One of the things that has concerned me this past few weeks is the confusion about how we reach people with the Gospel whose political views are labelled “right wing” or more precisely “far right”. There seems to be a take that you have got to go along with the political views expressed. I think there are two factors here.
1. Attempting to find a way to say “we share your concerns. Now in some cases that’s legitimate but we need to distinguish for example between sharing the concerns of people on a march and sharing the ideology of the organisers. We do the marchers no favours if we give the impression that the people on the platform are the answer.
2. For too long the Church has been far too absent from places we’ve determined as “hard places.”. This includes inner city Bradford and East Birmingham with high Muslim population. It also includes white working class council estates in South Bradford and North Birmingham (I’m choosing those two cities as places I know well but as examples of many places.
The result of the second point is that we do not know people and they don’t know us. We are shouting at a distance. This means a couple of things. First, it means that we don’t have permission to speak into their lives and challenge them. So, when they get invited on a march by Tommy Robinson, we don’t have the relational context to say not just “I cannot join that” but also “nor should you.”
It also means that we don’t really get to understand them. I’ve talked a lot here on Faithroots about “subversive fulfillment.”. The idea is that we have all kinds of hopes and dreams that can only be fulfilled in Christ. However, those desires are fragmented, disordered, distorted and corrupted. That’s where the subversion bit comes in. We need to reorder, reorientate and restore the true hope. That’s where repentance comes in. Now some of us spend almost all of our time talking subversion and some of us are all about fulfillment but you need both.
It is as you live alongside people that you get to do two things. First, you get to understand what a person’s desires and hopes really are. Second, you get to show where there is a true sharing of dreams but also what those hopes and dreams like ok like, subverted and fulfilled in Christ. All of this is hard, long term work. But if we want permission to properly witness to people and for them to let God’s word disagree with them, then it’s necessary.
I don’t want to just leave you with a negative critique of current attempts to “reach the right”. Rather, I want to encourage more positive ways forward. There are different groups trying to encourage this in different parts of the country. If you want to get involved in living among and reaching people from estates and inner city areas then there are people like 20 Schemes in Scotland and Medhurst Ministries in the north of England
I would love to hear from you if this is on your heart and you are interested in the West Midlands but also would love to hear from people wanting to reach other places too.
Faithroots 