The Unconventional Baroness

The Unconventional Baroness
Excerpt:
When the Door Was Opened
It all started more than 20 years ago when her son Jonathan, a medical missionary at the time, told her of the desperate shortage of nurses in Sudan. People were dying by the thousands of treatable diseases and famine. A believer in the fact that if God opens a door one should go through it, Lady Cox, a qualified nurse, responded and spent several months in Sudan.
Medicine runs in her family. Her father, Robert John McNeill Love, was an eminent surgeon at the Royal Northern Hospital in London and the coauthor of the authoritative medical textbook, A Short Practice of Surgery. Born in 1937, her personal faith developed in her childhood, inspired by the biblical story of Samuel's experience of listening to God. Confirmed at age eleven, her chosen text was Joshua 1:9: "Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." She has turned to that verse many times since, in preparation for her many dangerous missions. As a child, she prayed these words: "If you want, send me — where you want." As a teenager, she declined a place at university and chose nursing school instead.
After working for some years as a nurse, Lady Cox moved into academia, as a social scientist and then as head of London University's Nursing Education Research Unit at Chelsea College. She went on to be appointed a vice president of the Royal College of Nursing, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and founder chancellor of Bournemouth University. She also became a trustee of numerous educational and charitable organizations, including the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the Siberian Medical University, and MERLIN (Medical Emergency Relief International).
Soon after qualifying as a nurse, Caroline McNeill Love married Murray Cox, a young general practitioner. Her two sons, Robin and Jonathan, followed their parents into the health service, Robin becoming a doctor in the Royal Navy and Jonathan a nurse and a missionary. Her husband then developed a specialty in psychiatry and became a renowned senior psychiatrist at the hospital for the criminally insane, Broadmoor. He developed a passion for the use of theater and music as therapy for the patients at Broadmoor. One of his many books before his death in 1997 was Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor.
Lady Cox's years as a social-science lecturer at the then — Polytechnic of North London led, unexpectedly, to her political career. In the late 1970s, higher education institutions in Britain were hijacked by the extreme left Marxist-Leninists, and she witnessed the consequences. Appalled by the indoctrination and intimidation deployed by extremist lecturers and students, she wrote a book called Rape of Reason, which detailed the tactics of the Trotskyites. This book came to the attention of then — Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who saw in Caroline Cox an ally in the battle against Communism and called her to 10 Downing Street to invite her to accept a seat in the House of Lords...
What Keeps Her Going

Lady Caroline Cox Courtesy of Christian Solidarity Worldwide

As the years have gone by, her travels around the world have become increasingly dangerous. But eager to dispel any image of heroism, Lady Cox, recipient of the 1995 Wilberforce Award, which recognizes "an individual who has made a difference in the face of formidable societal problems and injustices," admits to having a "fit of faithless, fearful dread" before going on her dangerous missions. "I don't want to go. Home is very comfortable, with clean water, electric light, warmth, clean clothes. To wrench yourself away and go voluntarily into a conflict zone, you recoil against it. I don't particularly want to go and get my guts blown out. I don't really want to go and get malaria." But, she adds, she goes because she knows that "I will come back receiving more than I have ever been able to give."
She recalls preparing for a trip to the tiny Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, which she has now visited 54 times, at the height of the war, "feeling dark and not wanting to go." Then she heard the passage in Mark's Gospel that says "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields — and with them, persecution)." That keeps her going. "I just come back so humbled and inspired by their dignity, courage, faith. I have a deep commitment to those people."
She is motivated by a number of factors. Theologically, St. Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, where he writes that when one part of the Body of Christ suffers, we all suffer, is her primary inspiration. But there is also a political motivation. "Those of us who have freedom should never take it for granted. We ought to use our freedoms on behalf of those who are denied them. We are privileged to be born into a democracy and a free society, but we need to remember that it is a privilege — for those to whom much is given, much is required."
Lady Cox has a deep concern about the threats to Christianity in the world today, particularly the growing militant Islamism, which is, she believes, a "real threat to our spiritual and cultural heritage." We in the West, she says, "have an obligation to act as a watchman, to warn the rest of Christendom and the rest of the world." In her new publication, The West, Islam and Islamism: Is Ideological Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy?, she challenges the free world, and moderate Muslims, to take the threats from the radicals more seriously and develop an appropriate response.
The threat from militant extremist Islam is typified not only by the rise of al-Qaeda terrorists but by evidence she has witnessed in Sudan, Nigeria, and Indonesia. In all three places, there is jihad taking place against Christians and moderate Muslims, and efforts are being made to introduce Sharia law. "That is really a death knell for Christianity," she argues. The international community needs to "wake up" and think about an intelligent "moral, Christian, strategic response" to these threats. "Christians out there trying to hold a frontline of faith for freedom to practice Christianity often feel very beleaguered, very unsupported, and very vulnerable."
But with the rise of Islamic extremism, it is not only Christians who suffer, Lady Cox argues. Moderate Muslims are also targets for the extremists....