We exist because the Sun is. It was 5 billion years ago that the Sun "turned on" and scientists estimate that there is another 5 billion years of life left in the Sun. We live in the midpoint of its life; at its noonday. It is a star - it is our star - it is our daystar. It's not the biggest nor the smallest of the 200 billion stars even in our galaxy - but to sustain life on Earth, it is just right.

We experience the Sun as a largely benevolent force, although with the holes in the ozone layer, we are increasingly aware of its danger to us too. The sun gives us life and light. We measure our life by it; evening and morning are because the Sun is. We watch the sunrise and the sunset and they are calming images; they help us put our lives in perspective - today's troubles are cast to the setting sun, as in the Kenyan Eucharistic liturgy, and the new morning brings with it new light, new possibilities, new mercies of God.

But the Sun is by no means a tranquil part of God's creation. This created light is violent, awesome in its power and constantly active, spewing out solar flares, generating electrical energy beyond our wildest imaginings.

How does the sun shine? 400 trillion trillion trillion hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium every second, releasing more energy than all humans have used since the beginning of civilisation. From the core of the Sun, energy takes 170,000 years to reach the surface of the Sun. The Sun is not only violent and active providing us with energy and life; it is also creating sound with this activity. The Sun is singing. It is playing a secret melody, hidden inside itself. Sounds are coursing through the Sun's interior - throughout the whole globe; sound waves moving in and out rhythmically like the regular rise and fall of the tides or the beating of a heart. It is the secret music of space.

Including environmental concerns in our liturgy is not just about mentioning recycling in the sermon or pollution in the prayers. Liturgy in the light of our creation and redemption is all about orientation. All liturgy is embodied and enacted in the context of the sun that shines by day and the moon by night, and liturgy proclaims the two truths of Christianity: God is beyond us, God is with us. Yahweh and Immanuel - transcendent and immanent.

For me, I have two pictures in my mind to help me remember this perspective when I am planning liturgy or writing prayers and sermons. The first is that stars are being born in space now - in the most spectacular way. The combination of chemicals and energies create new light. The second is that 2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day and over 90 per cent of the world's population has never used a mobile phone. God beyond us, God with us.

Liturgy is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet made visible and embodied now on earth. It is therefore a place where right relationships are rehearsed. Biblical justice, Biblical righteousness, and the Hebrew Bible's focus on the anawim, the poor, is not a recognition of individual rights (for example the right to attend public worship or receive the bread and wine) but a making right of an unjust society. And so in liturgy, we rehearse right relationships in proclaiming three fundamental relationships that human beings have. First, to God - that all we have comes from the abundance of God's creation and the gift of human ingenuity and endeavour. All our worship is a response: We have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. Second, to each other - that all of our prayers to God are from a particular standpoint, a particular view of life in the world and a particular place in the economic web of human relationships. And that we are the body of Christ on earth. As the grain once scattered on the hillside is reunited in the body of Jesus Christ, so we are gathered. Third, to the earth - that particularly in the Eucharist we take material things seriously, that we neither despise nor worship nor ignore material things, but reverence them in their transfiguration. Bread and wine become body and blood.

Liturgy as a paean of praise to God is a visceral and natural activity for human beings. It is acknowledging the perspective from which we pray. The created worship their creator from within creation, interdependent, vulnerable yet responsible. And in the 21st century, the human perspective from which we pray is entirely new. For the first time in human history, we are able to be co-creators, co-redeemers and co-destroyers of the earth.

This is theologically profound. Activities once solely the preserve of God; the maker of life and the bringer of destruction upon the earth are now also within the grasp of humans. Humans who once were dependent on the action of God to bring about the end of the world, are able to do it ourselves. The "end times" could be at our bidding. The eschaton is a divine prerogative that humans have the possibility to adopt.

These are profound theological questions as they address the issue of our trust. In whom do we place our trust? In whom or what is our security?

For the first time, we are able to separate ourselves from the earth and look at it in its entirety. Astronauts have spoken of seeing the earth from space and feeling a strong sense of "home". We know it is a beautiful and blue planet. Our perspective and our imaginative engagement with the heavens and the earth are different from ever before.

