Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60028. Christian political involvement makes many believers uneasy, and the unease usually runs in one of two directions. Some feel that any engagement with public life is a distraction from the gospel and a step toward compromise. Others feel that a faith which never touches how a country is run is a private hobby…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 12046. Is Christian nationalism biblical? My short answer is no, though the question deserves a great deal more care than the shouting on either side usually allows. Some of the people drawn to it are responding to something real, and telling them they are simply wicked will not help anybody. So let me try…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 12045. Defending religious liberty while believing that idolatry is a sin against God feels, to a lot of people, like holding two contradictory positions at once. I get asked this most often when the conversation turns to Islam in Britain, and the question underneath it is usually sharper than the words used: why should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9093. Questions about church and state partnership land on my desk more often than people might expect. A council officer offers a grant for the toddler group, a school asks whether the church hall can host a breakfast club, a housing charity funded by the local authority wants to run a debt advice service…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09083 Church tax exemption comes up more often now than it did twenty years ago, and the question is usually asked with an edge. Why should religious organisations receive relief that a small business does not? Is a church that accepts favourable treatment from the state compromised by it? Both are fair questions and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09034. The relationship between church and state has produced more confusion, and more blood, than almost any other question in Christian history. Scripture gives us the principles rather than a constitution, and the principles have to be applied in circumstances that vary enormously from one country and century to another. What Scripture does establish…