laudable Practice

At the Coronation of His Majesty the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury said this prayer over the oil with which the King was to be anointed: Blessed art thou, Sovereign God, upholding with thy grace all who are called to thy service. Thy prophets of old anointed priests and kings to serve in thy name and in the fullness of time thine only Son was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be the Christ, the Saviour and Servant of all. By the power of the same Spirit, grant that this holy oil may be for thy servant Charles a sign of joy and gladness; that as King he may know the abundance of thy grace and the power of thy mercy, and that we may be made a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for thine own possession. Is this Christian Nationalism? On Sunday 10th November this year, Remembrance Sunday, the Bishop of London will lead the nation in Christian prayer , before the Royal Family, representatives of the Government and Parliament, the Armed Forces, and ex-servicemen's organisations...

The backlash against New Theism has been swift. And, strangely, most of it hasn’t come from humanists and atheists, but from what one might call established Christians. George Pitcher's comment on the recent flurry of articles on 'cultural Christians' in the United Kingdom highlights the oddest feature of this phenomenon: the most intense opposition to the very idea of 'cultural Christians' comes from Christians. It is almost as if the failure of the New Atheist movement - and this is what 'cultural Christians' at least partly represent - comes as a disappointment to some of the theological despisers of cultural Christians. Perhaps this emerges from a desire for a combative, confrontational relationship between Church and Culture, rather contrary to the Apostolic exhortation that "we may lead a quiet and peaceable life". Sectarian existence, after all, can be a rather more heady experience than the quiet, peaceable, modest Anglican (or Presbyteria...