Comment: It's interfaith dialogue in the CofE

Those of us in the Church of England have been engaged in interfaith dialogue: not at a mosque, temple or synagogue but in the General Synod.

Many of those watching from a distance and those of us within the Church of England are asking - what is going on? It is obvious that there are two fundamentally different worldviews in collision here... but how can this happen with Church? And what are we going to do about it?

This did not happen overnight.

This is the fruit of long years and decades of syncretism – adopting the religious convictions of the world. This is not a sudden spiritual disease, but it is a sickness that has infected us and threatened us for generations. Spurgeon and Ryle more than a century ago warned the Christians of their own day of the dangers of making their own prosperity and 'flourishing' to be the goals of their lives. Even in the 1950's a preacher like Tozer was ringing the alarm bells at the deep intrusion of worldly values into Church life – when work, money, entertainment, marriage, family, and comfort were valued more highly than our precious Saviour Jesus.

In the General Synod when people were confessing that their very identity and dignity was threatened if they could not fulfil their dreams and desires... they were not only speaking for people with same sex attractions but for the majority of modern Western Christians no matter what their marital status or desires.  

This crisis in the Church of England is only superficially about how to deal with same sex attraction, but is much more fundamentally about the worship of any desires, any dreams, anything that this world offers. Remember how the Apostle Paul talks about marriage between a man and a woman in 1 Corinthians 7 and how it is best for people to stay single so that as many of us as possible can be whole-heartedly devoted to Christ and Church. That kind of message only makes sense when the true religion of Jesus has utterly captured our hearts and minds – when we will sell all, deny anything and crucify all our passions for His sake.

The true religion of the Living God is a remnant... in all churches in the modern world.  

The modern world has been built with self at the centre and the highest ideals are all too human. Human prosperity and pleasure, satisfaction and sensuality, fun and finance, greed and gluttony... all of these have become gods to worship, goals to pursue.   

The Apostle Paul said that through following Christ he had learned to be content in any and every situation, whether poor or wealthy, hungry or full  (Philippians 4:11-13). We have not learned that wisdom.  For us, we are miserable and frustrated, even angry and bitter if our desires are denied or our dreams dashed.   

The LORD God gave up all His own riches and glory in order to become one of us. Through His death and resurrection He paid the price of sin FOR us, but also joins us to Himself on the cross so that we may be crucified WITH Him. If we are joined to Christ Jesus then we die to ourselves and live to God.

Always the great temptation is to cling onto our life in this present darkness rather than trust His way of the Cross as the path of true, eternal life.

When I was a teenager I read the Old Testament a lot – especially the Law. It was – and still is – my favourite bit of the Bible. However, I was often puzzled by the concern with avoiding the Canaanite fertility cults. How could such nonsense ever be a serious temptation to the ancient Church of the Living God? Yet, as we read on, those fertility cults were all too appealing and for hundreds of years many of the people of the ancient Church would hold to these fertility cults even while they were superficially following the LORD God. How could they get so deep into ancient Church life?

Think of how the devil tempted Jesus with food, popularity and power – all the things that our flesh craves. So, Baal, Asherah, Chemosh and any other religious manifestations of the devil's angels, offered the very things that our flesh desires, whether food and fertility, wine and women, power and prosperity, money and even magic! Surely, it could not be wrong to crave such good things.... surely we can go after these things alongside our weekly worship of the LORD?

At the time of Elijah, he felt as if there were hardly any true worshippers left – a feeling that many of us have experienced this last week.

When our own comfort, pleasure and desires become central, then the Living God will always be dethroned in our hearts and minds.  When we insist that our passions and appetites are most important then we crave the SLAVERY of Egypt with their gods more than the FREEDOM of the wilderness with the LORD God.

• Deuteronomy 8:12-14 – 'When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down... then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God.'
• Deuteronomy 10:610-14 – When you have 'flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide... then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord....  Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you.'
• Deuteronomy 12:30 – 'Be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.'

(See also the whole of Ezekiel 20. 'I said to them, “Each of you, get rid of the vile images you have set your eyes on, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord your God"' – verse 7).

This is not a challenge for long ago – but all these Scriptures were written to inform us today. Church is always threatened by these fertility gods who offer to fulfil the desires and appetites of our flesh if we will only bow down to worship them.

What has happened in the Church of England is that the 'salvation' that the world offers has, for so many, replaced the real salvation that the LORD Jesus gives. The gods of this passing world offer us temporary 'salvation', in terms of the fulfilment of our desires and appetites - yet when we reach for that 'salvation' we lose our identity, our joy, our freedom, our peace.  The world and the devil are joined with the flesh in that unholy trinity because it is through the desires, attitudes and appetites of the flesh that the world gains our minds and the devil gains our worship.

The two religions at war is not some weird feature of the Church of England – but the perennial conflict that we are trained to face by the Law and the Prophets.  

For us in the Church of England we have to know what to do next. The fracture between these two religions is obvious for all to see.  We are told that we all need to 'walk together' but Amos 3:3 – 'Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?' If so many are walking with 'human flourishing' as their destination we cannot walk with them. We must walk with the city of God as our destination – away from the city of destruction with no backward glances.

Our big concern in these next days and weeks is to find a way that we can be visibly, concretely distinguished from those who will no longer walk with us.  In our ‘Jesus at the Centre Network’ we are talking together to find the right way forward: we want to stand in the Spirit of Elijah, even if there are only 7,000 left who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

Yet we are never alone in this, as we regularly say in the Church of England: it is with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven that we proclaim His great and glorious name, for ever praising and saying: "Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest."

Paul was ordained in 1997. He served at All Souls Langham Place as Associate Minister for theology until 2008, and has since led church plants in both Lancashire and South Wales. He is currently vicar of St Crispin's Church in the Finsbury Park area of London.

Writer of the Book by Book study guides and series co-presenter, Paul was one of the original trustees of Biblical Frameworks, the charity that administers and funds the series. He is also author of ‘The Great Unknown’ by Christian Focus publications.