I don't think "marginalising" is a harsh word, and I was merely borrowing it from Ravi Zacharias. In his description of historian David Marshall's thesis on the church in Canada he writes, "Betrayal came from their own educated ranks as some in leadership succumbed to and even joined forces with skeptics, giving strength to the tenatacles of secularism to gradually choke out religious life. Secularizing voices amog the clergy berated the conservative authorities in institutions for not giving free vent to those of a liberal stripe. Once that openness was granted and liberals had gained power, those same voices countered with greater bigotry to block out any conservative view. Since then, there has been made, at best, a patronizing provision for the conservative as a **marginalised** viewpoint."

Paraphrasing Peter Berger's critique of Protestantism, Zacharias writes, "By stripping the Bible of divine authorship, liberal scholarship made it just another piece of literature, open to attack and critique. Its definitive roles for faith and conduct were debunked, and its injunctions were de-legitimized. Many who were determined to pursue this agenda dared to remain in the ministry and function within the church, all the while reducing its reason for existence to myth. This was a Copernican revolution within the church, and the signature of God upon the Scriptures was deemed a forgery. It was no longer a God-authored book, but a man-concocted collection. "This was no longer theology - from God to us - but anthroplogy - about us and our thoughts toward God..."

[These extracts are both from chapter 4 of Zacharias' "Deliver Us from Evil - Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture".]

- A netfriend