Reinstating Holiness in life today.

DSC_0244

The Strange Word.

Holiness does not seem to feature much in our general culture, and many of us will not have thought about the word for ages. A year could pass in the Daily Mail or Channel Four without the word occurring, and “holy” is number 2396 in the corpus of words used in contemporary American English, hardly a front runner. It seemingly hovers at the edge of cultural consciousness in the modern world, part of the secular incomprehension of Christian words in our culture. Yet, as this article sets out, it may be the most widespread attitude to life on the planet, the most important cultural construct, and our ability to ignore it merely reflects our inability to think about who we are as a world-wide community.

The most normal English reference to the word would be in the phrase, “holier than thou attitude”, which means to be insufferably morally superior, hardly a selling point for the idea. Yet a word can be dismissed, but the reality it represents stays put. There may be alternative cultural expressions which ebb and flow on the tides of public dissatisfaction, but they swill around the truths this great word contains, for it is a word to live by, as billions do with varying degrees of success.

The understanding of the term in contemporary culture is narrowed and slightly dismissive. The closest many can probably get is that it means to be goody, goody, to be separate from sex, gin and overeating. Many secular people would associate it with nuns and holy gurus who separate themselves from the normal business of life. They try to get rid of the profane by running away from the world, but usually do not succeed. They fall in love or get drunk when they are caught unawares, and the world catches up with them and spoils their holiness. In any case their life is not practical. It normally depends on the charity of others, whether it is a nunnery or Buddhist monks. The polarity holy/profane probably sums up the most aware perception of the term, and most people like to keep in touch with the profane. One sociological indicator of this is the use of swearing; the terms, “My God”, “Jesus Christ”, “Holy Cow” drop off the lips of a large number of people.

This holiness as withdrawal from life model does not quite work. The term “Holy Matrimony” is in our collective memory, and that definitely includes sex. In the Old Testament holy days seem to be the ones where God proscribes feasting and a good time, hence our holidays. In reality, a bigger question lurks behind the word. Most people seek to live a good/holy life, not a successful, exciting, rich, popular, applauded life, but a good one. Just being good or holy, because the two do hang together, is ambition enough for most of us. So, what is holiness?

THE Biblical Word – God and Holiness.

The Bible conveys holy as a central God word, even the central God word in the Holy Bible. We are told God is a holy God. We are to worship God in the splendour of his holiness. The Lord our God is holy. But what does holy mean? Is it just a foot-loose adjective or does it have some substance? A bit of wider biblical exposure shows that it is one of the biggest words in human culture. It is the word of monotheism. There is to be worshipped one God, because there is one God. “Do not profane my holy name” is to acknowledge God as God of everything. We can see this clearly in the great creation narrative at the beginning of the Bible and its climax. “ … God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening and morning – the sixth day. Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing by his word of power; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” (Gen. 1:31-2:3) Thus, the whole business of creating – the big bang, quarks, time, atoms, galaxies, nebulae, stars, heavy elements, planets, continents, life, animals and humans is brought under the complete understanding that this, some kind of fulfilment, is God’s work. The Sabbath is the artist standing back from the painting, and it is very good. It is blessed. The sand, as made by God, is holy. The moon, as made by God, is holy. The wholeness of the creation made by God is holy, and we mere mortals are invited on this seventh day to see the full picture and the God who has made it. This is the holiness of God, the Creator of the whole creation. So far from holiness being some kind of separation, some kind of retreat into smallness, it is our relation to God and the whole creation. It is being in a dark valley and seeing the glory of God’s local galaxy in a moonless night, or a newborn child, or facing one’s beloved, all in the super-text of knowing that God is God. Every Sabbath we are invited to see the whole Holy Creation and honour the God who made it, to face this ultimate truth about everything.

There, it is out of the bag. Holy and whole. Are they related? Yes, they are, but it might be in a way. The Christian meaning of holiness is often seen in terms of being separate from the world, of withdrawal. But we note that this focus ignores the full and most basic meaning of seeing how the whole creation is held together in God’s power. Shortly, we examine the derivative meaning of separation. Rather, we see that the whole meaning is more central. Indeed, we can understand the word through its prostitution. “Hal” (Old English) “heel” (Dutch) “heil” (German) means whole. But, wait a minute you say, what about “Heil Hitler” or “Seig” (victory) “Heil”? What is going on there? Heil, is a greeting, health, wholeness, “Hail Caesar” towards the leader. So, in 1934 Rudolph Hess came out with, “”The Party is Hitler. But Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler. Hitler! Sieg Heil!”, which, of course, is a load of rot, but it shows the wholeness of conception. God is God of the Heil creation. Far from being a word of separation, it is the word that includes everything, including us. So the biblical meaning focusses first on the way the whole creation is God’s, and the Israelites are called to acknowledge this among cultures to whom the whole idea was alien. The separation bit is merely recognising that Hitler is not God, but merely “examine my armpit”.

The Old Testament cultures were usually polytheistic. The Egyptians looked to all kinds of particular deities, pushed by their local priests and surrounded by myth, magic and ritual. A careful look at the books of Moses shows the absence of these kinds of religious manipulation and their deconstruction under the aegis of the Lord of the whole earth. The worship of the Golden Calf, the construction of shrines to particular deities, sorceries and magic are forbidden in the culture, so that they might know God. The disentanglement from polytheism is complex and protracted. The children of Israel are first taught the presence of God especially in the Tabernacle, and are then taught in the prayers of David and Solomon that the God of all creation does not need one specific Temple for worship. “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heavens cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built.” (I Kings 8:27) This understanding of the Creator, free from the mumbo-jumbo of countless religions, is the holiness in which we are invited to dwell. To know God is holy is to see the whole creation as God’s work and be free of the fragmented view of the cosmos which comes from polytheism, and we might add modernism.

Humanity and Holiness.

