been Christian for nearly 600 years, more than twice as long as America has been a country. Now, given this history, why is this show written this way? Certainly those responsible for the scripts must know it is full of easily disprovable falsehoods. So why do it in the first place? The reversal of history in pop culture is not due to a dispute among historians. No, it's a symptom of the critical theory mood that has long captured the West. According to the intersectional hierarchy. Christianity is an oppressive religion that was imposed by force wherever it spread. It's because of this same framework that Islam is often portrayed as being indigenous in places in which it post dates Christianity by centuries. Despite this fabricated history found in the new Robin Hood, the British Isles actually enjoys one of the richest histories of Christian thought, work and devotion to in the world divorced from that history. As Roger Ayer's Substack has recently documented quite thoroughly, British culture is now turning into a nightmare. Konstantin Kissen recently noted how in a single year 400 people were arrested for social media posts in Russia. That same year, 3,300 were arrested for the same crime in Britain, and last year that number spiked to nearly 10,000. Protesters are allowed to march for approved causes in Britain, but pro lifers and gender realists, they get jail time. Not to mention More recently, the British government moved ahead with plans to scrap jury trials. As a member of British Parliament recently argued to a mostly empty room a few months ago, and I quote, to repudiate Christianity is not only to sever ourselves from our past, but to cut off the source of all the things we value now and that we need in the future, such as freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and human rights. He is of course correct, and it remains to be seen whether Britain's future will be that of a nation severed from its roots or that of a nation renewed. That will depend on the path chosen by those in the present, including how they remember their past and what they do with the faith that is at the center of it. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co authored by Timothy Padgett. If you appreciate these daily commentaries, would you leave us a review wherever you download your podcast? And to download, print out or share this commentary with others, you can go to breakpoint.org.