Ryan Anderson debates gay marriage with Piers Morgan

I had never heard of Ryan Anderson before but he stands up well to hostile cross examination by Piers Morgan and guests. Clearly set up for a fall he more than holds his own and despite being goaded remains courteous throughout. Well done!

Sign the Petition.

It seems to me to be a fairly clear observation in nature that male and female together form a compatible unit. There is a clear intention in nature for the two sexes to compliment each other sexually. Indeed in procreation each provides half the chromosomes neccesary to form a new individual.

It is a misnomer to describe homosexual or lesbian relationships as "sexual" because by definition they cannot be sexual, to be "sexual" requires one female and one male. Homosexual relationships are Asexual by definition.

Marriage is a sexual relationship and by definition is a joining together of one male and one female.

Governments do not own marriage and it is not for Parliament or any institution to seek to redefine it.
Coalition For Marriage

No Brainer!

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist thinker in the mid 20th century who defined two revolutionary concepts - revolution by manouvre and revolution by position. Revolution by manouvre is the physical action of taking power. Revolution by position is the act of  establishing oneself within the conciousness of the individual that makes the revolution inevitable. The Gramscian concept is that one reaches a point where "The Revolution" becomes so common-sensical in the popular imagination that it comes about of its own accord. The key concept here is this - when does something cease to be 'ideological' and become 'common sense'?

Let me give a current example: In conversation with someone I will call CH the Middle Ages were an unmitigated intellectual disaster fostered by Christianity. The self evident fact - so far as he was concerned - was that Christianity had plunged Western Civilisation into the Dark Ages. And the "Fact" was that his enlightened view of life had brought a revival of learning out of this Dark Age. Moreover that this interpretation of history was "Fact"!
Vainly I pointed out that Dark Ages were due to the incursion of pagan invaders and that the Christian Church was the repository of classical learning. I also gently intimated the Carolingian and 12th Century 'Renaissance' don't fit his simplistic interpretation of history - but ignorant of these - he was inclined to consider these considerations mere bluff.
The point I am driving to is this. So far as he is concerned it is a "No Brainer" - Christianity brought about the Dark Ages - he does not need to engage his brain... the Gramscian revolution has occured... what requires careful thought has been bypassed...
To be a Christian one needs to engage ones Brain.

Catholic Adoption Agency & Gay Rights.

A Leeds based Catholic Adoption Agency has won a High Court case against certain 'sexual orientation regulations' (part of the Equality Bill) which would compel it not to draw a distinction between same-sex adoptors and more conventional relationships.
A variety of lobby groups (Stonewall, The Secular Society, Humanist Society etc) have denounced this ruling as immoral and bigotted. A same-sex couple interviewed on the BBC TV the other night felt deeply angered that they were being discriminated against.
There was no evidence, to the best of recollection, that this couple had been refused adoption by this agency. Indeed one is tempted to ask why would they apply to such an agency in the first place? It should also be pointed out that no-one has an absolute 'right to have a child'!
The moral outrage seems rather contrived to say the least.

It seems that the High Court took the view that the work done by the agency in managing 'difficult to place' children was such that to effectively close them down would be a wholly unwarranted consequence of enforcing Harriet Harman's brainchild.

It would be silly to assert that the church is being persecuted by the state. And yet it strikes me that the church as a whole and other Christian institutions are being "set up" by state sponsored legislation which will encourage vexatious litigation from hostile lobby groups and individuals with their own agendas. Pressure from them and an unsympathetic media will increasingly bear down on the work done by Christian charities.

The precedent our Liberal masters are seeking to create is that the State will in future police individual consciences. No you won't be thrown into prison, but you will be subject to public vilification and, in some circumstances, the loss of your livelihood if you defy the Liberal Establishment. They might permit you a conscience just so long as you don't actually do anything with it!

Persecution of the church by the state has simply taken a modern twist - it's now contracted out!

"Evangelicals are a Force for Good", says Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times.