The biblical theme of holiness thus rests on humankind; we dwell with God. “You be holy as I am holy” is a refrain of the Mosaic Law, but it is even stronger than this, because ….”so that you may know that I am the Lord who makes you holy”. How does God make us holy? We are in the image of God. Even on this speck of extraordinary planet we reflect something of the God of all creation. We can know the coherence of life and existence in relation to God; we can think, relate, love, have consciousness, understand time, space, laws, principles, see beauty, harmony, and what underlies the surface, unlike helium, rock and mackerel. To know God is to be whole in this human sense, and holy. First, to acknowledge God, then to recognise the glory of the whole creation, then to honour and steward the bit of creation we have been given, then to be whole, or holy, as persons before God, and then to dismiss all the idols and polytheistic rubbish cultures can sling at us. And then to acknowledge the richness of life before God – relationships, education, art, music, economic life, care of the creation, politics, law, mathematics, travel, history and more. It is T.S.Eliot’s quest in Little Gidding, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Holiness is not a retreat from the creation, but truly inhabits the creation God has made. In holiness, everything is in the right place in relation to God, the rest of creation and ourselves. All things are relative, but relative to God. These, then are some of the themes that arise in human holiness.

The person and holiness.

The first is “Unite my heart to fear thy Name.” This is the great Spring Cleaning of the Soul. All our life can be drawn together to worship God. This is worshipping God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, the centre of life and existence. Christ insists on it being the Great Commandment. We note it is a commandment because this is the way we are. Of course, it was easy for Bach. He could let go in a Toccata and Fugue to the glory of God and then write another one next week. But, it is also easy for us. The sunset, or the new sky, or the acorn, or the dandelion, can prompt our response to the God of the acorn or the new sky. To put God truly and rightly at the centre is also to bring all of our life into synchrony with God, wherever it has been. “Our Father, who art in heaven, holy be thy Name.” is the centre of life. The modern call to “be centred” has its real meaning here. To fear thy name is to unite my heart, reversing Psalm 86:11. However our living might have been strung out, fragmented and compartmentalized, before God we are truly whole, because God has made us. Christ teaches us to pray so that this rightness may be ours, day in and day out. God is God also to us, Creator of the whole universe, to you alone be praise and glory, not because you need it, but because we need you, because we are through you.

And then each little thing in the creation is brought into perspective. This is the heart of modern science mainly formed by Protestants in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere in the 17th century. They conceived science as thinking God’s thoughts after him. Swammerdam could see and draw a louse for the first time under a microscope and proclaim, “The glory of God in the body of a louse!” Borrow, Newton, Boyle, Gay, Grew, Huygens, Leeuwenhoek and a bevy of other Christian scientists looked to the intricacies of creation in the greatest leap of scientific development in history, although Faraday, Clark Maxwell, Kelvin and J. J. Thomson produced a similar Christian inspired movement at the end of the 19th century around the birth of the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge, which had inscribed over its door, “Great are the works of the Lord” from Psalm 11:2, under Clerk Maxwell’s direction. Holiness is, in part, seeing the works of the Lord in their fulness and inter-relatedness, not just in science but in the daily experience of the creation, for the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth declares his handiwork. Durer’s painting of a clump of weeds is seen with a holy eye. Whatever we see is not a thing in itself, ein ding an sich, but points to the Creator and innumerable creative stages.

Then, holiness is also not idolising any part of the human persona. In the past the mind, the soul, body, psyche, subconscious, the will, the ego, existence, experience, image, identity, actions or emotions have all been seen as the centre of human life to which the other faculties must do homage. Not so says the Bible. All human faculties are called to worship God and no human faculty is independent of the God who made it. The footballer who scores a great goal and praises God, not his or her body, is right. The mind is not an organ of self-rule, but of integrated thought before God. So, in this sense we are whole before God. We are not minds telling bodies what to do, or emotions leading thought, or social persons driving psyche, or will dominating body and mind. The biblical motif for this truth is the heart – neither the beating biological thing or the emotions, but the whole person before God, needing understanding, healing from sin and shaping by faith. Christ’s beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” is this human wholeness before and in God. So, holiness is the central human motif, around which our lives take, or lose, shape.

This integration of needs expressing, too, in terms of the different aspects of human life. Our lives have social, economic, law and justice, biological, psychological, educational, political, geographic and other aspects to them, but none of these areas is autonomous, a law unto itself. We know that it is not usually holy to break the law, or to feel hate, but in all aspects of our lives there are holiness issues. And in contemporary culture in this post-modern era, we face the disintegration of thought. Let us consider education in the UK, whether at Cambridge or at school. A strong motif, made stronger by discrepancies of pay by one to a hundred, is the idea of education as personal economic success. What! Learning reduced to self-promotion! School made into a horse race with hurdles. Wisdom reduced to the quest for salary. Research dominated by the companies which will pay for it. Gone the humble business of learning how the whole great creation fits together. The poor student, the professor of the faith to learn, despised in favour of “my career”. The study and learning subverted as eye-catching performance. Lost is the great diamond of education, the pearl of great price, the foundation of all education. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Right there, underneath everything, acknowledge and see God, and the integration of knowledge, understanding and education is possible. Here is the universe of knowledge, the university, gathered under God’s great creative power – science and arts, each discipline, note discipline, area of humble studentship. As here in Cambridge St John’s, Peterhouse, St Catherine’s, Magdalene, Emmanuel, Corpus Christi, Trinity, Trinity Hall, Christ’s and Jesus College gathered round the sluggish Cam in pursuit of knowledge, so the humility of learning can again take place. As the painting of Trinity College at the top conveys, roughly from Newton’s staircase, our local lights of knowledge are gathered under God’s great sky. Recognising economics as stewardship before God rather than acquisition or plundering the earth, seeing natural science as uncovering the intellect of the universe, seeing politics within the rule of God’s law not as assertive power, seeing maths as part of God’s tool kit, this is where education holds together, this is the wholeness which post-modern, but really post-Christian culture, has lost in a smorgasbord of fragmented knowledge.

The Human Idols.

Perhaps the biggest task for human holiness is to defeat the idols of life, something that dogs every day of life. As the Bible insists, idols are made by human hands; they are our manufacturing. We make them and then bow down to them. How silly! How counterfeit! Always, people can sell their souls to power, sex, money, status, pleasure, experience, the state or nation, to family, romantic love and many other idols. One of them, the whisperer tells us, will provide the ultimate meaning of life. And all of these idols have a vast priesthood who will promote their idol. Banks tell us we can borrow and make money, but we make money for them. The idol enslaves the weak to the priesthood. Weapons will give you power, say the arm manufacturers, omitting to say that they are also selling to the other side. Here is sex, say the pornographers, divorcing it from the love which makes it meaningful. Get drunk and have fun say the ads and tomorrow the idiot is groaning with a hangover in a police cell. The idols are gross and destructive, but they are also subtle, used by those who do not believe in them but can manipulate them to make money or get their way. Those selling sex for money do not believe in sex, they believe in money. Those selling missiles do not believe in war, but will be safely in the rear when the bombing starts. The love of money is the root of all evil, says Paul, in a plausible summary of the mess. The idols will be used, every one, in ingenious new but old forms. Become powerful, power dressing, how to win promotion, use soft power, fast, powerful cars will get you a woman, power cleaning products do it, not just cleaning, and so it goes on. Most people have played with power of one kind or another. It will be your magic.

