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Why Dawkins will come to regret being right and Fraser is badly wrong.
Ho, ho, ho. Richard Dawkins doesn’t know the name of his own ‘sacred text’! Ha, ha,ha, Giles Fraser owned him live on the radio!! Epic Fail, Dawkins!!!
If you missed the Today programme on Tuesday, the recording of Dawkins V Fraser (after The Thriller in Manilla, The Imbroglio in the Studio, anyone?) is available all over the internet and the inevitable youtube clip is good for a laugh if you like schadenfreude. But for Bible Christians, the truth is we shouldn’t be to quick to join Team Fraser.
Their argument concerned the strength of Christianity in Britain today and I would argue both adopted unnecessarily extreme positions.
My guess is that the number of confessing evangelicals is very small in this country, but that it is supplemented by a larger group of people who, while not instantly recognisable to the secular inquisition or the strict evangelical, will turn out to be counted among the sheep at the end of time. They may be found scratching around for crumbs of comfort that inadvertently fall from liberal pulpits or locked into marriages or families where church attendance is not allowed and so growth is stunted. They may be young people who were converted in unlikely ways through chance conversations in school or attending an Alpha course in prison. They may lack education and so struggle with questions academics assume would be easy or be unfamiliar with theological language none the less they are aware of a genuine conversion from death to life in Jesus.
There is also a separate group of people who want, when the moment calls for it, the Christian themed ceremonies. They want their children baptised, their marriages recognised and their deaths commemorated. At these times it will be up to individual churches and ministers to decide whether to extend these opportunities to those who are clearly not in any sense ‘a friend of Jesus’ and therefore not a Christian. (for the record my answers are “no, but…”, “absolutely” and “of course”).
So, I suppose we can argue that to an extent, both are right. Dawkins is right that there is a large group of people that presume Christian faith where there is none and Fraser is right that there is a large section of Britain that still wants Christian input in public life.
What’s ironic though, is that even as Dawkins and his supporters use this evidence to remove the veneer of Christianity from the institutions of British life, they do a work for the kingdom of God. Because, an argument can be made that once the deadwood is stripped away and only the genuine believer is left, suddenly that diamond of grace- Gods workmanship- looks more brilliant. It is far more mobile and effective even as it is more isolated. So, let Dawkins and the secularists strip out the meaningless prayers before council meetings and ban the tedious moral morning assemblies. And as they stand in the tatters of post- religious Britain and try breath life into whatever mutant morality they’ve managed to construct, let the ordinary man look across to that little band of odd bods that still serve their neighbour, forgive their enemy, love their God and live and die for their Saviour.
And what of Fraser’s attempts to shore up traditional religion by defending ‘self identifying Christians’? It’s tempting to join his bandwagon, but those wheels are destined to come off. His argument that a person doesn’t have to answer a checklist of questions to prove he is a Christian is correct as we’ve said. But these questions weren’t esoteric, they were the basis of faith in a man called Jesus who is unique in being the son of God. No wonder Dawkins got worked up- no one likes people moving the goalposts, not least when the goal posts are the Bible and the historic Christian creeds.
So, let the secularists do their worst, ignore the self interestedly ‘religious’ liberals, and we’ll all see why (unless God converts him) Dawkins will come to regret being right and Fraser will be proved to be badly wrong.