What is the largest US-based international relief organisation? Save the Children? Care? Neither, says Nicholas Kristof; it's actually World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group. The organisation has 40,000 staff in nearly 100 countries - more people than all the other big US relief groups combined. While the American view of evangelicals is still shaped by "preening television blowhards and hypocrites", the reality is that a growing number of conservative Christians are "acknowledging that to be 'pro-life' must mean more than opposing abortion". They are getting out there and helping the needy, doing "superb work" on issues such as Aids and malaria. And, contrary to the myth, it's not all about proselytising. Today, such groups as World Vision "ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversion". Secular liberals, who have a "snooty" disdain for all faith-based groups, haven't recognised their contribution. Indeed, some are pushing to end the long-standing practice of channeling US aid through such groups. That would be a "catastrophe", since it would destroy many of the "indispensable networks" the US relies on to distribute emergency aid. America mustn't make the world's most vulnerable people the casualties of its own "cultural war".



As quoted in The Week, issue 757, 13 March 2010. http://www.theweek.co.uk/

Militant Cleric's Anti-British Rant in School Assembly.
Imagine the scene where a cleric uses the platform at a school assembly to denounce the British presence in his country and calls for his co-religionists to make a stand with those the army is oppressing there.

At the time of this incident the army had been deployed a couple of years earlier to help preserve the peace in that country and were taking casualties in this thankless task. There was some feeling that the army should be pulled out and the inhabitants "left to get on with it!" The cleric made his appeal to a secondary school in Bradford which had a large number of third and fourth generation immigrant children from his home country. Their forebears had come to the city to work in the textile industry which depended upon cheap labour - and that was recruited from overseas. The important point is that the cleric clearly felt that these children owed some loyalty to the old country and its people.

On the whole the children were baffled rather than inflamed by the impassioned plea by this man and I don't think anything much came of it. The cleric was not invited back to the best of my knowledge. By this time the children had only the most tenuous links with the old country and any resentment towards "the British" had long since dissipated. The stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents having to walk from Bradford to Leeds to attend their nearest place of worship had passed into folk memory and any resistance to such buildings being developed locally (as alien impositions on the national culture) had long since ceased. Additionally the immigrants had by now their own well established school system. That did not mean, however, that the immigrant community felt entirely at ease among the host nation and there persisted some unspoken but genuinely felt fear that the conflict in this cleric's country could have serious repercussions on British streets. Occasionally their children would be asked to disperse quickly from school on the basis of rumours circulating in the city that they would be targetted by gangs of local youths. This was probably sheer paranoia - but even so it was a genuinely felt fear, met with a resolve not to retaliate in kind.

A casual observer in the secondary school would have found one aspect quite jarring however. Each class did not have a number to designate them; the classes were given the names of those who had been "martyred". Such markers emphasised to the children that, as well assimilated as they were in English culture, there were differences too. Yet the names of the martyrs were carefully selected to emphasise their English rather than foreign origins. In fact the names of the schools themselves were carefully chosen for the same reasons as if there was a concerted effort not to create an immigrant subculture but to stress that they too belonged and wished to belong. So the challenge to the host community is how welcoming they choose to be.

From an Evangelical perspective (and that is where I am coming from!) there is a much deeper challenge - do we see our role as defenders of our national culture against faiths perceived as 'foreign'? Are we inclined to feel threatened, defensive or even angry? In the face of militant calls from hostile clerics do we really believe that the Gospel is our greatest asset or do we think we need to take "action" of some other sort?

Oh! by the way the assembly I described was in 1970 and the cleric was an Irish Catholic priest.... I was there that day! This was St George's Secondary School on Cliffe Road and I was there for two years in "Anne Line" and "Henry Morse" before moving onto St Bede's in Emm Lane, Bradford.

post-script, 12th March 2010.
I came across this BBC article on local history which ties in nicely with the comments above, just click on the link... http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2006/05/12/bradford_irish_katie_feature.shtml

Equality Law and the Christian Church.

