Positives

A funny old weekend. I managed to attend the first part of a very uplifting and successful Walsingham Day at Saint John's on Saturday; was cheered by Charlton's return to the top of League 1 on Saturday afternoon -  before writing off my computer keyboard when I emptied the contents of a glass of beer on it in the evening. Heigh ho.

I seem to have spent a lot of time at the keyboard not least because I have a huge amount of various business and volunteering-related  stuff  to do, most of it involving tax returns and Excel spreadsheets. At such times I need distractions and the internet comes up trumps. I got drawn in to a various interesting discussion piece on Father Ed's blog about his appearance on the front page of the Tunbridge Wells Courier.

The origin of the piece was an earlier posting on his blog about the increasingly secular content of funeral services ("My Way" by Frank Sinatra, etc, etc) and Fr.Ed's piece lamented the passing of yet another area of Christianity from people's everyday lives. The tone of the offending blog item was characteristically unambiguous and it was perhaps the absence of the "on the one hand...........but on the other...." that is expected of our clergy that it came in for a bit of a hatchet job from the local paper. The suggestion was that it was rather insensitive to say such things in a time of family grief.  Needless to say the local Humanist rep felt it necessary to put the boot in.  I would reflect that a priest expressing views about  the Christian faith ought not be seen as worthy of  front page news and I hope that this incident does nothing to dilute future content of Fr.Ed's blog.  

From time to time I pitch in with a Christian perspective to an atheist forum. I do so secure in the knowledge that such interventions are likely to attract a  bit of flack. However tonight I received a response to an earlier contribution to a debate on science and religion  that was quite unequivocal about my mental health (Christian = Deluded/Mad/Crazed etc, etc). By any standards of civilised debate, it was not measured. It was a hate and anger filled rant that made me wonder who the real "Fundamentalists" are. 

 It will hardly be headline news but I am increasingly begging to  recognise that my faith is under real attack. Unless something happens and soon the triumph of liberal secularism/atheism/Dawkinsism  is not a question of if but when. That is a real threat to the church. In particular I see real dangers for the Church of England as it attempts to tackle its many internal divisions. Time to put away the Vicar of Dibley, Derek Nimmo and the eccentric/harmless stereotypes with which it is associated in the popular mind. It is really time to recognise that the church's very survival is at stake.