[394.1] A CASE FOR REHABILITATION

"Can we find a way of transposing the remains of folk religion, other vestiges of a desire for a 'Christian nation', and the remaining opportunities of a paraochial system which still theoretically covers every area of the land, into the shape of an ecumenical church which can nonethless know and show that is stands for the universal concern of the universal God for the whole of humankind?" ~ David E. Jenkins, writing in God, Miracle and the Church of England (SCM Press, 1987).

A good question with which to mark the formal end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (*.PDF resources from the WCC for 2007). And with which to signal the question about how the 'inherited' and the 'emergent', in terms of Christian institutions, might engage in fruitful interaction. This is also, by extension, an inter-faith question. What is the community of Christ in a globalising, plural environment? As the early Christians asked in Acts of the Apostles, "Where are the ends of the earth?" {Image: St Bartholemew's, Dinard, France}

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