Liturgy is worship that is purpose-free rejoicing in God. Worship is not utilitarian - not there to "recharge our batteries" or make us feel better, although it will from time to time perform those functions. Liturgy is a response to our creation and redemption. Similar to our discussions about the Sabbath, which is not just a gap in which we can recover from the working week, liturgy is the distinctive moment that makes new the experience of daily life in the world. It is intimately connected to the experience of life and helps us maintain our orientation towards God in Jesus Christ.

Liturgy in Worship is not designed as a protest but it is nonetheless a protest, a counter education in a different set of values. The language of worship is that of God's gift and grace, not the language of contract and exchange. Liturgy, as one recent commentator puts it, is a de-tox from the sickness of consumerism. Liturgy is not of itself counter-cultural, but a repetitive and prayerful encounter with the texts will make it so.

Liturgy is a vehicle for the cultivation of wisdom. It is a place where the truth is told; the story of the earth, the story of human endeavour and the proclamation of hope in Jesus Christ. Liturgy is an expression of hope, which imagines its future and then acts as if that future is irresistible.

So what can we do? I have already used one environmental illustration for meditation at the beginning of this paper. There are many other obvious Biblical ones; trees, fire, mustard seeds and even that icon the environmental movement, the Whale: Leviathan in the psalms, the personification of evil, the seductiveness of evil in Jonah - whose time in the belly of the great fish symbolised the ambiguous relationship between good and evil. Now, much is written about the symbolism of whales as a totem creature in the conservation movement. Whales live in a mysterious environment about which we really know very little: the ocean. They are millions of years old and have been granted the status of the indigenous people of the ocean; they hold ancient wisdom of the earth's origins and have seen dinosaurs. Somehow they know the secrets of the Creation.

The accounts of Creation in Genesis always sound too calm to me - placing the stars, the morning and evening of the first day, the rhythm of it is seductive and reassuring. In fact, for anyone who has been present at a moment of creation - say, at the birth of a baby - the reality is far from calm and quiet. The pain and blood involved in creation is something to meditate upon - the cost of creation, perhaps even to God. This is consonant with the ground-breaking perspective of the philosopher Hannah Arendt who said that human beings defined themselves as "mortals" because we are focussed on our death. A different and enlivening way of understanding ourselves is to define ourselves as "natals" - that is defined by our birth. This in turn is consonant with the teaching of Paul to the Galatians; Jesus Christ is nurtured and formed in the community; as a mother nourishes new life in her, so the community is the womb that nourishes Christ in order that he may be born among them. Christ is formed, shaped in our communities, by our prayers and our regular gathering, as Paul's letter to the Galatians has it. In our liturgies, we are, like a woman carrying a child, to make space, to create a nourishing place for Christ among us; because it is inside our own miraculous and fragile communities - in the Church - that Christ will be born, in the vulnerability of a baby, and with the light and power of the Sun.

Let me identify four places in Church that we can nurture this sense - intercessions, the built environment, the natural environment and in meditation. First, intercessions. An intention to pray for the "Earth", as opposed to the "world" (which tends to be more androcentric) stops church from being too self-referential. We are anxious about expressing our creatureliness and sometimes the language can be a little twee when we thank God for, say, "the meadows where we play". What is the ideology undergirding our prayer and liturgy? It can very easily be of keeping things the same. Chaplaincy to the status quo is expressed in a liturgy that doesn't groan with all creation. It's "Rich man in his castle, poor man at his gate" liturgy. It matters what language we use and how we use it. Because the suffering of the earth and its peoples is so difficult to express, we ask for the Spirit's help in a prayer that is at its fundamentals a sigh too deep for words. Intercessions can be informed by other disciplines; science, philosophy, medicine, astronomy. And when we do pray for people, who are "they" that we pray for? Them and Us? In the light of our creation by God, there is no them and us. There is only us. It is only together that we face the challenges of our planet and its flourishing and the language of our prayers should reflect that belief.

Second, our built environment. Beauty is absent in many urban environments. In 2006 for the first time, more of the world's 6 billion people live in cities than in rural areas. The tipping point was predicted to happen around June of this year. In the spirit of finding a high place like a hill or a wide space like a clearing in a forest, we can define our churches as sacred space - responding to a natural and visceral desire of humans. We boundary this sacred space with stone and wood and make it beautiful.

