Dr Paul Allen

Christians, non-Christians, and people of no faith are now particularly mindful of the possibility that the forms of living we have grown accustomed to may very soon come to an end, whether by runaway climate change or another virulent plague, or extreme acts of violence.  For so many, normal life, or whatever once passed for it, now appears irretrievably lost. To be fair, extreme dislocations of this kind are nothing new to human history. But there is something new within our peculiarly combustible cocktail of catastrophes.  We see it in the increasingly violent rhetoric and action taking over once-stable democracies, the frustration and desperation that grips even the most peaceful and hopeful social movements, and the chronic despair of a young generation who has given up on the idea that society will ever work for them.  There is, in all these things, a sense of hopelessness. It pervades all levels of society, from the highest institutions to the simplest human interactions. Hopele