What we call civic Christianity seems to be growing – or it is as least as prevalent as ever. It seems as though our political leaders want some kind of religious blessing on their secular endeavours. It’s why chaplains are wanted in schools, hospitals, work places and political institutions.   Religious leaders are then all too keen to grasp at the straw of civic Christianity in order to justify their own existence.

It’s a somewhat strange paradox. As the church seems to be in decline, the number of religious items in the news increases and the clergy are everywhere. Tom Nairn’s quip that Scotland wouldn’t be free until the last Church of Scotland minister had been strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post (how’s that for hate speech?!) if true would suggest that Independence is a long way off.   D C Thomson, the publishers of the Sunday Post, are one of the few publishing firms doing well (unlike the recently demised Sunday Herald) and although the Church of Scotland is losing most of its Indians, it still has plenty chiefs.

Despite the most fervent wishes of the more militant secularists religion is not going to disappear from civil society soon. Indeed I suspect it is highly likely that it will become even more prominent, but is this a good thing? What we call civic Christianity seems to be growing – or it is as least as prevalent as ever. It seems as though our political leaders want some kind of religious blessing on their secular endeavours. It’s why chaplains are wanted in schools, hospitals, work places and political institutions.   Religious leaders are then all too keen to grasp at the straw of civic Christianity in order to justify their own existence.

But what is the place of Christianity in public life?

Should we still live in a society where we have school chaplains, the Kirking of the Council and prayers in parliament? John Owen’s Sermons to the Nation are from a different time – but when you read them you can only long for our current politicians to hear such preaching. Lets examine some recent examples of what we call ‘civic religion’.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is a self-professed evangelical -coming out of the Alpha school.   His church is in trouble – only 2% of young people even nominally identify with the Church of England and its numbers have halved in the past 15 years. There is no indication that this trend will not continue. Yet the Archbishop (and bishops) are influential members of the Establishment.  In a recent speech to the TUC Justin Welby wooed his audience by announcing that there should be more taxes, praised the unions, condemned zero hours contracts (which he called ‘the reincarnation of an ancient evil’) and denounced Amazon. The trouble with his speech is not that what he said was wrong – your political views will colour your views of that – but rather whether he should have said it, and what he missed out.

We don’t believe that Christian leaders should keep quiet about politics – but we should be very careful about making pronouncements on behalf of the Bible or the Church. For example I have views on the EU and Scottish Independence – but I would never dare claim that they are views revealed to me directly from God or that the Church should share those views. The Church is not a political organization. We can proclaim biblical principles that will have political implications, but we should not baptize any particular political philosophy.   There is always the danger of hypocrisy as well. No sooner had the screen faded on Welby’s speech denouncing Amazon than news came that the Church of England was a major shareholder in…Amazon! We were told that zero hours contracts were a reincarnation of evil and then discovered that some C of E cathedrals use zero hours contracts. Did someone not once say something about taking the beam out of our own eyes first?!

But the bigger problem is with what he didn’t say.  The difficulty with being a biblical prophet is that God often tells you to say things that your audience does not want to hear. The Archbishop’s speech at the TUC was like a ‘love in’ – an endorsement of everything that his audience would like to hear. Although he said there was a great deal of God in it…there was in fact very little. Indeed if I was a trade unionist I would have gone away with the impression that God agreed with me and all was well with the world (apart from the evil capitalists of course!).   The truly prophetic would have been the archbishop challenging the culture of death (abortion and euthanasia) and thereby asking the unions to stand up for the weakest and most vulnerable in our society.   Imagine the reception if he had challenged the deconstruction of humanity and marriage currently being enforced by the rich and powerful on our culture! But of course such a prophetic word would not be said in that particular echo chamber. Tickling ears means that you avoid ‘offence’ i.e. anything that challenges or disturbs those who are listening.

And that is the main problem with civic Christianity.

We are allowed to be chaplains in schools, universities and other civic institutions as long as we never say anything that would disturb the status quo. We are allowed, even encouraged, to talk about being radical – as long as we never are radical. When I was asked to go and speak at a University CU recently, they received a health and safety form asking that my speech be vetted in order to ensure that no one would be upset (triggered) by what I said. Dundee University frequently get requests from outside groups asking that they dismiss me as a chaplain because I do not bow down to their gods.     Our society wants a religious veneer and blessing, as long as it is on their terms.  If you are not on (their) message you are excluded.

Take for example the recent Pride marches in Perth and Dundee. Both were blessed by clergy (one C of S and one Anglican) who were described in the press as ‘brave and courageous’.   In what sense could that be true? They stood up and told the mob what the mob (and the media) wanted to hear. Being brave would mean proclaiming the Word of God, not baptizing the philosophies of men.

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