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Originally posted by Gwai:
Some churches (think the Reverend Martin Luther King, for example) certainly lead the civil rights movement in this country. On the other hand, some churches violently opposed it too.

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Well, I think you could argue for (some parts of) the Christian church as having a big role to play in equal rights for women, since so many of the early suffragists came to it by way of the temperance movement, which was rooted in the churches. However, there were also many sermons preached against the idea of women having the vote, so at best you'd have to say it was a mixed result in terms of Church support for that particular issue.

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Originally posted by JFH:
Well, churches were if my understanding of history is remotely correct the main space where blacks could gather in groups. As such it was probably one of the driving forces behind the civil rights movement. The parts of the church that sided with the oppressors or didn't side at all were largely inconsequential to their successes and minor actors. Leadership was only shown on the good side, not the bad one.

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Over the weekend I was at a conference where one of the speakers was talking about Climate Change, and urging Christians to get involved in this issue. "If the Church doesn't take a lead on this, then who will?" he asked. My answer was not the one he wanted (I kept it to myself) - the Church isn't leading on Climate Change, and that isn't affecting the debate at all.

My thoughts went on to other big issues where public thinking has changed massively - equal rights for women, for gays, for animals, caring for the environment - and it seems to me that Christians have come late to all those discussions. (However, they have then often claimed that Christianity was always all in favour of issue X, by a careful rewriting of history!) The only big moral issue I could think of where we did take a lead was the abolition of slavery, and that's a while ago now.

If I'm right I find that rather depressing. So are there other issues which I've missed, where the Church has led, rather than followed, public opinion?

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Originally posted by Evensong:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Over the weekend I was at a conference where one of the speakers was talking about Climate Change, and urging Christians to get involved in this issue. "If the Church doesn't take a lead on this, then who will?" he asked. My answer was not the one he wanted (I kept it to myself) - the Church isn't leading on Climate Change, and that isn't affecting the debate at all.

My thoughts went on to other big issues where public thinking has changed massively - equal rights for women, for gays, for animals, caring for the environment - and it seems to me that Christians have come late to all those discussions. (However, they have then often claimed that Christianity was always all in favour of issue X, by a careful rewriting of history!) The only big moral issue I could think of where we did take a lead was the abolition of slavery, and that's a while ago now.

If I'm right I find that rather depressing. So are there other issues which I've missed, where the Church has led, rather than followed, public opinion?

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Sure. How about a complete radicalisation of human society based on the worth of the individual and exercised through charity contra values of the Roman Empire?

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm going to bite on the homosexuality issue. My impression is that up until some time in the early nineties the church was probably ahead of wider society on gay rights.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I also think that as fewer and fewer British people identify with churches it's going to harder and harder for the churches to claim to offer moral leadership. Demoralised institutions find it hard to 'lead'. This is perhaps a bigger problem for the CofE than for smaller institutions, because the latter know their place (and can make their feelings known behind the scenes) whereas the CofE expects to have a public voice beyond its self-identified constituency. What happens behind the scenes, including in the congregations, doesn't seem to count for much when it comes toCofE leadership.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater ability to take moral leadership in the future in our diminished role, rather than greater.

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater ability to take moral leadership in the future in our diminished role, rather than greater.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
This seems to be a common bit of historical revisionism regarding mainstream churches and most social issues. The clergy who signed the open letter now known as "A Call for Unity" (in response to which Rev. King wrote his much more famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail") certainly represented larger and more respected religious organizations than Rev. King did at the time.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater (rather than lesser) ability to take prophetic moral leadership in the future precisely because of our diminished status (as opposed to our prior privileged status).

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Well, I think you could argue for (some parts of) the Christian church as having a big role to play in equal rights for women, since so many of the early suffragists came to it by way of the temperance movement, which was rooted in the churches. However, there were also many sermons preached against the idea of women having the vote, so at best you'd have to say it was a mixed result in terms of Church support for that particular issue.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
This seems to be a common bit of historical revisionism regarding mainstream churches and most social issues. The clergy who signed the open letter now known as "A Call for Unity" (in response to which Rev. King wrote his much more famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail") certainly represented larger and more respected religious organizations than Rev. King did at the time.

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As an aside it is interesting how large a role moral luck plays in whether one is treated by history as a hero or a villain.

