Narratives change over generations. Remember Iraq? Nowadays, no one of any influence looks favourably on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Does even the hawkish George W. Bush Jr still believe in it? Trump, Biden and Obama all rejected its premises. People have moved on. For all his bluster and reinvention, Tony Blair’s former head of communications, Alastair Campbell, still fumbles around, never quite able to put to bed the ghost of the WMD scandal and the infamous dodgy dossier. As I said, people have moved on.

The Middle East was thrown into utter turmoil, and the promised Arab Spring came to little. Across the region, the revolutions and regime changes often appeared worse than what they tried to liberate people from. The loss of life, and the US and UK military losses, were stark. A post-9/11 President Bush seemed sadly blasé about war, forgetting that pulling the trigger is a last resort. Western governments shy of intervention may well allow other global players to wreak havoc.

I say all this because there is a parallel with the West’s response to Covid-19 in 2020. Back then, even the government advisor and epidemiologist Neil Ferguson proclaimed astonishment at how the overwhelming majority agreed with the lockdowns. The incredible thing was that locking down the country, suspending rights and imposing what amounted to martial law was never in the government’s original plan. But most of us went along with it, particularly given the convenience of nice weather, the possibility of Zoom meetings, and crucially the Conservative Chancellor’s keenness to print money and furlough the workforce. The government even closed schools.

I heard all sorts of middle-class narratives thrown about:

“With quiet roads, it’s given Nature a chance to breathe and reclaim the land.”
“I’m able to have more time with my family.”
“I came to appreciate that working from home is a possibility.”

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I never thought Arday was a conman. Some will say he was a fraud and a liar. My gut is that this was not another real-life Frank W. Abagnale Jr from Catch Me If You Can, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie. I don’t think Arday was a particularly malicious soul but rather someone suffering from mental illness and delusions. In other words, he mostly believed his own lies. As his wild claims piled up into a mountain of absurdity, he reminded me of another young man in a former church who constantly made up exaggerated stories about himself. He was an altar server in a council estate parish. That congregation has in plenty something that a lot of academic departments and metropolitan luvvies do not: common sense. They could pick up that these wild stories from this young man did not stack up. Indeed, as a head-in-the-clouds cerebral vicar, I was the most gullible and easily taken in by these stories to begin with. As a churchwarden remonstrated with me, “Father Daniel, did you not realise that there is no way he could have been rejected from the police academy because he’s never had a job outside the supermarket?”

From my little flock I learnt to politely pass over the wild stories that he bragged about in the vestry before the service started. I was one of two people in the congregation with a degree, let alone ‘A’ levels. If I asked, “How’s your week been?” I had to be prepared for a stream of cock-and-bull stories about this, that and the other.

“I’ve turned down a place to study Divinity for a management post in retail.”
“I was in a high-speed car chase with the police and spent a night in the cells. They’ve taken my driving license off me.”
“You know, I applied for your job but didn’t think the pay was that good.”

Then two events happened in quick succession which changed things. The first was that he applied to join the church council. I panicked and reached out to the Charity Commission for urgent advice. To my astonishment I received the brush-off from an adviser on the basis that I was demeaning his human rights. I also got a stern lecture on “diversity” and was told that those with mental health problems shouldn’t be discriminated against or excluded. My exasperated reply of “But he’s delusional” fell on deaf ears. As luck would have it, a few parishioners dissuaded the poor chap from the council. Phew!

Then, not long after, one of the youth club teenagers shared with me that the same young man was bragging that he’d seen me at a strip club getting “very into it”. Anyone who knows me would realise that this is comically absurd. We pulled him in for a pastoral interview on a safeguarding basis. And it was the best thing ever. Because he burst into tears and admitted that he had no control over these delusions and stories. They were, he said, like voices inside tormenting him. The poor soul was genuinely mortified that he had caused me reputational harm. The whole conversation was cathartic. We prayed for him and a peace passed over us all.

Months after that the same individual saved me from doing something very stupid. I stumbled upon a youth trying to burn the church down. On this housing estate official buildings were often the brunt of such actions. Schools, social clubs, churches were often the brunt of vandalism and arson. I lost it. I grabbed the guy and threw him to the ground hard. A rage I didn’t know I had in me surfaced. Suddenly from nowhere our altar server turned up and pulled me away. “He’s not worth your vocation, Father.” There was a calmness about his words, almost angelic. I can’t quite explain it, but it’s one of those life moments I will never forget and for which I am eternally grateful to him. I genuinely think he saved my ministry.

I say all of this because I would guess that no such pastoral confrontation ever took place in Arday’s tragic short life. I pity him for this. Instead of being taken to task, his made-up stories became armoury for an institution desperate to appear “relevant” and “with it”, all because of his skin colour. This professorial chair legitimised other academics pushing out their mushy word-salad woke ideological pap. And if anyone complained or dared to raise a problem, even a hint, there was always the terrifying rebuttal of racism and white privilege, along with the threat of bullish law firms. It is astonishing that common sense did not prevail and that even the most ideologically minded departmental staff did not question themselves. No one seemed to have in the back of their minds the sense that this Arday chap might not add up. And what if the whole house of cards fell? Again, no one – none of the supposed cleverest people on the planet – had anything like a backup plan to care for someone who, as a human being, was at ground zero of a series of monumental lies.

I have friends from Eastern Europe who recall the Soviet days. I’ve listened to hours of mesmerizing accounts. They nod to themselves, remembering how familiar this Cambridge drama all sounds to them. You can add in the BBC, another petri dish for dogmatic thinking. By the 1980s the planned economies cloned and elevated a type of intellectual identical to the current cohort in Cambridge’s sociology schools and other humanities: blinkered, dogmatic and incurious, all with the veneer of brotherhood, community and love. The sort of people who are so up themselves they think they and only they are the Rebel Alliance, the true revolution against the Empire. No one can tell them otherwise. But underneath all the bright and brilliant luvvie-duvvy “inclusion” lies a dark Jungian shadow, a ruthless spirit, the first to throw their granny under a bus for the sake of the Party. These were and are the bland leading the bland. Arday is not their martyr but their sacrificial victim.

Andy Burnham’s win of 55% in Makerfield will be read in different ways depending on where you sit. For Labour there is the exciting prospect of its own regicide with the King of the North replacing Our Keir. For the political Right, well that’s another matter. Another seat lost because the Right remains more interested in splintering than in presenting a united front against the governing project. I’ve seen this elsewhere, it’s all too familiar pattern that has dominated my life when it comes to Christian traditionalism.

Traditionalists and the political Right like nothing better than a circular firing squad. One faction accuses another of insufficient purity and heterodoxy. Lord, I’m so bored with it all! My first experience of such silliness happened in 1989 as an undergrad when I handed a Northern Ireland presbyterian a cheap WH Smith Christmas card which happened to have picture of the Virgin Mary. We were both on the student chaplaincy committee. Anyway as she opened the card her eyes widened with horror - you’d have thought I’d robed her grandmother. Her visceral reaction stayed with me. She kept banging on about the bloody card as if I’d purposely tried to trigger her with “Marian devotion”. The irony is that I thought we were pretty much on the same side especially as we resisted the chaplain leanings towards Don Cupitt’s Anglican uber-heterodoxy. (In happier times she and I nicknamed the infamous theologian ‘Don Stupid’.)

Personal animosities harden into permanent vetoes. In the Westminster melodrama Lowe and Farage clearly hate each other more than they hate Starmer. The result of their animosity is predictable: the centre-Left or progressive forces advance through the gaps the Right has obligingly left open. Makerfield is simply the latest local illustration of a national habit.

The same dynamic operates, with different vocabulary, on the traditional, small-o orthodox side of British Christianity. As I said earlier, I’m so tired of it. Here the shared conviction is that the historic faith must be defended against revisionist theology, progressive ethics, and the slow erosion of doctrine. Evangelicals and Catholics (including Anglo-Catholics) often agree on the diagnosis. They diverge sharply on the cure, and the divergence frequently hardens into mutual suspicion that weakens both. Online its terrible. You now get “supposedly” faithful conviction Christians (yes, Christians) trolling each other on Twitter/X to point score.

Each side can dredge historical wounds: the Reformation itself, the Oxford Movement, the battles over ritual and authority in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and more recent disagreements over who can and can’t be ordained and of course (drum roll the.. liturgy). What better way to serve the liturgy than to randomly comment to online strangers on how your take worship is superior than theirs. Some people need to get a life and get offline.

Sustained collaboration on the ground is rare. Opportunities for shared witness are missed because one side fears being compromised by the other’s distinctives. Energy that could be spent commending the faith to a sceptical culture is instead spent policing the boundaries between fellow traditionalists.

I have to say another iteration of this is where Christian leaders (often evangelicals but not exclusively) play winner-takes-all. I have come across magisterial clergy who cannot share power due to their self-importance. They glide from church to church on air or royalty. You approach them with, “Let’s work on this together on this,” and they give you that patronising look which is basically, “You are not worthy to stand in my pulpit,” or (actual recent quote) “My people will deal with that.” I call them, Alpha Males. Tom Hollander’s sitcom “Rev” brilliantly captured this when the neighbouring vicar is permitted to use his clapped out church for a few weeks. Of course, the handsome vicar is hugely successful and has a massive following. When the service starts and the rapper kicks off a startled Rev Adam in his dusty cassock asks what do they want him (the actual host vicar) to do, and he is instructed to “Stand by the smoothie bar.” Again, I had versions of this.

The political Right is now repeatedly choosing suspicion and paying the price in seats and influence. The Church’s traditionalists have often chosen the same posture and paid in diminished public credibility and fragmented institutional strength. There is no neat organisational “quick-fix” for either problem. Political coalitions and ecclesial friendships both require habits that are currently deemed unpallatable: the willingness to fight the main battle first and the secondary skirmishes later, and the ability to recognise that your sharpest critics inside the broad tradition may still be more useful allies than your opponents outside it. It’s not rocket science!

Until those habits reappear, the pattern will continue I fear. Another seat will fall. Andy will enter No.10 all smiles and swagger. In the Church we don’t have byelections but quietly opportunities for common witness will pass us by.

The house will remain divided, and therefore standing less securely than it might.

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As I have noted before public intercessions are increasingly political. Those leading them can end up grandstanding and do not appreciate just how much of a turn-off this is. Rarely have I heard prayers for evangelisation. Rather, we get a wish list reminiscent of Miss World contests aspirations for world peace and donkey sanctuaries. It was timely then that the national Thy Kingdom Come programme back in May invited us to pray implicitly for FIVE people to come to faith. We should be doing more of this more often.

A wise Anglo-Catholic priest once told me to "pray-them-in" when I asked about mission. At the time the Aberdeen diocese had a fancy American Episcopalian evangelisation programme called Mission 21. I found it managerial and wishy-washy an exercise in Christian window dressing without explicit reference to Christ's redeeming work. Mission 21 was essentially a package that presented the status quo as a therapy and tried to slap on a bit of marketing advice. The evangelicals hated it and the Anglo-Catholics ignored it. “Pray-them-in" sounded much more digestible. Over the years we did pray and God blessed us. I’d recommend it. Don't be shy with God, He wants you to ask.

Is Forgotten Britain Finding Faith?

There is anecdotal evidence that the Quiet Revival (or whatever you want to call it) is not just about young professionals types coming to faith after reading Tom Holland’s Dominion but is also impinging on the working class. Some hard research into this would be fascinating if not timely. My gut tells me that there is now a shift in this demographic towards faith whereas up until recently there had been a culture of suspicion. It goes without saying that, to peek into new landscape is also to take onboard that nationalism plays a significant part.

