DANCING AROUND CHRIST

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

April 19, 2025

Someone asked me the other day just how long the whole issue of homosexuality will continue to consume the Anglican Communion. It’s a fair question and the short answer is, I don’t know. The long answer is, not forever and probably not for much longer.

We have been fighting this battle since (and before) Lambeth resolution 1:10 passed in 1998. The churches are weary of the whole discussion and the arguments with them. They are sick and tired of being asked or told that they must accept practicing homosexuals to all orders of ministry, or face being called homophobic and then tossed out of the church for not being inclusive.

The lines have been drawn. Those who favor pansexuality and the whole range of LGBTQ+ sexualities are on one side and those who oppose any change in Biblical marriage and Biblical sexual ethics and practice sit on the other side of the aisle. The aisle itself is like the crocodile-infested Nile River, cross it at your own risk.

Mainline churches which have embraced pansexuality are slowly withering and dying while those who stand on Scripture, history and reason are growing. Furthermore, there is overwhelming evidence that evangelical churches that demand something of their adherents are actually flourishing.

Because sexuality and identity are so closely linked, there is little to think anyone’s mind is going to be changed. Those committed to a progressive church mindset will fall on their sword to make and keep the changes the church has “progressed” too; and those who have never moved will likely never do so; though one or two, like the Hays father and son have done so. The same goes for the Campolo’s. But they are few and far between. The sides have been drawn up and we now await the outcome of history on how it will all turn out.

CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

So, what will be the next big issue to fall on the Western church, (as in fact it is doing so even as I write.) I believe it is the growing confrontation between Christianity and Islam.

There are over two billion Muslims in the world today, making up roughly a quarter of the global population. The overwhelming majority, 87%-90%, are Sunni Muslims, while the remaining 10%-13% are Shia Muslims. These totals can be further broken down into minor heterodox sects, including Ismailis, Alawites, and Druze. They want a universal caliphate governed by Sharia Law and death to those who will not convert.

The West is facing an existential crisis. We are post-modern, post Christian, some say post truth, secular, materialistic, agnostic, atheist, greedy, lovers of money, angst-driven, with many hoping that a revived Christian nationalism will save us. While a handful of Christians are being cancelled, you have not, as the writer to the Hebrews says, “resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Meantime persecution haunts the Global South, with hundreds dying daily for their faith in countries like Nigeria and the South Sudan. A war in the Middle East has the potential to explode into a nuclear war if wiser heads don’t prevail.

But the Islamization of the West is the most troubling issue. England is fast succumbing to the siren call of Islam. The Church of England is a veritable joke (or lost cause) to most of the British public. The rest of Europe is fast becoming Islamic as refugees roll across the Mediterranean looking for a safe haven and a new life in what was once Christian Europe. The future looks bleak for European countries facing both Islam and a revived Russia at war with the Ukraine.

It is compounded with many thinking that Russia is more Christian than England and the Russian Orthodox Church chooses a ‘might is right’ mentality in the war on Ukraine, offering a robust Christianity now long gone in Western Europe. Islam also presents itself as a robust faith not made for feel-your-pain wimps, whiny self-reflection or narcissistic introversion.

In any eventuality, the central issue facing Christians will not be the joys of sodomy, but the uniqueness of Jesus. Is He truly the Son of God, savior of the world or something else?

We live in an age of growing religious pluralism, in which the uniqueness of Jesus Christ is being downplayed to meet the demands of political correctness and “the new tolerance.” We are now told that Jesus is not the way to God, but a way to God—one among many in the world. To suggest otherwise is to be ignorant, intolerant, insensitive, arrogant, fundamentalist, or just hopelessly out of touch with the enlightened consciousness of today’s world.

C.S. Lewis puts the kibosh on that: “The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”

So, it is Jesus or Mohammed. One is alive “at the right hand of the Father”, the other is still dead.

DANCING AROUND JESUS

What we are seeing playing out among Western intelligentsia is a fearful symmetry; watching a culture in decline, afraid of the consequences of lost faith while hopeful of a cultural Christianity to save it.

The label “cultural Christian” has become a new way to position oneself between theism and a rejection of the value of Western culture and civilization that has its foundation in Christianity.

Intellectual players like entrepreneur Elon Musk, philosopher Richard Dawkins and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson all flirt with Christianity but are not prepared to make a commitment to Christ.  It’s like having a steak dinner at a restaurant and all you get is the juice; the steak has been eaten by the waiter.

We have become a nation of idolators; we worship everything but the one true God. Millions have dropped out of the church and Gen Zs are not even giving the church a first thought.

To say that we are reaping what we have sown is to state the obvious. Only a genuine revival can change the hearts and minds of people; and that is a work of the Spirit, not our own tortured wills.

END