In my first post I categorized the various understandings or viewpoints held by people on the meaning of declaration of Zambia a Christian nation. In this post I will look at the first category, the Declaration as a social fact.
According to this viewpoint, the majority of Zambian’s are Christian, therefore, as Zambia can rightly be described as a Christian nation. Now any honest person will need to admit that this is a demographic fact. The question remains however, whether this demographic fact should influence our constitution making process. There are a number of objections to this view point that we will consider below, as I do this please remember that I am interacting with the arguments and not passing final judgment that will come later.
The first objection is that it is immoral to bind future generations of Zambian, who potentially may not be Christian to the declaration on the basis of the fact that today most Zambian’s are Christian. I would like to point out that this objection could be posed to any clause in the Constitution and that ultimately this type of reasoning undermines the very practice of writing constitutions. A constitution is a document that a particular group of people assent to at a particular point in time, it is possible that in some future point in time the decedents of that group of people (whether physical or civil) may take issue with the constitution and change it. This process is called constitutional amendment and it is widely practiced around the world. In light of this I think that today most Zambian’s are Christian, therefore, it is fair to say that Christianity is a predominant characteristic of the Zambian people. If at a future date most Zambian’s will not be Christian’s it will be their prerogative to amend the Zambian constitution to suit the Characteristics of Zambia at the time. I further believe that it in drafting the constitution our emphasis ought to be on present facts and not hypothetical possibilities.
I am wondering whether we should be more specific and say these are "professing Christians" as opposed to say "today most Zambians are Christian". But may be you will deal with that later.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that Zambians are Christians when we have so much poverty and corruption is something I struggle with. So there's something about the statistics that quite don't seem right.
So I guess my questions are : would it change your conclusion on the "socialogical perspective" if a stricter test for true faith in Christ was applied? If such a test was not relevant, should we then simply be more clear that here what we are asserting is the "Christian culture?"
The use of the phrase "professing Christians". I use the phrase to indicate the fact that some of the people who say that they are Christians are not Christians. Ultimately is is God who will determine who is and who is not a Christian. (Mathew 7). For this reason I take a persons profession at face value: God knows who are really his. However, even from the human perspective there are times when the profession does not seem to match the life.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your second paragraph from the sexual imorality, laziness and corruption it would seem that most Zambians are not living in accordance with God's commandments. However, I believe that when all cultural influences are weighed in the balance the Christian influence seems to be the primary shaper of much of Zambian culture. I suppose I ought to tease that point out in a post.
I think we are saying the same thing. I agree with the term "professing christians". My difficult was the statement "In light of this I think that today most Zambians are Christian". I was contending that perhaps we can't be that definitive when the fruits indicate otherwise. This I now read, is something you appear to agree with.
ReplyDeleteI also share your biblical view that God ultimately knows who is a Christian and is not. Scripture of course calls us to judge those who claim to be in the household of God but belong to the synagogue of Satan. In this respect 1 John, 2 Peter and Jude are quite instructive.