Stumbling Blocks

Amid reports about the persecution of Christians around the world - or at least difficulties being put in the way of any public expressions of faith, such as the Chinese authorities removing crosses from church buildings - we may like to reflect how much more fortunate we are in the UK, notwithstanding the tendency of Christians to want to imagine themselves persecuted (for which see here and here among other places). And yet, sceptical though I tend to be about the more shrill expressions of outrage and dismay that emanate from some bits of British Christendom about the way we get treated, I have to admit that modern life is throwing more and more obstacles in the path of the faithful. For the younger among us, these tend to be the pressures of work, travel and social arrangements. For the older, it's different.

Marion the curate regularly takes communion to a very faithful lady in the parish. She lives with her family and although she's not up to walking very far she'd be perfectly capable of sitting in a pew through a service and joining in with other people worshipping - but nobody will take her on a Sunday morning, a matter she naturally doesn't want to push. We will see whether we can organise a lift for her now and again. 

Another faithful regular congregant told me she'd be away over Christmas visiting family, 'so I won't be in church'. 'That's fine', I said half-joking, 'provided you make it somewhere else!' She looked even more apologetic. 'That's the trouble,' she said, 'I don't see how I'll be able to.' She doesn't drive any more and will be dependent on her family for travel; if they don't want to go anywhere near a church, how can an older person who is long-accustomed to subordinate their own wants and desires to those of others, especially their children, insist that their own faith is important? What you end up with is a category of people who are less likely rather than more to get to church over the Christmas season, arguably precisely because their Christian programming makes them less willing to make demands on the people around them.