This introductory paper argues that an emphasis on winning new members for church, defining ‘faith’ as ‘belief’, and emphasising personal transformation over transformation of the world is undermining the mission for which Jesus gave his life.  This is particularly tragic, since Jesus had much to say about social justice, institutional violence and exclusion of minority groups that is highly relevant to current issues such as wealth inequality, social fragmentation and conflict & terrorism. There is a need to rethink the structure and purpose of ‘church’ if we are to give Jesus a voice beyond the church in today’s world.

This study traces how agnosticism and atheism have developed during and since the enlightenment. Humanity’s current influence over the world’s social and physical environment calls for the urgent development of a shared moral compass.  Such a compass cannot be provided by science alone, since science lacks a moral dimension; it cannot be provided by philosophy alone, since human reasoning is limited by its embodied nature; and it cannot be provided by spirituality alone (even the Christian faith) because of the intensely subjective and culturally conditioned nature of religious experience.  Science, philosophy and faith need to work together to achieve a universally agreed baseline of morals and ethics.

This study draws on modern studies of the Bible to show that the violence that undeniably occurs in both the Old and New Testaments originates with humans, not God. Time and again in the Bible, God’s creative and distributive justice is distorted into retributive justice that often reflects the oppressive and violent behaviour of earthly rulers and emperors.  Jesus himself was utterly non-violent, and urged the same behaviour on his followers.  The Gospels, however, show that Jesus recognized the consequences of this. He saw that he would take the place of the ‘scapegoat’,  leading inevitably to his own violent execution as a result of his subversive anti-imperial teaching. 

Both the Old and New Testaments describe spiritual insights that have been painfully won at great cost out of the bitter experience of a people suffering at the hands of the great empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Rome. Running through the entire Bible, but supremely in the lives of Jesus and Paul, is a narrative about the human temptation to distort Gods justice of freedom and love into the oppression and violence of Empire.  The church’s task today is still mission in the face of empire, even though the presenting face of empire is different in a world of consumerism, materialism, nation states and global business.

Jesus’ statement in John’s Gospel that “no one comes to the father except through me” appears to justify a Christian claim to exclusive access to a right relationship with and right belief about God. But the words should be heard in their original context.  The global nature of contemporary society brings followers of Jesus into contact with people of other faiths, each of which has developed different and complementary spiritual insights. Jesus’ invitation to his followers to join him in his passion for a transformed creation and a right relationship with God and with our neighbours means that we need to become much more active in pursuing positive inter-faith dialogue as a first step towards joint-faith action.

In the West, church congregations are shrinking, the average age of churchgoers is increasing, and more and more people are answering ‘none’ when questioned about their religious affiliation. If these trends are to be reversed, followers of Jesus need to draw on diverse sources of wisdom, act with compassion and challenge evil, and seek to build communities (both virtual and physical) that share Jesus’ mission without insisting on conformity.  They should work together with people of all faiths or none to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world.