Again it widens our perspective: we think of St Paul's Cathedral as 300 years old, but the Portland stone which forms it is millions of years old. There are fossils easily available in Portland stone from the last Ice Age. All that happened 300 years ago was that it was crafted to the glory of God who is the maker and origin of all the earth. We might rightly be proud that, for repairs, we use the same quarry on Portland that Christopher Wren used, but this is the last few minutes of the story as far as the stone itself is concerned.

Third, the natural environment. It is of course possible to hold services outside in the churchyard or in another environment where it is more obvious to connect with the natural world. Encourage pilgrimage, praying with your eyes open. Fourth, a focus on meditation. Within the building, of course there are many ways to focus our meditations and praise: in the spirit of Julian of Norwich's hazelnut. In St Paul's in the last few years we have used yew trees, cashew nuts, rosemary plants, images of the sun from the NASA website, packets of seeds, sounds of birdsong, the ocean. Our imaginations are challenged to bring the natural world into church but with sound, smells, animals and produce, it is possible. And of course at our weekly gatherings we have bread and wine - of the earth but work of human hands. The bread we break and the wine we drink has a history; a catalogue of lives; the farmer, baker, distributor, church worker, the one who handles it and then receives it.

In all these ways, and many more, we can help ourselves and our people reconnect with the earth to which we have become strangers. It has never been more important for the church to take a lead in reconnecting cycles of birth and death and in proclaiming the paradigm of life, death, and new life that is the paschal rhythm embodied in Jesus Christ, evident in the natural rhythms of creation. It has never been more critical to look honestly at Christian history, which has separated spirit and matter and to great effect despised the material. A contextual theology and liturgy will encourage a holistic view of the Creation. Because this generation asks once again: Lord teach us to pray.

There are concerns that the legislation, which retains the option of prison sentences for anyone who vilifies the president or foreign heads of state, will discourage journalists from reporting on foreign affairs altogether. The penalty for such a crime ranges between six months and five years in prison, or a fine ranging from £E 5,000-20,000 ($870-3,480) for the editor and £E 10,000-30,000 ($1,740-5,220) for the journalist. In a country where libel insurance has yet to catch on and journalism is not a particularly well-paid profession, the threat of fines will seriously discourage journalists from doing their job.

The government maintains that the law is a step towards a freer press. It removes some custodial sentences, and the government claims that the ones that remain work to discourage sloppy journalism. Although many agree there are some improvements, there are still a range of problems. Journalists may face a charge of "insulting the president" or "spreading false rumours". In the ambiguous and loosely worded new laws, there are also no clear parameters for what constitutes "defamation".

However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) asserts that the laws invite abuse and contravene international standards for freedom of expression. "These laws hang like a threat over journalists and foster self-censorship," says HRW deputy director, Middle East and North Africa Joe Stork. The press law makes it illegal to even possess a picture or drawing that could "tarnish the image of Egypt", a crime punishable with a maximum of two years in prison and a fine of £E 5,000-10,000 ($870-1,740). The mere possession of a picture of a policeman beating a demonstrator could become a criminal act.

On 26 June, Issa Ibrahim, editor-in-chief of the outspoken opposition paper Al-Dustour, and one of his journalists were sentenced to one year in prison following their coverage of a trial that accused President Mubarak of squandering public money. Article 48 of the constitution allows for the "supervision" of media and publications during a state of emergency and grants the government the right to confiscate publications and newspapers and shut them down. It also allows arrest and imprisonment without charge. "The Egyptian penal code is a minefield for journalists," Ibrahim was quoted as saying in a recent HRW report. "If these provisions were evenly enforced, most of the journalists in the country would be in jail."

It is not just the media that should be concerned about this new legislation. Stork warns of the repercussions for business: "Free expression is a pretty critical factor in dealing with corruption and transparency; this is an issue that anyone in the financial or commercial sector should be very worried about," he says.
In the 2003 Annual Worldwide Freedom Press index, compiled by Reporters Sans Frontieres, Egypt ranked 110th out of the 166 countries studied. The list was drawn up by asking journalists, legal experts and researchers to answer questions on press freedom violations. By 2005, Egypt had slipped to 143rd out of 167. According to Egyptian commentator and journalist Adel Darwish: "It's not so much a case of one step forward and two steps back, but one step forward and two to the side... The process of reform has frozen."

