The wisdom of youth

Bishop John Saxbee reflects on a generation gap that bodes well for the future

“You see, Bishop John, you are very old, and do not understand these things”, said Dylan when I asked him to show me how to project a YouTube clip on to the school’s large Smart Screen for the Assembly I was to lead that day.

Eight-year-old Dylan has been able to do this sort of thing since he was born.

In a way, he was right. There are some things we apparently take in with our mother’s milk, as the saying goes, and today’s babies do seem to be born IT savvy. They are cradle computer buffs in the same way as many of us older folk can be described as cradle Christians.

Surveys indicate that there are many fewer cradle Christians today - many fewer born into Christian homes and raised to become committed Christians as a matter of course. This trend translates into steadily declining percentages of adults professing our faith.

Does this signal the slow death of Christian Britain? No - what it does signal is a new and potentially even richer role for faith in an increasingly fragile but more inter-connected, ecologically sensitive, and spirituality inquisitive world where the virtues and values at the heart of the Gospel of Christ - repentance, renewal, resurrection, and transcendence - will be rediscovered in something akin to a new Reformation.

Those of us who are, as Dylan put it, “very old” may not live to see that day but, meanwhile, we have a vital part to play in keeping the sparks of faith alive until they shall indeed be fanned into a flame.

(This article first appeared in The Messenger newsletter published monthly by St Martin’s Church, Haverfordwest.)