Target Corporation responded to pushback against their support of sexual perversion by moving certain displays to the back of certain stores. This action angered members of the LGBTQ community so they criticized the company for caving in. A representative group, the LGBTQ Coalition, responded saying, “When it comes to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, there is no such thing as neutrality.” They are saying to companies like Target, and to individuals like us, either you are our ally or our enemy.[1]
That’s a rather strong statement, and it isn’t the statement of a group that is simply seeking to be tolerated among the community. Instead, they demand nothing less than total support and affirmation. Still, Christians can’t quibble too much, since they’ve only adapted the language of our King, Jesus Christ, who said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).[2] So this is simply the enemy of Christ standing on the other hill and repeating the words of warfare.
What’s fascinating about this statement is the enemies of Christ have stumbled onto a reality that many well-meaning Christians fail to realize, namely, there is no such thing as neutrality.
To illustrate this point, I want to give you a brief recollection of the founding of Mason College.
In 1880, Josiah Mason, a rags-to-riches industrialist, founded Mason College in Birmingham, England. In the deed of trust of that school, he specified that “no lectures or teaching or examination shall be permitted in the institution upon theology or any question purely theological.”[3] The school was strictly forbidden, in its founding articles, from teaching theology. Why did Mason forbid theology?
We might speculate he was an avowed Atheist, however, such was not the case. In fact, Mason specified the children in the orphanage he founded would “be carefully instructed in the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and taught to love, reverence, and obey the doctrines and precepts therein graciously revealed…”.[4]
Why, then, did he forbid theology in the college? The founding of London University may give a clue. The university’s founders deeply stressed over teaching theology there. In the end, H.G. Wood noted, “proposals for a theological faculty were…reluctantly abandoned” since “theology cannot possibly be taught except in two sorts of universities – either where all the students were of one religious persuasion, or where religious belief is a matter of perfect indifference to all.”[5] What the founders realized is to teach theology in the institution would be to take a side. And, to take a side would prevent them from attracting students from “all walks,” so to speak.
I believe another factor likely influenced Mason’s decision. Living as he did in the height of the Enlightenment era, it is possible he was affected by the works of Lyell and Darwin.[6] Positivism was the popular philosophy of the day, suggesting that we must only accept God’s existence if we can arrive at it through evidence and experimentation. The presupposition, however, is that we are alone.
Desiring to provide a neutral ground for academic pursuit, therefore, Mason forbade theology.
But are we on neutral ground when theology is removed?
Consider the conclusion of John Henry Newman (now sainted by Roman Catholicism) who wrote in the early mid-1800s, “I observe then that if you drop any science out of the circle of knowledge, you cannot keep its place vacant for it: that science is forgotten: the other sciences close up, or, in other words, they exceed their proper bounds and intrude where they have no right…The case is the same with the subject-matter of theology; it would be the prey of a dozen various sciences, if theology were put out of possession; and not only so, but those sciences would be plainly exceeding their rights and their capacities in seizing upon it. They would be sure to teach wrongly, where they had no mission to teach at all.”[7] In other words, when you remove theology as an academic discipline, the academy doesn’t remain theologically neutral, the other sciences take on theology’s role.
Thus, H.G. Wood, in his inaugural lecture as the Chair of the Department of Theology at the University of Birmingham, noted in 1940 that modern universities, “are not indeed tied up to any philosophic creed, but the prevailing atmosphere, the tacitly assumed philosophy, is apt to be some form of positivism or scientific humanism. The primary position given to the natural sciences in the younger universities predisposes teachers and students to welcome such outlook, since it is mistakenly supposed to be the metaphysic implicit in natural science.”[8] When Christian theology is removed, you do not achieve neutrality, you make way for humanism, “the metaphysic implicit in natural science.”
This brings us full circle. The LGBTQ Coalition is correct, there is no such thing as neutrality. As Christians, we must remember neutrality is a myth. As R.J. Rushdoony so eloquently stated it, “We have no neutral facts in the universe. Mathematics no less than biology is an area where there is no neutrality. Moreover, we have no neutral men. Men are either for God or they are against him. Either they are covenant keepers or they are covenant breakers. So that all men when they approach all things will attempt to divorce them from God, to abstract them from the world of God’s meaning. They want to see the world in a vacuum.”[9] For this reason, we take the time to discern if there be any humanistic tendency in our own beliefs!
[1] 2“More than 200 LGBTQ Groups Demand Target Restock Pride Merch,” 1686081901, https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/more-than-200-lgbtq-groups-demand-target-restock-pride-merch/ar-AA1ccXOd.
[2] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references from ESV.
[3] H.G. Wood, “The Function of a Department of Theology in a Modern University: An Inaugural Lecture” (University of Birmingham, October 28, 1940), 3.
[4] John Thackray Bunce, Josiah Mason: A Biography (Birmingham: The “Journal” Printing Works, 1882), 83.
[5] Wood, “The Function of a Department of Theology in a Modern University: An Inaugural Lecture,” 5.
[6] Sir Charles Lyell, A Manual of Elementary Geology: Or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and Its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological Monuments, Fourth Edition (London: John Murray, 1852). Charles Darwin. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray, 1859.
[7] John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated, Fourth (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1875).
[8] Wood, “The Function of a Department of Theology in a Modern University: An Inaugural Lecture,” 10.
[9] Rousas Rushdoony, Mathematics, MP3, Educational Christian Faith (The Chalcedon Foundation, n.d.).
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