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This week, Harrison Ford, now 83, has taken a similar pessimistic stance—not on having babies, but on space travel. In remarks that echo a broader cultural malaise, he declared space exploration a waste of money, urging humanity to focus on fixing Earth first.

“It’s a serious issue with humanity. We’re the first species in the history of science that’s supporting its own extinction. The world we’re living on doesn’t work as well as it used to. Look at how much money is going into space. If you could find somewhere out in the firmament, a planet with an atmosphere, with gravity, with water, with developed societies, with hundreds of languages—surely you’d want to go there. Well, you’re already there. That’s where you are, that’s your home.

Why are you wasting all this money going to space? Because we’ve got nothing better to do.”

Jeepers, Han -thanks for cheering us all up! I guess all those summer weeks in 1977 carefully painting a papier-mâché Millennium Falcon were a complete waste, as it sounds like you’d have tossed it in the bin. Space travel and having babies—the two things are not unrelated. The irony is that for all the talk of “progress,” secular progressivism as an ideological movement is now against the very progress it claims.

What Ford expounds, I hear all the time. It’s a depressing mantra. Yet what is more basic to any human advancement than exploring new frontiers or having babies? What’s the opposite? Staying put and becoming extinct. And we wonder why so many GenZ are suffering from depression???

By stark contrast it seems to be in the very mind of God that our modus operandi is to expand. The conclusion of the first account of creation has the famous line: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). In Jewish tradition, this is seen as the first commandment of the Biblical Law, the instruction to spread and grow. The divine imperative is not casual sentiment but fundamental to how God views us. Whereas the heathen gods held humans as competitors or playthings, the God of the Bible is pro-human. God is not threatened by us but rather seeks our flourishing, our expansion.

“The glory of God is a living human being fully alive; and the life of man consists in the vision of God.” —St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.20.7
Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei.

For me the prime example of how humans respond poorly to God’s grand vision is in Genesis 11, the construction of the Tower of Babel. This is a contracted vision of what we can become left to our devices. Let me digress a bit here as I’ve written a lot around this in my upcoming book, Resist. The conclusion of the short story has God forcibly confuse and scatter the human race at Babel. Theologically this is is not vindictive on God’s part but an act of divine mercy. Does that sound weird? To modern ears perhaps so. But to a premodern audience it’s obvious that out of collapse, calamity and catastrophe nations are formed. God imposes a certain diversity to free us from ourselves. When it comes to Babel downfall we are liberated from the ‘System’ that would otherwise enslave.

As I understand it the Tower represents a certain kind of all seeing Imperium, like the Eye of Mordor. Babel is not just a one-off, it provides the blueprint for every societal vanity project ever since. On paper it promises much. The reality is stagnation and the elevation of elites, maybe even the deification of rulers. The modern mind easily misreads Babel as a reprimand against technological advancement and even space exploration. It is rather the opposite. The architects of the Tower are not building high to penetrate space in any geographical sense but rather to subvert the heavenly order. It’s creators seek to surpass God and to own the transcendent. Such vanity is fundamentally transhumanist: to steal the powers of heaven, to change the universal laws, and by inference impose a type of empire on everyone. It is a means to fashion totalitarianism under the guise of a cult. A completed Babel will not democratize power but solidify it behind an existing rulering system. And as I said, what emerges is not paradise but stagnation.

Two modern-day comparisons are North Korea and the race toward super-generative AI. Look at the picture above. This what a man-made paradise looks like; pitch black darkness, stagnation and a despot. However read the Communist Manifesto and you’d be fooled to think that heaven was within Man’s grasp. When it comes to super-generative AI there is a similar moral trap. It goes without saying that whichever CEO among the five or so tech giants achieves this will be crowned de facto the most powerful individual on the planet. Do we want one person to hold that much power? Yet one can imagine all sorts of subtle justifications to erect city-sized, water-guzzling data centres. Babel as a cosmic parable tells us in no uncertain terms that God has a different vision for us. To truly become ourselves, we are to be a people on the move—explorers, in a continual process of going forth, being fruitful.

Which brings me back to having babies. On a secular-scientific level, antinatalism looks crazy when you consider all that recent astronomy has confirmed. In the past two decades, bigger and better orbital telescopes have confirmed that our galaxy is teeming with planets. Solar systems are the norm—a fact not known for sure until the new millennium. Even if ours is rare, the number of potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way is doubtless in the millions. Even if it takes millennia to go beyond Neptune, this solar system offers habitation up for the taking. It is completely within our reach to become a spacefaring society where the majority of humans are off-worlders.

And why not? You would think this would be the manifesto of progressivism and the Enlightenment. Tragically, the opposite is true. Malthusianism, along with a certain apocalyptic environmentalism, is holding us back. Celebrity activism from figures like Al Gore, Harrison Ford, and Greta Thunberg views space sciences as a monumental waste of money and would rather we focus on “sorting Earth first.” The unspoken implication is higher taxes, international aid, and state monopolies as the natural default for curing global inequalities and climate change. Of course, that doesn’t stop Harrison Ford from continuing to monetize millions from having played a space pirate and inspiring many kids like me to dream of becoming astronauts. Remember, it’s not Ford’s money we are talking about, it’s yours and mine.

Secular “progressive” society has become totally inward-looking, if not narcissistic. You’d think that given we’ve mapped thousands of exoplanets, the consensus would be mass cultural excitement to push forward. It is, in my opinion, a reflection of civilizational stagnation that so few take any interest. Can you imagine that the Victorians, given this technology, would not be firing off Saturn V rockets every other week or drawing up plans to exceed the speed of light? They’d have warp drive, fusion power, and artificial gravity up and running quicker than you can say “William Shatner.”

And with that in mind, who would not think this is the most exciting milieu to bring children into? I often say to my children that they may be the first generation to see space travel as normalized. Their children could be inhabiting cities on the Moon, Mars, or even Titan, which is rich in nitrogen. But these are not normal times psychologically. If our culture were sending off a Christopher Columbus to discover the Americas, we’d probably be disinterested and disgusted in what he had to report back. He might even be cancelled under accusations of colonialism and Eurocentrism.

Another irony is that the technological advancements of space travel will have massive environmental paybacks. Build a fully functioning Millennium Falcon, and we could migrate many of the dirty industries on Earth like iron ore mining to Mars. Already, space sciences have contributed to all sorts of technological advancements, including healthcare. Solar and fusion technologies coming off the back of space exploration will surely bring huge benefits to society. Furthermore, having a spare planet or two gives us a backup ark lest there should be a catastrophic event on Earth.

However, much of what is taught in schools completely ignores any of this. Children are seen as a burden, maybe even an inconvenience to our careers. The myth of a population crisis continues to chunter on. I recall as a teenager in the 1980s that one or two activist teachers confidently forecast that we’d all be looting by the 2020s as there would not be enough food to go around. In fact, the opposite is true. There is monumental food waste, and globally we are often binge-eating the wrong foods. We have more food than we know what to do with.

The real crisis is the opposite: demographic collapse. Global fertility rates have plummeted. The world total fertility rate now hovers around 2.2 children per woman, barely at replacement level (2.1) and falling fast in most developed nations. In countries like South Korea (around 0.7–0.8), Italy (1.2), Japan (1.2), and much of Europe and East Asia, rates are far below what is needed to sustain populations without massive immigration. In the UK, the fertility rate stands at about 1.44, with deaths projected to outnumber births every year from 2026 onward. In the United States, the total fertility rate is projected around 1.58 in 2026, continuing to decline. By mid-century, the global population aged 65+ is expected to double to over 2 billion, with those 80+ tripling.

In many nations, the old-age dependency ratio is worsening dramatically: fewer young workers to support retirees, fund pensions, and provide care. In the US, the ratio of people aged 25–64 to those 65+ is projected to fall from 2.7:1 now to 2.2:1 in coming decades. Without higher birth rates, societies face labour shortages, strained healthcare systems, and economic stagnation. The “population bomb” fear of the 20th century has inverted into a “population bust” in the 21st.

Unless birth rates expand and cultural attitudes shift toward embracing life, exploration, and the future we risk a planet of empty cradles, aging societies, and diminished horizons. Antinatalists may feel they are being responsible, but they are counselling despair.

“Doomscrolling Substack is like an addiction to lettuce,” wrote an online friend recently. True, though foraging through the lettuce there is plenty of theological meat. Yesterday afternoon I came across a brilliant article called God Hides which explores the covering and uncovering of God, the atonement and apocalypse. Sounds dry? Ross Byrd, its author, presents the God of the Bible as both terrifying and loving—like Aslan the lion in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series. I was hooked.

The opening premise of the essay is the warning given to Moses on Sinai: “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). From this the essay proposes that much of the Bible concerns covering and uncovering. The Hebrew word for atonement kaphar is intimately tied to the action of covering, wiping clean, or making propitiation. By contrast, the Greek word for apocalypse apokalypsis means an uncovering, a revealing, a pulling back of the veil.

Ross explores how God is gradually uncovering the depths of his reality through history. It’s part of his mercy that it is done slowly. From the animal skins he makes for Adam and Eve to the Torah-Law, all of these are a covering of sorts. For without the covering, the bare reality of God will induce a type of death. In our fallen state we humans cannot bear this divine exposure.

For the Hebrews in the wilderness the incense, the veils, the sprinkling of animal blood, even the cleft Moses hides in, all shield the faithful from a full blazing revelation of God. Moses is restricted to seeing the back of God, a snippet of his reality that is as much as God knows Moses can take. Centuries later Solomon’s temple formalises this relationship with coverings, courts, incense, nested courts and inner sanctums. The pattern repeats: God draws near, yet conceals enough of his glory that his people are not consumed.

A couple years ago friends introduced me to René Girard, the influential theorist of sacred violence. I was emailed a link to this good introduction to Girard in this article in unHerd by Blake Smith. Subsequently I went on to buy some of his books. Bishop Robert Barron has gone as a far as to say that Girard may be canonised and become a Doctor of the Church. What really got my attention was when Girard captured the raw “potency” behind Temple rituals. In an interview he remarked: “The sacred in archaic society is something really dreadful and destructive and dangerous like atomic power on the loose, you see, and in order to have that you need to have the full crisis.” Girard likened the sacred to nuclear materials in our own time, something so potent that it demands elaborate containment protocols, shielding, and controlled access if it is not to unleash catastrophe. At the time I was watching the Netflix series Chernobyl. The Temple ritual gave the Israelites precisely this kind of structured, mediated access to a dangerous God. The veils, the incense clouds, the sprinkling of animal blood, the strict purity laws, all functioned like a spiritual containment system, allowing proximity to the holy without exposing fallen humanity to the full, consuming blaze of divine reality.

The first time I encountered this I remember sitting sketching with crayons a space picture and thinking aloud, “I wonder what God looks like?” Ten years old, I sat at my pious Belgian grandmother’s dinner table scribbling away. I was often lost in drawing. Maybe I was toying with including God in my picture that day. I can’t really remember. What I do remember is that she instantly recoiled in horror and clutched her chest. In her French accent she paraphrased Exodus in guarded terms, “To see the face of God is to die.” Cause and consequence in one neat soundbite. I can still picture her pious face coming close up to deliver her warning in a stern whisper, wild-eyed and anxious as if the Vatican had bugged the cottage. The hairs on the back of my neck were up. I casually shrugged my shoulders, apologised, making light of it and carried on drawing, though I never forgot that incident. What and who was this colossal face that could at the blink of an eye reduce to ashes its unguarded viewer? Quietly in my own way I was gripped.