After the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in last year's elections, during which it gained almost 20 per cent of the seats, political analysts say the push for reform has slowed. On 30 April, the national emergency law was extended for a further two years, 25 years after the assassination attempt on President Sadat that put it into effect. "The government has painted a false picture to Egyptian liberals and to the West that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only alternative to the current regime, so people put up with it," says Darwish. "Better the devil you know."
For journalists, the fight is not yet over. "If the government is serious about reform, how can it possibly justify this muzzling of the country's press?" asked Cairo's independent Daily Star. "The press is what stands between the people and the abuse of power."

Loveday Morris, of the Next Century Foundation, recently helped to stage a one-day Forum at St Bride's entitled Xenophobia and Disinformation in the Media. Here she writes about continued threats to a free press in Egypt. This piece originally appeared in the Middle East Economic Digest on 25th August.

Just as the target of the satire in the show at the Edinburgh Festival entitled Jesus: The Guantanamo Years was not the Christian faith but the horrors of Guantanamo Bay, Cohen's satirical target is not Kazakhstan - though some of his gibes at it are undoubtedly very funny - but those who might believe him. We're not laughing at Kazakhstan. We're laughing at the Americans who believe that central Asia might really be like that.

Rather than po-facedly commission a heroic film, Kazakhstan's President might smile wryly when he meets President Bush and say "Mr President, you'd have to be really dumb to believe that Kazakhstan is like that". Or he could commission his own cod documentary, depicting a Fox News reporter touring Kazakhstan, telling its natives that the United States is commanded by a warmonger who dodged the draft himself, who electrocuted or lethally injected poor blacks to get elected and who has declared world war on an abstract noun. Only that wouldn't be funny, because it's largely true.

Then there are those who complain about the anti-semitism of Cohen's character Borat. Yes, there is truth in the observation that Cohen can get away with it because he's Jewish himself and I have some sympathy with the view of a Jewish stand-up comic I met recently who said that Jews cannot truly be free of the burden of the Holocaust until non-Jews can do gags about it too. But I believe the more fundamental point is that ridicule is one of the most potent political weapons known to humankind (ask any senior politician). Cohen has us laughing at him in his pantomime anti-semitism. Not, thankfully, with him.

Tony Blair has the worse track record, his neo-conservatism posing as social democracy, running an Animal Farm on which two conservative legs are good and four socialist legs bad. But then he's been at it longer than the Archbishop. For the record, a selection of "Labour" reforms since 1997 consists of a law and order agenda that has witnessed the slapping of Asbos on unborn babies, on-the-spot cash fines for youthful offenders, an abolition of the principle of double jeopardy, an attack on the ancient rights of Habeus Corpus through detention without trial and a full scale assault on trial-by-jury.

Social welfare has been restrictively reformed and the Human Rights Act dismantled. Freedom of speech has been restricted under the guise of incitement to religious hatred. Asylum laws have been tightened, compulsory identity cards for all adults been touted and peaceful protest banned from Parliament Square. An octogenarian has been ejected from the Labour conference for heckling Jack Straw and held under anti-terrorist measures and a woman arrested for wearing a T-shirt disrespectful to Blair. Fox-hunting has been banned and there are now 3,000 more offences on the statute book than there were in 1997 - it is illegal, for example, to sell a grey squirrel.

But the shining light of Blair's warrior, neo-con mentality must be the coat-tailing of George Bush's Republicans into the illegal and disastrous misadventure in Iraq, destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in a bid, at best, to secure a working relationship with the most powerful regime on earth and, at worst, to win the kind of jingoist, popular support that Margaret Thatcher enjoyed after the Falklands War.

Many people may support some, if not all, of these initiatives. But it's not what liberals had in mind when they voted for Blair. These liberal voters exacted their revenge on Blair's government at the last election; they are also doing so by holding him to his promise to leave soon and may well deliver the coup de grace by defeating his successor, with the assistance of David Cameron's lib-cons (another party in disguise), at the next general election.

