Reclaiming the High Ground: A Christian Response to Secularism

162 Pages·1990·14.949 MB·English

by  Hugh Montefiore (auth.)

RECLAIMING THE HIGH GROUND
Also by Hugh Montefiore
A WKWARD QUESTIONS ON CHRISTIAN LOVE
BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT
CAN MAN SURVIVE?
CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS: The Drummond Lectures 1989
COMMUNICATING THE GOSPEL IN A SCIENTIFIC AGE
CONFIRMAT ION NOTEBOOK
EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS: A Commentary
GOD, SEX AND LOVE (with lack Dominian)
JESUS ACROSS THE CENTURIES
PAUL: The Apostle
THE PROB ABILITY OF GOD
THE QUESTION MARK
SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR
TAKING OUR PAST INTO OUR FUTURE
TRUTH TO TELL
Reclaiming the High
Ground
A Christian Response to Secularism
Hugh Montefiore
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-53468-7 ISBN 978-1-349-20992-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20992-7
© Hugh Montefiore, 1990
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1990
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
NewYork,N.Y.1001O
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04247-9
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Montefiore, Hugh.
Reclaiming the high ground: a Christi an response to secularisml
Hugh Montefiore.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-04247-9
1. Apologetics-20th century. 2. Secularism-Controversial
literature. 1. Title.
BTll02.M648 1990
239' .9-dc20 89-48399
CIP
Contents
Introduction Vll
1 Religious Experience 1
2 Love and Marriage 11
3 Technological Society 29
4 The Environment 46
5 Freedom 65
6 The Evolution of Life 84
7 The Origin of Species 100
8 The Premature Demise of the Soul 113
9 Claiming the High Ground 134
Notes 142
Index 150
v
Introduction
This book has been written as a contribution to the reinstatement of
the Christian religion on the high ground of intellectual debate. So
often the Christi an or even the theistic option is ignored today. The
media, whether in print, in broadcasting or on the television screen,
portray an almost entirely secularised society which does not accord
with the actual facts of the situation. Serious writers and commenta
tors take little or no account of the religious dimension of life, or, if
they do mention it, they often imply that there is nothing much to
choose between one religion and another. The Christian religion has
become a private religious option for individual choice rather than a
matter of objective truth wh ich should be publicly debated. Our
culture, which is founded on the Christi an religion, is becoming more
and more unChristian in its presuppositions. It is high time that this
situation was exposed. At almost every point the Christi an religion
has a very high claim to truth, and an even higher claim to the high
ground of intellectual debate.
I fear that the Churches are partly to blame for this state of affairs.
On the one hand they have been very inward looking, concerned with
their own survival and locked in internal strife over battles which, it
seems to outsiders, should have been settled long ago, such as
attitudes to divorce and remarriage or the ordination of women to the
priesthood. On the other hand, many church leaders seem to have
become preoccupied with the political dimension of Christian life,
'which, important as it is, seems at times to engulf the general claims
of the Christi an religion to truth. There are many deep-thinking
Christian lay people who are expert in different areas of secular
thought and life, but, such is the climate of opinion, they are shy, or
even frightened for their careers, of making themselves heard in
relation to the relevance of their Christian faith to their secular
subjects.
I have written this book not because I even pretend to be an expert
on the secular matters with which it mostly deals, but because the
subject matter of the following chapters happens to have been an
enduring interest of mine. The substance of most of the book has
been taken from a number of lectures that I have given in the last
year or two since my retirement from the see of Birmingham in 1987.
The chapters on the Evolution of Life and the Origin of Species are
vii
viii Introduction
based on a lecture given at the Ramsey Centre at St Cross College,
Oxford; the chapter on Technology derives from the Leggett Lecture
at Surrey University, while the chapter on Freedom has it origins in
the First Annual Lecture given at Froebel College, Roehampton.
The chapter on Love and Marriage is taken from an address given to
clergy in the Salisbury Diocese, while the substance of the chapter on
the Environment comes from the annuallecture given to the YMCA.
'The Premature Demise of the Soul' was the subject of a paper read
to the London Society for the Study of Religion.
Perhaps I should make it clear that this book, for which I alone am
responsible, has no direct connection with the book which I am
editing on The Gospel and Dur Culture, which is being published in
1991 in advance of aNational Consultation at Swanwick Conference
Centre in 1992. Nonetheless I hope that there is sufficient converg
encein the underlying theme of this book to make it a contribution
