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Dispatches; The New Fundamentalism, Christianity and Creation.

Rod Liddle is a highly politicised person getting into trouble previously for abusing his media position to pursue his own political views. He had to resign his position as producer of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme because of continued political activity. See for instance; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Liddle This Channel 4 programme was in part a political attack on Tony Blair's education policy, but he chose to drag one branch of Christianity through the mud as well to make it.

First of all Liddle failed to define fundamentalism, but simply suggested that fundamentalists are a threat to liberal values and democracy. While the word fundamentalist is often used as an adjective to describe Christians who hold to a literal reading of Scripture, it can also be used to describe legalistic Christians, and at other times is used as an insulting noun to dismiss all evangelical Christians as dangerous and irrelevant. Those who use it in this inconsistent way, conveniently flip from adjective to insult to make their point. This is nothing short of prejudice and intolerance by liberals such as Liddle who want to avoid understanding people they disagree with.

Fundamentalism started in the early 20th century with a group of Christians who wrote a number of pamphlets, known as the Fundamentals to uphold the New Testament against secular attacks of higher biblical criticism. If Liddle had done some research he would have found that many of the leading Fundamentalists such as B.B. Warfield were in fact supporters of theistic evolution.

Fundamentalism is also used to describe legalistic Christians, but most evangelical Christians, including those who support young earth creationism have an understanding of law and grace that is not legalistic. In other words literalism is not the same theologically as legalism. Liddle did not seem to understand this, nor the Christian message of God’s love and grace that Paul appealed to in the first 8 chapters of Romans.

Liddle also stated without any discussion or evidence that creationism is loopy. He interviewed no creation scientists to discuss his view despite the fact that 39% of the British population accepts a form of creation or intelligent design, and a majority do not accept evolution in the UK.

The reason that evangelical Christians engage in social action through initiatives such as The Silver Ring Thing and Living Waters is because of concern for the health and well being of individuals and society. It does not begin from legalism, but from love. The issues that these two organisations address are serious and need to be discussed and researched rationally, but with blinkered vision Liddle failed to see any good in them at all, suggesting that they are a danger to society.

These are creational issues. God called men and women to respect each other and engage in life long committed relationships, but Liddle seemed to ridicule children for their stand preferring the negative social consequences that a liberal attitude to sexual activity brings. He failed for instance to acknowledge the link between condom use and promiscuity. Condoms are about 95 to 98% effective, meaning they have a 1 in 20 to 1 in 50, failure rate. If the rate of extra marital sexual activity increases by more than a factor of 20 to 50 through contraception use then the incidence of unprotected sex will increase with damaging consequences for people and society. The issue of whether a gay gene exists or not is also an important one because many people suffer from confusion or mental illness, as a result of popular culture and the gay lobby teaching children and young people that gay sentiment is genetic, and not cultural. There is no evidence that a gay gene exists, although Jesus did acknowledge that some are born as eunuchs, this as a result of the fall. But God did not create people to be gay and our genes do not determine the thoughts we choose to think. While we have sympathy for those suffering confusion over their identity, it is important to maintain a correct understanding of our make up. Gay sentiment has more to do with exposure to a cultural replicator and nurture, perhaps through negative experiences in childhood. Natural selection also could not select for a mutant gay gene if one did arise.

Liddle also showed a piece of Jerry Springer the Opera without warning. This is likely to have offended many people and may well have been a breach of the Ofcom code of conduct. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode/

Liddle also launched into a rather angry and belligerent rant in interview with the head of Emmanuel School, betraying his own partisan views instead of making an objective programme. He also seemed to question whether anyone with creationist views should be allowed to hold headship of a state school. There are laws against such discrimination on grounds of religious belief. The viewer was also left with the impression that material was used selectively to build the biased case that Liddle wanted. The Association of Christians Teachers has written a press release that is worth reading for more information. http://www.christian-teachers.org.uk/news.html

[1] Reported on this webpage. http://www.secularism.org.uk/newsline.html?startidx38722=20

This message was added on Thursday 9th March 2006