In my early days of involvement with the Christian church, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in January each year was a fairly major event, involving the breakthrough development at that time of Christians of one denomination actually attending and worshipping in a church of a different denomination. Prior to this, the divisions between let us say the Baptists and the Church of England were so pronounced that any sharing of worship, resources, personnel etc would have been considered inappropriate.
Things are now very different for which we thank God. Christians will regularly work and worship together and will sometimes switch denominations during their lifetime without a second thought. Of course there are still different ways of worshipping and different emphases between denominations but fundamentally we know now that “we are the Body of Christ and by one Spirit we were all baptised into one Body”, irrespective of whether that baptism was within the Church of England or the United Reformed Church for example.
I only wish that the spirit of tolerance and generosity that largely exists now within the wider church was reflected in the whole of society which seems to be tragically divided and where intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and rudeness pervade and do so most particularly in the world of social media where people write things to each other which one would hope that they would be embarrassed to say face to face. Let us pray for respect, tolerance, forgiveness, humility, courtesy and kindness to be more obvious in all our dealings one with another.
Nigel Freathy
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