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Progressive Christians, intent on implementing equality within the church, as a substitute sow division. In their need for absolute equality they remake God as a cosmic Henry Ford who famously instructed his prospects that they may have any color of Model T ‘so long as it is black’. But God doesn’t go in for mass manufacturing: He is a craftsman and every one in all us is exclusive.
Injustice primarily based on pores and skin color, intercourse, age or any of the opposite discriminations widespread in our day must be opposed, particularly when it seems within the church. But Christians also needs to be clear on the grounds on which they oppose injustice.
Subordinating theology
In trying to undo what they see as injustice, progressive Christians abandon theology and undertake secular woke hermeneutics, notably Critical Race Theory (CRT). This is the route chosen by the Church of England, educating it of their colleges and preaching it from their pulpits. So entrenched is CRT {that a} social justice unit being arrange within the diocese of Birmingham introduced that it will be hiring a ‘deconstructing whiteness’ officer. In trying to create equality, they find yourself emphasising distinction.
Recently the Ven Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Archdeacon of Liverpool, referred to as for ‘anti-whiteness’ within the church; she additionally needs Christians to ‘smash the patriarchy’. Giving the rationale for her views, Dr Threlfall-Holmes didn’t say they had been the results of intensive examine and reflection on Scripture; as a substitute she mentioned she had attended a one-day convention on racial justice organised by the charity Reconciliation Initiatives. This resulted in her waking as much as the dangerous whiteness of the Anglican church.
Far from serving to Christians to understand the worth of loving our neighbours, a command Jesus thought-about of best significance, progressive Christianity begins by emphasising divisions between Christians on the idea of pores and skin color. It encourages the vast majority of Christians within the UK to view themselves morally flawed as a result of their inherited pores and skin color.
Starting level
Critics of progressivism throughout the CofE level to its divisive and demoralising results. Valid as these criticism are, they miss the primary failure. Dr Threlfall-Holmes and the opposite progressive Christians make a basic error of their start line by adopting a secular ideology which subordinates the Bible. Where you begin influences the place you find yourself. If you might be in search of racial concord by means of CRT, ‘you’ll be able to’t get there from right here’.
Progressive Christians take human ideas, varnish them with biblical terminology and picture they’re being true to God’s will. It would not matter how a lot of a coating you give these ideologies, they continue to be human and ignore the sovereignty of God. Nowhere in Scripture do we discover the idea of ‘intersectionality’.
In the church the Word of God should at all times be our start line and supreme rule in religion and life. In Scripture we discover a very totally different strategy to reconciling individuals and serving to us reside collectively. The apostles, in a really unjust society, didn’t function on a framework of oppressor and oppressed. The Romans who dominated Paul’s world definitely oppressed the individuals they conquered and thought of themselves above all others, but nowhere do we discover Paul railing towards ‘Roman privilege’.
If Paul had used progressive classes the early church would have fractured and died an early demise. We discover him doing one thing very totally different. Paul defends equality not by filling quotas and evaluating percentages however by focussing on the particular person of Christ.
The identical in Christ
Instead of demanding seen racial equality between Christians, Paul insists that outward variations are immaterial as a result of what Christ has performed inside us. He tells us that in Christ, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there may be neither slave nor free, there isn’t any female and male, for you might be all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). Our variations are recognised, however Paul ignores them as a result of we have now one thing much better and extra vital which binds us collectively. This is the place true equality is discovered, in Christ and particularly after we come to His desk.
We are taught that all of us, no matter our background, are in the identical situation, want the identical Saviour, obtain His grace in the identical manner and journey collectively to the identical finish. Christians ‘have placed on the brand new self, which is being renewed in data after the picture of its creator. Here there may be not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; however Christ is all, and in all’ (Colossians 3:10,11).
No division throughout the gospel and its outworking was permitted. At the Lord’s Supper each believer got here to the identical desk. Nationality, language, color, social class, these had been all immaterial. In a hierarchical society primarily based on distinction and oppression, the gospel created a spot of real equality, the church. This scandalised the Romans and provoked opposition to Christians due to their dangerously radical concepts and practices which threatened to undermine their stratified society.
Follow the Gospel totally
The church has not at all times lived as much as its foundational ideas: it consists of fallen individuals who screw issues up. There are issues within the church’s historical past of which we must be proud and different issues of which we must be ashamed. But the issues of which we’re ashamed ought to encourage us to redouble our efforts to observe the gospel extra totally fairly than abandon it for secular ideology.
There is just one place the place there may be true equality between individuals, in Christ. Resisting the encroachment of progressive ideology and particularly CRT within the church is way more than resisting a political stance: it’s a very important defence of the gospel.
Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister. He blogs at A Grain of Sand.