So, the idols pop up in every area of life. In our media age it is partly popularity. You have two thousand followers on the web? How impressive, at least until you meet Jesus. He didn’t give a damn about the number of his followers, but about each one – the self-harming outcast among the tombs, the hated chief tax collector, the leper and the thief hanging beside him on the cross. In the parable of the lost sheep, the Shepherd leaves the 99 that are safe to search for the one that is lost. Far from seeking followers, the Shepherd trails off after the lost sheep. He had something under twelve followers when he died and now he has well over 2,000,000,000. Now that is impressive. Partly, we follow because we know he has freed us from the idols and through him we can see through popularity and status. In relation to the Son of God all these idols keel over. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Do not laud it over others. Do not do good to be seen. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Do not even think about aggression. Here with Christ the idols are dead, and there is another way.

Nevertheless, these blown up promoted idols bury into our culture, enslaving millions directly and indirectly and costing all of us – especially those who do not believe in them. There are millions, perhaps billions, who are working for profit, other people’s profit, who do not believe in the aim of their work, but they have no alternative, no other employer. The great god, profit, the personification of greed, feeds and gorges on the wealth of the earth, but millions are servicing its sewers. It distorts life, families, and it is given great respect. We view stately homes, full of inflated junk, and are impressed, but we have missed holiness. The great self-worshipping empires enslave and destroy, blighting the lives of millions. Pleasure is cashed in obesity, wealth in loneliness and power in being hated. The rewards which the gods (speaking through their human mouthpieces) promise, turn out to empty and without value. They are not good. They depart from God’s holiness.

This is also a deep world-wide structural economic issue. The quest for making money leads to dishonesty, bribery and destroys markets. We are told that profit seeking capitalism “creates wealth”, when actually wealth comes from God-given resources, technological knowledge built over generations, education and service, and the production of goods (note the word, “good” again). Actually, the “wealth creators” were often raping free resources, buying up public goods cheaply, using cheap and near slave labour in poorer countries, exploiting monopolies, selling addictive and dangerous products, avoiding taxes by using havens and building financial empires which collapsed in 2008. Mixed with that were lots of companies seeking to provide goods and services in a fair way, respecting their workers and paying them properly, looking after the environment and loving their neighbour as themselves rather than exploiting them. So, either economies can grow in a holy and good way, where the place of resources, workers, people is balanced and good, or there can be an unholy exploitative mess. The economic choice is there. More immediately people can do good work, be fair in dealings, thrifty in their choices, live within their means, work well with their colleagues, learn how to improve their work, co-operate with others, or they can use other people, not take their fair share of effort, be unsafe, unpleasant and working only for themselves. The business of holiness is intertwined with work in hospitals, transport, building, manufacture, mining and logistics. A good or holy lorry driver sleeps properly and does not drink and drive, and all good work requires holy living which sees the place of that work in a God-respecting economy. The opposite is the capitalism which worships money rather than God. As Jesus said succinctly, “You cannot worship God and Mammon.”
So, to be holy, a follower of Christ, is to be free from idols and to see their danger in our culture.

Christ’s Transformation of Holiness.

God with us is deceptive. The understanding of God is so much beyond our own that we can easily not see how we are being taken apart. So, when Jesus walks into his own culture it is one where the rule and establishment people make the rules in another sense. They claim to cudos of God to their rules and regulations. God’s law is elided with their regulations and self-interest, whether it be the Temple Tax of the Temple Party or the Sabbath Observance rules of the Pharisees. Nor is this a little local problem, for in all societies the establishment self-serves, sets up the system to suit itself. Within weeks of being in power Lenin is self-serving. But of course, monarchs, dukes, aristocracies, colonial powers, overlords, plutocracies, oligarchies and establishments in every culture have produced self-serving moral cultures which the poor, slaves, bureaucrats, serve. And, of course, Churches, despite their leader, have settled into the same pattern. They are established churches. They are rich. They insinuate themselves with rulers saying what the rulers want them to hear.

More than this, the establishment wants to capture holiness. If it can be in charge of holiness, rather than God – aha, you see the enormity of the move – then all will be well. Whether at the Palace of Versailles, within the Wall of China, at the whiter than White House or at the Temple in Jerusalem, wherever the establishment dwells it seeks to put holiness, moral rightness within itself, so that it can be the Sun within which behaviour orbits. The rulers make the rules and the ordinary folk conform. Of course, the rulers are not holy. They have mistresses. They are full of their own vanity. They kill or imprison if they have opposition. They enslave people for their pyramids, ziggurats, palaces, courts, landed estates, finery, banquets and freedom from work. There is a great industry in quasi-holiness, what is right. The holiness of God is borrowed to settle on the Sun King, William the Conqueror, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Queen Victoria or President Trump, whatever they are like. So, holiness is subverted. Except, Jesus has taken it apart, ripped it to shreds, showed its hypocrisy and restored the holiness of God.

The Temple at Jerusalem is the Holy of Holies, the place where the people are invited since Solomon to meet with God. Solomon is quite clear that because God is everywhere, the idea that God can be contained in one place is ludicrous. So, the Temple is for our benefit, not God’s. After all, if the whole universe is yours, a poky bump in Jerusalem hardly counts, but we can gather to meet with and worship God, and with a sense of the holiness of God. The Temple is for us not God. All ground is holy, but this Temple is the recollection of holiness. So, what does Jesus do with the Temple, its rules and regulations, its establishment, its exclusions?

