People look around at the political scene – the state we’re in – and ask what can be done.

There is an order of things: politics – what Sisson called “a decent set of political liberties” – depends on good law but also on institutions which are themselves allowed to flourish freely. And there must be some ethical code which is the basis of the res publica. This in turn depends on a sound theological understanding of the origin and source of all goodness. And that source is God.

People imagine that we can give up on God but all the benign infrastructure which derives ultimately from God will stay in place. It won’t – as we are seeing for ourselves. Eliot put it well in 1934:

“…such modest attainments as you can boast in the way of polite society will hardly survive the faith to which they owe their significance”

In short, Judeo-Christianity is not an optional add on but the origin and also the engine of our civilization. Ethics and politics have to be derived from dogma. And dogma has to be held in faith. As Collingwood put it, we require fundamentally “absolute presuppositions.” These absolute presuppositions are the doctrines of the Creed

Well, we have given up on the Creed and turned to strange gods.

The most shocking aspect of our defection is the church’s Laodicean temperament wherein “…the best lack all conviction etc” In such a condition it is obvious that “The centre cannot hold.”

A wonderful example of the wrongheadedness which prevails was given to us by Rowan Williams in his final address before he retired: “The church has a lot of catching up to do with secular mores.” Wrong from the start. What he ought to have said is, “Be ye not conformed to this world.”

So what to do? I can only quote Eliot again, from The Waste Land. “What shall we do tonight? What shall we ever do?”

Prophesy against the forces of chaos and the dark, outside and within. This means criticism, which, as we know, is the word for judgement. Criticism of the sort practised by such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, John Baptist AND Coleridge, Eliot and Collingwood. And this criticism – which itself must be derived from our theological understanding – must not amount to mere sniping, as it were sporadically. Our prophesying and our criticism must be a constant struggle to maintain a proper judgement and to express this judgement in English: the language that is at one with our soil

And say our prayers and receive the Sacrament. As Sisson said, “Without the Sacraments, there would be nothing.”