Three amendments proposed by Baroness O'Cathain were approved by the House of Lords last night. These will help the church to continue to employ Christians ............. for the present.

There are two very important things to emphasise about the churches' stance over this issue, especially to those who will regard these amendments as an illiberal step. Firstly, the Christian church is committed to the principle of equality, St Paul wrote that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female" (Galatians 3 v28), there are no race, class or gender inequalities in God's eyes. Equality was a Christian concept long before our liberal establishment claimed it as its own invention. Our society describes as "community" ever more tightly defined and exclusive groups but the church is one of the most diverse communities within the UK today - in fact it is one of the few which genuinely draws together people from a diverse range of backgrounds. Thinking specifically about gay issues it is important to say that the church does employ gay people, but as with all Christian disciples, their lives must reflect the ethos of the organisation they will directly or indirectly represent, again St Paul said on these sorts of issues "and such were some of you" (1 Cor 6 v11).

So, secondly, the point of the churches' opposition to the government's Equality Bill is not to exclude some people groups from being employed by the church but rather to allow the church to employ professing Christians. The issue at stake is the independence of the church from state control.

It is a curious anomaly that our liberal establisment has excluded political parties from its Equality Bill; and indeed it would be incongruous if the law required such parties to appoint people who did not share their beliefs. Given that, is it so unreasonable for churches to seek similar consideration?

"YOU SWEEP THEM AWAY AS WITH A FLOOD; THEY ARE LIKE A DREAM."

Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall was breached signalling the end of the Communist experiment in Europe. Within a few years the Soviet Union folded up and the world seemed destined for a unipolar future. Some even speculated that with the apparent triumph of Liberal - Capitalist- Democracy history itself had reached some sort of definitive conclusion.

Growing up in the 60's and 70's the mighty USSR seemed to be a monolithic power structure which would certainly outlast me - how wrong I was. As ludicrous as it seems now the Soviet Union and its empire seemed an unassailable fact of life and some of my contemporaries even saw it, on balance, as a force for good!

Psalm 90 seems apt;
"You return man to dust
and say, "Return, o children of man!"
For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night."

It would be a bad mistake to put our trust in Mankind - whatever the political or economic ideology. The lesson of history is not the triumph of capitalism or democracy but the fragility of all that Man constructs and the hubris which asserts its ascendancy. Only God is "from everlasting to everlasting" and security is only found in Him! "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations". Amen.

11th November 2009. A Wonderful Addendum!
I would like to add this additional comment: God sweeps aside these pretentions of Mankind - these mighty empires come for a season and wither; they are utterly insignificant to God. But in case we are tempted to feel that our individual lives have even less significance 2 Peter 3v8 relecting on Psalm 90 says this, "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years...." Nothing is insignificant to the Lord - He has all the time in the world for you!

I Was a Teenage Post-Millennialist!

I have previously related the story of the time I joined a church in Bradford (Yorkshire, UK) back in 1979 where this fellowship had a clearly "Post-Millenialist" ecclesiology. The "Millennium" is a term derived from a passage in Revelation 20 - the prefixes of "Pre", "A" and "Post" describe the period when the Kingdom of God, as promised by Jesus Christ, will be truly inaugurated.

"Pre-Mill" means that Jesus will return first and then establish his kingdom on earth. This is usually attributed to a re-establisment of the State of Israel which is then overtaken by "the rapture" and an apocalyptic world conflict. This is often the subject of "pop prophecy" in Christian circles and treats the Gospel era as a kind of hiatus in God's plan.

"Post-Mill" means that Jesus will return after his kingdom has been established through the agency of the Church... generally taken to mean that the Church will so predominate the life of the world community that the vast majority of people will be saved - and the rest will be notionally "Christian". Isn't it interesting that Jesus poses the question in Luke 18 v8, "Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?"

