Monday, July 27, 2009

All Quiet in the Cathedral

The Cathedral tour guide who never once mentioned God, Jesus, or the Christian faith during a tour of Salisbury is the topic of a couple of threads, one at Cranmer, and the original by Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home.

Sharing the same tour was American blogger CrunchyCon, who also takes a dim view of the bookstore. He notes that during some recent time in England, there was increasing despair about society in general, and the church's response to social breakdown.

Tim's post brings to mind several conversations I've had with English Christians of various traditions on my travels here this summer. There is among them a very deep concern about the moral direction of this country, and what role exiling Christianity from the consciousness of the nation plays in this.

His post is not the whole story, but it's part of it.

I note in passing that there's a vigorous debate about assisted suicide going on at Conservative Home as well. I'm struggling to think of anything equivalent on a Christian-run blog. Maybe this backs up CrunchyCon's point - the moral discussions are, increasingly, bypassing the church. That's partly because we don't play knockabout/rentaquote, but it might also be because we're too scared of offending people to make clear and unequivocal statements.

2 comments:

  1. 'There is among them a very deep concern about the moral direction of this country, and what role exiling Christianity from the consciousness of the nation plays in this.'

    Thank goodness Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are both Christians.

    At least there are some Christians in power in the past 12 years to set the moral tone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice one. I think most Christians are still waiting for Blair to give a convincing account of his faith and his time in office.

    ReplyDelete