The statement of spiritual intent by the increasingly influential news and comment site Christian Today sounds as nice as pie:
“We are evangelical at heart (read our basis of faith here). However we are passionate about bringing the whole Church together and helping Christians of different denominations and groupings to learn from each other. To this end, you will find a range of voices, views and opinion on this site, not all of which will be considered orthodox evangelical.”
Who could complain about “bringing the whole Church together”? But lift the crust off what is happening spiritually and morally in the Western Church and it would appear some nasty theological maggots have got inside Christian Today’s professedly evangelical meat and potato.
Of course, a Christian site should accurately report the profound disagreements that surround the news. For example, the theological reasons why the one-time orthodox evangelical song writer Vicky Beeching now believes homosexual activity is acceptable for Christians should be quoted.
But in the theological engine room of the comment section, the operatives should all be sound evangelicals otherwise the spiritual and moral direction of the ship is compromised. There are plenty of outlets promoting the LGBTQI agenda. The pen-pushers of political correctness are rapidly taking over the whole alphabet of media opinion. They already dominate the BBC. Freedom of Christian expression in the UK will suffer if there is not a distinctively evangelical news and comment site with paid journalists and a committed readership in local churches.
All Christian Today’s contributing editors should be required to sign its soundly evangelical basis of faith, which includes commitment to the Trinity, to the divine inspiration of the Bible and to “the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, so reconciling us with God”. Wonderful biblical doctrine that would warm the cockles of Thomas Cranmer’s heart, not to mention John Wesley’s.
In addition in the present climate, CT writers should be required to declare their conviction that heterosexual marriage is the only right context for the expression of sexual love.
But unfortunately insistence on evangelical conviction is not the spiritual direction Christian Today appears to be moving in. So there is now the need for a new, uncompromisingly evangelical news and comment site. This new forum would be wise to include in its basis of faith commitment to the complementarity of the sexes, including the Bible’s teaching about male servant leadership in the family and the Church.
The transcendent truth of the Lord Jesus Christ matters supremely. That is why the UK needs a robustly evangelical alternative to Christian Today to proclaim and defend it.
