Pilgrim Soldier

A lot of the books that I’ve been reading over the last year or so seem to see that the Church has become a place where legalism is one of the biggest problems. It seems as if the authors feel that much of Christianity is forcing a Pharisaical view of our faith onto the people who attend. The expectation therefore is that the ‘faithful’ must therefore stick to a rigid set of rules that, while mimicking God’s Law, are man-made.

My problem with this is that it doesn’t really seem to describe the Church that I see here in the UK. Whilst it might describe a certain section of the more extreme wings of US evangelicalism, it doesn’t really reflect the situation here. The problem is though that many people may be blindly reading the books that are pushed by the publishing giants of the Christian world, forgetting that the industry is actually publishing for its largest market, the US, and therefore uses authors who speak best to the North American culture.

So who is speaking to the UK churches? Who is speaking to the tired out Christians who I’ve seen are living faithful lives but have lost their drive? Who is speaking to the apathetic church that simply doesn’t see the need to evangelise? Who is speaking to the ancient geriatric church that is too weak to do anything and to out of touch with post-modern Britain to attract new blood?