towards "The 'Gospel and Our Culture' Movement" as a whole.
HUGH MONTEFIORE
1 Religious Experience
Human beings are religious creatures. It is only in the post-Christi an
West that secularisation has involved the decay of religion. Even in
Communist countries, which are officially atheist, religion has
flourished in the hearts of men and women, even when its outward
expression has been forbidden. In Soviet Russia, attempts have been
made in the past to indoctrinate people against the Christian faith
through compulsory lectures and by propaganda and other means.
This has been extraordinarily unsuccessful, even to the extent that it
is reckoned that there is a higher percentage of believing Christians in
Russia than in Great Britain today. Again in China not only were
churches at one time closed but Christian worship was until recently
actually forbidden. Now that the Cultural Revolution has ended, it is
clear that the number of Christian believers expanded dramatically
during this period of oppression. Elsewhere - apart from Europe and
Australia - religion flourishes, whether it be in Asia, Africa or North
and South America.
Religious faith involves trust in supernatural reality. Faith is descri
bed in the Christian Scriptures as 'the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen'. The stubborn fact remains that
1
man kind as a whole believes in a Reality other than the material
reality which we experience in this world. (For some this involves
belief in a personal God: for others it means that to find Reality is to
escape from personal existence.) It seems that belief in Ultimate
Reality goes right back to prehistorical times, very early on in the
history of homo sapiens2, and some anthropologists have even traced
it back to neanderthal man.3 It used to be thought that henotheism
(the worship of one god) emerged from primitive animism (belief in a
spirit world); but research now makes it seem more probable that
right from the dawn of humanity men and women believed in a High
God, although it was not until later that monotheism (belief in only
one God) emerged.
Here in Britain we are often told that religion is waning. It is
certainly true that the statistics of the Christian Churches show a
steady decline from a high point in Victorian Britain. At times - as in
the 1960s - there has been a dramatic decline. But commitment to a
particular church is not to be equated with belief in God. It is
remarkable that, despite the agnostic and often atheist assumptions
1
2 Rec/aiming the High Ground
of the mass media, an overwhelming majority of the population, even
in this secular society, responds to opinion poIls by asserting a belief
in God.
There can be little doubt that the mass media ignore religion as
much as they can. Aperson, perusing the hundred-plus pages of the
Sunday Times, would be hard put to it to find any mention of God or
the Churches. In the media as a whole, the Church is seldom news
except when its clergy are involved in a scandal, or when statements
are made by religious leaders wh ich impinge upon the preoccupations
of the press with sex or politics. Billy Graham may be news when he
comes over to Britain for one of his campaigns; but it is the veteran
evangelist hirnself who is of interest, and not the message that he
proclaims, nor the impact he makes on people's lives.
It is weIl known that in television it is only the BBC, with its duty of
public service broadcasting, which gives proper attention to the
things of God by its wireless and television time. The other television
companies, concerned for their profits and consequently for the need
to attract advertising, have savagely cut their religious departments
and now devote the minimum time to religion to satisfy the Indepen
dent Broadcasting Authority; and even that may disappear when the
new Broadcasting Bill becomes law.
Only the 'quality press' now have religious correspondents, and
they seem to win few column inches for religion in their papers. Most
of the press is not interested. I can confirm this by my own personal
experience. In 1987 I was invited to write an article for Christmas for
the Sun. It was never printed, and when I enquired the reason, I was
told that a story about violence on the London Underground had
broken. 'Of course you will appreciate that this had to have priority',
I was told. Again, the Observer had taken an article of mine to
publish on the following Easter Sunday, but when I was subsequently
paid for it, it was explained to me, somewhat shamefacedly, that it
was too overtly Christi an for a secular newspaper to publish; and I
later discovered that a similar fate had befallen a religious article
commissioned from a friend. And yet, despite this lack of interest and
often contempt that is poured on religion in the mass media of
communication, the vast majority of the people, over 80 per cent,
continues to believe in God.
The persistence of faith in God all over the globe requires some
proper explanation. It cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nor can the
fact of religious belief be discounted on the ground of differences
between religious faiths. Inevitably, the content of religious belief