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The sun was shining when the Prime Minister announced that we are now living in a new world order where old assumptions can’t be taken for granted.

Outside, things don’t look so different. The weather has taken the edge of terrible events and with spring doing its thing, new beginnings seem natural enough.

But the slightly threatening phrase ‘new world order’ doesn’t quite bring to mind anything new. It just conjures an old montage of marching soldiers, gesticulating leaders, nations duped, and people caught sleeping.

I think about the words of Dietrich Bonhoffer, the German priest murdered by the Nazis. At a time when things didn’t seem so bad to most, he called people ‘to live up the challenges of our time.’

Is this one of those moments? Or are we just living in the age of the amplified bully and fear-mongerer? It’s tempting to ignore it all. Or tell jokes about it.
Like that conspiracy theorist who went to heaven and asked God who shot JFK? When God replied, ‘It was Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone’, the conspiracy theorist said ‘Oh. This goes much higher than I thought.’

Jokes apart, in recent years there have been a number of ‘warnings from history’ suggesting that something is awry: a glut of conspiracy theories; the encouragement of fear; the need to find enemies to blame.

We are also seeing a swell of religious nationalism. A call for a return to old values. I confess I felt uncomfortable when I saw Christian leaders laying hands on one President, and another President praying for soldiers he’d sent to war.

What is striking is how this desire for old values is really more about the past than the future. To go back a fantasy of the good old days of White Russia, or Christendom, or the Caliphate, or Zion.

When leaders talk about Christian values, I wonder if they mean something else. I’m fairly sure they don’t mean the quiet, good will and the daily acts of kindness holding this fragile thing together.

When I picture this new world order, I see that Old World disorder: a culture of dominance; the affluence of a few; and a static, compliant religion.

No thanks! No-one should try to control people’s faith or use it for political gain. I’d rather be in a so called ‘failing’ church that is too insignificant to be coopted by power and yet retains its saltiness.

I think of the prophet Jeremiah admonishing the then King: ‘woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, who makes his neighbours work for nothing. True governance is to do no wrong to the outsider.’

There are real grounds for anxiety about the future, but let’s not be afraid. For without fear we can better read the room, without panicking we can stay alert to the challenges of our times.

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