Qui utuntur
non utantur

One of the pleasures of middle age is to find out that one WAS right, and that one was much righter than one knew at say 17 or 23.

Ezra Pound / ABC of Reading

[Let] those who deal with the world [live] as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away.

1 Corinthians 7:31

When I was born, Queen Victoria had died less than half a century previously. My grandmother herself was born a Victorian. She could remember the very first petrol-driven motor-car to pass through the village where she had been born.

When I was born, the famous firebrand preacher, Donald Soper, was yet to be elected President of the Methodist Conference. The social life of most communities still revolved around the churches and chapels of this land, and only a handful of people owned that new device called a television, for the rest of us sat around [and I mean around] the wireless... This is the BBC Home Service; here is the News, and this is Alvar Liddell reading it...

When I was born, Mr. Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, lived only in the century before last. It was only in the century before last that the English finally got it together and sorted out the Scots once and for all at Culloden. It was only in the century before last that John Churchill was allowed to build a gigantic country house in Oxfordshire for services rendered to the crown, amongst which was winning a battle at a place called Blenheim.

Now, as we stand in the twenty-first century, it was the century before last that my grandmother was beaten at school for being a chapel child rather than a church child. It was last century that Anglican vicars would refuse to give my father Holy Communion if they knew he was a Methodist. It was last century that anyone outside the church knew what a Non-Conformist was - or cared. It was last century when we had a Decade of Evangelism, which failed. It was last century when I lived the first fifty years of my life, but it is this century in which I shall live my old age... the form of this world is passing away.

Although the truths of Christianity will not change [despite the best efforts of some committees of the Methodist Conference], the form of Christianity in this country which we have known - the form of the Church institutions which we have known, and sustained by the constant worship of our past - is passing away. It is reckoned that if the decline in the membership of the Methodist Church continues at its present rate, the Methodist Church will cease to exist by the year 2020. Most people reluctantly acknowledge that gimmicks designed to reverse this decline have failed utterly to do so. Some sections of the Christian church seem to thrive by feeding their members easy uncritical answers, which bear no resemblance to a pilgrimage of spiritual discovery, but easy answers are unreliable companions in the company of doubt or in the Valley of the Shadow of Death; which is why the members of such churches tend to be under the age of thirty-five.

In the first century AD, when the truth of the Christian proclamation was being challenged by the Jewish leaders, Rabbi Gamaliel expressed the opinion that if these proclamations were of God, they would succeed and thrive, whereas if they were not, they would wither and fail. It is a pity that we do not put the present state of the Christian churches in this country to the test of Gamaliel. The Christian proclamation itself is still true. The nature of our ecclesiastical institutions and their divisions, and the manner in which they fail to communicate the proclamation, may be giving us a very big hint at the beginning of this twenty-first century. Perhaps it is God himself who is giving us the hint, and we will not hear him or believe him.

I have seen the future, and I have seen what it must be like if the Christian Church in this country is to survive as any sort of meaningful presence in the twenty-first century.

It was in the decade before the failed Decade of Evangelism when I trained for the ordained ministry of the Methodist Church. I was sent, without choice, to study at the Queen's College in Birmingham, which was the only ecumenical theological college in the country. Before I arrived there, I was a very mild, middle-of-the-road Methodist. I did not slavishly venerate our Methodist past, but my Christian life was always inspired by the stories of the heroes and the heroines who had been part of it. I did not look down on Christians of other denominations, save for feeling sorry for them if they expressed the arrogance of believing that they were the only people who understood the idea of Christianity correctly. I had always felt that it was far more important to me to be a Christian than to be a Methodist.

But through the years at the Queen's College, Birmingham, God opened to me the vision of an entirely new landscape. There, Christians of all denominations worshipped together, benefiting from each other's individualities, rather than making belittling comments about them. We all came to Holy Communion together, and shared the same cup. The Roman Catholic ordinands who came from Oscott seminary to study with us for a while, for the first time in their lives watched a woman celebrate Holy Communion, and although they were shocked and although their own discipline did not allow them to partake, one of the men said to me, "This really means as much to you as it does to us, doesn't it?" "Of course," I replied, "but we just express it in slightly different terms." The Grace of God which allowed that young man to see the truth of that moment has taken his words and made them the beacon for ecumenical progress and victory in this twenty-first century. And when we in turn spent our time of study at Oscott seminary, that young man and some of his friends declined to receive the sacrament in their own college chapel because they knew our pain of being barred from doing so. They sat with us and held us in prayer.

Before those years, I had read about the concept of Christendom in dry and dusty history books, which spoke of how Christendom was for the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, and others before the Great Schism of 1054. During those years, I was given a vision of what Christendom could be again, in the twenty-first century. It could be again the faith of one people, one family, together, who deal with the world as though they have no dealings with it - in other words, who are in the world, but not of it. Christendom could be the faith of one people together, not prone to the bickering, dissension, personal pride and division which mark unredeemed human nature, so that when enquirers come into a Christian Church they would find a genuinely different set of values compared with the selfish and fractious ones which they know in the outside world.

I know that at the moment it is likely that the local Baptist or Free Evangelical minister will dismiss me as somebody who doesn't understand how to "do mission" properly. I know that I will be excluded from the sanctuary at the celebration of Holy Communion in a High Anglican Church because I will be regarded as a bogusly-ordained layman. I know that I shall be refused the sacrament in an English Roman Catholic church if it is known that I am a "separated brother". I know that all these things are still true at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but do you honestly think that such attitudes have been gifted by the Holy Spirit to such people? Of course not! They are merely further nails in a cross of a young carpenter who died for the brothers and sisters of one family. I do not worship the nails, or the people who hammer them home, or the people who stand at the foot of the cross and scoff. The object of our worship as Christians is elsewhere, and you know that.

The nails hurt, but one day, the marks which they have left will become marks of glory. Oh, you will say, full Christian Unity will never work because of all the social and cultural differences which divide us. How long are you going to use those social and cultural differences as an excuse? Are you going to refuse to sit next to somebody in heaven because he is black, or Irish, or Roman Catholic? Or do you have the supreme arrogance of believing that such people will never make it to heaven because they are black, or Irish or Roman Catholic? These divisions are part of a world in which we must have no dealings and which is, anyway, passing away.

The motto of the Queen's College, Birmingham, is Qui utuntur non utantur - those who are in the world, but not of it. The practical expression of that motto I found in the college's unity of worship. Such a vision of unity cannot be pursued half-heartedly. It may therefore be of interest to know that the motto of my first college in London, nearly forty years ago, was Una Mente - with one mind - single-minded!

Leave the nails of past centuries of denominational prejudice behind you. You cannot take the hands of your bothers and sisters in Christ if you already have a bag of nails in one hand and a hammer in the other.