As we approach the crisis decision over our membership of the EU, it is apparent that the Christian voice has not been heard in the UK. Either society has decided that this issue does not have a Christian or religious component and can be handled on purely economic grounds, or the moral authority of Christianity has been so eroded and undermined by the scandals of clerical abuse of children that the Christian message no longer carries any weight. I would like to challenge these attitudes.

Christian thought has made much of reading the signs of the times and listening to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches. It is also clear that this discernment is not confined to “spiritual” issues and faith praxis. Christians now accept that the divide between the spiritual and the secular is dangerously misleading, in that human beings have only one history which cannot be halved in this way. God’s saving gift is for the whole of creation, not simply to be dispensed to a community of believers by the Churches.