The Busybodies



I suppose we all know that politics in the West have taken a strong set toward irreligion and the disparaging of traditional, that is religious, morality. Brendan O'Neill reports this incident from the UK:

Brendan O’Neill - The New Inquisition: "Last year, a Baptist Church in Norfolk in England put up a poster suggesting that if you didn’t believe in God you would go to hell. The poster said, “If you think there is no God, you had better be right”, and underneath there was a picture of flames, hellfire, the suggestion being that if you don’t believe you will suffer. Suffer in eternal damnation, no less. . . The police registered the poster as a “hate incident”. They launched an investigation. But in order to avoid embarrassment — because it would undoubtedly be very embarrassing for the police in modern Britain to investigate a church for expressing its religious views — the police went to the church, spoke to the pastor, suggested he take the poster down, and so he took the poster down."
O'Neill offers further examples of an intrusive official attitude taken by society toward the churches. It is certainly a trend to watch, and oppose.

Are there ramifications for Christian unity? I think there are at least two. There will be a clear feeling of division between churches only too happy to go along with the dictates of political correctness and the pressure of the state, and those that resist. You can feel a bit of that tension already building. You can feel it, for example, between postmodern/liberal and traditional/conservative Anglicans, and in some other denominations now caught up in the liberal/conservative split.

Among those churches that choose to resist the state, there will be an increased feeling of common cause, brought into being by a common adversary. When the state was more hands-off about the churches, we debated among ourselves about mostly trivialities; this growing social pressure against us is not trivial. There is a now good deal for us to discuss on a practical basis: where the battle lines are drawn and who is standing with whom. Indeed, we may find that the very things our shared faith calls us to do and say are things Caesar and society do not like. As it was in the beginning. . .

So then, I think we will see a parting of the ways between churches standing against the new societal trends and those who welcome the same trends. We will see, also, better unity or at least greater cooperation among those that resist.



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