The churches addressed by the author of Revelation died long ago, and whatever their martyrs and struggles with paganism may have been, the preoccupations of the writer are not those of our day; we are no longer concerned about meat sacrificed to idols. Yet we do have problems in common with them, notably the question of how far we should reflect, and how far we should oppose, the prevailing culture of our day. This is a dispute at the heart of the current deep divisions in the Church of England and in the Anglican Communion. Some glory in being out of step with contemporary assumptions; some are only too anxious to lead the way into modern styles of life. Perhaps we are not so different from the congregation at Pergamum after all.
Though that may be so, I want to make it clear from the outset that I believe we should be mistaken if we were to try to draw too many parallels between us and them. In particular, I think it wrong to apply the social teaching of the author of Revelation to the twenty-first century. There are far too many differences between his circumstances and ours. Of course, we have a duty, like his flock, to direct our conduct in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of love, but I am not persuaded that love means general hostility to the social standards of 2006 or that Christians should pretend to live in the first century instead of today.
Of course, the author of Revelation was worried about sex, and so are the conservative Christians today. I had better make it clear, in case any of you were in doubt, that I do not sympathize with them. In my eighty years there has been in the West a revolution, not in sexual practices, which have not, I think, changed very much in thousands of years, but in the abandonment of hypocrisy, and the public acceptance of homosexuality and the self-determination of women, which I thoroughly welcome. I think there are still too many societies in our world devoted to male domination and needing reform, but at least a beginning has been made. I have no doubt that our author would not agree with me, but that is one reason why I believe that texts like Revelation have to be considered in the light of the society in which they were produced and treated as an expression of that society, and not, as the writer would have it, the voice of the Holy Spirit in these matters.
Our writer was also very worried about compromises with the official paganism of Pergamum, which was an important centre for the worship of Zeus and the veneration of the Emperor. We are not tempted precisely that way; I think that even the veneration of Mr Blair is distinctly on the decline. What worries one about contemporary society is nevertheless still the worship of false idols, but nowadays as football stars and pop singers, as well as the deification of possessions. This is not exclusively a Christian concern. It is a problem for anyone who believes materialism to be an inadequate creed.
What then should be a primary Christian concern? It is not the dreary condemnation of other people indulged in by our author and his followers. Our message, like our God, should be positive. In the first place, we need to cultivate, and encourage the spiritual life. This means thinking about God, his messages and his creation in the light of what we know of him, and trying to know him better. Jesus Christ gave us a revelation of God which his followers can only echo, and should not attempt to improve upon. For instance, he never bothered, so far as we know, to mention sex. What he was concerned about was love, which is not, of course, an irrelevant consideration for us in thinking about sex.
Jesus was also not in doubt about the supremacy of his Father. I am confident that neither football nor popular music would have stood high on his list of priorities, though perhaps because they enshrine genuine human aspirations and feelings, particularly among the less well educated, he would have valued them more than I can bring myself to do. I believe he would have had less sympathy with the passionate desire to acquire possessions which dominates Western society to-day. At the same time, it can be argued that the undoubted yearning for aspirations external to the individual can sometimes be seen in a need for elements of the spiritual life, whether observable in charitable donations consider the outpouring of generous giving over the tsunami – or in mourning the victims of violence or accident – consider the current fad for laying flowers at the site of disasters. None of us is all bad; all of us are aware of a need which is actually, whether we formulate it in this way or not, a need for the love of God.
Society today is in trouble. But it always has been. Certainly, society in Asia Minor was not at its best at the end of the first century AD. But, by the fourth century, when Christianity became the official way of life, it was already in decline, so that it collapsed before the Muslim invasion in the sixth century, and these churches disappeared. The saint who condemned them hoped that his harsh words might revitalize them; his hopes were not to lead to any vital change. I am not offering any condemnation of Western society today, partly because I am less certain of progress than he was. I believe that the Gospel does not give us any guarantee that things will always get better. But I do, on the whole, welcome changes in society which mean greater tolerance, that is, greater love for one another, greater acceptance of individual freedom to choose one’s way of life, greater acknowledgement that God loves all his creation and that Jesus came for all of us, and not just the traditionalists. Amen
Alan Goodison