Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism. A passively tolerant society says to its citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. A genuinely liberal country does much more. It believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens: this is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe in these things.
The New Testament exhorts Christians 'to strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord' (Hebrews 12v14 - RSV). In the light of Mr Cameron's call for social coherence and our New Testament imperative to pursue civic peace and maintain our Christian integrity, efforts need to be made to resolve the following outstanding issues between us and government:
• Does 'a genuinely liberal country' understand that freedom of worship for a Christian means the ability to present his or her body as a 'living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God' (Romans 12v1)? That means worship affects the whole of life, and is not confined to what Christians say or do in church or in their private devotions.
• What should be the outcome in a genuinely liberal country when freedom of worship and a perception of equal rights clash as happened in the Cornish B&B case?
• Will a genuinely liberal country allow churches and indeed other religious organisations to employ people for a range of roles who adhere to their beliefs on faith and morals?
• Will a genuinely liberal country allow Christians and others publicly to point out what they see as the theological and moral errors of the Koran without being proscribed for 'Islamophobia'?
• Will a genuinely liberal country allow Christians and others to proclaim and uphold their belief that the expression of sexual love should be exclusively reserved for heterosexual marriage without being proscribed for 'homophobia'?
• Will a genuinely liberal country be pro-active in protecting those who wish to convert from one religion to another?
• Will a genuinely liberal country allow traditionalist Christians to incarnate different roles for the sexes in the ordering of their corporate worship? And will it recognise the fact that the mainline churches go about this in a very different way from Mosques?
Christian volunteerism and caring social action are a vitally important part of our witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. As spending cuts kick in, local churches are well placed in communities to serve our fellow men and women, particularly the elderly, in practical deeds of loving service.
The other imperative towards active social engagement by orthodox Christians is the fact that we are or should be firmly on the side of law and order and supportive of government in its responsibility to wield the sword of justice. We are or should be supportive of Mr Cameron's indictment of a cultural climate that has allowed Islamist terrorism to breed.
And we are or should be supportive of the promotion of civic peace by counter-acting a cultural isolationism that feeds off the welfare state.
Mr Cameron's Munich declaration highlights the urgency of resolving our issues for the sake of gospel proclamation, Christian social action, and civic peace.
I picked up on the "freedom of worship" line as well. It is become rather commonplace for North American politicians to employ this phrase instead of "freedom of religion". I remember a columnist/blogger parsing Obama's use of it as essentially being a rhetorical maneuver to strip away any true exercise of one's faith and replace it with the right to hold rituals. As you correctly point out, worship for a Christian continues outside the walls of the church building and is manifested in one's manner of life. The theological ignorance of our pols shows. I fear they will, nonetheless, adopt this strategy so as to continue persecuting Christians over issues such as prayer in the workplace and schools (to which Muslims will continue exempted), sexuality, and conscientious objection by medical professionals with regard to abortion.
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