Conservatism and Christianity are not synonymous

Too often no distinction is made between the so-called Religious Right or Conservatism and Christianity. Sometimes this mistake is committed even by well-meaning Christians! Tragically, the confusion is as fallacious as it is common. 

The truth is that biblical Christianity is no more conservative than it is liberal. Precisely as neither of these worldviews reliably reflect the message taught and embodied by Christ. 

We err when we fall into the common trap of confining Christianity to contemporary socio-political narratives of any age. This risks the dreadful mistake of reading the bible through prevailing sociological lenses rather than interpreting the flow of history and its contents through the prism of biblical truth.

Before we venture further, it is useful to clarify a few key concepts. 

Defining Conservatism is a tricky affair, not least for its nebulous nature. It has morphed from era to era since its origins that are traceable to that Irish intellectual of renown, Edmund Burke. 

Indeed, it cannot be anything but amorphous, as it is subject to ceaseless redefinitions from epoch to epoch, according to evolving generational values. Its essential character is, however, a yearning for the preservation of supposedly propitious but waning cultural, political or economic structures. These are usually perceived by incumbent groups, as threatened by emergent contemporary values or previously marginalised social strata. 

Biblical Christianity, on the other hand, from antiquity, has had a tenuous relationship with prevailing culture. Its claims have been a perennial thorn to contemporary orthodoxy across the ages, from the crucifixion of Christ, to the days of the persecution of the early church by the Roman Empire, until now. 

This acrimonious relationship is owed to the audacity of its claims. They issue an unyielding and visceral challenge to all of us. 

Chief among these is the assertion that there is such a thing as truth or objectivity and that neither individuals nor society are the owners thereof. 

Truth by its very nature is exclusive, confrontational and not a little threatening, even when proclaimed by the meekest and most powerless in society, as the church most certainly was at its infancy. 

Mary the Queen of Scots, who was revealingly called "Bloody Mary", reputedly said, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe”. Whose sole and chief weapon being the transcendent truth and the invisible yet immanent power thereof.

Likewise, it is with good reason that the press has always been unsettling to authoritarian regimes who rightfully tremble at the very real yet indecipherable threat of what is true, even at the peak of their military powers.

Truth is exclusive in that it proclaims that not all ideas and the actions that flow from them are equal. Some are right and deserve commendation while others are wrong and are worthy of judgement. This raises the ire of individuals and societies who wish to reserve their presumed prerogative to be the ultimate arbiters of what is good and evil. 

The confusion of conservatism with Christianity, as mistaken as it is, has historical reasons. 

Since the Enlightenment, there has been the observable trend in societies whose frame of reference derives from Western tradition and thought, to unhinge themselves from the perceived strictures of Biblical truth. 

This is against the backdrop of cultural Christianity that held unremitting sway over Europe and its antecedents for well over a millennium following Constantine the Roman Emperor’s decriminalisation of Christian worship in the AD313 Edict of Milan. 

Cultural Christianity, very crucially, is not to be confused with biblical Christianity. It is descriptive of the existence of a general consensus in a cultural setting that (superficially) embraces biblical claims and values. 

This consensus need be neither specifically nor personally applied. In fact it is usually vague, contradictory and inchoate enough to seamlessly coexist at times, with the reign of cultural ideas, practices and norms that are in direct conflict with biblical truth. A good example is slavery, racism, apartheid, among other forms of hatred that have at sundry times coexisted with ostensibly Christian social settings. 

In other words, rather than embracing the Lordship of Christ and the primacy of His truth, cultural Christianity merely enthrones Christianity as the politically correct worldview of the day, even while its truths are simultaneously trampled, and sometimes used to justify the unjustifiable. 

The departure from Cultural Christianity has gained snowballing momentum over the decades. Recently, it seems to have reached a tipping point such that a new decidedly anti-Christian consensus is now threatening to capture the cultural centre that was for centuries the preserve of cultural Christianity in some places. 

This poses an existential threat to the beneficiaries of receding social, economic and political power structures with which cultural Christianity was deeply interwoven. A new and uncertain era beckons for their purveyors.

Biblical Christians need not join them in weeping for what was at times an affront to Christ and his gospel.

Even the prospect of resurgent persecution need not unsettle Biblical Christians. After all it was Christ who said “a slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also”. (John 15:20)

Who knows, this shaking may be a godsend for a church that has gone flaccid under the soporific shade of cultural Christianity.