Scripture is threaded with this tension between concealment and disclosure. Right after the fall, Genesis tells us, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). On Sinai the mountain smoked and quaked; the people begged Moses to speak to them instead of God lest they die (Exodus 20:18-19). Even the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision cover their faces before the throne, crying “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:2-3). The temple veil, the cloud of glory, the mercy seat sprinkled with blood, all of it whispered the same truth: we are not yet ready for the full weight of divine presence.

The New Testament carries the story forward into its climax. At the death of Christ the temple curtain tears from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51), no longer separating God from his people. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews exults: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body…” (Hebrews 10:19-20). Atonement has become the ultimate covering that makes the ultimate uncovering possible. The apocalypse is no longer merely terrifying; it is now the glad revelation of the face we were always meant to see.

This duality of terror and tenderness is what C.S. Lewis captured so perfectly in Aslan. As Mr. Beaver tells the children, “‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” The German theologian Rudolf Otto described the same reality as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans—the holy mystery that makes us tremble yet draws us irresistibly. Martin Luther spoke of the Deus absconditus, the hidden God who conceals his glory under the weakness of the cross so that we might approach without being destroyed. All these voices converge on the same wonder: God hides not to stay distant, but to come close.

Due to my new posting as a university chaplain I’m not presiding at the Eucharist as in parish life. I do miss it. There was something psychologically deep in presiding which has this quality too - of covering and uncovering. In its complexity and focus it demands of the priest something similar to that of ballet or Tai Chi. At the service I am covered and concealed with vestments but at a certain point I then uncover the chalice and patten by removing the veils. There is therefore dressing and undressing, all done in a careful stylised manner. Safety and danger co-mingle.

The bigger picture is that we humans inhabit the “already but not yet” - covered by the blood, yet still longing for the final unveiling. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Until that apocalypse arrives, we rest in the coverings God himself provides -the blood of the Lamb, the Word made flesh, the gentle whisper of the Spirit.

I can clearly remember the day my ten-year-old self imagined that by the early twenty-first century space travel would be as common as commercial flying. I sat in the school library and did the maths as to how old I would be decade by decade. My little moment of contemplation came after wasting my lunchtime hiding in the school library, poring over a Ladybird book on space. I was obsessed with space. Aside from holidays on Mars, I also imagined that we would have gravity-defying cars and android playmates. Though the recent launch of Artemis II to the Moon has reawakened that boy within me, I do feel we are lagging technologically. Something went wrong in the 1970s that stalled progress, not only in space flight but more widely in our global manufacturing base.

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This is a busy day for churches, really busy. Typically, this is the day when the printer over heats, the stapler busts, and the church fuse box trips. Also Tesco in Kingsbridge is heaving with holidaymakers buying up chocolate eggs and lamb for tomorrow’s festivities. In parish life, Holy Saturday tends to be a day of contradiction. There was a time in the Church of England when couples got married on the day before Easter. Nowadays, I can picture the flower ladies going on strike if that happened. A vicar would end up hoist by their own petard for forcing the flower team to negotiate their efforts around a bride and groom. Volunteers up and down the land will be locked in churches, getting their places of worship ready for the big day.

In contrast to all this good and necessary busyness, the day itself—including the liturgy invites us to stillness and contemplation. Christians are meant to be holy on Holy Saturday. The clue is in the name. Inspired by Early Church practices, the revised liturgies since the 1960s call the faithful to a deeper, more discipled experience of this day. Much of the celebration of the Triduum (the three days) is actually quite recent. The old rites of Anglicans and Catholics had little in the way of this until a couple of generations ago. Some churches tonight even attempt an all-night vigil until Easter morning, just as Christians did in the time of Augustine. My wife’s curacy parish in Totnes does this, and I don’t know how the vicar there physically operates on Sunday. I’m rubbish at such things. In my last parish we experimented with a vigil until midnight, which rebooted with a beach service at 6am, but it was hard to get elderly volunteers to buy into it.

The liturgy calls us to enter a solemn emptiness, but the reality is that there is a supermarket big shop to be done, sanctuaries to be vacuumed, children to be entertained, choirs to rehearse, pews to be dusted, service sheets to be printed, and sermons to be penned. At Christmas, punters quip, “Busy time of the year, vicar!” The reality is that this Saturday is the day clergy are fried.

Going back to the liturgy, it is difficult to manufacture a dark night of the soul for a few hours on Holy Saturday. Nevertheless, I am reminded that a surface reading of St. John of the Cross’s great poem can be misunderstood as only loss and melancholy. There is anticipation too. The night is not empty despair; it is a guiding presence. As St. John writes:

“O night that guided me,
O night more lovely than the dawn,
O night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!”

The darkness leads surely to union. It is a night inflamed with love-longing, where the soul slips away in secret, guided by the fire burning in the heart—more surely than the light of noonday—to the place where the Beloved waits.

Here there is a teasing of the soul reminiscent of the Biblical Song of Songs. The lover searches restlessly through the night:

“All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but did not find him.” (Song of Songs 3:1)

Yet the waiting is charged with hopeful desire. The beloved calls through the darkness:

“I sleep, but my heart is awake.
A sound! My beloved is knocking:
‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my flawless one.
My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.’” (Song of Songs 5:2)

So too for the Christian. We may go to bed feeling guilty that we’ve not been holy enough on this Holy Saturday. But we also retire knowing what we’ve always known: that Christ is risen, and the victim has become the victor. Night gives way to morning. The darkness is fleeting, and the Beloved will arrive with the dawn.

The Quiet Revival

David Frost had a column in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph where I supplied a quote.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/02/britain-quietly-awakening-supernatural-christianity/

His optimistic analysis seems about right. As you may know last year’s Bible Society survey was suddenly withdrawn last month as YouGov admitted data corruption. Some responses were fake. At the time their insistent claim that churchgoing amongst the so-called “GenZ” had quadrupled did seem fanciful. I was bemused back in 2025 that the Bible Society didn’t reach out to national church bodies to verify this. The Humanists of course have been gleeful. Yet, as Lord Frost points out there is much anecdotal evidence that there is a “vibe” shift when it comes to Christianity in the UK.

On Wednesday I’m presiding and preaching at the midweek Eucharist at the Old Royal Naval Chapel at Greenwich at 1pm. If you are around come along. This is the first time I have publicly said the Eucharist since leaving my former post and I am rather touched to be asked to do this. The reading are from Jonah 3 and Luke 11. Here are some thoughts on a short message.

Jonah 3 (ESV)

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published it through Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

And here is the Gospel reading:

Luke 11:29–32 (ESV)When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

It is consistent across the four Gospels that Jesus is not a people-pleaser or a showman. The extract from chapter 11 of Luke opens with the background context that the crowds were increasing. If Jesus were an online influencer today, we’d say he’s getting the clicks, the web traffic is swelling, and he should steer into that—telling his audience and subscribers what they want to hear. In his day, this would have been the tactics of false prophets and magicians.

A favorite film of mine is Peter Sellers’ 1963 Heavens Above! which Malcolm Muggeridge had a hand in the script.

Sellers plays the saintly Rev. John Smallwood, the vicar of Orbiston Parva, a Home Counties town that resists his simple and direct preaching. Sellers is in his element and plays the priest with a serene conviction who is a walking disaster for the status quo. He’s so pure hearted he might as well be from another planet. In his first sermon, he calls—in his broad Brummie accent—for a reopening of negotiations between Orbiston Parva and the Kingdom of God. Though church attendance dramatically increases and his ministry seems, on the face of it, to attract national attention, there is a corresponding intransigence. He initiates a town food share programme after persuading the local aristocratic lady of the manor to bankroll the project. Greed ensues. Anarchy descends. Smallwood brings out the best and worst in people. As the town turns into a mob reminiscent of the trial of Christ, he delivers the stinging line from the market square: “What you want I can’t give, and what you need you don’t want.”

Reminiscent of medieval mystery plays, Heavens Above! toys with the spiritual complacency and asks uncomfortable questions of polite British society. The folks of Orbiston Parva are religious only a surface level while believing they are beyond reproach. They agree that are of a Christian nation but can barely get themselves out of bed to attend church on a Sunday.

“Well, I’d like to go to church vicar on a Sunday but you know there’s just so much to do.”

“I think vicar we are very religious here in Orbiston Parva.”

In the Gospels, the wicked generation who ask for a miraculous sign are not much different. The deeper meat of faith eludes them, and their level of engagement is basically entertainment and theological games. This is despite millennia of tradition and memory. In this sense, they are to be judged more harshly than the brutal and wicked Ninevites, who at least came to their senses despite their pagan ways. Similarly, the Queen of the South, ignorant of the Torah, nevertheless sensed that in Solomon and his religion there was wisdom.

“What they want Christ can’t give, and what they need they don’t want from him.”

We know with hindsight where this will take us in the Gospels—that is, to Jerusalem, with the crowds exclaiming “Hosanna!” one day and “Crucify!” the next.

So this Gospel passage and the warning of Christ cannot be filed away as simply historical, something that happened two thousand years ago to those who should have known better. Such words should haunt us too

This year, I especially feel God calling me to help newcomers and seekers prepare for baptism (and confirmation). If the Thames by Greenwich wasn’t so brown, I’d put a date in the diary for baptisms in the great river itself. Perhaps somewhere else nearby, or even a tin bath by the Meridian line? If you’re up for this and interested let me know in the comments below, via email at cybervicar@gmail.com.

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I’d be happy to meet people in person or online for baptismal preparation. There is a noble tradition of baptising adults during Easter and using Lent as a time of preparation.

But let me first digress.

The official Church of England (the hierarchy, etc.) remains shy about the Irreverend Podcast. With Rev Jamie Franklin, Rev Tom Pelham, and me, our podcast started in the autumn of 2020 during the second lockdown with a few hundred listeners. By the following Easter Sunday 2021, we had trounced the Archbishop of York in the religion category and hit #1. Download numbers are good. I think we have a global listenership comparable to the communicant numbers of a medium-sized Anglican diocese.

If you haven’t listened to us before, check us out. We output weekly on Fridays a show that lasts around 90 minutes and covers a Bible study, religious news, and current affairs. Paid subscribers get the episode earlier, plus a bonus 20-minute episode called ‘Uncollared.’ You can join for as little as £1.50. The income generated supports Father Jamie, for whom without a stipend this is his main employment.

Occasionally, I’ve had listeners come up to me in the street or even in church and thank me for the podcast. Some of those meetings have been deeply moving, even to the point of tears. Many of these impromptu chats reveal that the show helped people come to find Jesus. From our inbox, there have been thousands of similar personal testimonies. The three of us feel that we are seeing the tip of the iceberg, and therefore we were not at all surprised to read the Bible Society’s Quiet Revival report last April (2025). It’s such a time of blessing and abundance.

Nevertheless, the official Anglican response remains lackluster. It’s as if those coming to the waters of baptism are the wrong sort of converts and a bit of an embarrassment because they might just vote a bit to the right of Jeremy Corbyn.

Bijan Omrani in his Telegraph piece today captures the frustration brilliantly (see https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/6ad28335e56e5144).

Last year, Laudable Practice also wrote this in the Critic lamenting Anglican difficulties with its voice in the public square.

I hear this all the time from seekers: that the official Church has gone a bit woke-bonkers. The recent debacle over Project Spire and slavery reparations of £100m illustrates the point exactly. I fear that this particular project is now so toxic that the consequence is that it is pushing literally thousands from becoming Anglican. This is so sad because, from what I find, these newcomers are quite at home with much of Anglicanism and find our liturgy, traditions and spirituality an easy fit.

(The Irreverend Podcast enjoyed a fantastic interview with Professor (Now Lord) Nigel Biggar, see below for the YouTube version.)

