Saturday 6 June 2009

Christians being ‘sidelined’, says head of Asian Christian Fellowship

“Christians in this country are being sidelined and discriminated and even some pastors have been threatened and beaten, because of preaching the Gospel,” he said.

“I believe it is time for Christians to raise our voices and stand up for our rights and values, which are being sacrificed in the name of political correctness.”

Who is speaking and which country does he have in mind? The speaker is Canon Yaqub Masih of the Asian Christian Fellowship so you might expect his concern would be for an Asian country but no. He is addressing the problem of growing persecution of Christians in the UK.

It is reported that one in five Christians now complain of discrimination because of their faith. Have you noticed that people hate Christ now? Say you are a Christian and often people will screw their faces up in a sneer and exclaim, “Don’t ram your religion down my throat!” Defend your faith and they speak disparagingly of Christian superstition and ignorance. The reaction is positively violent and they will speak of anything but Christ.

I think it is time we stopped apologising for being Christians. You may look through all of Scripture and never find a text prescribing political correctness or niceness (that bane of Western Christianity). By all means let us have the fruit of the Spirit, peace, love, etc, but always remembering that it is to make our Christianity more real and challenging not more respectable and accommodating.

Turning the other cheek does not mean turning our back on the truth; neither does loving your neighbour mean not warning them of impending judgement for fear of offending. Standing for truth necessarily means exposing and refuting error and while we do it with love we do it nevertheless.

Christians being ‘sidelined’, says head of Asian Christian Fellowship

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