Lecture Transcript

Across Europe, we face different threats to freedom of religion. In the north and the west, those threats come from secularizing forces pursuing a radical agenda on matters of life and death, human sexuality, and identity. As we’ve heard this evening, the prosecution of Päivi Räsänen for tweeting Bible verses went all the way to the Supreme Court in Finland, despite her being acquitted in both the lower courts In the south and east, there’s the historic dominance of the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church.

So in Italy, Leonardo De Chirico’s church was denied recognition simply because the building in which it meets does not conform to expectations of Catholic church architecture. In Greece, proselytization remains a criminal offense. Turkey has expelled more than 150 foreign Christian workers under the pretext of national security.

Across Europe, there are the pressures that come from the aggressive promotion of Islamism and the populist responses to Islam. The wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and between Israel and Iran have inflamed tensions between Muslims and Jews, leading to attacks on Jewish synagogues and individuals in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, and Norway.

Now, in the lifetime of older members of this gathering, and you will probably automatically include me in that, the scope of freedom of religion in Eastern Europe was changed for the better by the collapse of the communist regimes in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But the landscape for freedom of religion in Western Europe was decisively changed for the worse by Al-Qaeda’s successful terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on the 11th of September 2001.

If you are looking to trace the moment when the popular mood across Western Europe shifted from religion being a good thing or a neutral thing to religion being a problem, that was the moment. Instead of focusing on the violence of Islamist extremism, many Western liberals took aim at religion in general.

And for more than a decade, the tone of the press and in academia was that all organized religion, and possibly all religious convictions, were harmful and dangerous. Questions relating to freedom of religion take us to the heart of our faith and to the nature of Christ’s kingdom. To be an evangelical Christian is to be a witness to the good news of the offer of salvation extended to all through the work of the crucified and resurrected Christ.

And so freedom of religion means for us, above all, freedom to present the message of the cross, despite the scandal that this may cause. And so a Christian case for freedom of religion has at its heart the cross and the resurrection. Acts 2 tells us about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and Peter’s proclamation of the gospel.

Immediately afterwards, Acts chapter 3 tells us about Peter and John healing a lame beggar at the gate of the temple. In Acts 3:13-30, uh, thir- 13-23, Peter declares the gospel to the crowd that has been gathered by the miracle. The Euangelion, the good news, is announced in verse 15, “You have killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.”

And then in verse 19, “Repent then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.” It is for proclaiming this message that Peter and John are arrested and taken before a religious court, the Sanhedrin. How does Peter respond to being hauled up before the authorities? Well, we’re told in Acts 4:9-12, he responded like this.

“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers and elders of the people, we’re being called today to account for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and being asked how he was healed.'” Nice framing of the question. “‘Then know this, all you pe- and all the people of Israel: it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

The stone you builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to humankind by which we must be saved.'” The gospel proclaimed to the religious authorities on the day that the church is born And the question, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you or to God?

You be the judges. As for him, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Freedom of religion for us as evangelical Christians is at its heart. Not only the freedom to believe the truth of the gospel and the resurrection, but the freedom to proclaim it Patrick Parkinson, an Australian law professor, has written the helpful book on the screen, Unshaken Allegiance: Living Wisely as Christians with Diminishing Freedoms, thinking about how we can discern in this time, in this moment, how to continue to proclaim the Gospel faithfully, fearlessly, and wisely in contexts where our right to speak about Jesus publicly and to follow His teaching is being challenged and contested.

So we should believe in freedom of religion as Christians because it’s fundamental to our ability to carry on proclaiming the Gospel, to carry on proclaiming the good news about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s also fundamental because it chimes with the nature of the kingship of Christ and the Kingdom of God

So, at his trial, Christ is called up before Pilate and he’s asked the question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it was, my servants would have come to defend me.” You see, Christ’s kingship just looks very weird. It looks nothing like the kingship of the world.

He’s acknowledged by the wise men, the manger. They come, they give him gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. This is the gift for a king, but a king not born in a royal palace, but in the smelly straw-filled room where the animals were kept at night. In Christ, he’s presented at the beginning of his ministry.