At Passover time – the Passover was when God confronted the Egyptian Pharoahic establishment for the freedom of the children of Israel – Jesus moves into the Temple in his first confrontation. It was a money-making machine where offerings and the Temple Tax made the High Priests and their establishment very rich. Their income almost equalled the Romans. When the Temple was sacked in 70AD it contained so much gold that the price of it halved throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Jesus overturns the money-changers tables, scattering their coins and drives the sacrifice animals, shortly to die, into a frenzied stampede out of the Temple Area. He named the attack on the money system. ”How dare you turn my Father’s House into a market!” The meaning of the attack was clear. The holiness of God, the worship of God, was subverted into the money hypocrisy of the Temple Authorities.

And then comes the joke. The Jewish leaders wanted a sign of authority, and Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” It is a hoot. The last thing the Jewish leaders want is to destroy the Temple. It makes them money. It gives them authority. As they point out they have laboured forty six years, especially manipulating Herod the Great, to get Their Temple. By accusing them of destroying the Temple, Jesus left them completely nonplussed, and they could not possibly understand what he meant. Yet, the great momentous transition of meaning had taken place. The Holy of Holies was Christ, not this money-making hypocritical system. Later they would set out to murder him and he would be raised in three days and the disciples would have an inkling of what was going on. The Christ, who insisted on being outside every self-righteous establishment, was and is the holy of holies, redefining holiness into radical integrity before God – not just murder but hate, not just adultery but lust, not just divorce, but dishonour, not just aggression but retaliation, not just friendship of allies, but love of enemies, not just public good, but good in the heart before God, not just the cudos of good public acts, but unrewarded goodness, not just money rewards, but God service, not things, but God’s righteousness. While the Temple authorities defend the hypocritical holiness of their Temple, Jesus helps each of us to be a Temple of God. Of course, the Jerusalem Temple authorities cannot understand, and after the second confrontation, set out to kill him, which they seek and achieve. But aside the “Wailing Wall”, a fitting epitaph, the Temple is destroyed – not one stone was left upon another, and the followers of Christ see something of holiness before God.

Pietism, Integrity and Holiness.

Some years back the holiness movement was a powerful force in British life. It was also labelled pietism. The main idea was that people would live a holy or pious life, marked by prayer, pure living and the attitudes which Christ encouraged. It has a long history but surfaced more recently in Methodism, the Anabaptist groups like Mennonites and Amish, the Brethren, the Keswick movement, and in many mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches. More recently it has been mocked and a travesty of it has been conveyed. One of the false understandings was of moralist censure. Pietism was against sex, drugs, drink, dancing, films, television and rock and roll, as indeed many pietists were. The kind of sex they were against was prostitution, sex that got girls pregnant, predatory sex and a whole load of other stuff that the world is now again recognising destroys people, especially women and girls. They were against addictive drugs, but so really are all of us. They were against drink, and ran temperance movements rescuing men from alcoholism, an obviously repressive move. They were against dancing, or rather they were not, but Anabaptists had their own dances. They were against films and television, but since most of us spend five to fifteen years of our waking life slumped in front of a television that may be no bad think, and to the contrary they were keen on talking to one another. In other words, pietism had a whole range of, arguably, good attitudes and everyone is free not to like rock and roll. It was charged with being repressive, but actually war, hate, greed, drunkenness, self-importance, addiction and slavery need repressing. Nor is pietism, self-righteousness. Sinners are miserable sinners, not self-righteous ones.

The pietist position was not moralism, but an emphasis on holiness or piety before God, the basic Christian point. We try to live as God intends us, and that often means not accumulating things or doing things that might be harmful to others and ourselves. There was an underlying obedience to God which included basic things like not stealing, coveting, lusting and hating others. And this requires an underlying integrity of action. The word, “integrity”, needs some unpacking. None of us has it, because we sin, compromise, self-excuse, hide failures, pretend outwardly and are double minded. But areas of life require integrity, as Christ pointed out repeatedly. Truthfulness is not secured by an oath. Marital fidelity cannot co-exist with lust. Real good intentions do not sit with receiving public approbation. We cannot serve two masters. A lovely statement of this principle in the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Yes, how we see shapes how we think, feel, act. Let’s watch how we see. Postmodern culture has tried to get rid of sin, repentance, remorse, forgiveness and this integrity. Sexual harassment and rape are wrong, but lust is OK. You can hate your enemies as long as you love your friends. But integrity of actions, in Jesus’ words, “practising what you preach” will not go away. Temptation is a real phenomenon, as advertisers recognise and broad is the road that leads to destruction. So, the need for piety and holiness, needed in all cultures, is especially needed in ours now.

The worldwide Christian truth of holiness.

We live in a fragmented western culture, disintegrating under the influence of vast media messages, a consumer culture where we can buy anything, people taught to shout their messages, politicians raised on falsified messages and religions worshipping the self, the experience, the reward, the state and the future. It has no real grasp of the holiness of the creation and God’s good planet and has undertaken a rape of the earth and seas. It is prepared to treat the death and ill-treatment of millions with indifference. It has adulated the self-vindication of millions of human actions with no sense that they might be held to account. I did it My Way rules in lives and funerals. Personalities dominate and persons are forgotten. The dark clouds of famine, refugees, desolation of the earth, war and economic failure are gathering. It is time the deep truth of God’s holiness, also given to us by Christ, is rediscovered and owned in our lives, so that we can find again whole, and holy, people, families, nations and steer by the holiness, not of the establishments, but of Jesus and the content of this great word can align our lives before God in humility and some truth.
More than this Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and other worldviews each seek in their own way the Holy Life, representing the majority of the world’s population by far. This Christian understanding speaks both of God and the human condition in its fullness, and a proper discussion on holiness, and the holiness of Christ, may be the way to unlock relations among these faith communities as well as in the wider population in the west.

Party Leaders, Winning, Emptiness and Popularity.

mayreddress

The Conservative Party needs a leader. Since Thatcher, long-lived and falsely successful leadership (North Sea Oil and selling off the State’s family silver) we have had John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, David Cameron and Teresa May in 27 years. May now faces a challenge, though she won the last election, because she might not win the next one. Note the central credo. A Conservative leader must win elections. Says who? Why MPs with seats to defend, who also largely select leaders in the Conservative Party.

Of course, Labour has proved no different. Corbyn had to go, and was rubbished by most of his party’s MPs until, at the 2017 election is became clear that Corbyn nearly won, was on the right side of history, supported by the young, and suddenly from deepest venom they all marched up the hill again and became Corbynistas. Fortunately, the leader had been schooled in several decades of insignificant unpopularity and may survive adulation, but the MPs clearly have few political principles and want to keep their seats warm. They change with the wind of Public Opinion Polls, or POP for short.

