Christian faith ‘tucked away’

Press, 1 June 1985, Page 28

Christian faith ‘tucked away’

Many Christians kept their faith tucked away, separate from the rest of their lives, according to the vice-principal of a Canadian theological college, Professor Ward Gasque. While people in the Soviet Union were able to practise religion but were not able to relate it to everyday life, people in Western countries had chosen to keep their religious and secular lives apart, he said. Professor Gasque, who was in Christchurch during a New Zealand lecture tour, said that people had probably separated the two parts of their lives because of insecurity. r Professor Gasque is viceprincipal and professor of New Testament at Regent College, Vancouver.

Christians had become afraid and felt threatened by modern life, modern science and its discoveries, and by education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he said. “Many educational leaders were critical of the

Christian faith. Christians tended to withdraw their input from society,” said Professor Gasque. An emphasis was then placed on missionary work and all the “best” Christians were sent on missions.

“Missions are very important but it is wrong to neglect the secular life.” Professor Gasque said the emphasis on missions almost returned Christianity to the Middle Ages where the best Christians became monks, nuns, or

the others were left to get on as best they could. “They were second-class

citizens,” he.said. More Christian education was needed to help people combine their religious and secular lives. “Teaching in the Church tends to be at the kindergarten level. People are not encouraged to think, learn, and grow. Paul, in the New Testament, encourages us to grow up in our faith and to mature in our understanding. We need the same high level of education in religion as we have in the secular world,” said Professor Gasque. The clergy had a low view of lay people’s ability to learn and so did not teach much. Lay people were not given positions of influence and authority in the Church. ‘ “The clergy need to recognise that theirs is a

share ministry and that they cannot do it all by themselves. They need to go hand in hand with other members of the body of Christ,” he said. Christians also needed to realise they had a stewardship and responsibility to exercise their influence in the world and help establish God’s kingdom on Earth. One way to get people to combine their religious and secular lives was to help them understand that their secular work was of value. “Most people think of themselves as cogs in a machine. Their secular employment is mostly a source of income so that they can live and support their families and to allow them to do what they want at the weeksaid. j-