ATHEISTS CREDIT THE GOSPEL
Two high-profile atheists concede that to get
practical help to the poor and liberate them from poverty you need
Christianity’s teaching about man’s place in the Universe
by David Catchpoole
Although an atheist,
veteran British politician Roy Hattersley1
is considered something of an authority on the origins of the Salvation Army,
since he wrote a best-selling biography of William and Catherine Booth.2
Hence it wasn’t too
surprising that a BBC program3
about the Salvation Army’s effectiveness sought his opinion on the subject. The
narrator, Peter Day, put it to Hattersley that, “This sort of thing, a sort of
social entrepreneurial drive which starts off out of a particular place and
circumstances—those sorts of things often run out of steam after a generation
or two. Is the Salvation Army in danger of running out of steam?”
Hattersley’s response was
immediate and effusive:
Since the
publication of his biography of William and Catherine Booth, Roy Hattersley has
written further (http://textualities.net/author/roy-hattersley/) of the positive influence of
Christian evangelists: “My view of society is very different from that which
was held by Booth and [John] Wesley. I am an atheist. But that does not prevent
me from admiring the strength of their different convictions. Nor did it stop
me from realising the crucial part that Wesley’s ‘respectable’ Christianity
played in the development of modern Britain.” For more on the positive effects
of the Wesley/Whitfield revivals, see Anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce and A Tale of Four Countries.
“I don’t think the Salvation Army is remotely in
danger of running out of steam. And I think it remains a vibrant organization
because of its convictions. I’m an atheist. But I can only look with amazement
at the devotion of the Salvation Army workers. I’ve been out with them on the
streets and seen the way they work amongst the people, the most deprived and
disadvantaged and sometimes pretty repugnant characters. I don’t believe they
would do that were it not for the religious impulse. And I often say I never
hear of atheist organizations taking food to the poor. You don’t hear of
‘Atheist Aid’ rather like Christian aid, and, I think, despite my inability to
believe myself, I’m deeply impressed by what belief does for people like the
Salvation Army.”
Roy Hattersley is not the
only high-profile atheist to publicly note, grudgingly or otherwise, the fruit
of the Gospel.
Matthew Parris, another
well known UK politician, author and journalist,4
wrote in The Times a most remarkable piece entitled …
“As an atheist, I truly
believe Africa needs God”
… and subtitled: “Missionaries,
not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem—the crushing
passivity of the people’s mindset.”5
Parris’s article was
written from a very personal perspective, dwelling particularly on his
experience in various countries in Africa during his childhood and during an
extensive tour across the continent when in his twenties. Of a more recent
visit to see a village well development project, he wrote:
“It inspired me, renewing
my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed
another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an
observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my
ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has
embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
I never hear of atheist
organizations taking food to the poor. You don’t hear of ‘Atheist Aid’—atheist
and UK Labour politician Roy Hattersley, January 2010
“Now a confirmed atheist,
I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism
makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government
projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and
training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It
brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”
Rebirth? Spiritual
transformation? Hardly the language of an atheist. But nevertheless, Parris’s
atheism is real. He tells of trying to “avoid this truth” of what he was
observing, wanting to applaud the practical work of the mission churches while
ignoring other aspects of missionary work. “It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation
is part of the package,” writes Parris, “but Christians black and white,
working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and
only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and
say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was
needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the
help, not the faith.”
However, as Parris
admitted, “this doesn’t fit the facts”. He explained how Christian faith
benefits the poor not merely because of its supportive effect on the
missionary, but because “it is also transferred to his flock. This is the
effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.”
Matthew Parris
has written many books, including Chance Witness, an autobiographical
account focusing primarily on his UK parliamentary observations and
experiences. But the time he has spent in Africa is arguably of much greater
significance. As a child more than 45 years ago, Matthew Parris grew up in southern
Africa, and often stayed with Christian missionaries (friends of the family).
When he revisited Africa in his twenties, the inescapable observation that
Christians, whether black or white, were ‘different’ from other people
continued to taunt him wherever he went, driving from Algiers to Niger,
Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, through the Congo to Rwanda,
Tanzania and to Nairobi, Kenya. And his recent trip to Malawi reminded him of
it once more—a truth he’d been trying to ‘banish’ all his life.
Parris notes indeed what
many other people, past and present, have observed in those who believe the
Gospel. “The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or
confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them
Matthew Parris also notes that Christians had a certain “liveliness, a
curiosity, an engagement with the world—a directness in their dealings with
others” that was lacking in non-believers. “They stood tall”, he writes.
Recalling his driving tour
in a Land Rover with four student friends when he was aged 24, Parris observed
that the difference between Christians and non-Christians was particularly
striking in “lawless” parts of the sub-Sahara. “Whenever we entered a territory
worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the
faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way
they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had
not become more deferential towards strangers—in some ways less so—but more
open.”
His recent trip to see the
village development project in Malawi brought him in close contact with charity
workers. Although Parris admits that it would suit him to believe that their
“honesty, diligence and optimism in their work” had no connection with their
evident personal faith,6
he had to concede that they were undeniably “influenced by a conception of
man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.”
The Christians were always
different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared
to have liberated and relaxed them—atheist Matthew Parris
Parris also makes this
astute observation: “There’s long been a fashion among Western academic
sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond
critiques founded in our own culture: ‘theirs’ and therefore best for ‘them’;
authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.7
“I don’t
follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and
that it suppresses individuality.” He goes on to say that such a mindset “feeds
into the ‘big man’ and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated
respect for a swaggering leader” and does nothing to allay fear of evil
spirits, ancestors and nature that so burden many in Africa. Parris writes that
“a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People
won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their
own shoulders.”
But in stark contrast,
Christianity, “with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between
the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any
other human being, smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual
framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to for those
anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it
liberates.”
Removing Christian evangelism
from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign
fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete—atheist
Matthew Parris
Parris concludes by warning
that aid programs that focus only on provision of material supplies and
technical knowledge are unlikely to succeed. “Removing Christian evangelism
from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign
fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.”
Parris’s observations
remind one of other atheists who like ‘Christian values’. Richard Dawkins has
often said that on social and moral questions, he is no Darwinist. He even
called himself a ‘cultural Christian’ in that regard. However, it’s all very
well for atheists to want Christian values, but if people are told they can’t
believe Christianity’s Bible, those values, as we see all around us, are simply
not sustainable in society. It’s as if the post-Christian West is still living
off of the last gasps of Christianity’s cultural capital, which is being
rapidly exhausted.
Observant and open-minded, yet deceived?
Given Roy Hattersley’s and
Matthew Parris’s keen observations about the undeniably positive impact of
Christianity’s teaching about “man’s place in the universe”, why don’t they
themselves believe that teaching?
Perhaps, in their case,
it’s because they only want to believe what is true and conforms to reality.
They don’t want to waste time and energy in duping themselves into believing
what they think is a falsehood. Remember, they’ve been taught that evolution is
fact, thus in their mind relegating the Bible, beginning in Genesis, to
‘fairytale’ status.
How many thousands of other
people are victims of the same deception? It doesn’t have to stay that way, as
many readers of Creation magazine would personally testify.