I needed an example with bite to it, since I recently read of a young Canadian scholar's incredulity about what he seems to regard as the American obsession with "religious freedom." Richard Greydanus, PhD candidate in religious studies at McGill University, whose mind and scholarship I generally like, has written with incredulity of wide-spread American fears of losing their religious freedom. But does he have any experience in dealing with these sometimes huge and sometimes tiny incremental losses of Americans under the secularistic Humanist ground motive at work there, generating all sorts of cultural agencies trying to choke off religious freedom of any kind in public schools, where the locality and composition of the public and parental populations no longer counts. In Canada, Richard doesn't have the same tensions to contend, under what is now a majority Conservative government under Stephen Harper. I'm not damning one régime, nor promoting another. They are both part of the facts we all must live with, and it's not a matter of a statist leading one country, and a non-statist leading the other. It matters, but what matters more are the unquestioning masses and élites in both countries which have control over the direction of things not just in government, but in culture and in most societal spheres.
Another example might be, from the Canadian milieu, the stacking of the labour laws to prevent the entry of a principled Christian labour union into meaningful competition with the secularistic unions for the membershp of Christians thru-out the workforce. Everywhere, even in Canada, monopoly unionism prevails, even the Conservatives can't imagine a plurality of unions where workers woud vote annually for that union which best woud represent their workviews, their ultimate values as they might be expressed in the workplaces where they spend much of their lives. Is that religious freedom? We have to get beyond the slogan, because in worriment about their religious freedom workers in the USA and few in Canada have even a vocabulary by which to hame and share their raw sentimate of injustice, even when they can't get to a fuller concept of religious freedom.
Another example coud well be the lack of religious freedom in medicine. But I have written about that elsewhere at length. Or is Richard falling back on a churchy, precious definition of religious freedom such as the Soviets imposed on the Lithuanian population, or Krygistan today imposes on its citizenry, Muslims, Protestants, and Jehovah's Witnesses alike. Or maybe we shoud bring it back to Canada, and the imposition by government of Québec of anti-Judaic rules upon daycare centers operated by Orthodox parents?
After reading McGuire, I want to hear what Miroslav Volf has to say.
— Alphabetikos, refWrite Backpage books newspotter, analyst, columnist
Christian Reformed Network (Jan22,2k13)
A PUBLIC FAITH
My book recommendation:
by Miroslav Volf (Brazos Press)
We are the first generation in Western culture that is facing the real prospect of living in a statist society. Although there are many faiths under the roof of our pluralistic house, it is becoming rather clear with each passing year that the one approved faith is acceptance of the rule of the mother state. In this very clear and readable treatment of both the problem we Christian believers have and some real solutions, Volf lays down a path every one of us needs to seriously consider before we are forced to be totally isolated from society around us.
We do have more than just the two choices of put up or shut up, which was a great encouragement to me personally. He also is not bashful to put forth in strong terms that our Christianity is going to have to become REAL and GENUINE displaying real love and all its fruits before a shattered world. The author makes it very clear that fake Churchanity will not cut it any longer, and so-called Christian politics as it has been attempted in the past is a waste of both time and resources. He implores us as solid believers to wisely but actually engage our multi-faith society and pluralistic world on every front, not in order to achieve some kind of numerical success, but to have the world out there actually see what God is like through our engagement. Volf begs us not to retreat into a privatized faith because of past failures, but to work for the common good and the glory of God in all things.
Covenant Theological Seminary [St Louis, Missouri] has made this required reading for all their Dr. Ministry candidates and I can certainly see why. This 174 page book needs to be read by all of us on the front lines of ministry today. I think the reason is obvious, brothers and sisters in leadership. If we who lead in local congregational leadership do not know quite what to say out in a society which is totally strange to our upbringing, how will we train those under our care to speak freely the things of God out in their lives in the same upside down society and culture they face daily?
Finally, maybe a basic question is in order: Is the reality as dark as the author seems to think where we really are facing a society where the state will call all the shots, or are we simply in one of those depressingly dark but temporary setbacks of religious freedom?