So, what is a democratic party? It is, in truth, (not used lightly) a shared body of convictions and principles which people believe should by conscience, preferably before God, shape the policies of government through elections. It is conscience (that great word), not power. It is the sifting of truth and error in public life, so that we might do what is right and good, and here’s the rub. Democratic parties are often wrong. Selling council houses in the 80s and 90s and not putting the money into new housebuilding was wrong. Deregulating banks was wrong. Invading Iraq was wrong. Allowing off-shore tax evasion was wrong. Cutting public services is wrong. Privatising rail was wrong. In fact, a high proportion of what parties advocate is wrong, aside the logic that given three or four parties disagree, being wrong must be a big part of politics.

But it is worse than this. The electorate is also (usually) wrong. A Republican Party which can choose Reagan, George W. Bush and now Trump is in a stage of terminal mindlessness, a world danger given its military dominance. We vote for Thatcher because she wins a war against Argentina or perhaps against a figure who coughs at a party conference. We vote for climate change deniers, or ignorers, in Gadarene droves. This is not said triumphally. Finding we are wrong, and learning from it, is one of the best routes to understanding on the planet. If ordinary Jews can be persuaded to vote for Barabbas and against Jesus, the human race has problems, as of course it has – now – in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Las Vegas, Kensington or wherever the wounded doctor puts his figure on the pulse. Learning what is wrong is a prophetically deep task, and the real precursors of democratic parties are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Socrates and John the Baptist, but especially Jesus in Matthew 23.

For we are all hypocrites:- taxation, but not for me, British self-interest, but not that of other nations, my pay high and others low, my house price rise and pseudo-concern for others, peace with nukes, Great Britain but not great France, cheap goods and slave labour, our boys courageous, but theirs do outrageous killing, my car pollution but cut greenhouse gases. We are in a deep hypocritical crisis.

What is this guy on about? May will have to go/stay. Trump will come and go. Putin will stay or go. It is all about power, democratic power, now media-centric power, the tweet of the President. So, the poor and jobless of middle America choose the born rich, mindless master of media exposure. It is all about power, even power prostituted by fake news, and leaders have to win. It is all about power. But it is not all about power. Jesus of Nazareth chose to rule from another place. His power was humble truth, hungering and thirsting for the right and just, loving enemies, knowing economic contentment and having no-where to lay his head. It was Pilate (Roman power) or Jesus (witnessing to the truth), and Jesus won, not with a knock-out blow, but by the long humble search for truth before the Spirit of God.

So today we face a crisis in party politics. The empty process of winning, of rubbishing the opposition, as though the truth does not matter, of seeking popularity as though the voter is always right, of choosing the vote winning leader irrespective of content, or forging the strap line for the election and using the people yet again.

Corbyn broke the mould, but is now rubbishing according to the culture. We need political repentance of an unprecedented kind to really rescue democratic party politics. We need to look to Christ, and see the crown of thorns truly.

The Fragmentation of Western Christianity and Addressing it.

rembrandtchrist

This paper, appearing in stages, suggests western Christianity of differing types has fragmented and in part lost its way. As a result of this failure Secularisms of various kinds, some dangerous and destructive, have dominated the West and caused and are causing massive problems. It is time western Christianity recovered, and this primarily involves once again seeing and living the big picture of Christian truth and moving away from the subcultures and holes we have often dug ourselves into. Many of the two billion plus Christians around the world are already doing this in a variety of ways, and this paper merely throws in its contribution.

A Short History.

After the partial defeat of Fascism in 1945, an idolatry which sought to replace Christianity, like atheistic Communism and other modern movements, it seemed Christianity would be able to grow without persecution, except in the USSR and China. There were missionary movements planted in many countries which were honest and trusted and Christianity grew. Except it did not in the West as other cultural forces took over. These included Individualism, where life centred on me, Consumerism, where the advertising industry promised the new world to sell its goods, and Choice or Freedom, where the individual choosing his or her life was the most ultimate reality. New generations choose these ways, as the ideologies for them swamped churchgoing and Sunday School.
Gradually, years of teaching, prayer, churchgoing, family life conveying a Christian faith or ethos receded in varying degrees. God was not worshipped, except occasionally, or on Sunday and was marginalised in the media, especially television. There were compartments for Christianity – RE in schools, religious slots on radio and television, civic and national events, and for a lot of people the weekly church event, but Christianity was being marginalised.

There were also educational and intellectual challenges. Perhaps the main one was a scientific neutralism in the natural and human sciences which was philosophically and really without foundation, but claimed to know. Facts, causes, logic, data, evidence, theory described what is really the case and all other views were consigned to belief or ideology. In the popular mind evolution not a seven day creation proved God did not exist, and even more formative was the cultural division between the natural, what is explained by something else, and the supernatural, whatever might then be unexplained. Some Christians addressed these. Some secularists saw their own problems, but most did not. Even worse, many Christians slowly retreated from intellectual engagement.

Throughout this period there were good things. Millions of Christians lived mainly good lives, serving others, being reliable, having good standards of conduct and helping good economies emerge, stable and relatively peaceful states, health services, education systems and good marriages, families and relationships, although there were also Christian failings of course. These contributions are the great unwritten history of the late 20th century to be noticed only in the 21st century as they disappeared in selfishness, aggression and self-promotion.

But Christians did not reflect on their reactions. One was to churchify and internalize. They deliberate for decades on proposed church unities, sifting organisational quagmires. They spend decades on whether there should be women as vicars and bishops when men have been cross dressing for centuries. Ecclesiastical issues became so convoluted that no one could understand them. People did things in churches which were cultic and weird, and more sadly churches were bought off – Anglicans by the British establishment and American Christians by the Republican Party in what is one of the most serious issues on the planet. So, western Christians collaborated with Secularism, mainly because they wanted to be nice and fit in.

