The Church of England will die unless we start reading the Bible again.
As a new survey shows 60% of people in the Church of England "never" read the
Bible, Gavin Ashenden says its time for the CofE's leaders to step
up
I've just come back from Russia. The last time I was there - 35 years ago
- was when I became a Bible smuggler, and got caught by the
KGB.
Two KGB majors ran the interrogation. They threatened to have me tried as
a bullion smuggler (I'd failed to declare that a gold ring I was wearing was
imported bullion). When I was found guilty, the sentence would be 20 years in
the labour camp in Siberia, they said. In exchange for not prosecuting, they
wanted the names of the contacts I was taking the Bibles to.
I survived the questioning, they didn't get the names and I lived to tell
the tale.
But why did I (and others) smuggle Bibles?
Because the Bible is the bedrock of the Church. It's very hard indeed to
survive as a Christian without meeting Jesus in the Gospels, where his words
take on a life of their own and through which the Holy Spirit changes
you.
The Russians are scornful of the way some Western Christians are
capitulating to secular culture, particularly over the redefinition of marriage.
At meetings I attended last week they said "we have lived under the dead weight
of atheist secularism, and we know how empty and dangerous it is to human
flourishing." Only the Bible challenges the claims of
secularism.
