Basic Christianity

by John R.W. Stott

‘Hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus Christ.’ These words describe large numbers of people, especially young people, today. They are opposed to anything which savours of institutionalism. They detest the establishment and its entrenched privileges. And they reject the church - not without some justification - because they regard it as impossibly corrupted by such evils. Yet what they have rejected is the contemporary church, not Jesus Christ himself. It is precisely because they see a contradiction between the founder of Christianity and the current state of the church he founded that they are so critical and aloof. The person and teaching of Jesus have not lost their appeal, however. For one thing, he was himself an antiestablishment figure, and some of his words had revolutionary overtones. His ideals appear to have been incorruptible. He breathed love and peace wherever he went. And, for another thing, he invariably practised what he preached. But was he true? An appreciable number of people throughout the world are still brought up in Christian homes in which the truth of Christ and of Christianity is assumed. But when their critical faculties develop and they begin to think for themselves, they find it easier to discard the religion of their childhood than make the effort to investigate its credentials. Very many others do not grow up in a Christian environment. Instead they absorb the teaching of Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam, or the ethos of secular humanism, com...