Fundamental Change - The Christian Right British Style

The Christianists in the USA have made great efforts to export their posionous version of Christianity abroad, with the UK being but one targeted country where kindred wingnuts have been encouraged to try to take over existing churches. The campaign - or dare I say crusade - is having mixed results partly due to the societal differences between the USA and UK. This Newstatesman article takes a look at the situation. As always with these hate merchants, the LGBT community is a favorite target. What must Christ think of those who use fear, hate and the demonization of others to spread their version of his Gospel? One can only hope that the British public will see this strain of religious fundamentalism as just as potentially dangerous and corrosive as Islam fundamentalism. Both need to be stopped and suppressed if they seek to intermix religion in the civil laws. Here are some highlights:

*

Both politically and theologically, conservative Christianity is now a militant and rapidly growing force, in Britain and globally. Evangelicalism, which centres around the Bible as the revealed word of God - with an emphasis on personal conversion and an imperative to spread that word - is almost the default position for many Anglican clergy these days, but also for most other Protestant and Nonconformist sects: from the good old Methodists and Baptists to some of the more exotic fringes of Pentecostalism.

*

The conservative evangelicals are the ones who do not hesitate to tell that nice, Guardian-reading, self-designated hairy lefty, Rowan Wil liams, Archbishop of Canterbury, that he's a false teacher and a heretic. They noisily assert that they wouldn't allow him in their churches to preach because he would only confuse their congregations with wrong doctrine. They are also the ones who have chosen opposition to homosexuality as the litmus test for Anglican orthodoxy and have made it the issue that has come close to dividing the 70 million-strong worldwide Church.

*

The particular sinfulness of homosexuals was a visceral issue, one which they believed would unite their supporters in a way that a few years earlier women's ordination could not. Female priests divided them: many evangelicals knew women (some had even married them), whereas gay people are more easily demonised, especially as the Bible in a few scattered references says homosexual practice is wrong.

*

Conservative Christianity has been much less effective in Britain than in the US because it has less social and political influence, less unchallenged access to the media - and less money. But there is certainly a desire in some quarters to mimic the tactics of the US right. They think they are winning the argument, but fear they may be losing the war. They assume that because the world is against them, that means they must be right. But the ultimate irony is that the more urgently they profess the need to win the nation for Christ, the more they repel those they say they most wish to save.