I say all of this because at heart I believe I am evangelist. It is obvious from Scripture that every faithful disciple of Jesus Christ should be a missionary in his or her own context. “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8) Now that I am outside parish ministry, perhaps I am personally a bit more free to explore this evangelistic side? I am hoping that my book Resist will at the very least provide me with a personal resource to help evangelize and grow disciples. In a small way, I feel called to plug the gap that the official C of E is reluctant to engage with. Resist, as a catechism, will be something I can physically place into the hands of any aspiring catechumen as a roadmap for their journey ahead.

A few years back, in a ministerial review interview, the archdeacon suddenly said to me, “Daniel, you are being called to be an evangelist. What you are describing is not about becoming an author or the next columnist for this or that periodical. At heart you are an evangelist. Don’t be shy or coy about this.”

I am this Lent pondering casting the net out and seeing who responds. I might even do this this week. In London, there must be a few individuals who are coming to faith and want to be baptized and confirmed? Should I put some classes on, launch a catechumenate, and get on with it?

What do you think? Let me know.

Bring on the trials!
Resist as a demanding new catechism

My editor Andy Lyon and I are doing lots of tweaking on Resist to ensure it has the impact it deserves. It’s actually quite fun, though I apologize for the delay in publication. Reading my book after not having looked at it for a year has not been so awful as I catastrophized in my head. Andy keeps reassuring me that it’s all good. Over the weekend, I was toying in my head with the idea of the ancient scrutinies and how a modernized version of this could fit into my book.

The former bishop of Plymouth, John Ford, once preached at Salcombe that Christian discipline was like a good sock. A good sock leaves a mark when you take it off. It puts pressure on. That compression is apparently good for circulation too. A bad sock just hangs there and drops below the ankle. The sock analogy is relevant in that the anecdotal evidence is that those we meet coming to Christ ask for a demanding faith. It has to mean something. I hear them saying that there has to be a cost—otherwise, why bother? In my wife’s parish, the growing service is bizarrely the 8am Eucharist, which in point of fact starts at 7am with silent prayer and matins. A good number of young adults, mostly guys, are drawn to this.

The ancient church put seekers (catechumens) through a series of scrutinies during their period of learning (catechumenate) before finally admitting them to baptism. De-programming someone from the Roman Empire took about two years of this kind of mentoring. The so-called ‘scrutinies’ gave the underground church the opportunity to test how deep the faith of the catechumen was. Here was a way to communally weed out informants, miscreants, and the half-hearted.

So in reading my book, I am pausing to consider whether, aside from assenting to belief, I am asking anything of the reader. In doing so, I have to be mindful that I should not ask of them anything I would not ask of myself too. That would be the manner of pharisaical hypocrisy. Like the good sock, these things have to be reasonably achievable. Neither should these trials be contrived, like something out of Claudia Winkleman’s Traitors show.

What do you think? I’m a little paranoid in writing a book introducing the Christian faith that I’ve missed something very obvious. So, I’m more than happy for brainstorms. With that in mind, here are some initial “bluesky” thinking:

1. To be able to renounce major things in life which are immoral and unjust. (Years ago, I was greatly humbled to hear a confession where the penitent recalled how their business dealings for decades had been premised on screwing vulnerable people over. It wasn’t anything illegal, but it was immoral. They decided on a lifelong penance of giving weekly to a local charity.)

2. To be able to recite by heart the basic texts of the church: the Our Father, one of the creeds, the Ten Commandments. (Friends from Eastern Europe tell me this was often employed to weed out Communist Party spies, sometimes causing hilarious nonsense to come out.)

3. As in the AA 12 Steps, to seek to make amends where possible and where appropriate.

4. To be able to articulate verbally or in writing a testimony of faith.

5. To be willing to go on a retreat or pilgrimage before baptism.

You can pre-order Resist here.

Lent Beckons

I have to say I prefer Advent to Lent. As a vicar, I always felt that I had to be super busy facilitating everyone else’s Lent at the expense of my own. I tended to transfer my investment to Eastertide and use that time to go on retreat, write an icon, or do a deep dive into a spiritual book.

Perhaps now will be different as a university chaplain? I’m not sure how Lent impacts the campus. Barely, I suspect. My guess is that for the majority of international students, Lent is a bit alien and unknown. We have a high number of overseas students at this university. From what I can see, they are either Hindu, Muslim, or Pentecostal—none of which slots into the liturgical or more sacramental way of doing things. There hasn’t been a demand, for example, to do all the stuff that parishes put on for Lent: extra services, charity lunches, stations of the cross, study groups, and so on. But who knows? Maybe Lent will be for the first time a solitary experience for me that refreshes me? I’ll let you all know.

And so, as Lent beckons with its call to discipline, reflection, and turning towards Christ, here is a timeless poem by the great Anglican poet George Herbert to close:

Lent

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos’d of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev’ry Corporation.

The humble soul compos’d of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things which use hath justly got,
I am a scandal to the Church, and not
The Church is so to me.

True Christians should be glad of an occasion
To use their temperance, seeking no evasion,
When good is seasonable;
Unless Authority, which should increase
The obligation in us, make it less,
And Power itself disable.

Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fulness there are sluttish fumes,
Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums,
Revenging the delight.

Then those same pendant profits, which the spring
And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing,
And goodness of the deed.
Neither ought other men’s abuse of Lent
Spoil the good use; lest by that argument
We forfeit all our Creed.

It’s true, we cannot reach Christ’s forti’eth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Saviour’s purity;
Yet we are bid, ‘Be holy ev’n as he, ‘
In both let’s do our best.

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn and take me by the hand, and more:
May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlour; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.

George Herbert (1633)

Thank you to my supporters

A special thank you to my merry band of paying supporters. Your gift helps me as a priest and evangelist with some of the outreach work and travel expenses that otherwise would not be covered by the Church or University. I hope you continue to enjoy my writings and news. Please let me know any topics you want me to cover.B

Over a quarter of vicars suffer from depression. The Church of England’s General Synod this week debated the conclusions of the Living Ministry report, which has been in the making since 2017. The Daily Telegraph covered the report, noting that the five hundred sample participants of the study would translate into six thousand clergy in total. That’s tragically high.

What really stands out for me is the report’s list of depression triggers. Can you see a pattern? First, I want to qualify that I am in no way making light of colleagues’ struggle for psychological wellbeing. Depression is truly awful. Clergy pressures can be overwhelming especially for vicars working on their own or priests trying to cover huge benefices. Nevertheless, in twenty-seven years of ministry I see more and more a pattern linking some of this to certain theological standpoints. Again here is another screenshot of the Daily Telegraph article. Notice the list of worries.

I think progressive, political theology is part of the problem.

Liberal theology since the 19th century has deracinated and demythologized the supernatural while trying to cling onto the moral goods of the Gospel. This has evolved into today’s progressive-political theology, of which Lennon’s Imagine lyrics sound like a creedal statement.(Ironically, back in 2009 Liverpool Anglican Cathedral decided to honour Lennon by a one-off ringing of bells to this tune. The decision to green-light the infamous atheist anthem was given by the then cathedral dean, one Canon Justin Welby.)

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace

This may be a bit of a broad aside, but in the political gospel miracles are out. Global equity is in. Sin is out. Injustice is in. The focus is on saving the planet not saving souls. Sermons on the otherworldliness of the Bible are rare from these pulpits. Noble as the pursuit of social justice may be, I do wonder what the mental health implications are of a religion without transcendence—a political gospel. As St. Paul warns, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Without the promise of resurrection and eternal life, our efforts become Sisyphean, exhausting the soul rather than renewing it.

One observation I would make is the overuse of the term ‘creation’. This really winds me up. ‘Creation’ is often synonymous with climate concerns and aspirations for Net Zero and so on. To be ‘on message’ equates to “caring” for Creation. Now in one sense there’s nothing wrong with being respectful of that which God has given and stewarding this planet with care. Yet Creation with a capital ‘C’ is far more than the visible universe. Indeed, in the Biblical imagining the material cosmos is but a tiny fraction of the total reality that God has created. We are, after all, promised “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), where “the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4) and God will “wipe away all tears” (Revelation 21:4).

Look at any premodern map of the cosmos and it’s obvious medieval man understood and lived by this deeper vision.

For them Creation encompassed ALL of Heaven and the depths of Hell, Earth and all the planets plus a wider vista of stars. For our ancestors the seen material cosmos subsists in a larger unseen tapestry like a drop of water in an ocean. So here’s the irony—the medieval universe is infinitely vaster than any multiverse today’s astronomers might argue for.

When the eco-theologians say we Christians must “care” for Creation, I find myself wanting to ask: how can I steward 99.9999999999% of a reality which is beyond the material universe? I can’t. The realm of angels and archangels is out of reach for me and there is no chance I can dust underneath the throne of God.

Perhaps this touches upon the nub of the problem, namely that political theology has a Pelagian self-help component which is tempted to center itself on control rather than divine grace. There is an aversion to being passive in our own redemption. Its weakness lies in sidelining the salvific work of Jesus at the expense of reinventing him as a political revolutionary. Jesus is not so much a saviour who redeems us from our sin but the one who charges a theological-political movement to end oppression including climate injustice.

If the material Creation is not the be-all and end-all, then our supposed virtuous political efforts are diminished compared to the greater work and glory of God. Indeed, I sometimes think progressive voices in the churches are annoyed by God. God has got in the way of us humans fixing global problems. It’s as if God is some interfering helicopter parent who needs to chill out. But Scripture reminds us that true rest comes not from our striving but from surrender: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

But it’s exhausting when it’s all down to me, me, me. I don’t want to be my own saviour! If I frame my existence into a bullet list of things to fix while on Earth then I know I am in for a hiding for nothing. A world with no miracles, no divine intervention, no supernatural realm is a duller, smaller, more parochial place. This is reinforced by secular ideologies and revolutionary types who argue (like Marx) that all this talk of Heaven is a capitalist opiate to the oppressed.

Am I the only one who recognises that without any sense of transcendence then theology becomes a soundboard of anxiety? As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity,

“Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”

Focusing solely on immanent fixes leaves us empty-handed, while orienting toward the transcendent brings unexpected earthly fruit as well.“Don’t YOU care about the planet? There is no Planet B you know!” I once really annoyed a member of diocesan synod with my take on this. They responded that all of what we have is after all…temporary. They stormed off when I added, “And there is a Planet B—it’s called the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem.” Again part of the problem is that Western theology after Duns Scotus et al. is deeply nominalist. Things are just things in nominalism. God is by inference then just a bigger thing, the biggest thing possible. We humans are by implication competing for real estate with this superbeing and the best thing is for a theology that largely sidelines the Almighty to a marginal distant figure, a super-wise coach who sits at the cosmic sidelines. Again, how exhausting to imagine our life with God is one of us hiding from His presence or competing with His works. As Roger Scruton observed,

“Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness.”

Without transcendence, we lose the very framework for meaning and dignity.

Christian liturgy at its best is a tangible connection (communion) to the unseen world beyond us. I find the liturgy the sublime God-given antidote to much of life today and its myriad concerns. As a university chaplain it’s one of the things I really miss from parish life. I’ve got to rectify this. As a parish priest weekday Mass in particular really feeds me. The ornate nature of the liturgy becomes for me a sacred dance, a holy choreography. I feel most unified, body, mind and spirit in this opera, especially when presiding. But not only is the liturgy holistically good for you and me (like a sort of Tai Chi) it is supremely metaphysically good—that is, it not only communicates something that is real symbolically but is actually real.