Within this internalisation, various Christian isms emerged. One of them was moralism, the ism which Christ opposed in the Pharisees. Another was liberalism, an accommodation with whatever new thought form might emerge in the culture. Another earlier one was fundamentalism, a flight from Darwinist thought and possible a white racist reaction to black Christianity. Another was Evangelicalism, growing out of the world-wide spread of Chriistianity, and taking various new turns. Another was the charismatic movement. Catholicism had its own set of emphases. These isms often reflected important aspects of Christianity, but they had an inability to reflect on their own limitations or see Christianity aright. They were subcultural. Just as earlier, denominations had seen Baptism, the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper ( or whatever you choose to call it) , Congregationalism, the Priesthood or something else as the defining issue, so these groups were subcultural. They made a bit the whole.

This was even worse in theology. Theologians, enamoured of their own work, often picked up a post trendy philosophy, grafted it into their theology, when it was already outdated, and spilled words on it. Even worse were those who undertook to defend God in theology, or “doctrine”, as it was often called, failing to notice that Christ’s teaching was infinitely more subtle and comprehensive than theirs. Often, they were essentialists, seeing one “doctrine” as the touchstone of all truth. It may be substitutionary atonement, or even more strangely “abortion” which carries the weight of all veracity. There is, of course, good theology, but the discipline strained at gnats and swallowed camels. They talked theology, but ignored the whole corpus of knowledge world-wide into which Christianity has spoken for two millenia and now should have been speaking to billions who were, or might become, Christians.

Culture moves fast, especially with the internet and television. Now the crap of militarism, western and Islamic, is let loose on the world. Western capitalism has conquered with its own self-serving faith. The process of individualism is driving billions to success at the expense of others. The planet is in danger from fast, or slower, destruction though the human predicament of sins and idolatry, yet Christianity, especially in the West, and despite the bigger wisdom of Pope Francis and others, is fragmented and not up to the task it should face. It is time to wake up, friends, and this essay will try to provide breakfast in a number of later additions.

Good Morning, troopers,

boris

It is exciting that you have turned out in such large numbers and have managed to finish breakfast by this unearthly hour. My first hope for Brexit is that the Full English breakfast will be returned to its proper place, preferably served on silverware. It is only a F.E.B start to the day that allows the work and government of the day to be finished before 4 o’clock and we should put it in our manifesto.

This is an important speech on an important subject, and I must not be sidetracked by other issues. Let me say what an outstanding, indeed even good, leader, Teresa May is in these challenging times for our country. And when she is gone, we will be eternally grateful for what she has done. As your Foreign Secretary I face challenges from Russia, Syria, Burma, China and the British Virgin Islands. In fact, there is nothing I enjoy more than the challenge from the British Virgin Isles. Ho. Ho. Ho. Fortunately, the horrible hurricanes did not actually hit our investments. I was a teeny bit worried and asked one of our Treasury wallahs about it. He said that the money was not actually there. But I have every confidence that old Hammo will be able to find it somewhere in the Empire.

Which brings me to my next topic. I am determined to find the money we have got. We are a rich country, but we have put the dosh under the mattress somewhere, and haven’t been able to find it. I lose things all the time. But they are not really lost. The servants can always find them. The key issue in Brexit is that we have lost a lot of money in Europe. We give it away every year, and Italian tourists don’t spend all their £s and then take them back home. So, my policy on Brexit is to find the money under the mattress, so that we can spend it on the NHS and nurses and things. We must get the best deal on Brexit and not a second longer. If we let Europe get too uppity, we are on the road to Mandalay, as Virgil said in the Iliad. My deepest thought on this is to remember Euro. Euro is EU owe, get it? Wot Ho. They owe. We get it.

But I must get back to my subject. Some of you wallahs may have read my book on Churchill, an amazing man, the greatest leader we ever had. He fought against great odds. He only went to Harrow and was too small to play in the scrum, but he came through. When the time was right he fought against Europe, or bits of it, when our backs were to the wall. He fought them in the beeches. That is what we must do now, with the right leader. Some of my Foreign Office guys point out that Europe is not fighting us. That is probably true, but it must not stop the Dunkirk spirit, and we must end this class stuff and all get down in the scrum and push together.

The trouble is we are pushing, but the opposition will not put the ball in. So I say to Europe, Put The Ball In, or placer le sphere en, or whatever, and I am prepared to lead the push on a level playing field. At this time, we need some weight in the scrum and we will push to victory when we leave Europe and they go back to the pavilion. We will push and I will keep my head down until the job is done.

So, thank you for coming this morning. This conference is about confidence, about confidence in your leader, and I salute you. Teresa May, or May not, (get the pun), be our leader at the next election, but I will serve as I am asked, especially now David and George have left the field. So, thank you troopers for listening to this momentous talk on this momentous topic.

God’s O

So, what is truth, you say, but know
because you made the total show
those billion years of work were slow
to sort out coal and make the O
for us to breathe by trees which grow.
You worked at us and then said, Lo,
you dwell with God, though far below.
First, understand, sometimes it’s No,
Or you will always live in woe.
Then learn to cultivate and mow.
You live in truth, so off you go
And learn to live and not to crow.
Learn first from me, the Christ with you,
Then you will fathom what is true.

What Mr Fox says

fox

Liam Fox, the UK Government International Trade Secretary, spoke at the DSEI Arms Fair and is quoted in The Independent as saying the following:
“If nations and peoples have an inalienable right to look after their own defence, those of us from advanced economies must remember that if we do not provide countries with means of defending themselves, then we will see a proliferation of uncontrolled and unregulated arms sales free from oversight or inhibitions. To allow such a situation to develop would be vastly irresponsible.”

Let us try to understand what Mr Fox means. First, we read, “If nations and people have an inalienable right to look after their own defence…” It seems to be that Mr Fox adds mentally, “and they do.” Because of that supposition, Mr Fox argues, “those of us from advanced economies must remember” . . . This is rather a strange thing to say. First, it implies that those of us from advanced economies are in danger of forgetting, might have an amnesia in this area, whatever it is. Second, it focusses on “those of us from advanced economies”, which of course might mean you and me, but does not because we have not even thought about forgetting our inalienable rights. Rather, what Mr Fox is doing is suggesting, or presuming, that the business of defence is on a par with the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” mentioned in the Declaration of American Independence, an inalienable right. He is doing his best to legitimate the selling of arms and is speaking to mega arms dealers from “advanced” countries at an arms fair who are not likely to forget that they need to sell arms to provide countries with the “means of defending themselves”. It is an entirely concocted conceit.

