What an interesting comment. It seems to be saying that the church should drop its own agenda, and find common cause with others to bring peace and justice to the world.

But I think the church can do both; it can have its own agenda, which it can maintain without compromise, and at the same time work with others, who although they may not share aspects of that agenda, find there is overlap and agreement in many areas of social protest and practice.

The church is called to speak to the conscience of the world over war, injustice and oppression. So are many others. It is called to act, with others, in arenas where peace and justice are absent; providing not only welfare for its own members, but to be an advocate for the vulnerable, disadvantaged and oppressed everywhere. Of course the issues on which the church is called to speak out and act should first be put into practice amongst its own members, but it shouldn’t stop with its own members.

Why should the church abandon the very distinctive aspects of its own agenda? This agenda cannot be imposed on anyone; it can only freely be received and accepted, and can equally freely be rejected.

The Iraq war was not a Christian war - the church was broadly against it, in this country and in the USA. The practice of the church in the time of Constantine, with its increasingly oppressive tendencies, flew in the face of New Testament Christian practice, and the practice of very many in Europe who attempted to express their faith outside its authority. To invoke the Crusades as an illustration of the church’s fundamental intolerance to opposition simply begs the question.

The church does have a view on the future shape of the world, and how that will come about. But nobody has to accept its views if they don’t want to. Again, it begs the question to assume that any blueprint for the ultimate destiny of the world must be universally embraced, and be given the consent of the democratic wishes of the majority.

It has to be said that Premillennial assumptions have muddied the waters considerably - and it’s time their false pretensions were exposed. There is no sound biblical basis for a belief that the church will be either wholly or partly airlifted out of the world, abandoning it to a theological chimera known through the hijacked term ‘the great tribulation’.

But ‘concupiscent?’ Getting into bed with unbelievers? Maybe you meant ‘culpable’?