The devil comes to him and offers him all the kingdoms of the world, and all their splendor. All he has to do is bow down and worship the devil. And Christ refuses to do it. John tells us in John 6:15 that Jesus, when he sensed that the crowd so impressed by his powers that he displayed and the miracles he performed, when he realized they wanted to make him king by force, he walked through them and melted away into the wilderness.

When God wanted to show, uh, Jesus’s, uh, most favored disciples, his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, who Jesus was, where Jesus stood in relation to the Hebrew faith, it’s Moses and Elijah who appear on the mountain with him. Moses representing the law, Elijah representing the prophets. But there’s no David, there’s no Solomon, there’s no representative of the Israelites’ kings.

Jesus was declared to be the son of David, the expected returning king whose reign would last forever. That’s what they proclaimed on Palm Sunday. But he was riding a donkey You go to Kraków Castle two hours north of here, you will find lots and lots of Polish kings. They’re all riding very, very nice, stylish, big horses in front of massive armies winning wonderful victories.

No army, no horse, just a donkey for Jesus. And in a world that claims that kings are anointed by God, have r- divine power, with kings who claim to be God… The Roman emperor had on his coins, “This is the divine Augustus, the son of the divine Caesar.” Jesus takes a coin, holds it between his thumb and forefinger, and says, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar, and to God the things that are God’s.”

That’s not saying that there are two realms, one that is God’s that Caesar has nothing to do with, and one that is Caesar that has nothing to do with God. It’s saying everything in the universe belongs to God. And for all the apparent power of Caesar Just like that, and then it’s gone. And Jesus, when he commissions his disciples, he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

And then he gives them and us the Great Commission. “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you.” We may wonder why he didn’t say, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore go and conquer nations and force people to convert or face persecution and discrimination for their beliefs.”

Well, that’s not what he did So we return to the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate. My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is from another place. Now, Pilate was scratching his head when he heard that answer, so he said, “Well, you, you are a king then?” And Jesus answered, “You say I’m a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth.

Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” So we are the followers of a king of truth, a king who wants us to be able to proclaim the good news about salvation offered to all through his death and resurrection. But to do so relying on the power of the word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, not on the sword.

You see, ethno-Christianity and Christian nationalism fatally disregard two points which the exchange between Jesus and Pilate show us. First, they ignore the decisive evidence that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, and is not established or maintained by force in the way that worldly kingdoms are. And second, they fail to discern the distorting effect that relying on political power to spread Christianity has on Gospel truth It was a secularist philosopher, Montesquieu, who spotted it.

He spotted that actually Christianity wasn’t a very good religion to have if you were a ruler. What you really want if you’re a ruler is you want a religion that says, “Do exactly what the king says.” And you see, that’s what happens every time the church gets too close to political power, starts being given too much official status.

It starts cutting down the implications of the gospel. It starts moving away from the truth about the offer of salvation to all through the death and resurrection of Christ. In chasing after what the world sees as strength, we can forget that Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.

The weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” What looks to us like weakness, God often sees as strength. And on the other hand, what looks to us like strength, God may in fact regard as weakness. And as we look across our continent and its history, we can find many times and many places where the church’s seduction by political power first had disastrous consequences for gospel truth, and then had disastrous consequences for the church itself.

To take just one example, the French Revolution in the late 18th century swept away not only the absolute monarchy and the aristocracy, but also the Catholic Church, which had for a century, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, enjoyed political and religious exclusivity. There was a whole century in France where you could not get married unless you were married by a Catholic priest.

So tight was the power of the church with the power of the king that when one went, the other one disappeared entirely. And today, we can think of countries across Europe where the gospel message is obscured by the power, uh, and political place of one or other official church So we’re challenged as believers to think about the nature of Christ’s kingdom and our place in it.

We’re challenged to find our core identity in Christ. One of the great things about this forum is being together with brothers and sisters from all across Europe and being reminded that wherever we come from, whatever historic enmities there have been between our peoples, our unity in the gospel is more important And so, the challenge we have is when we go out and share the Gospel, are we making sure that we are preaching Christ and Christ crucified, and Him alone?