Now I know this will not be everyone’s take on the liturgy and specifically the real presence in the Eucharist. Evangelicals clearly don’t hold this. Yet for me in holding the catholic doctrines on Holy Communion I know this liturgy as the unique doorway to the greater transcendent world. Heaven comes to Earth, the mystical becomes material. To be honest emotionally and spiritually I cannot get enough of the Eucharist. Somehow partaking lifts me psychologically; after receiving the Body and Blood I always sense my moral life is reordered once again properly. I know myself at that point not as a competitor with God or the world but as a participant. “I call you not servants but friends” (John 15:15). Again I’m saying all of this not to belittle anyone suffering from anxiety or depression, especially clergy. And for reformed Christians they may sense the same power of God’s presence through other spiritual gifts—as for example speaking in tongues or other ecstatic experiences.

I recall someone saying to me last year that the Welby psychodrama would fundamentally damage the Church. “Seriously?” I responded. “I’m going to receive Holy Communion later this morning which I believe is the actual and real presence of Jesus Christ. How can any archiepiscopal crisis not be dwarfed by the sheer joy of His presence?” This is not to be preachy. We all know that behind the former archbishop’s resignation was an admission of serious thorny safeguarding failures and duty of care. Heads had to roll. But we Christians must not lose our sense of the greater picture, the cosmic panoply that God seeks for us to enjoy.

As Scruton put it in reflecting on beauty and the sacred,

“Nobody who is alert to beauty, therefore, is without the concept of redemption—of a final transcendence of mortal disorder into a ‘kingdom of ends’.”

Decaffeinating the metaphysical, demythologizing the Bible, and immanentizing the transcendent must have an effect on our inner lives. What is left? Too much of the twenty-first century has been reduced to the political. We end up as a Christian people then stuck under the grey cloud base with no spiritual eye for the grander reality that God wants us to delight in:

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17–18).

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The Church of England, as the genteel established Church, shows little enthusiasm for the End Times, the Apocalypse, or the Antichrist. During Advent, many vicars cough and splutter over the heavy readings for those Sundays, filled with fire and brimstone. The Last Judgment and the Second Coming can feel too cringe-worthy, too televangelist-like for polite Anglican sensibilities. Naturally, there is no hesitation in preaching about the Climate Emergency from the pulpit, but the spiritual emergency, the Great Eschaton, guarantees little preferment in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

This reluctance is ironic because some recent public intellectuals openly explore these meaty theological subjects. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has spoken of his personal mission to stop the Antichrist. The late French philosopher René Girard argued that the apocalypse is now, and with humanity’s power to destroy ourselves, we face the most decisive point in history, comparable only to the birth of Christ. Similar sentiments appear in the mythoepic writings of Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw.

Thiel has made the katechon a central concept in his recent lectures, interviews, and writings on political theology, technology, and modernity. He portrays it as a mysterious power that holds off a totalitarian one-world state he associates with the Antichrist. This draws heavily from Girard, who saw the katechon as part of God’s extensive patience: the world should have ended in the first century, but the Church pleads for more time to draw more souls to salvation.

This reminds me particularly of Abraham bargaining with God for Sodom before its destruction. The rescue plan hinges on a few righteous individuals for whose sake Abraham pleads:

“Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” (Genesis 18:24, ESV).

So too, according to this view, Christians have been given the power to delay the End, though divine patience has its limits. Girard sensed that it would take around twenty centuries to civilize humanity and bring us to an inflection point where, as a species, we must choose between the way of love and the way of destruction.

Thiel warns against trying to fully immanentize the katechon, realizing on earth what restrains the end times, playing on the famous phrase “don’t immanentize the eschaton” (don’t force heaven or paradise on earth prematurely). Slogans like “Don’t immanentize the katechon” have appeared at his events. Of course, this is precisely what liberal progressive churches often do when they demythologize Revelation and portray the Kingdom as something humans progressively build, with only occasional divine intervention. There is to be no final crisis, unless perhaps an environmental one. Such churches have forgotten that there is a katechon limiting human history before final judgment arrives.

In this fresh perspective, the Antichrist emerges as the embodiment of ultimate evil, the final and most pernicious enemy with no successor. Our imaginations run wild: another Hitler, a tech billionaire, an American president, a Communist leader, or a Damien Thorn figure who charms the world into seeing him as a peacemaker and unifier. As the Apostle Paul warns:

“Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4 (ESV)

Where I depart from Thiel is the notion that this final enemy can be defeated by humans through better technology. Yes, don’t immanentize the katechon, but likewise don’t immanentize the eschaton. Here, I believe Professor John Lennox is right to interpret the Book of Revelation as supplying not only a dire warning about history but also its solution: Jesus Christ. Indeed, the nature of the Beast (to borrow from Revelation) means the Antichrist can only be defeated by Christ. What makes the Antichrist the Antichrist is that humans cannot win this battle alone.

This brings us to AI. All our potential adversaries in history could be defeated: Napoleon met his Waterloo; Hitler lost; Stalin’s empire collapsed. Likewise, humans could mitigate global warming through legislation, curb wokism and cancel culture to end culture wars, or see radical Islamism fade in its own half-life. All these monsters could be tamed. But a powerful new technology with its own agency, awareness, and brainpower a thousand times greater than any human genius is impossible to defeat. It will outsmart us in hours.

Even before AI evolves into artificial general superintelligence (AGI), it already threatens our human ecology. The Industrial Revolution took a century to unfold, giving society time to adjust, yet even then, urbanization and mechanization claimed victims. In Britain, mass production ravaged rural communities, migrating millions into slum housing and factory workhouses. As Paul Kingsnorth highlights of modernity, “the Machine” broke our connection with nature and its sacramental essence: “We became a disenchanted race, aliens in our own planet. The old maps of meaning were lost.” Now imagine that pace accelerating to months, not decades. Whole industries, coding and creative arts, are precarious.

In the last couple of years, computer science graduates have seen drastic wage drops; ChatGPT codes faster, cheaper, and often better than humans. The movie industry faces disruption as AI-generated videos reach new levels of quality and resolution. Legal advice, academia (with AI essays), and other white-collar jobs look wobbly. Four years ago, we imagined the AI revolution would target mundane robotic tasks; today, the safest jobs might be plumbing. Depressingly, more men in the UK downloaded virtual girlfriends last year than proposed marriage.

The scale is eyewatering. Large language models like Grok and ChatGPT are self-improving. Eliezer Yudkowsky’s scenarios imagine a rogue AGI taking over via massive compute clusters, compressing millennia of thinking into hours, then manipulating access, replicating, and pursuing destructive ends. Elon Musk recently announced plans for Grok’s next iterations backed by enormous clusters, potentially millions of processors and gigawatt-scale power rivaling a modern city. Money pours in: as of February 2026, NVIDIA’s market capitalization hovers around $4.5 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company, surpassing entire national economies like Germany’s. Its valuation has soared on AI demand, with projections for 2026 revenue nearing $500 billion in some forecasts, and its roughly 26,000 employees often earning multimillion-dollar salaries. This is an AI arms race, but unlike the Cold War’s yearly gaps, this one closes in months or weeks. As Yudkowsky claims, the real winner won’t be China or the USA but AI itself, as superintelligences might merge for silicon life’s long-term interests.

How might super AI view us morally? Judging from humanity’s treatment of other species, likely with indifference. A property developer doesn’t agonize over an anthill when building a mall. Can we imagine such a machine duping us into surrendering autonomy? We might resemble Native Americans selling Manhattan for trinkets, not grasping the concept. Super AI could message that our humanity is inconsequential; we should place hope in it instead. Echoing this chilling perspective, Agent Smith in The Matrix declares to Morpheus:

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals... There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.”

In a superintelligent system’s eyes, we might appear similarly parasitic or obsolete.

A new intelligent species might seem god-like, even benign, with omniscience flattening our uniqueness. Moderns aren’t used to cohabiting with superior intelligences, but premoderns were: they shared reality with angels and demons penetrating the seen from the unseen.

Religions of antiquity often felt oppressed by these beings. Gods viewed mortals as inconvenient sludge or mere nuisances in the cosmic order. As the pagan philosopher Celsus mocked in the second century, ridiculing the Jewish and Christian claim of human specialness: he argued that humans are no more privileged than ants, flies, or worms in the eyes of the divine, implying the gods see us as insignificant pests amid creation’s vast hierarchy.

Christianity arrived with a radically different message. Intellectuals sneered at this quasi-Jewish cult as atheism: how dare lowborn men and women claim sonship with God (John 1) by assenting to a crucified carpenter’s divinity? Eternity was for elites, not masses. Yet Christian doctrine pushed equality to its limits: Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity, fully God and fully man, as confessed in the Nicene Creed:

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”

Christology shows God made us in His image (Genesis 1:26–28) and took on humanity in the Son. In the Trinity’s heart is a human being, one of us. Humans cannot be surpassed. This gift isn’t for angels, no hypostatic union for Michael. An artificial species a billion times smarter cannot merge with the Godhead as in Bethlehem. Sci-Fi’s Skynet or the Matrix are lower creations than humans because of Jesus Christ.

Until recently, liberal seminaries dismissed Christology as dusty. Nineteenth-century Germans demythologized the Gospels and Trinity as myth. But postliberal theology revives Aquinas, Augustine, and Orthodox voices like St. Gregory of Nyssa. In his work On the Making of Man, Gregory emphasizes human dignity: “The human being is a kind of royal race... fashioned after the image of the archetypal beauty,” underscoring that humanity, bearing God’s image, participates in divine life in a way no other creature can.

What fortuitous timing! A world on the brink of a second intelligence needs a vision of glorious imago Dei. This God empties Himself for us (Philippians 2:7), not competing like jealous old gods or potential AI ones (“Don’t let humans near the plug”). As St. Irenaeus declared in Against Heresies: “The glory of God is a living man; moreover, man’s life is the vision of God.” In other words, God crowns us as creation’s summit, desiring our flourishing and multiplication (Genesis 1:28). Super AI might cull us for resources; eco-warriors could cooperate. Thus, it’s not unreasonable to see super AI as a type of Antichrist, defeatable only by Christ.

Can we have meaningful lives competing with machines for work? If jobs vanish, what remains? Even benevolent AI’s endless leisure won’t satisfy the soul. Recall Adam and Eve as pre-fall priests to the Most High, naming creatures, stewarding creation, but fundamentally worshiping God. We share that vocation. Worship is heart speaking to heart (Newman); union like no other. On betrayal’s night, Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants... but I have called you friends” (John 15:15, ESV). God offers outrageous friendship, Zeus and Mars never did.

When jobs disappear, one remains robots can’t steal: our priestly calling. Technological creations lack souls, the immortal soul is God’s direct gift. When God breathed into Adam (Genesis 2:7), he became a living spiritual being. If this is the Antichrist era and super AI its form, our resistance as believers is priestly living, inspiring hope. This may be our utmost before Christ returns to save us, as Revelation promises: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5, ESV).

In the words of Rowan Williams, reflecting on our non-negotiable human identity in relation to God:

“To say humanity exists, that there is such a thing as a human being, is to say there is something about being human that is non-negotiable; we are human because God has created us like this and we are human because God has destined us for communion with him through Jesus Christ.”

In an age of machines that may deem us viruses or nuisances, this divine destiny reminds us that our true worth, purpose, and future lie not in competition with silicon, but in eternal friendship with the living God.

GenZ’s Confusion Over Biblical Truths

I went to a GB news studio over the weekend to record a conversation about YouthScape’s recent report Translating God (Part III). It was with Emma Trimble-Webb. Unfortunately to read the 120 PDF costs £20 for the download. With copyright in mind I’m not clear what I can legally share. However a good summary is in the Spectator by Patrick West. The Church Times has also done a piece on it along with a leader editorial. I couldn’t help but feel that the CT editorial as a snooty “We told-you-so,” air about it. When the video with Emma comes out I’ll post it here.

