Do We Live In A Christian Country?

Do We Live In A Christian Country?

I have a confession to make: along with a significant number of others, I have for a number of years accepted a premise. That premise is this: that because we have become an increasingly secular society, that because only a minority of our citizens regularly attend a place of Christian worship and that because a significant number of those people who have come to live in this country share non-Christian belief systems, we have become a non-Christian Country.

It is understandable that we have fallen into this premise.

Since the mid-1960s, when there were huge cultural shifts in our nation, and the established church system in the UK began loosing its way, we have become, as a nation, far more secularly orientated.

Also, over the last 50 years, large numbers of people have come to live in the UK who do not have a Christian belief, but have beliefs that are totally non-Christian. These communities have grown not only in number, but in political and social power, to the point where our traditional lifestyle is now lived in the context of the opinions of these other beliefs.

So it is understandable that we have accepted the premise. It is, however, a false premise. It is a false premise because who we are as a country is not based solely on how many people go to church regularly, not on how many citizens have no belief, not on how many people have different beliefs.

Our whole way of life in the UK; our laws, our justice system, our democratic style of Government, our ethical beliefs, are based on traditional Judeo-Christian belief and have been for hundreds of years. This may not be a country where enormous amounts of people still attend church regularly, but we are a Christian based country.

What, therefore, are the implications of this?

In a nutshell, those of us who do share a Christian belief should not, any longer, accept that we now live in a non-Christian country. We should not accept that, increasingly, our society will devolve into a totally secular society, nor that we are going to evolve into a society where Christian belief becomes marginalized beyond other beliefs simply because they shout louder or because they instil fear of opposition into their fellow citizens via threats of orchestrated violence.

Rather, we should remind ourselves what the Christian mission truly is: to go into all the world and make disciples, to live our lives as Christ wants us to live them, and that sometimes that may involve turning over metaphorical tables in metaphorical temples and driving the metaphorical money-changers away.

How those metaphors work out in actuality has yet to be seen, but if we surrender the Christian legacy of this country too easily, we, or our children, or their children, may regret this, deeply.