But there is a terrible sense of lost opportunity - so much could have been achieved with Blair's first impenetrable parliamentary majority; so little has been. Similarly, there is so much that Rowan Williams could do as Archbishop of Canterbury. His record is anything but as reactionary as Blair's - he has stood up to the Iraq hawks and spoken out for the vulnerable and oppressed that the PM may not even know are there - but there is a prevailing sense of liberal disappointment just the same.

In the early days of three years ago, his liberal fans supposed there was wisdom in his persuasion of Canon Jeffrey John to step down from his appointment as Bishop of Reading in the face of anti-homosexual Church sentiment. It was supposed that it was a bishopric too far - too early to start the fight for sexual equality and tolerance, but that in the coming war John's sacrifice could be pointed to as the kind of compromise that should now be expected of the conservative wings of the Church.

Williams, however, has swung to the right on matters of sexuality, suggesting that those who don't accept orthodoxy on the subject are quitting the communion and distancing himself from the consecration of the first openly gay bishop in America. On gender he has pussy-footed around the issue of women's episcopacy. The rest is silence - Williams has taken a low profile on a range of issues of the day, letting it be known that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not so much a leader as a convenor and that God will find a way for the church, not him.

Disappointing, but there's time. A new Secretary for Public Affairs at Lambeth Palace, Tim Livesey from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, should grasp nettles. And what can the Archbishop learn from Blair's decade in the hot seat? Most answers are irrelevant, because Williams is a very different animal. He is not a politician. He is not interested in power and its maintenance, or the ego trip to which so many political leaders succumb. He is consensual and committed to unity and to one nation and one world under God.

But there is one thing Williams could usefully learn from the Blair years as he faces the bulk of his Canterbury years ahead: It is not consensual, nor unifying, nor even satisfactory to pay career lip service to liberalism, while sucking up to conservatives.

I said I'd be delighted to go on. But not to condemn the bombing attempts - who wouldn't? And there had been more than enough of that all day - but to condemn President Bush for what he'd just said. And so I did. I called the juxtaposition of the words Islamic and fascist "dangerous and inflammatory" and said it was unreasonable to make Islam responsible for the attempted atrocities. It moved the story on - Club Asia led its news with my response.

Since then, there have been those who have argued that the phrase "Islamic fascist" is perfectly reasonable. These were people planning the murder of thousands of innocent strangers in an act, if you like, of ethnic cleansing and in the name of Islam, even if that name was taken in vain.

But how would we react - at least those of us who profess the faith - to a world leader who spoke of "Christian fascists"? There were a few of those around in Britain in the 1930s, but I'd suggest that most of us would consider the phrase something of an oxymoron, believing Christianity and Fascism to be somewhat contradictory creeds. Those of us capable of taking offence at such nonsense would do so. I suggest that Muslims are entitled to be similarly offended, that terrorists can't act in Islam's name any more than Bush can act in mine.

And something else intrigued me in what Bush said: "They want to hurt our nation...". This was undoubtedly more accurate - suicide bombers want to hurt America and her allies, such as Britain, deeply. But the idea of a generalised "they" (Muslims), who want to attack "us" (the Judeo-Christian West) is intriguing for its implication that the War on Terror is a territorial, even nationalist, conflict. Further, it implies that our territory - The West - in some way owns the Judeo-Christian faiths.

The documentary-maker Mark Dowd recounts a story of how, on a research trip in the States, he met religious publishers who had printed the Bible with the American Stars and Stripes on the cover. They explained that they needed some self-confidence rebuilt after 9/11 and it made them feel better - it wasn't going to offend anyone because they weren't going to export it (a false supposition, as it turns out). We could laugh at them if the implications of this weren't so profoundly awful - what they're saying is that this is our creed, our story, our gospel; nationhood and faith as one and indistinguishable; Church co-extending with State; the Christian-state model that for centuries was indistinguishable and inseparable from oppressive colonialism. Flag and Cross united. The creed of the crusader.

Leave aside that the Underground bombers of 7/7 were born and bred in the UK. Never mind that the Heathrow atrocities were planned substantially by western converts. The very real danger of this kind of arrogance is that it fuels the very clash of civilizations that the abstruse Bush/Blair War on Terrorism pretends to seek to avoid. History shows that all holy wars of ideology destroy those who wage them, as well as those who suffer at their hands. There is theology behind this prophecy - the arrogant are brought low; the first are last.