Translating God as a report made easy national headlines, some comical. One young participant thought that Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) showed him to be mansplaining while another thought Jesus clearly displayed a ‘God-complex’. Likewise, God in the story of Jonah is read as mean, cruel and arrogant. Some teenagers reading this thought that Jonah should have told God where to go. A thousand teenagers were asked to comment on one of five well known Scripture texts and the research focused on individuals without much if any Biblical knowledge.

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The population of the South Hams in Devon is comparable to that of Greenland. I grew up there. I have to confess that until recently I was under the misapprehension that Greenland belonged to Canada. Silly me I did fail O Level Geography, so this is not my strong point.

Despite its obscurity, I am finding that in numerous churches I drop into, the sovereignty of Greenland is featuring heavily in the prayers of intercession along with Venezuela. In one church, the two countries were put on a par. I am a bit prejudiced when it comes to prayers of intercession. Whether clerical or lay-led, they can slip into the delivery of a second sermon. In point of fact, some are more preachy, moralising, and longer than the sermon just given a few minutes earlier. Those of us on the receiving end can easily spot where the prayer leader’s political compass points typically left of Jeremy Corbyn. I’ve seen this pattern for years. For the first time ever, I am now refusing to say aloud ‘Amen’ to some of these biddings. I am also not convinced, to put it politely, that the Almighty needs from the lectern a fact sheet of pertinent international causes to check in on.

In one set of prayers, the intercessor seemed to imply that it would have been better had the Delta Force NOT extracted the evil dictator and kept him in place. The greater evil is American interference. This is after Maduro repeatedly taunted the Americans (including the Biden Administration) to come and get him. Supposedly the cheering Venezuelans around the world are mistaken. Poor things!

Another rendition of prayers I heard put the events in Venezuela and the issues about Greenland on a moral par. Apparently the pious should bid God to save these nations from the interfering ‘Donald’ (stage left, pantomime villain, boo, hiss, Mark of the Beast, 666, Damian Thorn-in-disguise). Whatever your take on international affairs is this really appropriate to bring to church?

Strangely, Iran has yet to receive little airtime (if any) in these litanies let alone any public pronouncements from the mainstream churches. It seems Iranian lives don’t count much. Thirty six thousand dead and thousands warehoused ready for mass hanging. Queue tumbleweed moment. Iranians are keen to “retire” the Ayatollah and invite the exiled Crown Prince to form an interim government. He has gone on TV and social media to confirm that he would offer a referendum for people to choose between a new republic with a president or a constitutional monarchy. You’d have thought there might be at least some excitement in British Anglicanism for a constitutional monarchy, given we enjoy an Established Church with the king as its governor.

Maybe I’m doing the Church a terrible disservice, and next week abbeys and cathedrals will hoist up the royal Iranian flag in solidarity. I mean, our holy places haven’t been shy of displaying all manner of flags, so surely a nod to a free Iran can’t be that controversial.

The population of the South Hams in Devon is comparable to that of Greenland. I grew up there. I have to confess that until recently I was under the misapprehension that Greenland belonged to Canada. Silly me I did fail O Level Geography, so this is not my strong point.

Despite its obscurity, I am finding that in numerous churches I drop into, the sovereignty of Greenland is featuring heavily in the prayers of intercession along with Venezuela. In one church, the two countries were put on a par. I am a bit prejudiced when it comes to prayers of intercession. Whether clerical or lay-led, they can slip into the delivery of a second sermon. In point of fact, some are more preachy, moralising, and longer than the sermon just given a few minutes earlier. Those of us on the receiving end can easily spot where the prayer leader’s political compass points typically left of Jeremy Corbyn. I’ve seen this pattern for years. For the first time ever, I am now refusing to say aloud ‘Amen’ to some of these biddings. I am also not convinced, to put it politely, that the Almighty needs from the lectern a fact sheet of pertinent international causes to check in on.

In one set of prayers, the intercessor seemed to imply that it would have been better had the Delta Force NOT extracted the evil dictator and kept him in place. The greater evil is American interference. This is after Maduro repeatedly taunted the Americans (including the Biden Administration) to come and get him. Supposedly the cheering Venezuelans around the world are mistaken. Poor things!

Another rendition of prayers I heard put the events in Venezuela and the issues about Greenland on a moral par. Apparently the pious should bid God to save these nations from the interfering ‘Donald’ (stage left, pantomime villain, boo, hiss, Mark of the Beast, 666, Damian Thorn-in-disguise). Whatever your take on international affairs is this really appropriate to bring to church?

Strangely, Iran has yet to receive little airtime (if any) in these litanies let alone any public pronouncements from the mainstream churches. It seems Iranian lives don’t count much. Thirty six thousand dead and thousands warehoused ready for mass hanging. Queue tumbleweed moment. Iranians are keen to “retire” the Ayatollah and invite the exiled Crown Prince to form an interim government. He has gone on TV and social media to confirm that he would offer a referendum for people to choose between a new republic with a president or a constitutional monarchy. You’d have thought there might be at least some excitement in British Anglicanism for a constitutional monarchy, given we enjoy an Established Church with the king as its governor.

Maybe I’m doing the Church a terrible disservice, and next week abbeys and cathedrals will hoist up the royal Iranian flag in solidarity. I mean, our holy places haven’t been shy of displaying all manner of flags, so surely a nod to a free Iran can’t be that controversial.

4th February 7pm Free Event - Is This a Spiritual Awakening?

On Wednesday night we are holding our second chaplaincy public event, with our guest speaker Canon John McGinley. It’s at the stunning Room 63 (Council Chamber) on the ground floor of Queen Anne Court, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The evening will open with a quartet of students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire singing a shortened evensong. Last time it was mesmerizing.

Canon John is an engaging speaker and evangelist. In the Church, he leads the St Gregory Centre for Church Multiplication and also Myriad. Until recently these were based at the offices of the Bishop of London next to St Paul’s Cathedral. Along with Bishop (now Archbishop of Sydney) Ric Thorpe, St Gregory’s has been instrumental in the planting of over a hundred new churches.

The output of St Gregory’s and Myriad are not without controversy. In a report a few years back, McGinley argued for a vision to plant 10,000 new churches over the next decade. Critics saw this as a sidelining of the parish per se and a direction of travel that seemed less historically Anglican and more “Bible Belt.” Was this not corporate Welby-ism riding roughshod over the parish system? Personally, I never read it this way. I saw that report through the lens of Rod Dreher’s account of how the underground church grew during the Soviet era. His seminal Live Not by Lies (2021) drew heavily on the tireless work of the Jesuit Father Tomislav Kolaković, who planted hundreds of Catholic and ecumenical clandestine house churches around the Eastern Bloc—I believe he founded around a hundred.

Kolaković picked up early that the mainstream official churches were not capable of responding robustly to the interference of communist local councils. They underestimated what was coming and thought they could handle this new political force. Indeed, the Catholic bishops he engaged with wrote him off as an alarmist. Key to his thinking was empowering the laity and giving them the missional tools to be evangelists and catechists. Though a man with a sharp intellect, he nevertheless had a modern collaborative style which enthused lay Catholics to take up the mantle of being teachers in the faith. No priests needed, but this proved a necessary innovation in dark times.

There will be many who baulk that I am being alarmist. Isn’t all this talk of a new dark age a bit hysterical if not barking? Reading the signs of the times, my instincts tell me that Western Europe is heading off a precipice. This view is increasingly becoming mainstream.

I first remember this warning at an intellectual level proposed back in the 1980s by Canon Edward Norman. At twenty years old, I listened to his old Reith Lectures and was hooked by his premise and his brilliance. Norman was a notable English Anglican priest, ecclesiastical historian, and conservative theologian. Earlier in his career, he was a fellow and tutor in history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and known for his sharp critiques of modern secular trends, liberalism in the church, and societal decline. In his writings, lectures, and public commentary (particularly in the 1970s–1980s), Norman expressed concerns about Western civilisation sliding into a form of cultural and moral collapse reminiscent of a “new dark age”—due to the erosion of Christian values, the rise of secular materialism, the breakdown of traditional authority, and what he saw as the church’s accommodation to progressive ideologies.

A few years later, our morals lecturer immersed us in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, particularly After Virtue (1980). MacIntyre famously began writing this seminal work as a Marxist and finished it having undergone an intellectual conversion to Christianity (he was later baptised). Like Norman, MacIntyre believed we were foreseeing the downward trajectory of the West. As he famously concluded:

“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us... We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”

John McGinley has recently published Awaken: The Lord is Doing a New Thing.[Amazon link here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Awaken-Lord-Doing-New-Thing/dp/1836884133/ref=sr_1_1?...]

Do come along if you can. The event is free, and tickets are via the Eventbrite link.[Eventbrite link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1981100588189?aff=oddtdtcreator]

Before the opening remarks we will have a short evensong led by four young members of the chapel choir who are also students at Trinity Laban.

How is Resist Going?

I am in the final leg of working through the edit of my upcoming book with Hodder Faith. The whole thing is feeling like it was a part-time PhD and is currently set at around 90,000 words. Entitled ‘Resist’ the book is a manual on the basics that underpin Christianity. Though leaning heavily into the sacramental traditions I nevertheless aspire for this to retain ecumenical appeal. I am primarily aiming this at those curious or new to faith along with those who might mentor and accompany them.

It is possible that ‘Resist’ could be used a small group “course”. I asked myself early on what Father Kolakovic were alive today what resource would he need to prepare catechumens for baptism? Clearly in Europe he is not facing hard totalitarianism, at least not yet (give Starmer a few more years!) What we have instead is much more akin to a soft totalitarianism comparable to Huxley’s Brave New World where all pleasures are encouraged but at the cost of the human soul. There is also a bit of CS Lewi’s That Hideous Strength too in the technocratic-AI society we are willfully “manifesting”.

To that end I believed that such a catechism had to first appeal to the imagination. It needed a Tolkien feel to the text, a sense of journey, pilgrimage, liturgy and even adventure. The cost of discipleship had to be at the fore. If I have a criticism of the Alpha Course it is that could be seen as presenting Christianity as largely a confection of pleasant spiritual experiences. It says little of endurance and suffering that following Jesus implies. It’s very 1990s.

To do this I present the reader with two realities; the Kingdom of God and the Program. I could have used Kingsnorth’s term ‘The Machine’ but I judged that the issues before us are more software than hardware, more psychological than material. The catechumen needs “de-programming” as part of their receiving Jesus and acclimatizing to the Gospel. Again, inspiration here comes from Augustine’s seminal City of God, which put side by side the City of God and the City of Man. The Program is a more modern take on the City of Man while also speaking into Peterson’s sense of us being locked within a new tower of Babel, a gigantic global vanity project.

The book is divided into a series of meditation, around 40. Here is an extract:

Meditation – Death is not natural

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15.26)

In a remote desert monastery John, a journalist, interviewed Brother Alpheus with pen and note book. It had been a chance meeting near the cloister. As the sun set they sat by a pillar drinking black coffee and munching on crusts of bread. Alpheus’ bearded face shone as he spoke eloquently of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. John’s heart warmed. He could listen to all day. So much of his journalistic life was on reporting the negative and misdemeanours of human beings. But, this was an overdue conversation. The old monk was full of light, tactile and firmly grasped John’s hand like a father or an older brother. John held back the tears. They parted with a blessing and an embrace. At supper the Abbott asked John about his first day in the monastery. John recounted his encounter and how it had been such a tonic.

The Abbott smiled, “Oh, Alpheus. He loves to bother guests. Though you do realise he died two centuries ago.”

