Christians Engaging Culture Podcast
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Gerard O'Brien - The Biblical Basis (Religious Liberty Part 1)
In the coming weeks CEC will explore the topic of religious liberty. As Christians, we want the freedom to live quiet and peaceful lives and to make the gospel known. Unfortunately, as our culture moves away from the Bible, the Christian worldview is increasingly rejected as discriminatory and hateful. This has recently come to a head in the case of Israel Folau, in legislation forcing doctors to refer for abortions, as well as in a number of other cases. How should Christians respond to these issues? Should we contend for religious liberty? What should we say when our non-Christian neighbours ask us about these things?
We think a helpful definition of religious liberty is given by Andrew Walker in his thesis on the topic: ‘Religious liberty is defined as the principle wherein every individual should be free to live out his or her understanding of the conscience’s duty that is owed to God in all areas of life without liability to government penalty or social harassment.’ There are qualifications we could make to this definition (as we will see in this week’s module), but it is a good start.
This week we look at the biblical basis for religious liberty. Our authority is the Bible and so we do not want to believe in religious liberty unless it is biblical. Our podcast is a lecture given by Gerard O’Brien (assistant minister at St Thomas’ North Sydney). Also included in this week are an essay on religious liberty through church history from one of our congregation members, articles from Akos Balogh and Douglas Wilson on how religious liberty cannot be value-neutral and a lecture by Martyn Iles on the role of government and why Christians should enter politics. You can find these articles and more at our website.
Christians Engaging Culture (CEC) exists to equip the members of St Thomas’ to give faithful answers in everyday cultural conversations and to turn those conversations to the gospel.
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