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...

Prop 8 and Rev 19

Wednesday was an historic day in America, as the Supreme Court ruled that the state of California could not discriminate against those who wanted a same sex marriage. The court majority ruled that the DOMA, signed into law by Clinton in September 1996, was unconstitutional because it was written to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and therefore discriminated morally against homosexuals.

It's worth pausing, just for a second, to reflect on how quickly the world changes. Not just the truism that what is taboo, illegal even, in the first generation will be celebrated in the third, but that as recently as 1996, a Democrat government (!) led by Clinton (!) could legislate against same sex marriage. These are extraordinary days we live in.

The Church, as i see it, has a number of options. We can throw out the Bible and jump into the hand basket, because that eerie glow in the distance must be the dawn of a new day. That's obviously exactly the wrong thing to do. Or we can shout and scream and mourn the death of the god of American civil government, and lament the fact that the founding fathers would be turning in their graves, which is also far from the best course of action. We can point out the elephant in the room, the logical fallacy of allowing a man who wants to marry another man equality, but not a man who wants to marry several women. Or indeed an elephant. And the time will come for that. Bad laws take two or three generations to wreak their havoc. You're relegated at the end of the season, not on transfer deadline day.

Or we can do the best thing, the sensible thing. We can wonder to ourselves, why do they nations rage, humming along with Jesus as He walked out of the tomb. We can remember that since the Fall, men's feet have rushed to shed blood. We can remember that the Bible promises us these days, and that God always keeps His promises.

Those aren't the only promises in the Bible though. God promises Adam a serpent crusher. He promises Abraham a country. He promises Moses rescue. He promises David a son. He promises Jeremiah return. He promises us that He'll never leave us. The root, the ground, and the goal of all these promises is found in Revelation 19:11-21. In these verses we find Jesus, not cowed by the Supreme Court, not silence by secularism, riding a white horse. Jesus' robes are dipped in the blood of His enemies, and His victory is sure. He comes, and throws the beast and the false prophet in the lake of fire, he destroys those who follow the unholy trinity. Soon He'll bind the devil too. He doesn't looked perturbed, he doesn't look weak, he doesn't look like a legend or a fairy tale. He looks terrifying. He is. And victory belongs to Him.

No matter what happens between then and now, we have to remember this. Not because we want to destruction of sinners, we long for their God glorifying salvation. That they would see, as Christians do, the irresistible loveliness of Jesus, and come to Him. We need to remember that all God's promises are, quite literally Yes in Jesus, because all too often the Church feels like an overlooked seventh son, headed towards a giant just five stones and a sling shot.

And we all know how that turned out.