Thursday 24 May 2012

The public witness of UK evangelicals

A couple of examples of blogs from the US in the last couple of days,
related to the "culture wars":

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/05/im-indispensable.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frenchrevolution/2012/05/23/an-open-letter-to-young-post-partisan-evangelicals/

I do not know what you make of that, or of the US "culture wars" in general.

But Moody's famous quote to a critic, which I'll paraphrase from memory,
bothers me when I think of the land of my birth, the UK: "I much prefer
what I am doing to what you are not doing".

Whatever else is involved, US evangelicals are known, in general, for
believing decisively against the sins of sodomy and child murder. And UK
ones are not - at least, if we are talking about being ready to do
anything beyond preaching against it in our own gatherings, that is. If
it means standing up in public and saying "this is against the law of
God"; if it means raising a voice in relevant public places and trying
to reach lost people where they are (e.g. outside places where
"abortion" is provided), directly protesting against those who
perpetrate and allow such wickedness (as John the Baptist rebuked Herod)
instead of hoping that somehow they wander into our gatherings, then I
think it's fair to say that these are hardly seen as priority issues.
We're happy to leave others alone as long as they leave us alone too.
That's my honest impression, and that of an insider and friend of UK
evangelicalism, not of a hostile critic.

Is that how it should be?

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