"A-Millenniallism" is a bit of a misnomer. "A" as a prefix means "without" which implies that A-Millennialists do not believe in the Biblical Millennium. A-Millennialists actually believe that the Millennium is a real and present reality - it is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God... an entity which is here now and yet not easily nailed down. It will yet be revealed in all its fullness when Jesus returns. (Contrary to some people who ought to know better "A-Millennialism" does not mean a disbelief in the Return of Christ!).

Does any of this really matter? Well, yes. Depending on your stance regarding the Millennium you will adopt one of several attitudes towards contemporary culture. The pre-mill believer will probably tend to be rather separationist from his or her non-believing contemporaries. The post-mill believer will tend to be an active lobbyist seeking to enculturate Christianity into the contemporary scene; such lobbyists tend to be rather right-wing. An A-mill believer will see that only the gospel of Jesus Christ can reform society by changing people's hearts, neither isolationism nor moralising will change a thing. By refusing to be enculturated in any place or time the Kingdom of God transcends all human categories and by doing so demonstrates the power of God.

"Federal Vision" (aka Auburn Avenue Theology).

Until last Summer I had never even heard of "Federal Vision" and since then I have done a bit of a crash course to get up to speed as it has become a hot topic within some churches and organisations I know of. (St Helen's is not directly affected I hasten to add!). Trawling the internet is a bit of a minefield - you find skilful proponents of "Fed Vis" and passionate critics, along with 'the good, the bad and the ugly' voices in between. In a nutshell "Federal Vision" seeks to reaffirm the importance of the sacraments within the life of the church and indeed to reform our view of the Church itself. In support of these ideas they look to the Westminster Confession and Book 4 of John Calvin's "Institutes of Christian Religion" among other worthy sources, so at first glance it would be unfair to say that these people are outside the Reformed faith or that they are heretics. The most visible practice of the movement is a passionate belief in infant baptism for reasons which will become clear below.

Reading "The Baptized Body", by Peter J Leithart, has shaken me and caused me to review what it is I believe. I thought that we, the Reformed church, were all singing from the same hymn sheet. Have I so badly read the Bible that I have imposed on it my own pre-suppositions? An issue for me is, have I misidentified myself as a 'Reformed' christian? To be a 5 point Calvinist seemingly isn't enough. Can I still at least say I'm reformed with a small 'r'? But then again John Calvin didn't actually write 'The 5 Points'; they were written by his successors and dedicated to him. Nonetheless I feel a bit of an orphan.

I am not an academic theologian but I consider myself to be a reasonably well read layman who has a clear idea about what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about; and even if I do not know how to winkle out every nuance hidden within the curlicues of academic vocabulary I am sufficiently concerned to make this modest attempt. It may be that in writing on this topic I am making a right charlie of myself and merely displaying my ignorance for all of blog world to see - but I would far rather run that risk than say nothing.

Not knowing where to start - or frankly which source to trust - I figured the best place to begin was with some of the literature written by Peter J Leithart who is a leading proponent of "Fed Vis". This movement arose within reformed circles in the Presbyterian Church of the USA but has made significant inroads into the reformed scene in the UK. And when I say significant this is not mere hyperbole.

Peter Leithart's seminal book is "The Baptized Body". He asserts that when the word baptism is used in the New Testament it normally means the sacrament of water Baptism. I will have to consider the texts carefully again but if he is correct then the rite does achieve some remarkable things for the recipient. In Leithart's view water Baptism is a 'radical life transforming event'. But I always thought that the word "baptism" has a range of meanings or at least it could be used as a metaphor. Could not the word be legitimately translated as "immersed" rather than being transliterated from the Greek without neccesarily doing an injustice to the text? Is it so unfair, as Leithart suggests, to treat the word "baptism" as shorthand for the process of conversion which culminates in a public, symbolic identification with Christ's death and resurrection (a rite of passage if you like) and official welcome into the local church community? Leithart thinks this is playing fast and loose with the plain meaning of the text; put simply 'the sign effects what it signifies'. I do find that hard to swallow because it does seem to set these texts at odds with many others that seem to impute the benefits of salvation to the believer by the sheer grace of God alone without the agency of the sacraments. I will have to think on these things some more, but I am still inclined to view baptism as a testimony to regeneration rather than a regenerative act in itself!

