Sarah Halpin, 24, works as the Office Manager at Mosaic Church, Leeds. This year was her first time at the Wilberforce Academy. She says:
"It has been the most challenging, thought-provoking, relationship building and God-honouring course I have ever been on. Definitely one to repeat and recommend."
The Wilberforce Academy was a challenging, eye-opening and influential course. It was a week-long insightful experience that has not only challenged my socialist worldview but also made me desire the justice of God more through prayer and action.
One of the foundational discussions of the week was how we create a Christian Culture and live in 'post-Christendom'; encouraging the law of God to be recognised more in our paganist culture today. Initially, I rejected this idea believing it to be imposing on the non-Christian desire of worldly 'freedom' and, as written in Romans 1:24: "giving them up to the lusts of their hearts". I thought, who are we to impose our belief on others? However, I was challenged by the argument that our God is God of the universe and His law is not only for everyone but it is the only law that brings true freedom.
During the week we had devotions every morning. One of the devotions highlighted the importance and goodness of the 10 Commandments and the laws of God. It inspired me to simply love His law more. It helped me to acknowledge that obeying His law is the good thing to do and that it brings us from slavery to liberty. Sometimes it is easy to forget this in our culture, where liberty is preached, 'do whatever you want' but ignores that this is harmful to ourselves and others.
Defending our Christian rights and fighting for a culture where Christians are not being persecuted is a challenge that requires longevity. It is certainly not something that is going to change within a matter of years but something that needs persistence in prayer and passion in action. We need to let the vision of what we want our country to look like, for the glory of God, to be our motivation to create change.
Dr Peter Jones spoke on Romans 1, in particular creation, and the theories of 'Oneism' and 'Twoism'. In short, Oneism is the idea that God and man are essentially one and that people worship Creation (ourselves, each other, nature) over the Creator (God). Twoism is the idea that God and man are separate, yet a relationship is made between the two through Jesus. As Christians we worship the Creator over creation. Learning this and the impact of an accepted pagan worldview shocked me. I knew to some degree how prevalent it was, but not to the extent it has infiltrated our schools, judicial systems, state and general everyday interactions. It made me realise more than before how our society and culture today is not God-focused nor can our country be called a 'Christian country'. This saddens me because we have been known as the country to hold the baton of faith for a long time, but this is not true of what we see today.
Throughout the week we discussed the role of the State on society. If we are not obeying God, what 'god' are we putting in His place? One argument is that it is the State that is deemed as being the ultimate law-giver; the one to dictate what the definition of marriage is, what is offensive to people, what we should and should not accept, and even our spirituality. If we are being coerced by the State and forced to bow to its regulations, are we choosing the State to be sovereign over God? Essentially we are allowing the pagan worship of the State rather than the worthy worship of God.
The challenge that came from this question of sovereignty was what are we, the people of God, doing about it? The early Church was being persecuted because they were proclaiming Christ, not Caesar (i.e. the State today). They stood up for the authority of Christ: "'Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.'" (Acts 4:19-20). The Christian worldview, and thus the authority of Christ, is being pushed out of our society, and too often out of our churches, which only means that another worldview is taking its place. This new worldview is not one of liberty but one of slavery, not one of love of God but love of self. As Christians, are we going to choose Christ and freedom, or choose self and slavery?
The lecture I found most contentious was the one on social justice by Dr Joe Boot. He is an excellent lecturer and his talk was extremely well-thought through, which is probably why I found it offensive to my original standpoint. One of his arguments was that 'social belief that triumphs becomes justice'. But we need to acknowledge that God defines and executes justice, not people, our environment or society as a whole. This alerted me to the fact that the Church fails to promote Godly and right justice, and instead we take the role of bystanders in an already humanist-dictated social order.
Dr Boot also challenged the doctrine of entitlement. Biblically we are not entitled people, not even to food if we do not work for it. Although it is hard to accept, I understood that he had a point. God's justice and order is that we work to meet our needs, He gives us the ability to do so but for those who can't work, we need to show compassion and give to the needy through the grace and kindness of God. He then brought up the role of the State in providing for the needs of the poor and this is largely where his comments unsettled me. My defence of the NHS and free education came into play as Dr Boot questioned if it is through that State that the needs of the poor should be met. It is an important thought for us all to come to our conclusions, and not to just be passed over. Even with this topic being as controversial as it was, it was also one of my highlights of the week - debating this and coming away wanting to investigate more what I think would be the God-honouring thing to do.
The time that Dr Boot, Professor Andrew Sandlin and all the lecturers gave to us as delegates was extremely helpful. They gave up so much time to answer our never ceasing questions, no matter how trivial they might have been. Having such godly and passionate intelligent people to discuss with was pivotal to making the week as beneficial and life changing as it has been to me. In addition to the lecturers it was a blessing to meet so many students and professionals who are incredibly committed to God, to seeing His kingdom come on Earth, and determined to ask and discuss as many questions and ideas as possible! Witnessing their heart for Him stirred up mine even more.
Finally, our application groups, which we had each day, were also essential to digesting everything that we had heard, created space for us to discuss thoughts and helped us apply our conclusions to how we would live once the academy was over. It has been the most challenging, thought-provoking, relationship building and God-honouring course I have ever been on. Definitely one to repeat and recommend.