The Sign of the Cross

In the banter of conversation that escapes around the edges of an excited group it is possible, from time to time, to catch a snippet that somehow underpins my thinking about the increasingly secular society that we inhabit. The story, being told by a lad of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, was of a visit with his school to a large 'cathedral thing' in Bristol. It seems that the whole experience was a little scary, but the scariest thing was a huge 'cross thing' hanging from the roof . For a moment I thought there would be punch line but there wasn't and so this was simply the telling of a story.

Of course the giant cross was the essential truth underpinning two-thousand years of English Christianity, which in the scheme of things had passed this young man without impacting at all. But then in this secular world why should it?

Well it seems to me that somewhere is the maelstrom of educational theory someone has made the decision to extract this topic from the curriculum and in doing so has given history a sort of lobotomy. This is of course not a matter of faith but of the correct telling of our story so far. Meanwhile I have to report that the story being told by young friend seemed to be greeted with looks of shared bafflement. Hey ho....