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The uniqueness of Christianity'He's a Pakistani, but I think he's a Christian', was one of the more bizarre comments from Rochester Cathedral at the announcement that Michael Nazir-Ali was to be the new Bishop. New syllabuses for Religious Education have shown that there is a continuing debate about which religion should be taught in state schools. The Prince of Wales has declared his desire to be a defender of 'faith' or 'the divine' rather than of any religious group. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to favour a multi-faith Coronation Service for Charles III. There are some suggestions that the evangelisation of ethnic minorities in Britain should be banned as racial discrimination. It is in this climate that we are to speak about the call to cross cultures with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not just non-Christians who are confused about the link between race and religion. What then should be our emphases as we preach and teach in evangelical churches? What role do we have in helping British Christians to make their own contribution to the national debate? Christ in world historyFirst we need to be clear on the centrality to world history of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While we have never been slow to proclaim the gospel of individual salvation, few have majored on the cosmic significance of that event. The term 'New Age' could never have been highjacked by non-Christians if it had been a regular part of the Christian message. With his death and resurrection, Jesus brought into the middle of history the final judgement and the gift of resurrection life. This marked the beginning of God's new creation - a new humanity that is not defined by race, but by a relationship to the Messiah, the new Adam. Such a relationship led to the establishment of Christian churches as the realisation of what it means to be God's new humanity - the only humanity that unites all that it means to be human with the divine. The church is non-racialSecondly, this emphasises the non-racialist nature of the Christian church. Romans argues strongly that all mankind is united in sin and therefore there is only one remedy for all races. Christianity is the only major world faith that doesn't require its followers to adopt the life pattern of a particular race. Much of the New Testament is taken up with a debate about the relationship between faith in the Messiah and the Jewish race into which he was born. Early on there was an understanding that Gentiles could be free of circumcision and Jewish food laws when they entered the people of God. One of the emphases of missiology in recent years has been the contextualisation of the gospel into different racial and cultural groups. This may, however, tie people too strongly into their own culture. Later in the New Testament, in books like Hebrews and Revelation (which probably came out of the final stages of the Jewish War and the destruction of Jerusalem), there is the calling to Jewish Christians to abandon any identification with Jewish patterns and ceremonies. The Christian message is subversive to national and ethnic religious and political loyalties, since it proclaims Jesus as the world king and his people as the prime unit for those who recognise him. Living in a non-Christian countryThirdly, we must teach people to understand how to live and witness as Christians in a country which does not give any preference to Christianity, but may in fact favour another religion. We know that Christians can live and witness in such a society. We know that human laws and national philosophies can never become a final barrier to the advancement of Christ's kingdom. We may have experienced already what British Christians will face in the future. In the confusing present, British Christians may realise how much they need to learn from their Asian brethren. Ray Porter
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