The clergy who signed the Call for Unity were advocating what one could call the 'Wait for Atticus Finch position'. Atticus Finch essentially takes the line that Martin Luther King was arguing against: that black people should just wait for Atticus Finch and other white liberals to free them working through the courts. If the black people take any action to free themselves they'll just get shot by guards (who are just doing their job). Yet, while nobody would cite the Call for Unity letter positively, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is considered a classic text in the struggle for racism and is still taught as such to schoolchildren to this day. (Probably because the novel doesn't address any practical recommendations to any concrete situation.)

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Gwai:
Some churches (think the Reverend Martin Luther King, for example) certainly lead the civil rights movement in this country. On the other hand, some churches violently opposed it too.

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This seems to be a common bit of historical revisionism regarding mainstream churches and most social issues. The clergy who signed the open letter now known as "A Call for Unity" (in response to which Rev. King wrote his much more famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail") certainly represented larger and more respected religious organizations than Rev. King did at the time. In short, the basic tactic seems to be to support the status quo for as long as possible and then, once change has been accepted as not just inevitable but an unquestionably good thing, cherry pick one or two noted dissenters and say "see, the Church™ was an early supporter of X!"

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
It should be noted that there's a vast gulf between "ahead of wider society on gay rights" in the seventies and eighties and actually supporting the rights of gay people. Looking at it from a strictly UK perspective, how many church organizations actively supported the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater (rather than lesser) ability to take prophetic moral leadership in the future precisely because of our diminished status (as opposed to our prior privileged status).

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Reminds me of the observation someone made that the church's* stated interest in promoting human rights has historically been inversely proportional to its power to do so.

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*The specific church being discussed was Roman Catholicism, but I suppose it's equally applicable to most other hierarchical religious organizations.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:


Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater (rather than lesser) ability to take prophetic moral leadership in the future precisely because of our diminished status (as opposed to our prior privileged status).

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:


Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater (rather than lesser) ability to take prophetic moral leadership in the future precisely because of our diminished status (as opposed to our prior privileged status).

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Do these authors suggest which churches will be best suited to this role? I made a comment on another thread about how the Quakers and Unitarians have had a significant role to play in getting the law changed to allow SSM. However, from what I can tell, the CofE will be reluctant to 'speak truth to power' if the price to pay is that it must become as small and marginal as the Quakers and Unitarians. Is there much sign that the CofE wants to reinvent itself in this guise? And would it really be wise?

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
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Actually, I'm inclined to think that what we really need at the moment is spiritual leadership, and then the moral leadership will follow. For Christians to talk about morality ahead of spiritual transformation seems topsy-turvy to me. But that could be a separate issue.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
I would say:
I'm going to bite on the homosexuality issue. My impression is that up until some time in the early nineties the church was probably ahead of wider society on gay rights. It's only now that the church has become the only place where the holdouts have enough power and influence to dig in their heels.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Several writers (eg Eddie Gibbs, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren) have argued that the church will have a greater (rather than lesser) ability to take prophetic moral leadership in the future precisely because of our diminished status (as opposed to our prior privileged status).

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Reminds me of the observation someone made that the church's* stated interest in promoting human rights has historically been inversely proportional to its power to do so.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Well, I think you could argue for (some parts of) the Christian church as having a big role to play in equal rights for women, since so many of the early suffragists came to it by way of the temperance movement, which was rooted in the churches. However, there were also many sermons preached against the idea of women having the vote, so at best you'd have to say it was a mixed result in terms of Church support for that particular issue.

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Equal rights for SOME women. The suffragette movement was marked by incredible racism and pro-eugenics. Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst only wanted women who owned property to get the vote (though not Sylvia Pankhurst), and Susan B Anthony wanted black men to lose the vote so (white) women could gain it. Black suffragettes like Ida B Wells are all but forgotten.

As far as I know, the church had no role in opposing the oppression of black women by mainstream white suffragism and feminism.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Did the churches have much involvement in reform of nineteenth-century working conditions?

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There seem to be a number of assumptions underlying the OP, such as “chronological snobbery” and some sort of “Whig interpretation of history”-type teleology.

Why must we think that whatever “public opinion” ( or even an influential bien-pensant minority) supports just at the moment is right, clearly in the ascendant, and deserving of the backing of Christians?

Surely it is incumbent on Christians to decide what is right because it is right, no matter what opinion polls show, and then take the attitude of “Athanasius contra mundum” (or “fuck the zeitgeist”).

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
DH alert.

There seem to be a number of assumptions underlying the OP, such as “chronological snobbery” and some sort of “Whig interpretation of history”-type teleology.