There are some helpful correctives in the book. When we come to Christ we are called to be part of the church community and not just live our lives in splendid spiritual isolation. We also need to be aware of the dangers of an inward looking, pietistic form of spirituality. Both these stress "me" and "my walk with God" to the exclusion of our relationships with other believers. A distinction is drawn between the personal and the individual in the Fed Vis lexicon - personal is good: individual bad, an issue that will pop up again in this essay. Leithart makes a fair point about infants being able to form trusting relationships and that there isn't some magical age of responsibility; but that argument really scores against Arminianism rather than believers' baptism as such because faith is a gift of God at whatever age.

Here I want to draw attention to the problem of language and why Federal Visionists(?), Federal Visionaries(?), Federal Visionistas(?) often find themselves 'talking past' people like me... and indeed start to arouse concern. Fed Visers are very intelligent and articulate people who use language with precision - usually borne out of academic rigour - but the words used mean something signifcantly different to the men and women in the pew, or at least the evangelical in the pew. For example the word "Reformed" is used of this theology but something much more sacramental is meant by it than I would hitherto have thought possible. I accept this is probably sheer ignorance on my part.

That aside I am troubled by several aspects of the book, which I read genuinely in good faith. A lot of the words with which we are familiar on the evangelical scene seem to be radically redefined by "Fed Vis" eg, "regeneration", "sanctification" and even "justification" are to be applied to anyone who happens to be Water Baptised regardless of whether they are ultimately saved. "Baptism" texts can be advanced which seem to imply these amazing benefits - but, of course, for Leithart that almost invariably means literal water Baptism and invariably fall short, in the final analysis, of actual salvation. I can't help feeling that this 'radical life transforming event' is not so life transforming after all! Within this new lexicon it is possible to be justified, adopted, sanctified and regenerate and yet ultimately remain unsaved.

The crux of the sacrament is to induct the recipient into civic society. This is a fundamental reorientation away from the Gospel which saves sinners through individual repentance and faith in Christ to a Gospel which seeks social and cultural change through the agency of the Church as a formal institution. In this context it is easy to see why infants can, indeed must, be regenerated and encultured into the Church by means of Baptism. The concept of believers' baptism is treated with some scepticism on the basis that the notion of choice is an illusion derived from our modern worldly mindset. The "baptistic" approach of believers' baptism, is viewed by Fed Vis as deeply suspect and compromised by worldly pre-suppositions rather than being truly Biblical. Maybe I missed a step in the argument somewhere but (as I said earlier) I've always viewed faith as a gift from God. None of these criticisms 'hit home' and I wonder if he really has Arminianism in his sights rather than the target he claims.

Please note that not all paedo-baptists are Fed Vis! There is a spectrum of thought within the church community as to how much continuity or discontinuity exists between the Old and the New Covenant. I tend toward the discontinuity end of the spectrum but others see much more continuity ie, water baptism is the new sign of the covenant taking over from the OT sign of circumcision. Water baptism is, for them, an appropriate sign used to include infants within the covenant people of God; personally I'm not convinced but I do not regard this theology as "beyond the pale" by any means. Maybe this was where John Calvin was positioned. The question is how much further down this Covenantal spectrum is Fed Vis and at what point do we consider it to have crossed the line? Or put another way, do the proponents of FV regard us, sotto voce, as too far up the line?

