More Than Stone

“We are reaching out and grasping again the wholistic gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel not just for souls and not just for bodies but for whole persons and the whole world, the whole cosmos which is groaning in travail. We are working in new ways for Christian unity and refusing to connive at the scandal of separation. We are learning from one another, and discovering that we have more in common than we had imagined. We are asking the hard questions about how the gospel applies to the real world and refusing to be put off by the sneers of the media and the threats of some politicians. We are starting to realize that the lies put out by the Enlightenment – that Christianity was disproved, outdated, and bad for your health – were the childish taunts of those who were anxious in case God’s kingdom might call them after all to costly obedience. We are on the threshold of a great new work of God, a work of wholistic mission and evangelism in which God’s kingdom will be announced, and Jesus will be named as Lord, openly and unhindered. And it is precisely at such points that we should expect the strongest winds and the fiercest waves to blow us off course, to turn the ship upside down, and to drown us all in the dark sea of postmodern amorality and factious in-fighting.”

——N. T. Wright is Bishop of Durham; this address was given to the ACC