On The Fringe

Over the past thirty years, people's view of atheism has shifted from seeing it as being fringe, extreme, and morally suspect. Now, secular, atheistic ideology seems to be at the heart of the British establishment. No one bats an eyelid that the leaders of the two main political parties are atheists.

Michael Foot, leader of the Labour Party in the early 80s, was seen to be brave, principled, even foolish for not tempering his atheistic beliefs. This can't be waived off with the suggestion that 'everyone used to be a Christian,' - even the ruthless sceptic Voltaire admitted 'i want my lawyer, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, because it means that i shall be cheated and robbed and cuckcolded less often...If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.' 

While many find the new atheists (Dawkins, Miller, Grayling, et al) a tad angry and awkward in their presentation, their application of evolutionary biology to religion and ethics is mainstream. Moreover it is now Christianity which is held to have the extreme, edgy and morally suspect worldview. Christianity is variously accused by aspects of the establishment as being totalising, judgmental, homophobic and threatening to the harmony of our secular state. Christians who wear crosses to work or who publicly express the historic, Biblical view on homosexuality may find themselves arrested by the police or dragged in front of employment tribunals.

Richard Cunningham, UCCF Director, UCCF Annual Review

In my 10th grade history class on Friday, we talked about how Christianity went from being illegal to mandatory in the Roman Empire in just 70 years. 'And the church has never recovered,' i quipped. The current state of affairs, and the change in that state has been brilliantly outlined above by Richard Cunningham, and the situation in the United States can't be far behind, in the bigger cities at least. But i'm not sure it's a bad thing. Richard goes on to talk about how the change in mood on British campuses has lead to more and more people asking about the Gospel.

Why?

I think because Christianity, by design, does it's best work around the edges of culture, rather than in the mainstream. Jesus, after all, was a carpenter living in a backwater of a backwater, rather than the Roman Emperor. His earliest followers were fishermen and tax collectors from the wrong side of town. It was Peter's redneck twang that revealed him in the high priest's courtyard. And yet these men changed the world. You're reading this because of them!

I say all of that to say simply, we must not lose heart, or grow frustrated when we see Christianity and Christians pushed to the fringes of social acceptability. That's where we've been for most of time, in most of the world. And as proven by the work on British university campuses, that's where we do our best work...