The essence of the argument goes much further beyond infant Baptism because it turns on our understanding of "the Body of Christ. Leithart says our concept of "The Body of Christ" should be taken literally to mean just that, it is not a metaphor. If I read him correctly he seems to be saying that the Church is an incarnation of Christ in the world today - to say otherwise is to be guilty of Nestorianism no less! Hence the 'federal' tag ('federal' being a Latin derivative alternatively translated as 'covenantal' in English). The body of believers are in a federal/covenantal union with Christ. I don't have a huge problem with this provided we take care to distinguish between the Body and the Head. I cannot help but feel that Leithart sees the Church as sharing in the Headship/Dominion of Christ. Here it is useful to say that "Fed Vis" is firmly 'Post-Millennial' in its philosophy, which means that, in its opinion, Jesus will return after a glorious millennial Church age during which the world's culture, economics and politics will have been transformed through the agency of the Church. (A-millennialists interpret the 1,000 year reign of Revelation ch. 20 as a present reality we call "the Kingdom of God" which will find its complete fulfillment when Christ returns. Pre-millennialists see Christ as returning beforehand to inaugurate his kingdom in the modern land of Israel).

The discussion within Evangelicalism about Christ and Culture in recent years has been a helpful way of thinking Christianly about how we interact with the world around us and as a way of proclaiming the Gospel meaningfully in a variety of settings. But the "Fed Vis" position seems to be that redeeming culture is the principal mission of the Church, which is a step up from classic "post-millennialism". The classic Post-Millennialists I've met would say that culture will be transformed coincidentally as people come to faith in Christ; I don't have a problem with this conceptually because they recognise that "the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart!" You cannot change anything until the human heart is changed! However I worry that Fed Vis sees our primary mission as changing people's presuppositions as an end in itself, if so then they have started to lose sight of the grace of God and its ability to change the human heart; "not by might nor by power, but by my spirit" says the Lord Almighty. The danger in my view is that the Fed Vis version of post-millennialism will substitute mere formalism for spiritual reality as people are enculturated into Christianity and their confidence is focused on the institutions of the Church.

Perhaps the profoundest difference I have with Leithart is his view on assurance. I just cannot see how Baptism, or the Church minister's "absolution"(!) for that matter, offers objective assurance of anything. Indeed I would argue that the danger here is of placing our faith in people or institutions or rites rather than in Christ alone. Maybe Leithart would deny this on the basis that the Church is Christ, but I'm not convinced. Assurance can only be assurance when the focus is taken away from ourselves or our particular group and placed in Christ exclusively. I have assurance precisely because I have trusted Jesus and have no confidence in myself or any one or any thing else to see me right. I think Leithart would say that this is an unhealthy, disembodied, spiritualised, pietistic kind of belief. I think he is wrong.

I have to say that if Leithart is correct in his theology then my understanding of grace is actually wide of the mark, for the following reason: God would have instituted certain rites and religious practices, not as "a means of grace" - as if it were funnelled by the sacraments - but as grace itself! Not merely would these rites be crucial to our faith but faith itself would actually be more about sharing in the life of the Church community as expressed through the sacraments and less about who we have come to put our trust in. When Jesus promised the thief next to him on the cross "today you will be with me in paradise" the thief had had no opportunity to be water Baptised (ie in Leithart's theology = adopted, sanctified, justified, regenerated etc) did he? I cannot help but conclude that Federal Vision has moved from the concept of "by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone".... it's not that they neccesarily deny any of those beliefs per se, it is that they deny the 'alones' by making something critical of the sacraments.

I can understand why one Fed Viser I heard of described himself as a "Reformed Catholic". And, at least, that also leaves the door open for me to call myself a Reformed Protestant; I'm not an orphan after all!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

post-script: Monday 16th March 2009. I've been reading chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession (about Justification) and frankly it is difficult to square it with Leithart's take on the subject: Leithart says as much himself. Justification is about 'effective calling' in the W Conf (Rom 8 v30 etc) and for Leithart it is about the possibility of new life.

It seems to me that the contrast is between "Justification (in this strong Rom 8v30 sense) by Faith" versus "Justification (in the diluted Leithart sense) by Faithfulness"! Unless I've got completely the wrong end of the stick (and I am open to being put right!); this is no mere academic discussion, this is about the soul of the Evangelical/Reformed faith no less.

