The politically correct only tolerate safe Christianity

Christians need to ask why politically correct leaders in Parliament and the media are backing Christian prayers in council meetings.

The answer lies in a real practical distinction between hard and soft political correctness.

Hard core PC activists, such as the National Secular Society which brought the High Court action against Bideford Town Council to get Christian prayers off the municipal agenda, want Christianity out of the public square. But moderates in politically correct terms are prepared to allow houseroom to the 'faith sector'. They are therefore happy to allow Christian prayers in the council chamber and in Parliament.

The reality is that soft PC leaders enjoy the ceremonial trappings of a constitutional monarchy with a liberal and ineffectual established church. They like to parade on State occasions. They like to bask in Britain's national heritage.

They enjoy being invited to Sandringham to sup with the Church of England's Supreme Govenor.

Their ardour for equality certainly does not extend to being willing to sacrifice their place in the procession.

Or on the pay scale.

Such self-interested affection for a residue of safe, formal Christianity is broadly the explanation for soft PC support for Christian prayers in the political space.

Christians should not be overwhelmed by this support for a small aspect of public Christianity. Prayers before political meetings unfortunately have not stopped piles of anti-Christian legislation being passed in the UK since the 1960s, including the disgraceful Abortion Act 1967.

The Gospel we preach is that Jesus Christ is Lord over the whole of life, including the deliberations of the 'High Court of Parliament', as it is called in the Church of England's biblically-faithful Book of Common Prayer.

Our conviction about the Lordship of Christ clashes with the PC drive to push through the equality and diversity agenda. Christians believe that where the Bible differentiates between particular relationships, for example in the unique and special place it gives to the God-created institution of heterosexual marriage, humanity should too.

Soft PC leaders, even Conservative ones, for all their vociferous talk against aggressive secularism, are still arguing for same-sex pseudo-marriage and are not arguing for the repeal of the Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007. It was under those Stalinesque PC rules that Christian bed and breakfast owners, Peter and Hazelmary Bull, were prosecuted for wanting to uphold biblical standards in their own home.

In pursuing our calling to proclaim the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ against the dictates of political correctness, we need to be mindful of the spiritual reality that prayer and Christ-centred action are welded together in the Bible. The prayer meeting of the Jerusalem Church as described in Acts 4 typifies this nexus.

The believers' prayer understood the opposition God's Gospel was encountering within the framework of Psalm 2, a Messanic prophecy asserting the universal authority of the Lord's chosen anointed King over the rebellious nations. The believers quote from Psalm 2v1 - 'the kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Anointed' (Acts 4v26 - RSV).

Girded with that biblical understanding about the all-embracing authority of God's chosen Messiah, who has been revealed as Jesus of Nazareth, the Jerusalem believers pray for boldness to speak the Lord's word in the teeth of the threats from the powers that be (v29). And then in the power of the Holy Spirit, they act on their prayer by proclaiming the word of God concerning Jesus Christ's Messianic rule (v31).

That kind of God-centred, biblically-driven prayer united to Christ-proclaiming action will get UK Christians into trouble, even and perhaps especially from those supportive of prayers at a council meeting.

But preach Christ we must, rather than the safe Christianity of the soft PC procession.