Author: ARPA Staff

11 Mar 2021 Throw Back Thursday: Kingdom Citizens in Secular Canada (Part One)

Over the next few weeks, ARPA Canada will be re-posting a number of old articles on Throw Back Thursdays. Today's Throw Back Thursday article is the first instalment of a four-part series entitled "Kingdom Citizens in Secular Canada," originally presented at a 2005 Burlington Reformed Study Centre event. The legalization of same-sex marriage was one of the most pressing issues facing Christians in that era. The series was replicated in the January 6, 2006, issue of the Clarion magazine, and posted to ARPA's website on July 3, 2009. The author of the first part of this series is Dr. Cornelis Van Dam. At the time when this series was first written in 2006, Dr. Van Dam was a professor of the Old Testament at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary. In 2011, he published "God and Government: Biblical Principles for Today," an introduction and resource that many ARPA staff have greatly benefited from and that we highly recommend Reformed Christians interested in public theology to read. Dr. Van Dam is currently retired. Kingdom Citizens in Secular Canada: The Lord wants us to be salt and light in a world that has a tasteless morality and lives in darkness By Dr. Cornelis Van Dam Shaking foundations With the civic morality of our country dropping to ever lower levels as witnessed most recently by our national parliament passing the same-sex marriage bill last June, many Christians are asking themselves: What can be done to halt the apparently unstoppable slide of Canada going ever deeper into being a modern Sodom and Gomorrah? What used to be considered an abomination and sin, for the Lord said it was so, is now exalted as good and is defended as a human right. “The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honoured among men” (Ps 12:8). There is no doubt about it; the fundamentals of our national life are being shaken. With the psalmist, we can ask: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps 11:3)