WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY?
INTRODUCTION If society was more loving, more free, more just, and more truthful, we would all benefit. This is the Evangelical Alliance’s vision for the kind of society we want the UK to become. We believe that the Christian faith has provided the foundations for flourishing in the past and we are confident and hopeful that it can for the future. As evangelicals we are committed to engaging in public life and believe we have a contribution to make for all of society. We believe things can be better than they are now. Evangelicals frequently say they want to change society, so we want to stimulate the next stage of the conversation: what kind of society do we want? Evangelicals have been at the forefront of advocating for systemic changes for many centuries, and working to ensure the impacts of these changes are felt by those who need them most. Whether through campaigning against the transatlantic slave trade, improving factory conditions or working for prison reform, evangelicals are activists. The good news of salvation in Jesus is at the heart of our message and motivation, and as John Stott observed: “A country which has been permeated by the gospel is not a soil in which … poisonous weeds can easily take root, let alone luxuriate.”1 The gospel and social activism cannot be separated, but sometimes people have tried. We want to chart a course that is not about truth detached from the society we are living in, nor good works devoid of good news. A gospel without the truth of the good news is no gospel at all. It is an attempt to carry the fruit of the Christian faith without the root of the good news. To use another metaphor, it
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is like cut flowers: they are beautiful in their place, but detached from the ground they lose their freshness and life all too soon. We live in times of dizzying social and political turbulence. There is a crisis of leadership in our society, a lack of vision for a common good, and a hope deficit. This vacuum is a challenge but it is also an opportunity for evangelical Christians. Politicians do not have a clear framework to guide them as to what policies to pursue, and the wider public doesn’t have one to help them decide which to support. The decline of public understanding and acceptance of a Christian vision for the good life has left a vacuum which cannot be filled by political ideologies. Throughout this report we want to help equip Christians to have a vision for what public life could look like and a few core values that help structure how it is worked out. We often know what we are against – and are often known by what we are against – but for our engagement in society to be effective and lasting we need a vision for that society, and we will need to be able to articulate the vision in a way that makes sense and is appealing. This means asking ourselves two keys questions: 1 What do we want? 2 How do we best communicate what we want? Our goal with What kind of society? is to address these questions and to provide the church with what it needs to practically cast a vision and be a voice for the good of all. As James KA Smith puts it: “The biblical vision of our human calling to tend the earth and love our neighbours
