Indian Christians and ADF: Sacral Lands and Christian Persecution

https://www.persecution.org/2020/05/14/christian-families-central-india-beaten-refusing-renounce-faith/

Sacralism often includes the land itself. The culture and state are sanctified but for many religions there is a tie between the gods and the land. Biblically speaking there's a basis for this in terms of the gods, the now deposed elohim rulers of the nations. These thrones and principalities have been spoiled by Christ and Satan is bound – no longer able to deceive the nations (Matt 12.28-29, 28.18-20, Col 2.15, Rev 20.2-3).

The New Covenant epoch, the eschatologically brief period between the First and Second Comings is a period in which the gospel goes out to the nations. The Kingdom is universal in its claims (Already) but as all things have not yet been put under Christ's feet and will not until His return, there is a raging battle as it were (1 Cor 15.24-26, Heb 2.8, Eph 6.12-13, 2 Cor 4.4, 1 Pet 5.8-10). The forces that have allied with Satan cannot stop the spread of the gospel and its proclamation that their rule and claims have ended – but at the same time they are tenaciously and ferociously resisting its spread – desiring (it would seem) to take as many souls as they can down with them.

And so in the pagan world the ancient concept of sacral lands is retained.* Hinduism in particular also has a sacralised concept of class or caste that is wed to its particular cosmology. When Christians or other religious groups appear in their midst the monistic society they (like all sacralists) would create is thrown into doubt.

And so Christians as a result face oppression and at times overt persecution. This is tragic but to be expected. It is the course and calling for Christians in this life.

If Christians in the West were more robust in their resistance to this grave theological error (which dominates the Christian scene albeit in an appropriately different form) then they too would face oppression and persecution. The fact that Christians largely flourish in the West is no testimony to Christendom but rather is the fruit of Enlightenment values, Christian worldliness and compromise and in some cases a trace of the phony veneer that was once called Christendom.**

Regardless as we see today these onetime 'blessings' can quickly become a curse and lead to cultural implosion with both the society and the state turning against (an already confused) Church.

I am also disturbed to note that the Indian families are meeting with Alliance Defending Freedom or ADF – the Right-wing Evangelical group launched by a group of Dominionists within the United States. This is not the first time they've popped up in reports coming out of India (even the BBC has picked this up) and I'm sorry to see them spreading their heretical and Biblically disobedient form of Christianity to the Developing World.

It's one thing for a Christian lawyer to provide legal assistance to someone being targeted – to confound the state's false claims, tie their arguments in knots, bear witness and essentially shame them. But that's not what ADF is about. They're activists and lobbyists who file strategic lawsuits and do all they can to promote a politicised version of Evangelicalism. This error which has all but destroyed the testimony of the American Church has over the past few decades been exported and has borne rotten fruit in places like the United Kingdom, China and Latin America and increasingly the error is gaining traction in Africa and nations such as India.

For them the case is not one of Christians bearing witness but it's truly a clash of the sacralisms as ultimately their theology would (if given the chance) 'Christianise' the nations and marginalise other religions that fall under their domain. To do so requires not merely or even primarily the spreading of the gospel by means of Evangelism – but pedagogical legislation, coercion and control of cultural institutions. This is what they seek to influence. They're after the culture and seek transformation from the top down – it's a 21^st century model of the Christianisation programmes seen in the Middle Ages.

But it's all predicated on an understanding of Christianity that differentiates between those in a vital credible relationship with Christ and those who merely have a formal, external or cultural profession. These Sacralists acknowledge their projects will not create Biblical Christians but cultural ones and they hope (contrary to the Scriptures and all historical precedent) that the latter will produce the former. In reality it simply leads to backlash – not to mention the whole model is predicated on creating a new type, definition or category of Christian that isn't found in the Bible – and an alternate gospel to go with it.

I'm sure the poor downtrodden families in India are happy for some help but I would not take a cup of water offered to me from Balaam for it is the doctrine of that false prophet that ultimately drives the ADF. They claim to be servants of God but instead put stumbling-blocks in front of God's people and believe the Kingdom is built by means of mammon, law, the courts, the heavy hand of the police and the waging of war. It is tragic that they're gaining such a prominent foothold within the Indian Evangelical scene.

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*It exists in the Western world as well, even in 'secular' lands. Americans have often expressed a near religious veneration of the land. The Third Reich's concept of blood and soil tied a holy race to a holy land. Many national anthems express a religious affection for the land itself. From England's Jerusalem and the 'Blest Isle' of Rule Britannia to the 'Fatherland' in La Marseillaise and the Russian national anthem to the land veneration in America and God Bless America, it's hardly a novel or unfamiliar idea – even if few have really thought about it or would be willing to follow through on the concept in terms of ideology and ethics.

**Some Christian Sacralists have argued that sacral culture is basic to humanity and culture and to conceive of the Church apart from it is purely defeatist. They also ascribe this view to somehow being less than committed to Christianity in application to the whole of life.

On the contrary, by sacralising daily life and mundane labours they necessarily downplay the uniqueness of Christianity, the pilgrim-exile antithesis we're called to and the Heavenly eschatological citizenship of the Church. Instead of dwelling in the wilderness in sackcloth (a poignant image in Revelation) we're called to take up the sword and the crown and to crush the enemies of Christ.

These people have a fundamental grievance with the teachings and ethics of the New Testament and its attitude toward money, power and violence. Repeatedly they engage in hermeneutical gymnastics in order to make the Scriptures say something else – often the opposite of what the New Testament teaches. In many cases they rely on Judaized readings of the Old Testament – blatantly refusing the apostles Christ-focused interpretation of the Old Covenant and the argument for its fulfillment.

New Testament Christianity is unique among the religions of the world in that it rejects the sacral concept and actually demands a functional pluralism – this is not the same as embracing an absolute pluralism. Social pluralism is a means not an end. It allows the Church to function in all nations and contexts and is a Last Days ideal as Christians are always going to be a small minority – never a people in power, never a majority.

Are there no sacral lands then? Well, actually the New Testament does have a sacral-land concept – Zion, the Kingdom of Heaven. That's our home, that's where we lay up our treasures, that's where our hearts are. That's also why the faithful soldier of the Land and its King does not entangle himself in the affairs of this life, nor does he serve mammon nor greatly concern himself with Caesar's coin or Caesar's wars and the rumours of them.

The Church has lost the message and with it the gospel of the New Testament and now the False Church that is American Evangelicalism (a cousin and reiteration of its one-time enemy Roman Catholicism) is spreading this to the rest of the world – in the lands where the gospel has spread. And sadly in these unstable and polarised cultures where some of the people are more likely to zealously live out these concepts – the end will be tragic.