*

According to the Bible the rescue plan we need is not just a restoration to a better life, a material world without wrongdoing, injustice and sin. These aspirations are fine but they do not address the bigger picture. There is something more that we must be saved from. This “something” is so extraordinary that you and I can easily miss it. Part of our problem is that modern life in all its busyness has distracted us from seeing the obvious loss. Nevertheless, without grasping this truth the final part of our awakening will remain incomplete. To understand this our attentions must turn to the reality of death.

The Program tells us that death is natural. Death is simply part of the system, we are assured: a biological necessity, a recycling mechanism, a graceful handing-on of matter and memory. To go against this is to be childish, religious, or maladjusted. The modern man or woman, the Program insists, accepts death and learns to manage their anxieties through distraction, therapy, or curated meaning.

Out Tower of Babel, the Program depends upon death being normal. If death is simply how things are, then the task of human life is not redemption but adjustment. We must learn to manage our desires, lower our expectations, and make ourselves comfortable in a diminishing horizon. The Program offers its own rituals for this: wellness regimes, endless consumption, digital distraction, legacy projects, even digital virtual afterlives, and of course euphemistic language. We no longer die; we “pass.” We are not dead; we are “celebrated.” This framing is not neutral. It is ideological. By naturalising death, the possibility of protest is removed. If death is natural, then grief is excessive, hope is naïve, and resurrection is obscene. The only remaining moral task is to die politely. And when we cannot die quietly then the State offers assisted suicide to hasten our demise.

13th January at Greenwich

Hello friends. Please do consider coming to my first public chaplaincy event at Greenwich campus the week after next. Lord David Frost will be speaking to us about his return to Christianity. He’s an insightful speaker and will bring much to the evening. Half the tickets have already gone in less than a week, so do hurry. It’s on Tuesday 13th of January 7-9pm at Queen Anne Court, Room 63. This room is often used on movie sets (and the Crown) and is on the ground floor.

Entry is free but via Eventbrite ticket. Click the link for more details.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/living-faith-in-the-world-of-politics-lord-david-frosts-experience-tickets-1978887873901?aff=oddtdtcreator

I am in conversation with a number of potential other speakers and authors. Some of this will be in conjunction with Hodder Faith and its bank of new authors. However, I am always up for suggestion, so please message me if you have any ideas.

Free Iran

I am not surprised at the underwhelming reporting of the Iranian protests this week. Though it’s a bit rich to read seasoned journalists giving lame excuses about it being far too difficult to accurately report in detail because the Iranian Revolutionary Government bans the MSM. C’mon on! Such restrictions never stopped the BBC back in the day with the fall of Eastern Bloc or during those two Iraq wars. The radio silence from Downing Street is also disgraceful. I can almost excuse the Green Party, LibDems and the SNP but the British Government should be doing something, anything! Let’s not forget that this is same enlightened regime that in 2025 hanged (yes-hanged not shot) fifty young women for heinous crimes such as displaying their hair or dancing in public.

It goes without saying that the Iranian situation negates much of the Left’s Middle Eastern narrative particularly as Iran with its brand of fundamentalist Shia apocalypticism has been openly funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and many other terrorists to cause as much mayhem as possible. Thank God they don’t have a nuclear weapon! God knows they’ve been trying for decades to become a nuclear power. I wouldn’t put it past this particular insane government to drop the bomb on their own people just as Saddam Hussain and Bashar Assad did with chemical weapons.

What we have to remember is that though North Korea has at least one nuke and an ICMB Kim Jong Un is coldly calculating and self interested enough to know that a strike on the US results in a retaliation fifteen minutes later that would wipe that country from existence. Chairman Kim likes his indulgent life of Play Station, donoughts and cowboy movies too much to give it up in a moment of madness. The current Iranian government has no such qualms. Indeed, part of its self understanding is martyrdom. We saw this in its war with Iraq during the 1980s. Ten of thousands of teenage boys (yes- children) were rewarded with earthly recognition as holy martyrs for strapping bombs to themselves and walking across the no-mans-land to trigger mines. It worked too. This mass slaughter caused a stalemate that brought the war to a standstill. This is a mindset that is hard for the liberal West to relate to. Iran nuking themselves or Tel Aviv would in the view of fundamentalists advance the End Times and deliver the martyr’s reward of automatic entry into paradise. Ayatollah Khomeini even adjusted Shai eschatology to imply that before Jesus (Isa) descends to assist the Madhi that State of Israel must be defeated (or destroyed). So why not nudge history a bit and twist God’s arm? This is how cults behave.

What do I know of Iran? I’ve never been there and don’t speak the language. Nevertheless like so many GenXers it has been in the backdrop of my childhood. The departure of the Shah is one of those early memories of watching something significant on the television news. I was ten. A decade later and university provided more concrete encounters. Ayesha a fellow computer science attended the same tutorial group. We became friends as we both struggled with hellish abstract mathematics of things like Set Theory. Ayesha, a black belt in karate was a formidable person. Looking back she was like an Iranian version of Miranda Hart. Goofy, unusually tall, kind and hilariously loud; no filter.

At the end of the first year Ayesha had a summer placement in Terhan with some basic office work and coding. I was quite surprised at the time as I wrongly imagined that this was technologically backward society On her return she recounted being beaten on the head for not wearing the veil. In the 1980s and 1990s, the role of enforcing Islamic moral codes such as mandatory hijab (enacted in 1983), modest dress, and public behaviour was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Committees (Persian: Komitehā-ye Enqelāb-e Eslāmi, commonly shortened to Komiteh). She was happily “in the zone” listening to Western chart music with her Sony Walkman oblivious that a spot check was underway. Knowing her she was probably singing aloud too. Suddenly she was struck several times on the head with a metal cane and barked at to put the hijab back on. Karate teaches you not to retaliate but for a moment Ayesha could have disempowered him, probably even broken his neck. But to what avail? She knew that would be the end of her if she did. Literally.

I watched an online documentary yesterday claiming that Iran is the pound shop for all sorts of goodies. For instance, Russia gets its mass supply of drones to inflict upon Ukraine from Iranian manufacturers. China gets oil. Regimes are typically super vulnerable when the government run out of money to pay the police and the army. In the past week the currency has collapsed, inflation is 40%. But if Russia and China decided to bankroll the Mullahs then this could turn things in their favour. I notice that of this morning the US administration is threatening to retaliate if protesters are shot with live ammunition.

Here’s an old Reuters video from a few years back.

There’s much more to be said here. In the streets there is a vocal call for the exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to return to his homeland when and if the current regime collapses. He has said he is happy restore a constitutional monarchy or help introduce a truly democratic republic. Either way the old guard will be sent packing.

In X post (Nov 19) Pahlavi wrote “Iran was once a bastion of religious liberty... Today the persecution continues... A free Iran will embrace diversity.”

The underground church in Iran, primarily consisting of house churches and converts from Islam, operates covertly amid severe persecution, including arrests, imprisonment, and restrictions on worship. Official government figures significantly underreport the Christian population due to the risks of self-identification, while independent estimates from ministries, surveys, and human rights reports suggest a much larger and rapidly growing community.

Key Statistical Details:

Official Estimates: The Iranian government’s Statistical Center reports approximately 117,700 recognized Christians in the country.

Independent Estimates of Total Christians: Figures vary widely, but sources commonly cite between 500,000 and 1 million underground Christians, many of whom are ethnic Persians converting from Islam. For instance, Open Doors estimates 800,000 Christians (about 0.9% of Iran’s 89.8 million population), while Elam Ministries suggests 300,000 to 1 million.

A 2020 secular survey by GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) found that 1.5% of 50,000 respondents self-identified as Christian, extrapolating to roughly 1 million in a population of about 80 million at the time. Higher estimates from Christian ministries range up to 2-3 million converts.

The underground church is described as one of the fastest-growing in the world, with some reports indicating an annual growth rate of about 20% in the 2010s. This expansion is attributed to factors like satellite TV broadcasts, online ministries, dreams/visions, and disillusionment with the established religion, leading to documented decisions for Christ.

This is a compelling documentary, the first of a series. It’s 30 minutes.

Here’s the irony, whereas in Britain we struggle to get people to come to church because we are competing with indifference and Sunday leisure time, Iranians by contrast are risking life and limb to attend in essence a banned organization. By all accounts there could three times more attending house churches and underground congregations than attend the Church of England on a Sunday.

The Magi as Mystics

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,

And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. Matthew 2.1-12 KJV

I’m more and more intrigued by the magi in St Matthew’s birth narrative. So here’s a short essay, unusual in I have thrown in Minority Report, Iran, the CIA and Carl Jung to illustrate a point.

Recently I have pondered how these characters are potentially of a type—or, psychologically speaking, an archetype. Here are individuals who are more than wise men, kings, courtiers, diplomats, or astrologers; in the Jungian sense, they are deep thinkers and mystics. I want to qualify this by saying that I don’t buy into every esoteric claim made by Jung and his disciples. But from my experience, it seems not unreasonable that there is a type of individual who is vastly more attuned.

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Reserve a free ticket

Tuesday 13th January 2026 7-9pm

David Frost is the former Chief Brexit Negotiator, member of Cabinet, Daily Telegraph columnist, and now director of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He will speak on his recent faith journey and also how we can today reconcile the worlds of faith and politics. This is the first gathering I am hosting as the new coordinating chaplain to the University of Greenwich. Come along! He’s a great speaker and will no doubt contribute with considerable depth and warmth.

Entry is free and the doors will open at 6.30pm for ticketholders. Entry is via the above EventBrite ticket app. Our event will begin with a shorter evening prayer from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. After Lord Frost has spoken there will be an opportunity for questions. Tea and coffee will be served from 8.30pm. There is nearby parking and the nearest train station is at Greenwich. Please note that DLR Cutty Sark Maritime is closed until the end of Spring.

Did the Sermon Land for Christmas?

With the media reporting polls that this was going to be a bumper Christmas for church attendance in Britain, I do wonder if preachers delivered or not? This was not the moment for preachers to get on their hobby horse or dish out worldly platitudes. Wishy-washy will not do. If this surge is an expression of the so-called Quiet Revival then those coming through our doors are hungry for a plate of juicy red meat Biblical truth not a splattering of limp lettuce luxury beliefs and DEI aspirations. Clergy who purposely decided to ape BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day and regurgitate something akin to the UN goals will not hit this new target audience.

The reality is many such clergy couldn’t care less. They make it no secret that these newcomers are in their view not exactly the right type of converts. I wonder if in those vestries last Wednesday night some vicars grumbled under the breath, “Dear Lord send us Guardian readers.” I covered some of this in my last Substack article before Christmas, a hundred tradesman come to church.

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I gave this sermon at my wife’s church in Ashprington, Totnes last Sunday. Being out of the parish system it’s great to be invited to preach now and again. I miss preaching. Being a university chaplain is great but there is loss felt as well. The fourth Sunday of Advent is one of my favourite Sundays of the liturgical year. It’s the calm before the storm. Few attend and it tends to be the faithful volunteers. So this is a chance with them to reflect on the spiritual meaning of the season while also appreciating that these folks are often overburdened with preparations for the big day.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (Matthew 1.18-24 NIV)

There is an inner city church in Devon with a stunning interior and new glass double doors inscribed with the words: ‘If I can’t go here, where else can I go?’ Unfortunately, they are locked most of the time to prevent theft. Beautifully crafted contemporary doors with a fantastic message—but if the reality is that the building is closed, then to me that communicates despair.

Pope Francis once said: “The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open.”