But, Mr Fox is not actually talking about selling arms, which might bring to mind selling arms to dictators, to those who attack other countries, to human rights abusers, indirectly to terrorists and to those who have or might attack us. No. Mr Fox is talking about not selling arms. If we do NOT provide… This is a warning. But what kind of warning is it about not selling arms? What prophetic words are being laid before us if we are not supplying arms to those who would defend themselves?

This is where Mr Fox produces his supposed coup de grace. If we are not selling arms to those who would defend themselves, then “we will see a proliferation of uncontrolled and unregulated arms sales free from oversight or inhibitions.” There is only one response to this sentence, something like “Eh?” or “You what?” or “The logic eludes me.” Why should not selling arms to countries which would defend themselves lead to a proliferation of uncontrolled and unregulated arms sales? Would the US, UK, Japanese, German, French, Russian, Chinese and other Governments suspend all their regulations and allow a proliferation of uncontrolled and unregulated arms sales, when they have suffered from terrorism and opportunist wars? Would these Governments seek to allow North Korea and terrorist groups to buy arms because we are not selling arms to those who would defend themselves. It is flattery to call this an idea, or to seek for a causal relationship which inhabits Mr Fox’s word, “then”. There is no causality, but this is merely a scare dreamed up somewhere in Mr Fox’s head or left elbow. He is greasing the arms trade that he has served so well, but without the semblance of an argument. It is empty of any conceivable sense. It is a thought in absentia.

To “allow such a situation to develop would be vastly irresponsible”, but that is precisely why it is unthinkable and why Mr Fox is talking nothing in a long sentence. In fact, the real question to which Mr Fox might turn his mind is whether the West selling arms to Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Libya, Argentina, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and throughout much of Africa and to countless dictators has helped world peace? We could wait decades for an answer. Meanwhile , it is through this kind of rubbishy scare that the trade in arms is justified by our Government. The question is whether the scare works, as other scares by the arms companies and their acolytes have. That is up to you.

A Christian Policy for North Korea

kimjongil

The time has long come for some clear thinking about the North Korean military threat. But, of course, it is not the only military threat in the area. Another is the United States under President Trump. More widely, militarism is a world-wide problem encouraged by the arms trade. Most states have weapons, a visible sign of mistrust of other states and of domestic populations. Wars are often about the existence of these weapons and their destructive power around the globe is immense, causing grief, poverty, masses of refugees and the destruction of property and infrastructure. Militarism is the biggest failed experiment on the planet, causing perhaps 10% of total global warming, yet the big problem is rarely addressed. North Korea is a symptom of a bigger problem, but a serious one.

North Korea is now a nuclear crisis. The regime is testing nuclear weapons and missiles. We note nuclear tests have already killed an estimated 60 million world-wide through cancer. But now it seems there is a direct nuclear threat in the hands of a dictator who might use them.

It is time Christianity, espoused by well over two billion of the world’s population, made its contribution to world politics and to the increasing militarism around the world. Its principles and perspective should be there in the arena of world affairs. Sadly, Donald Trump has not undertaken any Christian thought beyond kindergarten and is completely unequipped to make any contribution.

There are three basic principles. Christianity sits under God’s commandment not to murder. Christ requires us to love our enemies, and we are to be peacemakers. Now we have threats, the building of hate and misunderstanding and war preparation. We are travelling exactly in the wrong direction, and need a rethink in the light of these Christian principles.

Christ deconstructed fear and trauma. Let us think in a different way. First, let us put North Korea in context. It has an economy half the size of Lancashire and a population which is poor. Second, we can understand that it has remained traumatized since the Korean War, when General MacArthur, had not Eisenhower firmly sacked him, would have happily nuked the North. It needs extracting from that past. Third, the United States and South Korea have undertaken forty years of joint military exercises against North Korea and subjected it to sanctions. As with Cuba, it has tried to make it into a failed state. No love there. Fourth, North Korea has built up its nuclear weapon capability partly through Pakistan, but also by buying bits and pieces from the nuclear and missile industries east and west; we have helped because we have not disarmed and removed the threat under which North Korea cowers. The United States has 9,600 nuclear warheads; it, and we, have killed vast numbers in a unilateral war in Iraq. North Korea can legitimately feel in danger. Finally, the double standard: – We can have nuclear weapons and you cannot – is laughable as well as violating our signing of the Non-Proliferation treaty.

The biggest point remains Christ’s insistence that we love our enemies. If you treat someone, or a state, as an enemy, for forty years, it is likely they will turn out to be an enemy, especially if bullying is involved, but if an enemy is loved and respected, they will grow not to be antipathetic and vindictive. As Christian leaders met after the intense hatred of the Second World War and vowed friendship and an end to conflict and have made European War unthinkable, so friendship and love can mark all international relations. Loving enemies is the basis of all international politics, not the UK’s frequently stated national self-interest, and it involves justice, closing down militarism and making sure that nation speaks peace unto nation. But we have wasted forty years and the danger is intense.

This perspective shows the way ahead. China, not the United States, should be the lead country. Actually, China has had a patient, long-term relationship with North Korea which has neither involved sloppy acceptance of faults nor threatening aggression. It is neighbour and a good neighbour to North Korea, and it also has good relationships with South Korea and very strong trading links. In other words, it is a close by, fair broker between the two regimes, and moreover its trading relationship and size gives it strong leverage. China advocates total nuclear disarmament, is totally against the first use of nuclear weapons, and it could make clear to North Korea that all external aggression is out, given the absence of the United States from immediate engagement with the area. The policy required is therefore the withdrawal of the United States from this situation. At the same time, if North Korea has no threat, it needs, and should have, no nuclear weapons, like the rest of us. Multilateral nuclear disarmament could happen here and begin now.

On Benefits

Yes, I agree it’s difficult to see

things my way. You are busy, gone – absent

and looking at your phone. The other here,

to do, and needing you, but I will wait.

For I can take as much time as I like,

And nothing much to do. We share the work,

and not so much of that on benefits.

We beg and he coughs up. The food arrives.

It’s grown and comes to us. I saunter round

and meet the others,learning as we walk.

For we are wanting to be serious rich.

The biggest diamond in the world is there

Under that stone. We cannot lift it up.

But we know where it is, and silly you

Working elsewhere, on phones, for peanut spread,

Your busy bee success and business tired.

