Over the past several years, a growing trend has seen more non-Christians taking active leadership roles in church services.

The milder examples of this involve a church hiring unbelieving organists or choir directors. A church needs one or the other and in desperation takes on someone who loves music for the sake of it but has no tie to Christianity.

This goes back further than the 21st century, however. When I was still a Catholic, the church my family and I belonged to in the 1970s hired as its organist a university student who was majoring in music with an instrumental speciality in the organ. He freely acknowledged that he was more than a lapsed Catholic; he was, he said, an atheist. He took the job to be able to state on his CV that he had regular work as an organist.

More serious examples of unbelievers at the forefront of church services are the known atheists who lead them. Cranmer posted on the topic two years ago:

Oxford University takes its Christian foundations very seriously. Despite multi-faith multiculturalism, its higher degrees are still bestowed upon graduands Ad honorem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et ad profectum Sarosanctae Matris Ecclesiae. As they kneel before the Vice-Chancellor, he touches each one upon the head with a Testament, admitting them in nomine Domini, Patris, Filii et Spirutus Sancti.

But on the morning of Sunday 20th February, the preacher in the University Church of St Mary’s was the notable atheist Philip Pullman. What glory to God that sermon must have brought.

Cranmer notes that, just a month before, the university’s Hertford College removed the requirement for a chaplain (emphasis in the original):

to perform divine service according to the liturgy of the Church of England during term time.

The notion of ‘Christian Atheism’ has become increasingly popular in the Church of England. ‘Is a particular famous person interesting? Does he sell a lot of books? Is he an intellectual? Fine — book him in for the first Sunday of the month at 11:00. We don’t care whether he believes or not. He’ll bring in the punters.’

The Revd Brian Mountford, longtime vicar of Oxford’s University Church, published a book in 2011 — the year of which Cranmer writes above — called Christian Atheist: Belonging without Believing. Not surprisingly, the aforementioned author, and now guest preacher, Philip Pullman — ‘self-confessed Christian Atheist’ — says of it:

In this fascinating and thoughtful book, Brian Mountford explores the borderland where Christians and atheists gaze at each other with expressions ranging from the hostile and scornful to the friendly and sympathetic. In some ways it is the most interesting place in contemporary religion. Mountford has an extensive knowledge of this borderland, and in the interviews and reflections in this book he explores it in the company of some eloquent and thoughtful contemporaries.

However, inviting Pullman to preach takes this concept into dangerous territory. Those who are Universalists won’t have a problem with that. However, Oxford’s university churches and chapels are Church of England places of worship.

Dr R Scott Clark, Professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary California, examined this development in a 2010 post ‘The Scandal of Pagans Leading Worship’ on his Heidelblog. Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

We have a fairly clear witness from Paul himself as to how he viewed the role of self-identified non-Christians in public worship. In 1 Cor 14 [it] seems clear that Paul envisioned that “outsiders or unbelievers” (ιδιωαι η απιστοι – 1 Cor 14:23 – “unbelievers” and “outsiders” are two ways of describing same group) would find their way into Christian worship services. He did not, however, seem to imagine that they would be invited by the pastor and elders to lead the service! Rather, Paul envisioned that, when an unbeliever (and outsider) finds himself in a rightly ordered Christian worship service, the unbeliever would be convicted of his sins, come to faith and repentance and fall down before God.

We should also observe how Paul thinks about “unbelievers” and the distinction he regularly makes between them and Christians … Unbelievers are those whose minds are “blinded” by “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). Believers are not to be “unequally yoked” with unbelievers (2 Cor 6:14) because there is a fundamental spiritual antithesis between belief and unbelief ( 2 Cor 6:15) …

The antithesis that Paul teaches is a spiritual antithesis, not a cultural antithesis. As a matter of divine revelation and providence we have a common culture with non-Christians …

There are, however, things we do not share. The things not shared are sometimes described as belonging to the “antithesis” between belief and unbelief … The spiritual aspect of the antithesis is in the forefront of Paul’s mind and writing. Believers belong to Jesus in a special way as his redeemed people. They’ve been bought with a price. The Holy Spirit has been poured out upon them. None of that is true of unbelievers. They do not belong to Jesus in the special, redemptive sense of “belonging.” They do not have his Holy Spirit. They have not been accepted (justified) by God for the sake of Christ’s righteousness imputed and received through faith alone. Unbelievers are under God’s wrath. Believers are under God’s peace.

Nowhere does the spiritual and epistemic antithesis come to a clearer expression in Holy Scripture than when it considers public, corporate worship. We live in the world, under God’s common providence, with unbelievers sharing (Matt 5:48) in God’s common gifts to humanity but when we gather, on the Sabbath, for Christian worship, we withdraw from the common into a special, sacred space and time. It is not a time to celebrate our common humanity with non-believers, it is not a time for cultural, artistic expression and achievement. It is a time to bow before the face of our Holy Triune God and worship him as he has commanded (WCF [Westminster Confession of Faith] 21.1) …

This is why Paul speaks of unbelievers as “outsiders” because he was distinguishing between that which is common and that which is sacred, between culture and worship.

It would not surprise me to find in future that atheists file a lawsuit against a church which refuses to employ them in a leadership capacity. Surely they have just as much ‘right’ to hold that position as a Christian? Surely not.

Clergymen who encourage this type of thing will most certainly face questions on the fateful day of judgment.