I'll have to make this a topic for a future 'blog' I think.

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

Shortly after the collapse of Communism it was
common in some circles to concur with Francis
Fukuyama's idea that we had reached "The End
of History". The great ideological battle was over
and liberal democracy had triumphed. 'Events'
would still happen, but Western civilization had
prevailed. In due course, its world view and values
would be accepted across the globe.

Fifteen years later this comforting notion looks
rather quaint and naive. Inthe mid 1990s Samuel
Huntington published his book THE CLASH OF
CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD
ORDER. In essence, he believes that the new world
order consists of six to nine civilizational blocs
(depending on how one counts them). They are all
mutually incompatible and destined to clash from
time to time. The book made a big impact, especially
as its publication pre-dated the events of 11 September
2001 by several years and seemed prescient in its
vision. the book was also warmly spoken of in
evangelical circles. But perhaps what was lacking
was a thoroughgoing analysis of Huntington's
ideas in the context of the Kingdom of God - not so
much from a missiological point of view, but from the
perspective of Western Christianity. The question I
want to raise is this: by over-emphasising the
'Christian' credentials of the West, are we Western
Christians more likely to be drawn into civilizational
clashes than our non-western brothers and sisters
in Christ who may have grasped the radical nature
of the Kingdom of God better than us? In short: how
do we Western Christians define who we are?

Huntington's civilizations are all 'religious' in nature,
or at least ethno-religious. They are as follows:

WESTERN CHRISTIANITY: Europe, North America,
Australia, New Zealand and some parts of the pacific
rim.

EASTERN ORTHODOXY: Russia, Greece, Serbia and
the Caucasus region.

ISLAM: The Arab nations, South-West Asia, Central
Asia, Caucasus region, Indonesia and parts of the
Pacific rim.

SINIC: China and nations of the Chinese diaspora,
and Indo-China (Japan, Buddhist nations). Described
as Confucian which is a 'good fit' with the hierarchial/
collective nature of Communism.

HINDU: Indian sub-continent.

AFRICAN: Sub-Saharan Africa and Guyana region of
South America.

LATIN AMERICA: South and Central America (though
arguably this might be considered as linked to the
West).

These 'civilizations' each have a distinct identity, and
individuals within them find the core of their identity
from them. They view each other with varying degrees
of mutual incomprehension. Where their geographical
boundaries meet there may be physical conflict. For
example, in Bosnia three of these civilizations come
together: Western Christian (Croatian), Orthodox
Christian (Serbian) and Islam. Huntington's diagnosis
seems to explain the deep roots of the Bosnian war, as
well as many other wars across the world. Because
civilization touches on the individual's sense of identity
and kinship, these clashes can never be negotiated away
or resolved. Warring civilizations may reach a point of
exhaustion and call a truce, but that will not remove
the root cause of the conflict. The civilizations have
irreconcilable characters.

Besides conflict at the interfaces of civilizations, some
nations are described as 'cleft' or 'torn' nations, contain-
ing within themselves populations of different civil-
izations or nations unsure of their identity. Australia,
for example, is described as a 'torn' country; there has
been some internal debate as to whether Australia
should consider itself itself part of Asia (which it is
geographically) or whether it should look back to its
European origins and cultural links with the West. In
the 1990s this debate was bitter and acrimonious
because it touched the Australian sense of identity.
But it is an issue every society has to face: how do we
identify ourselves? Who do we identify with? What
values do we hold in common? More to the point,
how do Western evangelicals identify ourselves?
Who are our kin?

If a Muslim becomes a Christian, the civilizational
cost is self-evident; he becomes estranged from his
roots, and those he leaves behind are dismayed at
the 'civilizational defection' their loved one has
undergone. The cost of becoming a disciple of Jesus
is to leave behind the civilizations of this world and
find one's identity within the Kingdom of God. What
a tragedy if that cost is cheapened by being perceived
as a move westward rather than heavenward!

