Values and Beliefs
“We need a set of values and beliefs to guide us.” These words give a flavour of the maiden speech in the House of Commons by Danny Kruger a new MP.
At the end of his speech he said, “I want to finish on a more abstract issue but I think it’s one that we’re going to find ourselves debating in many different forms in this Parliament. It’s the issue of identity, of who we are, both as individuals and in relation to each other. Traditionally, we had a sense of this. We are children of God, fallen but redeemed, capable of great wrong but capable of great virtue. And even for those that didn’t believe in God there was a sense that our country is rooted in Christianity, that our liberties derive from the Christian idea of absolute human dignity. And today these ideas are losing their purchase. So we are trying to find a new set of values to guide us, a new language of rights and wrongs, and a new idea of identity, based not on our universal inner value, or on our membership of a common culture, but on our particular differences.
“And I state this as neutrally as I can because I know that good people are trying hard to make a better world, and I know that Christianity in the Western past is badly stained by violence and injustice. But I’m not sure we should so casually throw away the inheritance of our culture. There is so much to be positive about. I share the Prime Minister’s exuberant optimism about the future, but we need a set of values and beliefs to guide us. As we advance at speed into a bewildering world where we are forced to ask the most profound questions about the limits of autonomy and what it means to be human, we may have reasons to look about for the old ways and seek wisdom in the old ideas which are in my view entirely timeless.”
Mini Missionaries
A group of 17 children aged 8-13 in Durham have been coming up with creative ways to share their faith and the love of God to their peers. The Children’s Council of the Church of England Diocese of Durham has been awarded £6,800 by the All Churches Trust. The award is for a project titled ‘Homegrown’ in which they will become ‘mini missionaries’ sharing their faith and the love of God with other children and young people across the region. The 18-month project has the potential to reach out to thousands of children and families in communities across the diocese. It is hoped that the project will further empower the children to take charge of the planning and preparation of mission events in their own home churches and to run the events themselves with support from others. The first event will be a silent disco followed by a family fun event in the summer.
Sharon Pritchard, Children’s Ministry Adviser for the Diocese of Durham told Premier: “Homegrown is a child-led project which will create events and activities for children, young people and families to share God’s love in the communities we live in. “Their eagerness to share God’s love within their own communities is inspiring and we hope ‘Homegrown’ will be a blessing to all who are involved.”