蜜芽传媒

I was shocked last week when my seven year old asked me whether World War III had actually started. Amid the bombings involving Iran, Israel and the US, the 鈥渨ars and rumours of wars鈥� spoken about in Matthew鈥檚 gospel have clearly hit the playgrounds of south-east London.

I never imagined that me or my children would have to even contemplate the prospect of conflict. But, according to a recent YouGov poll, 41% of Britons think another world war is likely to happen in the next five to 10 years. I hope, of course, that we鈥檙e wrong. I鈥檇 love to see us instead pull together to work for peace, however unlikely that seems in the current climate. . Because, I鈥檓 with novelist Alice Walker, when she said: 鈥淲ar will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.鈥�

News this week that the Church of England is making plans for what its role would be in a time of serious conflict in this country, is perhaps not surprising.
The Church will seek to play a spiritual role. First, in the military itself through strengthening its chaplaincy services, and also by providing spaces of prayer and reflection for the potential influx of people who may come through church doors anxious about war, life, death, and how to make sense of any of it.
In short, the Church is preparing to be a sanctuary 鈥� a place of refuge 鈥� at a time of violence and upheaval. The Church, though imperfect, and often rightly perceived by some as unwelcoming, has done this for centuries throughout the world.

Though it no longer has any legal meaning 鈥� as a place where fugitives can find immunity from arrest 鈥� sanctuary in its original Latin meaning describes a place where holiness or holy people 鈥� are kept in, kept safe. The Church as sanctuary keeps the world 鈥� that at times of war is a place of great violence and horror 鈥� out; and offers to those seeking solace, a place of peace; a safe haven in a world that shows us only destruction.
Retreating to a place of quiet safety doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean blocking out the realities of the world either. Start The Week on Radio 4 explored this sense of sanctuary on Monday. Reverend Fergus Butler-Gaillie described how Canterbury Cathedral in the wake of Thomas Becket鈥檚 murder there became symbolic of a place where the difficult and violent and traumatic were not shied away from. 鈥淗ere,鈥� he said, by facing the wickedness of the world, one could 鈥渇ind healing鈥�.

The Church as sanctuary is a place where we could possibly reframe our minds. To imagine a space and a world of peace rather than violence. Because, 80 years after the UNESCO charter was written, in the aftermath of World War 2, it鈥檚 opening words still ring true.
鈥淪ince wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.鈥�

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