Just How Secular Is Britain, Really?

So asks Dr John Sentamu, of whose remarkable article I have highlighted the most striking part:

Feelings were running high during the Stephen Lawrence inquiry some years ago, particularly when the five suspects were questioned.

There was a very angry crowd outside who were ready to give those arrogant and uncooperative young men a good hiding as they left the inquiry. A major incident was developing.

I was a member of that inquiry and, like a fool, I agreed to go and help calm things down.

Among the throng, I noticed four angry young men with iron bars concealed down their trousers, waiting their chance.

I said to them: "It's understandable that you are angry but violence isn't the answer."

Their reply remains with me to this day: "Bish," they said, "we don't believe in God."

I said: "It doesn't matter. God believes in you."

They laughed but eventually walked away. They didn't use their iron bars.

I admit I was scared. But God has no one except you and me.

As Martin Luther King Junior said: "To respond to violence with violence is to increase the darkness on a night already devoid of stars."

Those young men were in danger of making the mistake of treating belief in God as an optional extra. What matters in the end is that God believes in each one of us.

That is why he sent His son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. Jesus is not to be found among the dead, as part of an ancient dusty religion.

The message of Easter rings out across our land this morning - in the words of the old hymn, Jesus Christ is risen today.

Later today I will stand waist-high in an open-air pool in the middle of York city centre where I will baptise into the faith those people who will newly confess that Jesus is the Lord of their lives.

These will join the often silent and overlooked majority of people in this country for whom today is a day of celebration and joy.

According to a recent poll conducted by Theos, a public policy think-tank, 57 per cent of Britons believe Jesus was executed by crucifixion, buried and rose from the dead.

The fact that more than half of us hold that belief is particularly striking and demonstrates that our society is not as "secular" as we often imagine it to be, despite frequent chattering claims to the contrary.

The reality of the resurrection is not just a personal encounter - it's also collective. It changes societies, cultures and communities.

For the physicality of the resurrection of Jesus is a community-evoking, a community-forming, a community-authorising event.

Our belief shouldn't just be based on the miracle of the resurrection itself but upon the astonishing outcome of that miracle - the community it creates, and has already created, in this country.

Our identity as a nation owes more to our Christian heritage than many care to admit.

In the 8th Century, the Venerable Bede, "the father of English history", wrote not only of how the English were converted but how the Gospel played a major socialising and civilising role in this country by uniting the English from a group of warring tribes - and conferring nationhood upon them.

But God's Good News isn't just for the chosen few: it is for everyone, whether they hear it or whether they don't, and its impact upon our character as a nation is inescapable.

While it is, of course, true to say that such virtues of kindness to neighbour, fair play and common decency are not unique to the Christian faith, just as they are not unique to Britain, it is equally true to say that these virtues have become embedded into our social fabric and heritage as a result of the Christian faith and its influence on society.

The Christian faith has woven the very fabric of our society just as the oceans around this island have shaped the contours of our geographical identity.

It is time for us to acknowledge that. As we have seen in recent attempts to define Britishness, trying to unpick this seam can lead to an unravelling, leaving us in the unenviable situation of being unable to agree on who we are as a country and as a people.

Bereft of common values, and without a shared heritage, the danger of splintering our society into a million microcosms of individualised materialist desires and unconnected narratives is a destiny that we must resist, both for ourselves and for our country.

For me, the vital issue facing the nation is the loss of this country's long tradition of Christian wisdom which helped give birth to the English nation, and the loss of wonder and amazement that Jesus Christ has authority over every aspect of all our lives.

Nothing is needed more by humanity today than the recovery of a sense of "beyond-ness" in the whole of life to revive the spring of wonder and adoration.

This challenge is for each of us, not least for all those who bear the name of Christ and who are charged with spreading His message of an inclusive and generous friendship, where each person is affirmed as of infinite worth, dignity and influence.

Today's call is for Christians to live and be good news to everyone - to be an "Easter people" as Augustine said.

It would be fantastic if people not only said of Jesus: "What sort of man is this" but said of us, his followers: "What sort of people are they? Their gracious actions, and the language on their lips, is of God's goodness and love.

"Let us get to know them. There is something extraordinarily normal and wonderful about them."

Through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus there came into the world a new power that transforms human character and human communities and liberates us from anxiety, fear, meaninglessness, transience, evil, ignorance, guilt and shame.

But just as we, as individuals, are in need of salvation, we must realise that the culture and institutions we create are also in need of redemption, not simply of modernising.

Jesus made it clear that he is the friend of the poor, the marginalised, the vulnerable.

I would remind people who are judgmental and moralising that only God is holy, perfect and just. I would urge them to go and find friends among them, among the young, among older people and those in society who are demonised and dehumanised, and stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

I would say to Christians: go and find friends who are Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, agnostics, atheists - not for the purpose of converting them to your own partisan, dulled reflection of God's glory but for friendship, understanding, listening and hearing.

I would say to Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, agnostics, atheists: go and find friends among Christians, not for the purpose of converting them but for the sake of friendship, understanding, listening, hearing.

God is at work in our nation today quite beyond the limits of our budgets, structures and expectation.

His Gospel has the power to transform our individual and collective lives, our families, our communities and our nation.

Joining in with God's work is a choice for each of us. If you want to join in that work come to York this afternoon and join me in the pool. It would be my delight to welcome you in.