Vinoth Ramachandra

Earlier this month I spent two weeks traveling by train and on foot in Central Europe. I was fortunate to experience marvellous weather.

It confirmed my long-held belief that one of the best reasons for being a Christian is to compare Soviet-era art, architecture, music and literature- when Atheism was the officially sanctioned religion and Christians forced underground- with what preceded it. As Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) once remarked, “the only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, the saints that the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.”

Prague exceeded my expectations. The only downside was being charged to enter almost every building, including churches. Given that over 8 million tourists visit Prague every year (more than four times what Sri Lanka receives) this must be the wealthiest capital per capita!

I mentally composed this post sitting in St Martin’s Cathedral in Bratislava, where many kings of Hungary were crowned. I have ceased to photograph places I visit as I can find better quality photos, if needed, on the Internet. I have often watched bemused as a gaggle of tourists rush into, say, a cathedral and start snapping away with their phones, not even pausing to savour in silence the beauty and history of the place. Click, click, and they are off again to the next stop on their tour. At the risk of sounding technophobic, the camera-phone is not merely addictive, it has reinforced the superficiality of our engagement with the world around us.

While I was away, an American physicist from CalTech who has started his own global Christian organization descended on Colombo. Predictably, what was advertised as a weekend of “apologetics” for us was another typical crash-course in biblical fundamentalism (“creationism”, “god-of-the gaps”, “inerrancy”, etc). Scientists and engineers, with a few outstanding exceptions, tend to be philosophically and theologically illiterate. And, albeit well-intentioned, no attempt was made to listen to the perceptions and objections, religious or otherwise, of local folk.

Further, when will Americans learn that the neediest so-called “mission field” lies in their own backyard? Their society and politics are in disarray; and the credibility of American Christianity is at rock bottom. If thoughtful young people are not attracted to the white, conservative American church, or are leaving it in droves, its not because of atheism or science (which, after all, was birthed in a culture imbued with a Christian worldview), but because of the racism, patriarchy, homophobia, anti-intellectualism and hypocrisy they see; as well as the blind support for fascists like Trump and Netanyahu.

In the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist orator and former slave, argued that large swathes of American Christianity had so thoroughly conformed itself to the racist and slave-owning culture that it no longer represented the Gospel of Jesus. In 1845, as he concluded his autobiography, Douglas wrote the following devastating words:

“Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference- so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other… Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels… The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families… The dealer gives his blood-stained gold  to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America… They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.” (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845, Appendix)

How much of this applies to “Christian nationalism” today I leave the reader to decide.

As for the self-styled “progressive” white churches, these tend to leap on the latest bandwagon of the cultural left, with nothing distinctively Christian to say in the public sphere. That has always been the failing of theological liberalism.

My last Blog post was pertinent to political events over the past two weeks in the US and UK. The darkest expressions of political extremism in the US have found their way across the Atlantic as shown in the recent far-right rally in London supported openly by Elon Musk and others in MAGA. A hypocritical far-right rhetoric about free speech, initially fuelled by understandable resentment at left-liberal “cancel culture”, is inflamed by social media silos and AI chatbots.

Add to this toxic maelstrom the government-sponsored normalization of scorn for climate science and evidence-based medicine, and you are staring down a moral and political abyss.