Your way and giving you rewards of more

Importance. You prop up designer clothes.

But we know where the diamond is and weighs.

To know first what it means, before the work,

And then not much of that, as I have taught

Martha, whom I love strong, the other day.

My Very Dear Donald,

May

Thank you for your wonderful letter full of informalities and pearls of wisdom. Could you put the “e” before the “r” in my name, please. It’s harder than “Donald”. I shall treasure it as pure you and it will probably finish up in the Ordinary British Museum to show that you wrote to us. We await the Great United States of America Announcement and I am teaching all our people to say GUSA now, though Boris will take a long while to learn it. Trumpacare sounds very nice too.

I am glad, Mr President, that you are addressing the North Korean situation. I said last year in the Trident debate, we need our nuclear weapons to defend ourselves against North Korea, and you are even nearer than we are. I seem to remember that General MacArthur wanted to drop atomic bombs on them in the Korean War. It is a pity he did not finish the job.

I do not understand why North Korea should want nuclear weapons and missiles. They should know that we have about eight thousand and they will have only about ten. That is pathetic. I do not know what they are frightened of. I hope you will let me know of any attack and we will send one of our smaller missiles along too and an attack helicopter in support of your strike. I may not be Tony Blair but I can back GUSA when you need me.

You said in your wonderful letter that you had installed buttons on our missiles to switch them off if necessary. I know you made them and kindly exported them to us, and I know that when one of your superb wockets went astray off your coast in one of our trials, you were able to explode it before it damaged the United States. I was very grateful for that and staying allies and not thinking of nuking us, but I have to say that we are supposed to have an independent nuclear deterrent, and if noise of your buttons got around it would be difficult for me in the House of Commons. Corbyn, that awful man, might want an off-button too.

I think the way you sack your staff is so impressive. As a woman I find it more difficult. I want to sack most of mine. Boris is mentally in a scrum, Philip has to go. Gove is still in short trousers. But they are after me, like they are after you, and I am too afraid to sack them. They would seek their revenge. It is indeed lonely at the top. That is why we must stick together, me slightly behind. I have asked the Queen to retrain the staff for your visit and I understand you want all the furry hat soldiers who stamp to do their show. Of course. And there is a room in the palace with a long carpet where you can practice putting.

With my effusive best wishes and the understanding that the British will want to buy everything from GUSA in our new trade deal.

Teresa May (Ordinary Britain Prime Minister, your ally)

If you are reading this to him say what a nice letter it is.

European not Brexit Christianity.

MApieta2

Anglican Christianity did not express a strong view on Brexit. It issued a prayer for the Referendum which was scrupulously neutral between staying and leaving. It seemed that the Anglican commitment to Christians in Europe was not strong enough to sway God through our prayers, and presumably God heard our indifference. The prayer was a fudge.

This position is understandable because by and large the Church of England is a national, even nationalist, understanding of Christianity. It was founded by an English monarch. Its creed has been the 39 articles. It central document is the Book of Common Prayer, and the Anglican Communion which forms its primary international relationships are based on the British Empire and Commonwealth, not on our European relations. Anglican contact with the Reformation was heavily expunged in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity and the ejection of some two thousand ministers soon afterwards, the ones most influenced by the European Reformation of Luther and Calvin. Indeed, in the 18th century when Wesley was also influenced by European Christianity, he too had to leave the Church of England.

This pattern continued during the 19th century when mission was strongly identified with the Empire, and then, since the visit of Moody in the 1870s English Christianity has been more exposed to and influenced by American Christianity than anything from Europe, and, apart from some notable exceptions, the European connections have been relatively weak, compared, for example, with the links between Scottish and German theology.

Most Anglicans do not see this as a problem and the possibility that we might need insights from Europe in English Anglican Christianity scarcely crosses our minds. We are happy to be little Englanders cut off from European Christianity for the foreseeable future.

Actually, this is in part our problem. Anglican churchgoing, practice and liturgy carry on, but they are hardly inspiring for much of the time, partly because they are introverted and do not see European insights and awareness. One obvious contrast was the way Angela Merkel and the German Christian Democrats welcomed a million refugees in an obvious Christian response to people in need. It was a courageous Christian act, echoing the Good Samaritan and the teaching of Jesus. Meanwhile, the British Government withdrew, passing by on the other side, and the Church of England made statements which were on one side and the other with its usual lack of clarity. We need to think whether the European political engagement in both Protestant and Catholic churches in Europe does not have something to teach us.

More than this, Europe has exposed our national self-promotion. We always want to be leaders. We rubbished the French for not supporting the invasion of Iraq, when the French were right. We talk of leading Europe and come up with a financial crisis and self-important interventions in Libya and Syria which are making matters worse. Europeans get on with one another. England faces an identity crisis born of our own arrogance, as the Scots have recognized. English identity has nothing to do with Christianity. The Christian faith is not merely marginalised; it does not feature in our public life. Yet, none of this is addressed by the Church of England. Perhaps we should reflect as to whether English Christianity has anything to say? Does it, for example, have a worldview rather than a national view?

Meanwhile., the Anglican Church becomes increasingly spineless and parochial, unable to make any real public interventions and spending three decades on the internal business of moving towards women bishops. It is odd that the Old Testament prophets, and Jesus himself, spent so much time critiquing the domestic leaders and politics of their time, when the Anglican Church does not dare to say anything which might rock the Westminster establishment. The Pope takes on Presidents, but we dare not offend the Daily Mail and dress up to go through the next ceremonial act of State.

Brexit, the withdrawal from Europe, is a defeat for English Christianity, a withdrawal from millions of brother and sister Christians in Europe, a withdrawal from part of Christendom. Rather than just going with the flow, like a wrapping paper sliding along the gutter of British nationalism, we could engage with our European brothers and sisters. We could give and receive a European Christian holiday each year, link churches across Europe, have a European Christian website, language exchanges for children, have forums for European theology, Christian art, Christian economics; we could feature European churches, visions, failures and challenges. We can reconstruct Christian Europe as a body formed in Christ. Some of this happens but European Christianity is too much to lose.

We share nearly two millennia of Christian history with Europe, Christianity came to us through Europe and we should know that this agape relationship is rich to bless all of us. It is time to wake up, Anglicans, and think of yourselves as members of the Church of Europe.