Martin Luther said, “I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of hell unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.”[1]
Bryan Wilson defines secularisation as, “the process whereby religious thinking, practises and institutions lose social significance”[2] This means that even if we claim to be a Christian in a secularised society that is all right so long as it stays out of social institutions. Those ideas are to be kept private.
First dentistry was painless
Then bicycles were chainless
Carriages were horseless
And many law were enforce- less
Next Cookery were fireless
Telegraphy was wireless
Cigars were nicotine-less
And coffee, caffeine- less
Soon oranges were seedless
The putting green was weed- less
The college boy was hapless, the proper diet fatless
New motor road are dustless, the latest steel is rust-less
Soon tennis courts soil less and our new religion godless[3]
To those that conform to the patterns of this world’s kingdom and standards will find themselves labouring for an imaginary kingdom. “A new theory has lately been started, which sets forth as its ideal a certain imaginary kingdom of God, unspiritual, unscriptural, and unreal. The old-fashioned way of seeking the lost sheep, one by one, is too slow: it takes too much time, and thought, and prayer, and it does not leave space enough for politics, gymnastics, and singsong. We are urged to rake in the nations wholesale into this imaginary kingdom by sanitary regulations, social arrangements, scientific accommodations, and legislative enactments. Please the people with the word “democratic”, and then amuse them into morality.”[4]
[1]Luther, Martin. Statement. Robert Flood, The Rebirth of America (Philadelphia: Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986), p. 127.
[2]Bryan Wilson (a prominent pro-secularisation theorist) (1966). http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/religion/sec.htm
[3] Poem -poet unknown
[4] Spurgeon C.H, An all round ministry, page 323, Banner of truth print 2000
Posted by Brendon Naicker 