In April of this year I tried to summarise where the mainstream churches in the UK stood in relation to the vexed issues of same sex marriage, matters around transgender and related questions. In the Spring of 2020 we had arrived at a point where gay and lesbian people were able to be married in the Scottish Episcopal Church, the URC, the Quakers and Unitarian and some Baptist churches. The Methodist Conference (now postponed because of the pandemic) is due to vote for a second time on proposals to allow same sex marriage in its churches and chapels.

It’s so easy to be a one-issue voter. It’s also so superficial to be a one-issue anything. It’s a narrow, delimiting approach to the very essence of life.

And there may be some truth in that. But it is also true that all humans must be enabled to live as human beings — with dignity and decency — or the rest of us are no longer fully human beings ourselves, whether we realize it or not.

When in my early years living in Keswick the convention was an annual weekly event that in recent has been extended to three weeks. The Keswick Convention has been the spiritual home of conservative evangelicals for the last 145 years. It was started by two men, Canon Hartford Battersby a local vicar and Robert Wilson, a Quaker and businessman. Both had recently attended the Oxford Conference on religion from which both were inspired to start a religious gathering in Keswick in 1875. There was at the time much religious fervour in the country and in America stimulated by Robert Pearsall Smith and his wife Hannah preaching a holiness doctrine that influenced many. Both the Pearsall Smiths were originally Quakers who later became members of the Plymouth Brethren, with its strong emphasis on the inerrancy of scriptures and strict members' discipline. Robert was invited to speak at the first meeting, but illness prevented his attendance. Subsequently many speakers from the UK and America have been welcomed to lead the convention meetings who have a theological perspective as evangelicals that is fundamental to the Keswick Convention.

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,’” he said. “This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

These abiding principles – loving God and loving others – are at the very foundation of my faith. Throughout my career in public service, these values have kept me grounded in what matters most. As a husband, father, and grandfather, they are the cornerstone upon which our family is built. Through the pain of losing my wife, my daughter, and my son, they have sustained me with eternal hope. My faith has been a source of immeasurable solace in times of grief, and a daily inspiration to fight against the abuse of power in all its forms.

November 2, 2020

The title of these Letters from Outside the Camp is a reference to the many usages of “outside the camp” in the Hebrew Bible. In this series, we are using the phrase to signify a perspective from outside the contemporary political and religious “encampments” of our day.

These letters are addressed to those of you who are sincerely and devotedly trying to camp elsewhere than in any political party or religious denomination and outside the world of strongly held opinions. We know full well that we must now avoid the temptation to become our own defended camp.

As always, we want to inhabit that ever-prophetic position “on the edge of the inside,” which is described by the early Israelites as “the tent of meeting outside the camp” (Exodus 33:7). And even though this tent is foldable, moveable, and disposable, it is still a meeting place for “the holy,” which is always on the move and out in front of us.

In our ugly and injurious present political climate, it has become all too easy to justify fear-filled and hateful thoughts, words, and actions in defense against the “other” side. We project our anxiety elsewhere and misdiagnose the real problem (the real evil), forever exchanging it for smaller and seemingly more manageable problems. The over-defended ego always sees, hates, and attacks in other people its own faults—the parts of ourselves that we struggle to acknowledge. We do not want to give way on important moral issues, but this often means we don’t want to give way on our need to be right, superior, and in control. It is our deep attachment to this false or manufactured self that leads us into our greatest illusions. Most of us do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.

There is a very poignant moment in Scripture that gets little exegesis, it seems, but it touches the deepest nerve of a people in mourning for the loss of the character of their nation. Like our own.

It is the picture in Luke 19 of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem — the city on the hill that was the heart and soul of the nation.

"Jerusalem," Jesus cries, "you killers of the prophets." And then he speaks to the troubled city, "If only you had known the path to peace."

Thousands follow their favourite singer or sports star on Twitter or Instagram. Every week, Hello magazine reaches more than two million adults, keen to see and read about the world’s celebrities. Autobiographies, such as Michelle Obama’s Becoming, often top the booksellers’ charts. Recent cinema releases have told the “true-life” stories of stars such as Judy Garland and Elton John.

The docudrama genre is increasingly seen on television. Recently, the BBC told the personal stories of those caught up in the Salisbury poisonings affair; it has also screened the harrowing story of the racist killing of the black teenager Anthony Walker, murdered in Liverpool in 2005. Such reality-based stories hit us hard, and help to shape our attitudes and responses.

We human beings are made of stories. Our life in this world is our story to tell: a unique story, whether we be famous, infamous, or unknown. Five short films, commissioned by the Progressive Christianity Network (PCN), tell the stories of ordinary people grappling with important contemporary issues. Since a report in this newspaper (News, 4 September), we have had many enquiries from people wanting to show these films, from dioceses to prison chaplaincies.

September 28, 2020

The idea of the "Beloved Community" was central to the thinking of MLK jr. It appears from his earliest speeches and writings to his last ones. In an early article he wrote that the purpose of the Montgomery bus boycotts "is reconciliation…redemption, the creation of the beloved community." In 1957 he wrote that the "ultimate aim of SCLS is to foster and create the ‘beloved community’ in America where brotherhood is a reality."

In his final book he states that "our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation." Thus, we need to expand our sense of community. He warned that desegregation by itself would only produce "a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts apart."