What’s So Great About The Status Quo?

Every now and then I meet someone who is concerned about Muslims “taking over the country”. Apparently there is an Islamic agenda to infiltrate our government and slowly, but surely, to impose sharia law and before you know it, Islam will be the state religion. If it’s not Muslims, it’s those blooming post-modern relativists who are going to impose their views on us; stifling all opposition to their gender and identity politics.

Change is coming and its going to be bad. There are people who want things to be different and it spells disaster for the church.

The thing I don’t get about these sorts of opinions is that they imply that we are living in some sort of golden age, where Christianity is thriving and that any change to the status quo will be bad news. What’s so good about the status quo? Western Europe is at the tail end of 200 years of encroaching secular materialism that has seen the greatest regression of Christianity since the rise of Islam. We are living in anything but a golden age. However, we’ve accommodated our faith to the prevailing tide of modernism to such and extent that we fail to notice how hostile it is. Now that modernism is declining and different ideologies are on the horizon, we feel threatened and we cling on to what we know.

If Muslims do “take over the country”, or if we move further into the fog of relativism, the job of Christians will be the same as it is today. It will be our role to bear witness to Jesus Christ in a way which is relevant to the prevailing culture while challenging its underlying assumptions. Some cultures are accepting of Christianity, others indifferent and some are hostile, but our mission doesn’t change. So let’s not get too worried about what is around the corner – we’ve got a hard enough job working out how to be faithful Christians today.

PS – Sorry about the featured image on the front page, I couldn’t resist it!