So it's worth recognizing that spiritual arrogance when it emerges. There was something of it that directs the lack of audible response from Christian leaders when something like the events of the failed Heathrow plot occur. There was perhaps an unconscious sense of superiority that this is not to do with our faith, the faith of Christendom, but acts of the unspeakable heathen, the infidel - or, in the language of the moment, "Islamic fascists".

A major part of the problem here is the apparent exclusivity of the Christian faith. The Protestant fundamentalist will point to John's gospel for justification: "I am the way, the truth and the life...no one comes to the Father except through me." That's Jesus speaking, not Muhammed. But we need to recognize that his interpreter, the apostle John, was writing this account decades after the historical event of Jesus of Nazareth's life and the mystery of Christ's resurrection; an account that is bound to blur the edges between the ministry of Jesus and the theology of an eternal logos, the universal truth. Too often we confuse these two - the earthly and the eternal: The earthly Jesus, like us possessed of his time, owned and indeed trapped by the context of the historical time in which he lived, and the Christ of all time, from the beginning of times (as John helpfully points out in his introduction) to the end of times.

Jesus could be and was owned by the Jewish nation and its Roman occupiers. The Christ could not be so contained. It's why Jesus progressively realizes in the gospel accounts that his ministry is not just to Jews but is universal - clock the moment that the Syro-Phoenician woman crushingly tells him that even the dogs might eat the crumbs from his table. And it's why the risen Christ can't be possessed by Mary of Magdala at the tomb in the (excuse the pun) deeply touching injunction "Noli me tangere" ("Do not touch me"). Jesus was of space, place and time; the Christ is universal and eternal - and defies nationhood.

To this end, it's simply absurd to lay territorial, nationalistic claim to the gospel, as the Crusaders or the Romans did - and some Americans now do. But the injunction is clear - it is to be constantly engaged with the whole world in which we live. That includes, not as an optional extra but as a matter of centrality for faith, Muslims and Jews and Hindus, those of other faiths and none.

The core belief that drives that is that the universal truth and life that drives our creation is not owned by us, not by George Bush's administration, nor by Tony Blair, nor by our Church, but is universally to be recognized in any and every revelation of truth. We have to hope that this truth is bigger than nations, powers and dominions. And, as and when that hope is fulfilled, we really can have a war against terror.

This set me thinking about the difference between lay and ordained ministry. Those of us who are ordained to the priesthood rarely have a clear idea why. I have some sympathy with our rector David Meara's view that being ordained is the only thing that gets me into church on Sundays. And I'm not sure who it was who said: "God calls to ordained ministry those he doesn't trust in the laity" but I can see some truth in that too.

A slightly more serious analysis relates to the sacramental side of our priestly ministry and how that relates to our pastoral work - and Dave went into that too. But it seemed to me, as I dwelt on what Dave had been saying, that there is something essentially authentic about the lay ministry of readership - like the first Christians in Rome or Asia Minor. I say that because I think the church all too often gets in the way of Christian ministry.

When readers were first licensed by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in 1866, the churches were full, but Christian service and witness among the laity was altogether less organized. Some 140 years later, I suspect it's the other way around. Our churches are emptying, but the Christian experience is much more vibrant and alive in the street, in workplaces and, yes, even in our schools. I don't mean faith schools - I mean the apparently secular ones. We may not beat the catechism into our children with the cane, but I would venture that the love and leadership of Christ is more apparent in our universal and inclusive education of today than it was in the Victorian model. And that speaks of authentic Christian witness.

This is to imply that priests are redundant. I'm not about to throw in my collar so soon. But at some levels the whole clobber of the church gets in the way of that authentic witness. I'll give just two examples. I'm always meeting people - mostly media people - who tell me they're "atheists". We recently held a one-day conference at St Bride's on Xenophobia and Disinformation in the Media, with the Next Century Foundation - I lost count of the number of times I heard the phrase "Speaking as an atheist". And I went on BBC Radio the other day and both my fellow guests, one a Jew, one a lapsed catholic, claimed atheist credentials. But all these people also happen to be into love and hope and self-sacrifice and joy and celebration of the human spirit - even faith ("I don't know if I would put my life on the line for my children, but I hope I would"). It strikes me that they're not atheists in the sense that they don't believe in God - they just don't believe in me, or rather in my priesthood or my church. They're not atheists, in my view, they're church anarchists. And there's a respectable tradition in that. It was that great social-reformist Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who said: "It would be a mistake to believe that God is exclusively, or even principally, interested in Religion."

