More than 900 attend annual event

CHARLESTON, SC, JAN. 28, 2014 – Internationally known scholars and experts in the field of religion and culture drew a record-breaking crowd of more than 900 to the Charleston Music Hall, Jan. 22-24 for the annual Mere Anglicanism Conference which this year looked at “Salt & Light: The Christian Response to Secularism.”

Bishop NT Wright, one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars and the leading expert on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, said that Christians had colluded with secularism by letting God be pushed upstairs and out of sight, with Christians holding the view that their purpose lay in being heaven-bound. “That’s not it,” he said. “God rescues us to become rescuers.” “We are put right (justified) so we can help right things on earth.”

Mary Eberstadt, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington, D.C. organization dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to public policy issues, argued that the last 15-20 years has seen the emergence in the West of a new intolerance directed at Christians. Increasingly religious believers are the recipients of rage, ridicule and ostracism. “This hateful rhetoric would have been denounced if those on the receiving end were anything but Christians,” she said. She told of Christians losing their jobs or being pushed out of public life for expressing their beliefs.

“In subtle ways intimidation leads to censorship, censorship to self-censorship,” she said. “Free speech intolerance is everybody’s problem. Push back is way over due.”

Michael Nazir-Ali, the 106th Bishop of Rochester and the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England, reviewed contributions Christianity made to modern society but said the withdrawal of Christian faith from public discourse has created a vacuum in the moral and spiritual life of the nation.

“When there’s a vacuum, what’s going to fill it?” Nazir-Ali asked. He claimed we now have a comprehensive ideology challenging the Western world – radical Islamism. He said the institutional church is not the answer and what we need are movements – movements of young people students, men women, professional people, movements of Christians who are willing to take the good news of Jesus Christ in their professions, among their peers, in their neighborhoods. I think Mere Anglicanism is becoming one such movement.” He also stressed strengthening marriages and families and the importance of mission work, especially among those who’ve migrated to the U.S.

Ross Douthat, the youngest regular op-ed columnist in the history of “The New York Times” and a former senior editor of “The Atlantic,” said secularism does not have as strong a hold on American culture as is often thought; rather, culture is obsessed with religion and spirituality. That obsession has implications for how Christians should relate to the culture. He claimed the secularization crisis is coming from inside and outside the church through political polarization, the sexual revolution and Christians’ capitulation to materialism. Theological accommodations made by liberal churches have not worked and the role of orthodox Christians was to prove their adversaries wrong. “They think we’re back where orthodoxy will change or disappear. We need to prove them wrong. (Orthodox) Christianity is not going away.”

Os Guinness, popular author and social critic said that secularization is a process where religion is marginalized and that because of the west’s prosperity our generation can live “by bread alone” better than any other generation in history. He claimed that “atheism says the impulse towards the transcendent must be resolutely resisted; yet life points beyond itself.” “When you take God away everything dissolves,” he said.

Alister McGrath, the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, once a self-confessed atheist, found Christianity “far more robust and intellectually satisfying explanation of the world than scientific atheism.” “We need to draw people to the Christian faith by its luminosity, by its joy,” he said. “Our secular culture doesn’t provide those.”

McGrath urged Christians to tell their stories of faith – how they discovered it and grew into it. “It’s a story our culture needs to hear told,” he said.

The Rev. Dr. John Guest, who has preached to more than a million people face-to-face through his evangelistic crusades, preached during two services that were held in conjunction with the conference. Bishop Mark Lawrence, the XIV Bishop of South Carolina was the moderator for a concluding panel discussion of questions submitted by the audience. The Rev. Jeffrey Miller, Rector of the Parish Church of St. Helena’s, Beaufort chaired the conference. A team from his church helped to organize the event.

The presentations from this year’s conference will be made available online in March at www.mereanglicanism.com. Next year’s Mere Anglicanism Conference will focus on Christianity and Radical Islam

View a photo album of the event.