When I come and share the Gospel, am I coming as someone prepared to put aside all my London values, all my British prejudices, all my UK pride to preach Christ alone and Him crucified? Am I prepared to treat everyone in the way that Jesus would treat them? Or are there still ways in which our relationships with others are marred by tribalism, the aggressive assertion of the practices, customs, and values of those ethnic, linguistic, racial, and national groups to which we belong?

There was a cartoon of a, uh, Western missionary leaving a desert island where he had just been evangelizing tribes for a number of years, and his parting message to them was, “You should have the morning service at 10:30 and the evening service at 6:30.” That is not what we want to be doing. We want to leave people with the fragrance of Christ Now, I’ve been a participant in ELF’s Politics and Social Action Network for many years now.

I firmly believe that Christians should be acting as salt and light in the political arena, bringing our convictions to bear on issues of vital importance to everyone in society. I’m resolute in my conviction that the Gospel has implications for public life, which, as disciples of Christ, we are called to share and work out, and which we need to fight for the freedom to defend.

But the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to which we are called to bear witness, shows us that the cause of the Gospel will succeed for the reasons given by Zechariah in Zechariah chapter four, verse six. He prophesied there, “You will succeed, not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty So brothers and sisters, we have really good reasons, we have fundamental reasons that go to the heart of our faith and to the nature of Christ’s kingdom for us to be enthusiastic about freedom of religion, because freedom of religion is what gives us the space to speak without fear of arrest or imprisonment, to proclaim the good news, the only good news, the ultimate good news about the offer of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But we need, in this time, to explain to Europe why freedom of religion isn’t good just for us, but is good for our societies. The world’s leading scholar on law and religion, John Witte, writes this, “Today, a growing number of Western liberal scholars have argued that religious rights and freedoms have become obsolete and dangerous in our secular age.

And several of the highest courts in Western lands have dramatically softened their protection of religious freedom in favor of equality, neutrality, and secularism.” John Witte identifies two concerns as motivating the secularists who argue that religious beliefs do not deserve any special protection.

First, they present religious conscience claims as demands from, for exceptions from generally applicable laws at the expense of the public interest and the rights of others. Lawyers call this special pleading. It’s when you ask for something for yourself you’re not prepared to grant to others. Second, these, uh, secularists assert that the freedoms and privileges granted to religious groups have resulted in abuses of power and discrimination.

And of course, that criticism is partially true. In many countries in the West, if you want to understand why the gospel has lost credibility and why people have lost faith in the church, the answer is a series of sexual abuse scandals that have swept across churches of all kinds. As evangelical Christians, we need to be able to make the case for freedom of religion, which not only explains why it is good for religious believers and for religious organizations, but also why it is good for the societies in which we live.

Now, actually, we’ve already heard one of the ways in which freedom of religion is good for societies Remember Jesus and the coin? The appearance of Jesus before Pilate, the confession of Peter and John before the religious court. All of them show how the authority of rulers is limited and provisional.

If we have an allegiance, if we have duties, if we have obligations, if we are representatives of a higher power than Caesar or the Sanhedrin, then that power is limited. The route to totalitarianism is blocked off by those who fearlessly proclaim that there are areas that the, the state, the government, has no authority to go, things that the government cannot command, orders that will not be obeyed because they violate God-given, uh, treatment of, uh, human beings made in the image of God.

Now, fortunately, the case that freedom of religion is good for society is there for us to make really easily if we go back into Europe’s history. If we have a look at what happened to Europe in the centuries following the Reformation, well, it is because of freedom of religion that many of the other freedoms that Europeans enjoy today exist.

It’s meetings of believers that won freedom of association, and that freedom to meet with other like-minded people isn’t just something that, uh, religious believers are able… or churches are able to benefit from, it’s something that trade unions are able to benefit from, and Scout groups are able to benefit from, and music societies are able to benefit from.

Fearless proclamation of the Gospel secured freedom of speech, which in turn led to freedom of the press. It was Christians who wrote the first newspapers, shining a light on the evils that were occurring in the governments of their day It’s the commitment of evangelical believers to education, both for their own children and for the poor, that was key to the right to an education and the right to teach one’s beliefs to the next generation becoming embedded into European cultures.

