There has been much discussion of late on the place of religion in society.  Two recent kerfuffles come to mind - the British Airways worker who refused to remove or conceal her cross, the outward symbol of her inner faith and the Muslim teaching assistant who refused to remove her veil while in the classroom.  Both of these incidents resulted in much media coverage and, as a result, got people thinking about the place of religion in our twenty first century culture.  People like Professor Richard Dawkins would like to see religion completely disappear from society altogether and he makes a small fortune from his books attacking God (not that God is in the least bit "bovered", He is quite big enough to look after Himself!) - although, paradoxically, if it wasn't for God - Professor Hawkins would be out of a job and his income would fall dramatically as he would have no one to attack!

Recently I attended a conference at Great Baddow in which the speaker floated the notion that Christendom was a thing of the past and the new expression of being the Church was in the process of emerging - although, what this new expression might look like in practice seemed to be pretty vague.  When we throw the Baby Jesus out with the bathwater - both water and baby are gone and all we are left with is an empty tub.  If we are not mindful of where we have come from then it would seem that we haven't much of a clue as to where we are going and, to change the analogy, we are left, in the famous words of Stevie Smith - "Not waving but drowning".  It seems to me that we must be very wary in seeking an alternative to Christianity within our society.  There seem to be two possible alternatives waiting in the wings to take over - either Secular Materialism or Multi-culturalism.  Nowadays, there are a number of faith communities in Britain and I would suggest that people of different faiths have much more in common than those who have no faith at all but what multi-culturalism seems so often to mean in practice is that we can celebrate almost anything unless it is Christian.  To seek to marginalise the dominant faith which has sustained this nation for centuries is nothing short of crazy.  Fortunately the fight-back seems to have started - recent comments from the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Rochester (both of whom, incidentally, are Christians whose faith was nurtured in another country and resulted from the that which was inculcated by Christian missionaries in Uganda and Pakistan respectively) bear witness to this with a re-newed zeal to "Stand up for Jesus".

As guardians of our children's future we must keep faith with the past.  In survey after survey Faith Schools (the majority of which are Christian) come out as offering the best education.  A school, like any other institution, needs a robust ethos to sustain it - what better ethos can there possibly be than Christianity which has stood the test of time, for Christianity is rich enough and stable enough to be able to offer something distinctive to the world without being captured by the world.  We must keep our memories fresh with regard to the established faith of this nation and we need to actively cultivate the Christian memory which has so sustained what is great in the life of our nation.  Lose that and we will suffer from the collective equivalent of Altzheimer's disease.

Let me conclude with a quotation from an article by William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times entitled - "Thank heaven for our history" in which he argues - compassion, care for one's neighbour, liberty, justice - we owe them all to our Christian legacy.  He concludes the article with this final sentence.  I would encourage you to ponder deeply upon it as a good thought with which to begin another new year:-

"Christian teaching gives value and life to human society; education without religion does not."

HAPPY NEW YEAR BLESSINGS,

FATHER DAVID