I
continue with the subject of the previous post (43). I want to make sure you, my readers,
understand not only but also take
seriously the charge in that post that we Christians have at least
partially created our own troubles and are at least partially responsible for
our own marginalization in the West, not to speak of the Middle-East and other
places. I don’t just want this acknowledged and then move on with a shrug of
our shoulders with little or no concern. We, Christians, have seriously
compromised the truths, insights and requirements of our religion at the expense of
others by marginalizing and oppressing them, not once, not twice, but time and
again. It has been our style for centuries across the street and around the
world. And that is a major reason for
others trying to marginalize us.
We asked for it, you might say.
We should acknowledge that history, recognize that by our bloody mistakes—and
they were bloody—we called up, we evoked this secular reaction from the
darkness down below. People were tired of bloody religion, intolerance and
discrimination, religion forced upon people. And they had good reason to object
and rebel. It led to the French Revolution where religion was rejected as evil
and to thousands of books on philosophy in which the whole notion of religion
was ridiculed and rejected, while reason was offered as the great source of
wisdom, the exclusive source. No more
need for divine revelation, thank you. We can manage on our own.
At the beginning of post 43 I
devoted a paragraph to my series Studies
in Christian-Muslim Relations. In volume 5 of that series I wrote the
following, part original and part quotation:
Kuyperians—a
Calvinist version of Christianity to which I adhere--recognise that secularism
is
largely the result of Christian failing at various fronts and that it has
introduced a number of important corrections in society. Jonathan Chaplin, at
the time a faculty member of Toronto’s
Institute for Christian Studies, is generous and honest in this respect:
Let me make it clear that the
anxieties shared by many secular
liberals about the impact of
public religion are real
ones. Some of them are mine
too…And let me also record
that the response of early
modern liberalism to public religion
was compelling and necessary.
In the 17th century, religion
was not only public, it was
backed by force of arms. In
such circumstances, we can see
why moves to confine the
public expression of faith
seemed so necessary. In time,
Christians who had stoked up
religious warfare were humbled
and had to allow liberalism to
teach it again what its
own deepest principles had
always implied: that authentic
faith cannot and may not be
coerced. So, a religious response
to contemporary liberalism
must begin by appreciating liberalism’s
vital historical contribution
to religious freedom and democracy.
In spite of my
constant anti-secular bias throughout this series, I want this contribution of
secularism recognised and remembered as we go along (pp. 139-140). That will
help keep us humble as we struggle against the marginalization today’s secularists seek to
impose on us.
That is a major source of our secularism in Canada. Fear for that past. Islam
is now reviving that fear and, for some, also the American Christian right.
Whether the response of
secularism is the right response is another question, but that it has a historical
justification is certain and true. We, Christians, asked for it. But
that does not mean it is the right response.
So, as you will occasionally be entertained by my anti-secular blasts in this blog, do remember
that it is something we ourselves have called up. Secularism is our offspring. As we correct it as parents do their children, let
us do so humbly, something that may not come easy for someone like me, a
crusader type of guy.
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