This of course created some controversy and the paper turned to that bastion of common sense, Anne Widdicombe, a Daily Express Columnist, to make a statement, and this was what she said:
This is a Christian country. I don’t see why he would need to seek special permission to play a hymn on the radio. Jeremy Vine is an experienced presenter and if he thought it was appropriate to play a hymn on the radio, then it was almost certainly appropriateNow I fully agree with the last part, but I would like to challenge the first thing she said; "This is a Christian country", but simply asking - is it, and has it ever been one? You may argue that we have a state church and that is Christian, the majority of people would still consider themselves to be nominal Christian, and all of that is true. But I want to ask whether this nation has ever been truly a Christian country.
This week I preached on the Beatitudes in Matthew. The essence of my sermon was "there must be more than this", and I looked at the upside down Kingdom of Heaven. I talked about this as not a postponed reality, but one we pray into being every time we say the Lords Prayer and "on Earth as in Heaven". The Beatitudes with it's good news for the poor, meek, mourning etc. is what the Kingdom looks like. A truly Christian country would reflect this.
The problem is that the established church has been handicapped by its role within the institution. They became the enforcers of a morale code that kept people in order. But at no point did the church adequately challenge the nature and structure of society. The fact the people at the bottom of society remained there, and those at the top remained there. Nothing changed, and the church maintained that change by being complicit.
Thanks to Post-Christendom the church is no longer perceived to have that role (and in many ways the formal nature needs to cease ASAP), consequently we are now free to do what we were meant to do, challenge the order of society, and question why things remain as they are. Why the poor in spirit remain poor, why mourners are not comforted, why the meek inherit nothing, why the merciful are ignored and the peacemakers are seen as trouble makers? The fact is that we are not a Christian country, and although we may have been in name, we were never one in any other way.
To quote G.K.Chesterton:
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried
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'The fact is that we are not a Christian country, and although we may have been in name, we were never one in any other way.' I think you can argue that much of our legal system was based on Christian principles of justice and some of our institutions owe their existence to a Christian heritage so in that sense I can see why some people would say that Britain is a 'Christian' country. However, if you are defining 'Christian' as someone who is a disciple of Christ then no, clearly no country can say it is 'Christian' in that respect.
Thanks Ali, you are right the legal system is based roughly on Christian principles is true to a point..
For me Christians need to get their heads around the fact that this is not a Christian country, and never has been. We need to realise our place is on the margins, and that gives us a huge advantage over being at the centre.
The Church needs to find its prophetic voice. It needs to speak out against the injustice that embeds our society. This is not a time to get down and moan about what we have lost, but to look forward at the freedom that Post-Christendom will bring to the church.
A Christian person is someone who has dedicated his life to Jesus Christ, believes He is God and has accepted His sacrifice on the cross for the remission of his sin. He accepts the Bible as the anointed truth of God, to be followed and obeyed out of gratitude for God forgiving him and adopting him when he has done nothing to deserve it. The fact that many Christians have done all these things yet fail to live up to the high standards the beatitudes demand does not mean they are not Christians. One day they will manage it, probably not in this life.
A Christian country is a nation whose inhabitants mostly accept the values promoted in the Bible and agree to laws which uphold those values. The England I grew up in was wholeheartedly Christian in that sense even if many of its citizens had not dedicated their lives to Jesus in the way I have described above. My school day began with an assembly where I sang Christian hymns, prayed Christian prayers and heard Christian books being read alongside the Bible. My school day ended in Christian prayer. My R.E. lessons upheld the Bible as something to be honoured and I got more of the same on Sundays. This was normal life for children growing up in the sixties and early seventies. I was soaking up a Christian worldview where my values were shaped by the ten commandments, the 23rd Psalm and the gospels.
Sadly much of this has been abandoned even though required by law and the result has been rioting and looting. Many of today's youth feel that if nobody sees them stealing they are not doing anything wrong, especially if those around them are doing the same. They no longer grow up with a Christian worldview and many grow up with no concept of God at all.
I think you have mixed things up rather. Isn't the 'poor in spirit' about humility rather than poverty? Surely the verse is advocating this kind of poverty rather than telling us to eradicate it? But that is a side issue: there are more important issues here.
Because the nation isn't achieving the very high standards that Jesus required of His individual followers, you conclude that we can't ever have been a Christian nation. Yet I doubt you would even use such judging criteria to decide whether an individual, fully devoted believer were truly a Christian, so why accuse a nation in such a harsh way, especially when the passage is directed at individuals? It is almost as though you don't want us to be a Christian nation. Under such criteria I don't think any nation could be called Christian!
Abandoning our status as a Christian nation opens the door for us to become something else - a secular humanist nation or even a Moslem nation. If we let go you can be sure some other religion will fill the gap. "Bring it on, let's have some persecution" might be your response to that. But consider how it will be for the children born into such a godless society. My being immersed in the 23rd Psalm gave me a concept of God's immanence, his perfect love and parenthood which led the way for me to turn to Him later on in my life. If we continue down this path, tomorrow's children won't have that. Their only recourse when times get hard will be to turn to drink and cursing. Once we have thrown away our Christian heritage completely it will take a miracle of God to get it back. Ask yourself, have more or less people turned to our faith since we began to remove it from schools and public life in the eighties?
As a nation we have done much to promote Christianity. Our missionaries have spread the faith throughout the entire world and our laws have given us a reputation for justice around the world. Why else would so many from other nations have sought refuge in these shores?
It has become fashionable to denigrate the history of white, western nations. Usually this occurs by using impossibly high standards which are never used to judge non-white, third world countries. I really believe that as Christians we should not be joining in with such a double standard. We should uphold and strive to perpetuate the good that we have done in our Christian heritage. Sorry this is so long but I am desperate for Christians to see these issues as they really are and not as liberal secularists would have us see them!
Er, I seem to have got into a bit of trouble logging in today. I wrote the two posts above and please call me Ann Burgess if you have anything to add to what I've written, rather than the gobbledegook that I seem to have been named!
Ann
Thank you for your comment. I feel that a Christian nation should offer more than we have seen, I hardly feel that Christian assemblies, or the lack of them, make a nation Christian or not, what that reflects is a Christendom that presented a public face of being Christian, while allowing many to live lives that in no respect reflected the Kingdom of God.
I am not saying "bring on persecution", but actually persecution would give us an edge that maybe we have lost. We have become far too comfortable, while the nation does go to ruin.
As for becoming a secular society, we are already, that is a reality. The amazing thing is that what we see from the early church and in China, pagan cultures where Christians are pushed to the edge, actually sees growth in the church, not the other way around.
We have to accept post-Christendom as a reality, rather than anything else, but it offers a tremendous opportunity for the gospel. May I recommend Stuart Murray's Book "Post-Christendom:Church Mission in a strange new world".
In terms of riots and looting, I think that says more about how Governments have continued to ignore the poorest of our society over many years. And while the Beatitudes in Matthew talk about the poor in Spirit, Luke chooses to just highlight the poor, with no such caveat.
Thanks Anne, did not know if was you till after I had made me comment, but good to hear from you. Incidently how are you?
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