For some writing I am doing I am reading Richard Bauckham's essay, "Tradition in Relation to Scripture and Tradition," in a book he and Benjamin Drewery edited, Scripture, Tradition and Reason: A Study in the Criteria of Christian Doctrine.  He has an insightful comment on the role of traditional/historic Christianity in modern culture: "The real problem of the relation between the Christian tradition and secular rationality for the Christian in the modern West is therefore not in the realm of particular criticisms levelled at particular aspects of Christian belief or practice, but the problem of the sense it makes for a participant in modern culture to appropriate a tradition which that culture has deliberately left behind" (p. 134).

I suspect grasping this "dilemma" could help contemporary Christians to understand why so many moderns are quite happy to use the law and the force of the state to marginalize, criminalize, punish, etc., those persons (traditional Christians) who continue to affirm traditional biblical notions of human sexuality and marriage.  For some secular modern folks, it must be extremely difficult to make sense of the fact that some of us even think or believe the way we do.  And the more difficult it is for such secular modern folks to make sense of those who embrace older moral norms, the easier it will likely be for such secular moderns to continue to use the power of the state to arrest and punish this odd relic of the past.

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