Praying? What kind of people are you?
Well, the kind of people who built our civilisation, founded our democracies, developed our modern ideas of rights and justice, ended slavery, established universal education and who are, even as I write, in the forefront of the fight against poverty, prejudice and ignorance. In a word, Christians.
But to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal. In a culture that prizes sophistication, non-judgmentalism, irony and detachment, it is to declare yourself intolerant, naive, superstitious and backward.
It was almost 150 years ago that Matthew Arnold wrote of the Sea of Faith’s ”˜melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ and in our time that current has been replaced by an incoming tide of negativity towards Christianity.
A moving testimony of faith. For the information of US and other readers outside the UK: Michael Gove is a Conservative politician and member of parliament who was for several years Secretary for Education and began a wave of free schools (actually financed by the state: possibly equivalent to charter schools in the U.S.) His challenging of what had been a cosy monoply brought him opprobrium. He himself was adopted when a baby, and grew up in Aberdeen in ordinary circumstances. His courage and outspokenness may have cost him a shot at the premiership – certainly Boris Johnson (a U. S. citizen!) and Theresa May have overtaken him as possible successors to David Cameron.
I felt sad as I read Gove’s analysis because it is so accurate. What I find weird about the liberal mindset today is that it reduces choice and diversity, and imposes a monochrome world-view on society. You might have thought that that liberalism would be interested in expansion of social diversity, not contraction. It is a bleak time to be a believer in Britain. Still, I think of Palestine 2000 years ago, the marching Roman armies, the power and the panoply, and over against all this, someone lifting up bread and wine before a lonely death. How feeble it would have seemed to an observer at the time. Yet what has endured is that love and that communion and these sustain us still.
What has happened in Indiana and Arkansas shows that persecution is coming to Christians in America as well. But the good thing is that it will drive the phony and nominal Christians out (look at what is already happening with the collapse of the mainline denominations) and will leave the real believers and followers of Jesus. We are called by Jesus to be salt and light. Light only stands out in the darkness, and salt is only needed where there is corruption and decay. So we are entering a time in which our mission as Christians becomes all the more important, even if we may face scorn and opprobrium, and perhaps loss of jobs and businesses as well.