It’s the insistence, the evangelical insistence, that each one of us has to make a personal decision about whether to follow Christ or not that is foundational for the freedom to change one’s religion. Freedom recorded in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights at the insistence of Charles Malik, a Lebanese Christian.

And it was evangelical Christian minorities standing up for gospel truth against government-sponsored institutional Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant churches that secured for everyone freedom from religion, the right to opt out of collective acts of worship or compulsory religious instruction, giving everyone in society the time and the space to respond positively or negatively to the callings of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, even the system of democratic government, which has been a blessing to many countries in Europe, owes its inspiration to evangelical believers. You know what the ancient Greeks thought and what the Middle Ages thought? They thought you couldn’t trust the people to make sensible decisions, so it was best for the wise or the rich to stay in power.

And it was congregations meeting to discern the word of God and the will of God together that produced the model that then becomes modern democracy Let me just give you one example of a moment in history where these gospel freedoms are moved forward decisively for the benefit of everybody in society.

In 1670 in England, it was illegal for more than five people to get together for any religious activity that was outside the official church. And there were two men, William Penn and William Mead, who were arrested for street preaching and for organizing an illegal gathering. Under English law, the judge, uh, laid out the law, but then the jury had to make the decision.

And the jury, though the law was clear, decided to acquit the men. The judge responded in an eminently reasonable fashion. He had the jury locked up overnight without food, water, or heat, and he had the defendants who’d just been acquitted bound and gagged. A challenge was brought in another court that resulted in the jury being released, confirming their right to make a decision on that case in accordance with their conscience.

And what we saw then happen after that was the laws liberalized and changed so that freedom of assembly, freedom to preach the gospel was established. For our American friends who are serving us, one of the defendants, William Penn, went on to found the state of Pennsylvania

So, as evangelical believers, we can show that freedom of religion has been a benefit and a blessing to those parts of Europe that have experienced it. Freedom of religion is not just Christians asking for exemptions for ourselves. Freedom of religion is an application of the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It’s a commitment to follow Jesus’s way of refusing to spread the gospel through violence. We have a wonderful story from European history to tell But actually, it’s a story that is also true today. This book came out last month, Why Religious Freedom Matters: Human Rights and Human Flourishing. And in that book, Alan De Herz carefully traces the evidence showing that religious freedom is a potent X factor.

If you want your society to flourish, religious freedom will underpin democracy, boost civil liberties, build citizens’ loyalty, undermine religious fanaticism, reduce violence in society, improve the status of women, foster economic development, spur uplift for the poor, and contribute to international peace

So we have a wonderful story to tell about why religious freedom is good for societies, and we also have a story to tell about why restricting freedom of religion is bad for society. Freedom of religion has been described as the canary in the mine. Before the invention of safety lamps, if you were going mining, and you found yourself underground, and you needed to know whether there was any poisonous gas that would kill you, you would take a canary with you.

And if the canary stopped singing and fell off its perch and lay at the bottom of the cage, then you knew it was time to get out. Societies that begin to lose freedom of religion also start to lose all the other freedoms. Regimes that seek to control the procla- proclamation of the gospel soon want to control other forms of speech, education, and association.

Rulers who cannot tolerate the supreme claims of God easily slip into demanding that we worship them instead. So to conclude, brothers and sisters, in a Europe that is increasingly paranoid about the harm and offense that speech may cause, about the potential for violence when people assemble together, and where there are more and more tools to monitor every aspect of our lives, we need to be defenders and promoters of freedom of religion, freedom of belief, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of speech, not just for ourselves, but also for others.

In so doing, we protect our fundamental freedom to preach the good news, the death and resurrection of Christ, because salvation is to be found nowhere else. As we proclaim that freedom, as we seek to live by biblical values and to maintain the space to do that, we serve our societies by defending the other rights and fundamental freedoms and holding open truth, holding open space for truth and for governments to be held to account.

Paivi reminded us that God is awesome to turn bad things into good things. Jesus promised that he would build his church, and the gates of hell would not overcome it. So we go forward confidently, faithfully, and fearlessly, knowing that as Paul said in Romans chapter eight Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ, our Lord.