This is my latest article on Christian Today – looking at the original concept of the Garden City – which was designed to exclude Christianity! What happens if we do town planning without God?
The Blog of David Robertson
This is my latest article on Christian Today – looking at the original concept of the Garden City – which was designed to exclude Christianity! What happens if we do town planning without God?
This seems rather like the argument many American Christians promote – that the Columbine massacre took place because religious education is not permitted in USA public schools. (The Dunblane massacre took place in a country that not only permits but actually demands that religion is taught in schools, and in a town that has a cathedral, too.) Our inner cities are full of church buildings as is the town of Livingstone but that does not stop these places also being haunted by poverty, greed and godlessness.
Jeannie – it is not remotely like the view that the Columbine massacre took place because of a lack of school prayer. Nor was I saying that places with churches don’t have poverty, greed and godlessness….please read it again and try to respond to what was actually being said, rather than what was not….
Thankfully a church building is not necessary for there to be church. Church exists where people are gathered in the name of Christ. Richard Tiplady, principle of the International Christan College rightly comments:
“There is some fear and pessimism about the survival of the church and crisis of faith in Europe… Jeremiah’s message to the exiles in Babylon is equally relevant to us today: stop looking back at the (mythical) lost past, accept the new reality, settle in it and serve God there…In a post – Christendom context, a church – meeting focus is no longer indigenous to the culture or necessary to be faithful to the gospel. Instead, the practice of community foundation itself is more central than the church meeting… existing forms of Christian worship and community do not attract outsiders (and may even repel them). There should be no offence except the cross of Christ.” pp 144-145 ‘The Pilgrim Church Needs a New Home’ in R Dowsett (ed.) Global Mission Pasadena: William Carey Library
More importantly than whether town planners incorporate a church building as well as a railway station is to what degree the body of Christ is welcomed in the community and whether the body of Christ illuminates with likeness to Christ and the gospel or hinders the gospel by preferring church politics and arguments over the kingdom.
David, I used to live in Livingston. This was anew town which had churches planned into it from the beginning, yet it had the lowest church attendance in Scotland at that time.