I think a sense of gratitude and really a sense of awe at the courage and the faith, the daring faith of people like Thomas Helwys and John Smyth who couldn’t find in their own land the freedom to worship God according to their conscience and so went to free Amsterdam.
The Amsterdam today we associate with their liberal laws on all sorts of things but 400 years ago it was a liberality that favoured those who wanted to worship God according to their conscience.
Helwys and Smyth are a powerful inspiration for our society today where I believe religious liberty is once again on the agenda. The liberty of the church to follow her Lord is under threat and we have to look now at how we were founded and what it is from our founding mothers and fathers we can take as an inspiration today.
It’s interesting that you mention the issue of religious liberty at a time when many European Christians are complaining of growing secularisation across the continent. Are you optimistic that can change?
I can’t say anything about outcomes because that’s not in my hands, but in terms of a strategy for the church I’m very optimistic. You can’t take God out of the public square or out of the story of Europe. It’s what Libby Purvis once called “the grammar of the culture” – it’s in the paintings, the music, the arts, the history.
I want a public square which is not a naked square where a secular government says ‘we have no God in this square’. That would hurt society. Nor would I want a sacred square where only one faith says ‘we speak and this is the only faith that counts’. I would want a public square where all faiths and no faiths are in dialogue and within that the Christian story is told with clarity and integrity and is not overpowering, rude or insolent.
We only have to look at what’s happened recently in the British Parliament with the MPs’ expenses scandal. Does the Bible have anything to say about truth, honesty, integrity? Most people would say yes.
The Christian church has two thousand years of Christian history and before that, thousands of years of Jewish history. Surely with its ups and downs, its successes and failures, it has something to tell us. The church hasn’t always got it right but if we point to the objective standard of the written record of history there is ample evidence that the Bible has wisdom the world can learn by.
Much has been made of the relationship between Muslims and Christians since the release of the “Common Word” letter by the Muslim clerics. How do you feel about relations between the two faiths?