Why must we think that whatever “public opinion” ( or even an influential bien-pensant minority) supports just at the moment is right, clearly in the ascendant, and deserving of the backing of Christians?

Surely it is incumbent on Christians to decide what is right because it is right, no matter what opinion polls show, and then take the attitude of “Athanasius contra mundum” (or “fuck the zeitgeist”).

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Originally posted by leo:
The fight to abolish slavery was largely done by free thinkers.

Churchmen mostly opposed to e.g. the bells of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol rang a celebratory peal when Wilberforce initially lost the vote in the House of Commons,.

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
"If the Church doesn't take a lead on this, then who will?" he asked.

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
I'm still inclined to think that slavery is a bad thing, and that abolishing it was a good thing.)

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At a practical and personal level, it would good if Christians could refrain from the sort of crude spiritual blackmail which labels as “unChristian” any political view different from their own which is held by other Christians.

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Originally posted by no prophet:
"Church" as a broad term to encompass all churches and people of faith doesn't do it justice. Nor does highlighting progressive causes as the ones that are moral. Religious people are also leading the charge against climate change (which I think correlates with creationism, anti-abortion, anti-gay, support for sterner criminal justice, though not certain of the strength of the correlations).

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Today the debate of two centuries ago is often portrayed as the slavers' political and commercial power against the brave abolitionist Christians, especially the evangelicals of Clapham sect, who wanted to be biblical. Thus the Anglican Mainstream website claims that 'Those who cited the Bible to justify their views on supporting slavery based their views actually on economic theory, not on the Bible.' This impression is reinforced by the film, Amazing Grace, which features Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce singing Newton's hymn to other MPs concerned for trade in ports like Liverpool - using the tune we know today, which was not actually set to those words for another 60 odd years over in America.

But sadly, the caricature that the slavers were just selfish capitalists and the abolitionists were the only biblical Christians around is just not true. If anything, it was the other way around. Slavery was viewed as a 'biblical' doctrine, supported by the laws of God and human law, while the abolitionists were seen as dangerous liberals, preaching sedition and revolution. This was the time of the American and French Revolutions, the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man. Even in the film, Wilberforce has to warn Thomas Clarkson about how dangerous the abolitionist cause could seem. Yet, Thomas Paine only applies the word 'slavery' to French citizens during the revolutionary period - not to Africans or the Atlantic trade. Meanwhile, Jefferson and the Founding Fathers of the Declaration of Independence may have believed 'these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' - but they were all slave-owners, who did not apply these truths to their slaves. In fact, some origins of abolition began as a tactic by the British forces in the revolutionary war of independence to get American slaves to defect. It was extremely successful with tens of thousands running away to British side. Clarkson's brother John, against great opposition from authorities in London, eventually led them back across the Atlantic to found Freetown and Sierra Leone.

The 'biblical' case for slavery is clear: early in Genesis, Noah decrees that, as punishment for seeing him naked, Ham's descendants will be slaves for Shem and Japheth (Gen. 9.22-27); Abraham is blessed by God with 'male and female slaves' as a wealthy slaveowner (Gen. 24.35; for Abraham's slaves, see also Gen. 12.5; 14.14; 20.14). Slaves were part ofhis estate, property he passed on to his son Isaac (Gen. 26.12-14). There is provision in the Mosaic legislation for Israelites to buy and sell slaves, and how to treat them (see for example, Exodus 21 and Leviticus25). Slavery was equally accepted in the New Testament, where slaves are told to 'obey their masters . . . with enthusiasm' as though obeying Christ (Eph. 6.5-9; Col.3.22-25; Titus 2.9-10; 1 Peter 2.18-19). Paul returns the runaway slave Onesimus to his master Philemon, and tells slaves who hear his epistles to 'remain in the condition in which you were called' (Phm. 12; 1 Cor. 7.20-24). Particular attention was drawn to 1 Tim 6.1-6, where Paul's instructions, 'let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honour' are given the additional dominical authority as 'the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ'. All of these texts were common in the biblical justification for slavery in the early nineteenth-century.

It was all undergirded by Romans 13.1-7 with its appeal to proper law and order. Wayne Meeks and Willard Swartley have both demonstrated how leading Bible interpreters in universities and churches alike provided 'biblical' support for the 'scriptural' doctrine of slavery. While today's historical criticism can help, Meeks concludes that 'it appears to provide no knock-down argument against such uses of scripture as the apologists for slavery made'.

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