When Synodical squalls have been relegated to a footnote in some dusty tome or dimming e-book, what we do this evening will be remembered as the beginning of a significant movement in the life of the Christian community in this world city and beyond.
Just as small flocks of scare crow scholars in the mediaeval warm period combined to give birth to Oxford and Cambridge, so strictly informal, sneaker shod students in this modern wet period have come together to fill this place with new life.
This church was built in a period of Christian confidence in the London of the 1870′s. It was financed by a generous lay benefactor the glove manufacturer John Derby Allcroft who went on to commission St Matthew’s Bayswater which has also recently been filled with new vision.
An impressive coalition of support for action upon climate change is represented here today. But the opinion polls all deliver the same message. Public interest in environmental issues has declined from the level it reached at the time of the passage of the Climate Change Bill. Politicians who see the challenge which faces us all; who are well informed about the action that needs to be taken; cannot get too far ahead of public opinion. Both Mr Cameron and Mr Milliband have demonstrated an awareness of the scale of the adaptation which will be needed as a consequence of climate change but this aspect of public policy played very little part in the recent election campaigns across the UK.
