What you see depends on where you stand. Stand at Charing Cross. It may be a replacement of the original Eleanor Cross and repositioned into the bargain but it remains London’s central point for measuring distances, so standing there makes sense. Lerwick in the Shetlands is about 600 miles to the north. Swivel round to face south and Marseilles is about the same distance away.
Again, stand at Charing Cross and this time look west. New York is 3,000 miles off. And 3,000 miles beyond that is Anchorage (the biggest city in the biggest state, Alaska, in the USA).
Despite the mileage, we live in a global village. The same language, English (give or take a few hundred minority languages) is spoken in Anchorage, Lerwick and London, but the citizens of Marseilles are in love with their own language and are keen to preserve its distinctiveness. So much for the language. The climate is another matter. I suppose Anchorage is just as cold as Lerwick (I have been to neither). And there are other ways in which Marseilles and London are as far apart as chalk and cheese. Could it be Viking and Norman influence?
As always there is a choice – of citizenship and church allegiance. It is not exactly the same choice in London, Lerwick and Anchorage. In London there is an array of churches, Baptist, URC, FIEC, Pentecostal, and of course Church of England and Roman Catholic. Added to these are less familiar versions of Christianity – Orthodox, Seventh Adventist and Moravian. On a lesser scale the same is true of other cities and towns.
But beware! In London and Lerwick there are established churches – Episcopal in London, Presbyterian in Lerwick. This in global terms is unusual. No such establishment is found in Anchorage. With the rest of the USA it distances itself from a church-state link. It contents itself with the personal link of a president who may choose Billy Graham or another person as his chaplain. What is true of the USA is also true of France. Emmanuel Macron presides over a secular republic. The choice for a French citizen is between the Roman Catholic Church and a Protestant Church or abstention from any religious group. There is no established church offering a nominal connection.
Choices may vary according to marriage arrangements or family needs. At a guess there is more switching than there used to be. Consumer preferences have made lifelong membership of one Church or another less common, even exceptional. All these things come to mind when we stand in the forecourt of Charing Cross station.
JUST LIKE HOME
Alexander Boyer spent part of a gap year teaching English in a primary school in Kenya. Being on the coast, he met many Muslims and enjoyed comparing notes with them. In St Luke’s Anglican church he found himself in an environment familiar to him back in Great Malvern priory – even to the stained-glass. ‘I miss Kenya dearly and can’t wait to return,’ he says in the April magazine of GM, a member of the Greater Churches Network.
BEVERLEY LINKS
Another member of the Greater Churches Network, Beverley Minster, supports overseas mission at St Peter’s Cathedral, Kabale, Uganda, and a former Minster staff member Bishop Nick Drayson in northern Argentina.
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