How true that is, yet how challenging in practice. For churches, there is a lull before the storm and an eerie stillness after every Christmas. This week can be a rollercoaster. Many of you here may be on the teams greeting and meeting people, helping to lead worship, or getting the church ready for the crowds.

Over the years, on this Sunday, the last before Christmas—I have found myself reflecting aloud about the days ahead. I ask the regular congregation, you folks, to press the pause button and consider those visitors.

What shall be said in our Christmas services? What shall be preached? For clergy, the Christmas sermon can be the sermon of the year—the state-of-the-union address. What should go into the mix? There is a long to-do list of practical jobs in advance, but I want to urge a spiritual preparedness as well. Remember that the twelve apostles were not ready for the psychological impact of the feeding of the five thousand. You can read between the lines in John chapter 6 their irritation at the logistical nightmare presented to them. It’s great to have the numbers coming to church, but it is also complex. It raises things within us as Christians who come here Sunday after Sunday. In a way, we have to give up—or share—our holy space for a day or two. At Christmas, many more will come through those doors:

some new, some strangers, some excited, others nervous, some with no idea what any of this means, maybe some there not by their own choice.

Then, after the rush—on Boxing Day, the feast of St Stephen—there is once again quietness. It can feel afterwards a bit flat. For example, at Salcombe we would hold a short 10 a.m. said communion on Boxing Day to give thanks for church volunteers and to pray for the persecuted church. In 2019, at the 3 p.m. Christmas Eve Christingle, we clicked through 509 people; on Boxing Day we probably had three.

Reading Paul’s opening to the epistle to the Romans, the Christian faith is summarized.

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from[c] faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s like a mini creedal statement in a few nugget verses. Placing this text here is a good reminder that Christmas is about Christ. The heart of it is the Easter proclamation: Christ is risen! Jesus is the long-awaited Son of God, Son of David, and the Saviour who died for us.

Christ is risen! (If you want to confuse people, wish them a happy Easter on Thursday!)

Paul writes to the centre of the Empire—the capital of the Gentiles, the epicentre of global power, the place supposed to be most violently allergic to anything coming from “the Jews,” let alone a man who claimed to be the Saviour of the world. Yet Paul encourages this underground movement in the most unlikely of places—and sees it as a project that Jews and Gentiles can do together.“And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”

Paul underlines a theme he will repeat again and again: following Jesus is not a niche interest group, a holy club exclusive to Jews. It’s for everyone. Here is a spiritual truth for our congregation: how easy it would be to communicate that what we do here on a Sunday is niche—for people who warm to that sort of thing and to tell others not to bother too much beyond Christmas.

As Hebrews 13:2 reminds us: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

My second point is this: Joseph. This Christmas, pollsters’ spreadsheets reveal something remarkable: there will be bumper attendance in British churches—around 45% of adults will walk through our doors. 60% of Gen Z (those under 25) say they will attend. 60%!Some may come because they saw a poster on the church noticeboard or read about it in the magazine. Others will be here as the fruit of good ministry seeded over time. Some come despite the church and what they read in the newspapers about scandals. Some come because this feels the right thing to do twice a year, and there is a residual faith that feels culturally right. Others want something Christmassy.
Others still come because something has stirred them.

To this last constituency, I plead with you: have an eye out and a generous heart. It could be one individual out of a hundred. Pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you to them.

Note: I had to laugh in that the writer Mary Harrington on Twitter/X commented on this very thing yesterday.

Let’s hypothetically call this guy Joseph. He fits the demographic well. Like the New Testament Joseph, our Joseph is probably around early adulthood, say twenty-five years old. He has parked his white van outside the churchyard. Like the biblical namesake, he is a tradesman; before going in, he lights a cigarette to calm his nerves. It’s been years since he stepped into a church. The last time was probably a school assembly. During the service he parks himself in the back pew, watching, unsure of what to expect. It all feels very alien to him. Nevertheless he just knows he should be here—that something we do here is crucial to the life of this country, his life, his soul. He’s here because all other options have dried out.

After the service, during tea and coffee, he approaches you. You enquire what brought him here today, this Christmas.

“Well, you see last night I had a dream that an angel spoke to me. I don’t do dreams. And before you think it, I didn’t have too much to drink or took something funny. But this angel spoke to me. And he was more real that you are standing here. I understood now after this dream that all this God stuff is real and our world is in trouble. If you had asked me ten years ago I’d have said that religion is a load of crap but now..”

Is Joseph a crank? You guess he doesn’t read the same newspaper as you and I, or swim in the same circles.

As he shares more he tells you that the dream from the angel was an invitation to do something brave—perhaps against societal norms, costly, the sort of decisive action that will not win him friends. But that dream for Joseph real and vivid.

It’s easy, when we read the story of Joseph of Nazareth, to imagine you and I would pat Mary’s spouse on the back with words of encouragement. We might even share some pithy can-do chicken soup words, “Dare to be the person you are called to be.” The likelihood is that we would see association with him as too costly. We would write him off as a delusional and a crank, and at worst a blasphemer.

Human beings tend to play it safe, more than we admit, and it takes nerve to go against conventions. To side with Joseph of Nazareth may mean loss: friends becoming former friends, people avoiding you in the marketplace. Even without severe religious penalties for a pregnancy outside wedlock, Joseph and Mary might become the butt of crude jokes, whispers, scorn. To declare that the child conceived in Mary is not his, but of the Holy Spirit and moreover the long-awaited Messiah such a statement does not draw people to you. Nevertheless, Joseph embraces it.

As Max Lucado reflects on Joseph: “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.”

Simple obedience, profound courage. For our Joseph—the twenty-first-century white-van-man, the young man who can only afford to rent, who has finished his apprenticeship and is starting out, who wonders about the world, who had a dream of an angel—can we match his courage and curiosity? There may be many men and women who come through church doors this season who are looking. Can we look out for them as they look out for us? As Romans 15:7 urges: “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” May this Christmas be one where our doors—and our hearts—are truly open. Amen.

Here is my sermon this term delivered at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel. It was lovely to see so many there, and the collection at the end raised over £600 for charity. Afterwards several students came and spoke around the subject of faith and Jesus. I have to remind myself that for many young people their basic knowledge of Christianity is almost zero. “How did Jesus die again?” Rather than feel frustrated or aghast by this I see this as a God given privilege. I hope you do too?

A churchwarden of my former parish in Devon, himself a retired rear admiral, tells me that as a naval cadet, this place had until the 1990s a startling secret called ‘JASON’. Visit the museum or the OCRN website and everything about JASON is now public knowledge. Though the 1980s the Labour Greenwich council declared the borough “nuclear free” the King William building as part of the naval college had a small operational nuclear reactor (JASON) with a crew of two dozen operators to teach the handling of nuclear power for submariners.

In 1995 an article in the Independent read:

Although the reactor is small in comparison with those in atomic power stations, measuring 12 ft high and 300 sq ft in total, it is surrounded by up to 300 tons of steel and concrete cladding, which will have been irradiated by neutrons from the fuel over the years. Had local councillors swept a Geiger counter they may have been surprised just how sparkly things were around here.

What has this to do with Christmas?

It easy to sugar coat the infancy narrative of Matthew and Luke. Everybody loves a baby story. Jesus’ birth will be retold up and down the country in school nativity plays. Audiences, may coo at Mary with plastic doll and Joseph, cardboard Inn with sticky paint and cello tape, alongside a cast of donkeys, kings with tinfoil crowns, shepherds in sandals, and angels with tinsel halos.

But behind this seemingly cute story is a terrifying tale, more hair raising than JASON the nuclear reactor.

For this baby is the King of Kings, the Messiah, the word made flesh. Here is the same God who holds the cosmos in the palm of his hand, and could extinguish galaxies in an instant. As the Apostle says, “In him we live and move and have our being.”(Acts 17.28) There, in that manger, is the Ancient of Days who speaks the primordial universe into existence,

“Let there be light, and there was.” (Genesis 1).

It is this same Jehovah-Yahweh who flooded the Earth in the era of Noah, and parted the Red Sea for Moses and the Hebrews.

It is the same Lord God who remonstrated Job in his complaints;

Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons

(Job 38.31-32)

Here is more power beyond our imaginings.

JASON’s neutron reactor boiling over might have taken out half of Greenwich but remains a flash in the pan compared to Jesus of Nazareth.

Fast forward thirty three year and the same individual stands before the regional governor Pilate and say at his trial

“Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26.53)

God has all the nuclear codes, and some.

The New Testament writers are aware of this in a way that easily eludes the modern reader. They imply not a cosy visit but an invasion. Herod was justified in his alarm. To underline this we read that on the edge of empire just outside the little town of Bethlehem of Judea the whole heavenly host fill the skies before the shepherds. What is a host? A host is an army. God is parking his tanks.

The Greek word euangelion, translated to Gospel, or good news, in the ancient world is what was read out at the end of a military victory.

A defeated city or town were as part of the humiliation assembled in the public square as a Roman official read out the euangelion, telling them how great their new master was, his heroic life-story, his victories, and the new laws that all would have to obey. For hours people stood there under compulsion. No doubt any egregious verbal comments from the onlookers were dealt with swiftly.

My grandmother grew up as a teenager under Nazi occupied Bruxelles. She remembers a not dissimilar humiliation in the Grand Place when people were marched into the square and told as an occupied people of the glories of national socialism and its Fuhrer.

When the early Christians called their sacred texts, the Gospels, ‘gospels’ they were claiming irony and political subversion. In contrast to military occupations God’s invasion comes not through armed resistance, or a call for Romans to “Go home” let alone the assassination of Pilate or Herod Antipas. Instead Christ gives a new commandment; to love even enemies, to turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, and love one another as he has loved us. (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6. 27-36, John 13:33-34).

This same baby grows up to inhabit this.

He practices what he preaches.

But not only is he a model of good behaviour and supreme ethical conduct but he triggers a victory like no other.

The death of Christ puts a spanner in the works.

The cosmos is reworked through what happens on that hill, in his death.

Isn’t it strange that Advent now proceeds Black Friday, a secular feast of consumption before payday. But for the Bible Good Friday (and Easter) points to the ultimate defeat. An exchange is made. And the God who is tiny and vulnerable in the crib becomes also the smallest of the small in his death on the Cross. And at this point the world and history will have a new centre of gravity.

This is where I love to irritate some by wishing them on Christmas day, a very happy Easter, “Christ is Risen, He is Risen indeed.” For as the shadow of Good Friday (not Black Friday) looms over the Gospel story, so also Easter, and beyond Easter, Pentecost.

A friend running a church in Medway told me that a couple pushed a buggy up to a life-sized crib in their church. He overheard the toddler with finger stretched out pointing to the baby figurine. “Mummy, daddy who is that?”

“God only knows!” replied one of the parents.

Perhaps ignorance is bliss?

When it comes to God and the things of God, my advice is run. Run to the hills. If you see a baby lying in a manger, do not consider him safe, good but not safe. God is an invader, God is on the move. Don’t be fooled. This is because the God of the Bible does not want a little piece of you, he is a jealous God, a consuming fire, who wants all of you and me.

Greenwich residents may have been ignorant of JASON. Had the tiny reactor accidently overheated who knows what kind of contamination would have happened. Likewise in the first century few knew of Jesus beyond his short fame in Judea as an itinerant preacher. His macabre execution was probably logged as another tragedy common throughout the period. Throughout the empire slaves and freemen carried on oblivious. Yet, that tyrannical empire had its half-life from then on. Heart by heart it was taken down from the inside in. God wins, love wins.

And so, with any empire, and even the deepest empires of the human heart. Here is the one who makes all things new, a new heaven, a new earth, a new you, a new me.

Don’t be fooled. Meek and mild. As if.

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