I spent my first Christmas as a priest 35 years ago at a time when the church was somewhat introverted and generally regarded with a mixture of pity and disdain. In those days, the sociologist Peter Berger predicted that all over the world, religion would be pushed to the margins of life and become the concern of harmless sub groups. He has recently admitted that he was wrong and religious convictions and institutions have taken centre stage in a way that few members of the Anglo- American elite predicted.
Now the influential journal, The Economist, has deliberately changed its editorial policy because it no longer subscribes to the doctrine that it is possible to describe the daylight world, while ignoring the role of faith. One of the November issues contained an eighteen page supplement on "Faith and Politics".
This turn of the religious tide has brought encouragement to some but now instead of disdain and pity there is fear and alarm. These are some of the signs of the times which we are taught as Christian believers to observe in this season of the Church's Year. This is a time when we seek to re-appropriate the wonder and the hope which has entered the world in the birth of the holy child while we also meditate on the deep structure of life and the Advent of God's intention for his Creation.
Men's hearts are failing them for fear of what is coming upon the world [St Luke XXI; 26]. This is a time of promise but also of peril. Nuclear power and genetic engineering could be a blessing but also a curse.
