I hope I’m wrong...

I’ve been meaning to write this for some time.

I have hesitated. ‘People will think it’s over the top.’ And obviously I really hope I’m wrong. But I’ve begun to wonder how long churches like those represented by the en constituency will be allowed to continue by the powers that be.

How long?

Think about it. We stand for one way of salvation, Jesus Christ – non-inclusive. We respect other religions, but believe they are untrue. We do not favour abortion. We stand for male headship in the family and leadership in the church. We do not approve of same sex marriage. We believe God made two genders and, though we need to be caring towards all, everything else is ultimately an aberration, like so much in our fallen world. In all honesty, how long are organisations like ours going to be allowed to carry on? How long, in particular, will we be allowed to teach children? As things stand, the answer must surely be ‘not very long.’

The move to have Ofsted vet Sunday schools, which may still happen, was ominous. But what made my concerns more urgent was a news item from Scotland, reported by The Christian Institute in July. A newspaper columnist there had vilified a church choir touring from the US, saying that they were a ‘musical Trojan horse’, who were part of a church that ‘ticks every box of the Ugly Religious Fundamentalism checklist.’ Their church’s pro-marriage and pro-life views were cited as reasons why they were ‘not welcome’. Picking up the baton, the Scottish Secular Society questioned why the church group had ‘even been allowed in the country’. If secularists do not want such Christians even visiting they certainly would not want such churches permanently operating in the country.

The truth is that conservative evangelicals are now painted as ‘the nasty guys’. Al Mohler explains in his recent book We Cannot Be Silent: speaking truth to a culture redefining sex, marriage & the very meaning of right & wrong: ‘The Christian church has long been understood by the culture at large to be the guardian of what is right and righteous. But now the situation is fundamentally reversed. The culture generally identifies Christians as on the wrong side of morality. Those who hold to biblical teachings concerning human sexuality are now deposed from the position of the moral high ground.’ We must take seriously the fact that many secular people want to ‘evangelise’ us. We are the ‘sinners’ who need to be converted to become ‘nice’ and take on their laissez faire approach to life. And, if we won’t convert, eventually there will be vociferous calls to shut us down.

Be prepared

I hope I’m wrong. It may just be that our churches will be protected simply because so many Muslims have similar traditional moral values to us. But that may not afford us protection. Somehow we Christians tend to get singled out.

Supposing I am right, are we as a constituency thinking ahead at all? I can’t see that there would be violent persecution of Christians in the West, but I can see plenty of fines and court orders to shut us down unless we change (a route some churches are already taking). Are we planning for the future, simply assuming that religious liberty will persist? Is it time for churches to discuss how to operate outside the law? Are we preparing a new generation of pastors (part-time workers?) equipped to care for an underground church in a high-tech environment? It could be a waste of time, but perhaps not.