Clash of Civilisations (5) - Religion and Politics

I do not like the current government in Iran. For a start, they have chosen the wrong religion and the wrong saviour. However, they have attempted to establish a system where religion has an influence on the whole of life, including law and politics. This attempt has failed, because they have fallen back on using force to establish the religious influence. The Iranians have not succeeded in their attempt to integrate religious ideals with their political life and culture, but at least they are having go. I have to respect the fact that they have not rolled over in front of the secular humanist steam roller, as we have in the west.

The most important issue faced by the modern world is the relationship between religion and politics, economics and culture. There is a lot of debate about this issue in the Islamic world but it is barely on the radar in the western world. Here the debate is about how Christians should participate in a secular materialist system. No one is thinking about what a more Christian system would look like.

Thirty years ago, I became a Christian while studing economic at university. I could not find any books on economics from a Christian perspective, but I did find several on Islamic economics. There are more books on Christian economics now, but they mostly expound secular humanist economics with a Christian veneer. This partly explains why we are losing the clash in the West.