Secondly, a member of my family recently saw a woman in her village, striding out with her dog in a sweatshirt and slacks, with a broad smile on her face. Nothing terribly odd about that, perhaps, except that on Sundays in church she was a little old lady who could barely hobble to her place. So many of us have personas that we adopt for church, because it's a different life we have there.

It seems to me that Dave's kind of ministry can cut through those pretences and prejudices and expectations of church life, in an authentic Christian way. Not I hope as a replacement for ordained ministry, but as part of a vibrant and living faith that should reach every part of the society in which we live.

And one final thought: Dave promised in his readership vows to endeavour to promote peace and unity, to conduct himself as a worker for Christ. He will be an exemplar of Christian lay ministry. Unless and until the body of Christians takes back the gospel from the bishops and the popes and lives it out in the presence of those of other faiths, such as Islam, who have similarly re-claimed their ideologies from the self-appointed leaders who don't speak for them, we will be bound for hell in a handcart. Dave can't solve that on his own; none of us can - but his promises are at least a signal of hope in a wounded world, the authentic ministry of the living Christ among the mass of loving people, proof positive that our handcart isn't necessarily bound for hell.

The Jews were to be fed in perpetuity by this "promised land". But 20 centuries after the Christ and nearly 30 since the time of Elijah, it's hardly a land flowing with milk and honey - at war with its neighbours, suffering terrorist attacks and blasting the civilian population in southern Lebanon apparently indiscriminately in retaliation. The recent history of Israel might lead us to conclude that, if this is God's chosen people, he may not have chosen very carefully.

You will actually struggle to find much reference in the Bible to the Jews as a chosen people. But it is the belief that is at the root of Neo-conservative American support for Israel. Forget the "Jewish lobby" in Washington - American Jews predominantly vote Democrat. It is the southern Baptist view of Israel as God's chosen elect that drives George W. Bush's foreign policy in the Middle-east. Chillingly, it's a policy that will support Israel, right or wrong, because that is the will of God. It's also a man's gospel.

That's not a gospel that I recognize. As the bloodied and terrified faces of desperate Lebanese families, some holding the bodies of their dead children, appeared on the front pages of our newspapers, I realized that I'd had enough of balanced, "on the one hand, on the other" journalism that declines to take a position. Israel has suffered terribly from terrorism. But no democratic nation state should meet terrorism with terrorism, as Israel has done. When Britain faced "Irish" terrorism, it didn't respond by bombing Dublin. As with Britain's incendiary bombing of German cities in the Second World War, there can be no justification for responding to slaughtered innocents by killing more children. Israel's response to Hizbollah has been an abomination of Biblical proportions.

But simple condemnation is an inadequate response. The Christian paradigm does not condemn. But it doesn't prevaricate either. The example from our scriptures is definite and direct. When a crowd threatens to stone an adulterous woman, the founder of our faith doodles in the sand, but says "let he who is without sin throw the first stone". He holds his tongue before the Roman governor, but then makes it clear that he has no earthly power other than that granted by God. Truly extraordinarily, he prays forgiveness for his judicial murderers even as they nail him to the cross. And on a plain in the mountains of Galilee he faces a crowd that could at any moment turn ugly with words that must have struck the young apostle John as important enough to include: "Make the men sit down".

Men under pressure tend to stand their ground and look hard, get belligerent, spoil for a fight. When the fighting starts they try to assert and control and, in war zones, to grab what they can and to kill to defend their families. But it's difficult to throw your weight about when you're sitting on the grass, having a picnic, at the same eye level as the women and children. I doubt many men of war could bomb children if they looked them in the eye.

In the end, the fighting in southern Lebanon ended when the men were made to sit down. But the fighting will start again - there, or in Iraq, or Iran, or Afghanistan, or North Korea, or Darfur. And it may be for the women witnesses, faced with men of aggression and violence, whether Hizbollah, or Israeli militia or the Government of the United States, to echo the Christian imperative that is held in five words that ring down the centuries.