As a Western evangelical Christian, I struggle with a
double-mindedness borne out of an ongoing internal
conflict. I have been taught (and wished to believe)
that I am part of a 'Christian' nation - one historically
rooted in the gospel and blessed by God as a result.
Consequently there is little or no civilizational cost
involved in becoming a Christian. And if 'Christian'
values and morality have been eclipsed in society,
it is merely a temporary aberration which Christians
should strive to reverse. This would concur with
Huntington's analysis of Western civilization as being
'Christian'. But in our stage of God's strategy, the
Bible narrative has shifted from the limited concept
of a nation-state of God's people to something much
more dynamic with global and cosmic implications:
the Kingdom of God. The promises to Abraham to
bless all the nations (Genesis 2) are mediated via
David's kingdom into Jesus' breathtakingly expansive
vision of the Kingdom. It is tempting to draw flattering,
but deceptive, parallels with the ancient kingdom of
Israel and our own nation. The biblical narrative has
since moved on. To use the adjective 'Christian' in
national terms is sub-biblical in its understanding of
the sweep of scripture. The model Jesus gave us was of
leaven, not a pure nation - a diaspora of God's people
encompassing the earth. This mandate enables us to
engage postively with our culture and national life
while avoiding the dangers of politicising the church.
If we slip into politics with a 'nation' agenda, we will
be seen, not merely as creatures of the political right,
but even of the ultra far-right, with disastrous
consequences for our witness to the nations.

The other half of my divided Western soul is deeply
and profoundly uncomfortable with this identification
of the West with Christ. Firstly, there are more Christians
outside the West who are 'blessed' with a clear civil-
ization vs. Kingdom conflict and blessed with a clearer
sense of 'kin' within the community of the saints.

Secondly, there is little to commend the gospel of Christ
within the history of the West's dealings with other
civilizations. It has proved itself little better than any
other self-regarding, avaricious empire - albeit with
the leaven of a godly diaspora who have made a postive
contribution to the history of the host Western nations.
Huntington quotes a speech by Malcolm Rifkind who,
as the then Defence Secretary of the UK, set about
defining the roots of European civilization and completely
omitted any reference to Christianity. I shudder to think
what Western civilization would look like if it had been
left to its pagan origins.

Thirdly, and most crucially, any over-identification of
the Kingdom of God with any of these civilizations makes
a 'this-worldly' attitude among believers inevitable - an
attitude which has deeply corroded the soul of Western
evangelical Christianity. Our Western civilization has
mired us in compromise, and we have lost any sense of
just how radical the Kingdom of God truly is. I suspect
that, as a Christian, I need to 'defect' from the West in the
same way as a member of any other civilization needs to
if they are to come to Christ. The people of the Kingdom
of God are defined exclusively by the Gospel. They are
our true kin, Jesus is our King, and we are the poorer
for our compromise.

Fourthly, a warning: if Huntington's analysis is correct,
these civilizations will clash when the opportunity arises.
Given the 'religious' character of civilizations, if evangelical
Christians over-identify with the West, we may find
ourselves leading the charge into conflict. What price the
gospel then? Imagine a world fifty years from now,
struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of a
civilizational war in which the West was a protagonist.
When attention turns to the role played by the evangelical
church in the pre-war period, will the conclusion be that
the church fanned the flames of conflict, or that it modelled
grace to a world bent on war?

This article was first published in the February 2006 edition of
'The Briefing' (issue No 329). The publishers can be contacted as follows;
in Australia http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/
or in the UK at http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/

Post Script: 2nd May 06. A lengthy rebuttal to this article of mine
appears as a letter from Stephen Hurworth of Perth in Australia in
the "Interchange" section of the May 2006 issue of "The Briefing",
issue 332. He's entitled to take a crack at me, but I stand by my
article.


tagline: Clash of Civilizations. Clash of Civilisations. Religious Conflict.
Evangelical Church. Kingdom of God. Kin. Kinship. Identity.