Since we are reading through Knox, let's pick up another of his issues.
The language he uses sounds familiar to many exhortations we hear
"Unfortunately many of our community who call themselves christians do not recognise any obligation to find out or follow the mind of God on this matter, and think that they are at liberty to do what they like.."
What could he be talking about? Sexuality perhaps, or the role of the gospel?
"Everyone has an absolute obligation to conform to the will of GOd, and this obligation is not altered by whether or not we acknowledge the obligation"
Not only that, as Christians who know the mind of God, we have a duty to urge others in our community to conform to the will of God (though not in social justice, as we saw before). What could this be? This is something that our great forebear felt strongly about. I guess that disagreeing with this great one on this matter at the time must have looked like rejecting the Bible as the Word of God, a terribly liberal thing to do.
"Christians who know that the Bible is the Word of God have an unchanging duty to testify to what God's will in this matter is and to call on the whole community to conform to it"
"We should be alert to preserve ......, writing to members of parliament if there is any attempt to erode..... by legislation"
Is it marriage?
Nope. It is keeping Sunday as an equivalent of a Sabbath.
Now to a certain extent, I'm with Knox here. I like the idea of people structuring their lives for a day together praising God.
What I find fascinating is how this is now virtually a non-issue in Sydney circles.
What was so clear as the revealed mind of God, which was to be accepted as a marker of accepting the Bible as the Word of God, was to be fought over with the government, was written into the fabric of creation, is now loosely seen as a nice idea.
Now ,what I would love to know is: how were people who disagreed with Knox on this matter treated? How were they viewed? What positions were they denied? What was said about them at meetings?
And would we be happy for those same things to happen to us now.
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3 comments:
Sounds like a job for a church historian! It would indeed be very interesting to know some answers to those questions. I suspect that things have been written about the Sunday political campaigns, though I wonder if any of them have focussed on the internal politics of the church on the matter.
hmm, thanks byron, maybe that would be a good church history project
Excellent idea! You still have to do a 4th yr Oz Church history research essay? Go for it and let us know the outcome. :-)
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