(Part 2) Religion in the south: An interview for Blue Mountain Review
Is religion is being stigmatized and/or demonized by the American population as a whole? This was the second of five questions my fiend Clifford Brooks, asked of me for an interview for The Blue Mountain Review. The Blue Mountain Review is a literary magazine of which Clifford is one of the editors. The audience of the magazine is culturally southern but not Christian. The interview was published in the winter of 2016.
Each week I am posting my response to each of the five questions. If you missed the first post I encourage you to go back and read it.
2) Do you feel like religion is being stigmatized and/or demonized by the American population as a whole?
Religion, no; Jesus, yes; and there is nothing new about that. The New Testament church was not persecuted because the world they lived in was anti-religion. They were persecuted because the gospel they preached was exclusive. The Romans who so viciously mistreated the early Christians were not opposed to adding a new god to the list but would not stand for the testimony of Jesus claiming to be the one true God and the only way to heaven. That same dynamic is true today. Our culture loves religion as long as that religion makes no absolute truth claims. And that is the problem with Christianity – it makes absolute truth claims.
Presently, it seems that much of the hostility has been focused on issues of human sexuality. The demand of the culture is that religion must acquiesce to the desires of the present. In that demand you find the conflict. If you claim that the God of the Bible has no authority to define what is righteous among His creation, then He is not the creator, nor sovereign, nor God. For Christians living in a world that is increasingly growing hostile to a biblical worldview, we must recognize that believing the teachings of the Bible has always put us in conflict with the world.
I must admit that I personally have been surprised by how quickly America has abandoned its Christian heritage and vilified what once was honored. Yet, I am encouraged by remembering that the church is sustained not by the power of man but by the power of God. History is replete with attempts to silence, kill, and destroy the church and the witness of the gospel. Church history is peppered with the church’s own failing that could have brought about its own demise. Yet, the witness remains. Frankly, I believe that the vilification of Christians and the church is only going to grow more intense as the culture moves toward greater secularism. When the will of man is worshiped, then those who worship God must be silenced.
Next week I will answer the question: What are 5 easy ways people can practice every day to feel "a closer walk with God"? (Just a few small stepping-stones people can use, gradually, to find themselves in faith)