No one can remain unmoved by the sight! At a distance, from almost anywhere on the circumference of the City of London, the dome of St Paul's cathedral stands head and shoulders above the City. But the contrast between the cathedral and the surrounding city is now very striking. The present cathedral was completed to Sir Christopher Wren's design in 1708. It is ironic that during the thirty years of the rebuilding, after the Great Fire of London thirty three years earlier, the stage was being set for a totally new outlook from the previous thousand years. Capitalism, industrialisation, the growth of new towns, a slow freeing of the population from church courts and the eventual almost total diminishment of 'church going' by the majority of the population.

The sixteenth century had seen the culmination of the semi-feudal system in which families had their own plot of land while being affianced both to the lord of the manor and to the local church. There was a certain freedom in that way of life. The seventeenth century was the time for change. There was the growth of modern science and, at the same time, in England, the ascendancy of the Protestant view of Christian faith given extreme expression in the civil war. Sir Isaac Newton, apart from his breakthrough in scientific exploration, accepted the literal understanding of Scripture and spent a great deal of time calculating when the 'end time' would come about for the cosmos. On the other hand the ordinary person found himself facing destitution in the new wage-earning climate of the beginning of industrialisation, having given up his rights to any plot of land farmed by his predecessors for centuries. So, in the seventeenth century, all the seeds were being sown for the detachment of the Church from the rest of the community and the majority of people from Church.

There were two things happening in this gradual process over three centuries. First of all the need for the ordinary person to become really autonomous. Not that, in the long drawn out process, they would have seen it in those terms. But democracy was in the air. I have quoted this paragraph from a historian of the period before, but it is worth saying it again -

'[The Enlightenment of the 17th century] not only attacked and severed the roots of traditional European culture in the sacred, magic, kingship and hierarchy, secularising all institutions and ideas, but (intellectually and to a degree in practice) effectively demolished all legitimation of monarchy, aristocracy, woman's subordination to man, ecclesiastical authority and slavery, replacing these with the principles of universality, equality and democracy.' (Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750, Oxford University Press, 2001[2002] page vi.)

So what we have had in this country, at least since the universal suffrage, is personal autonomy and a real measure of freedom - freedom to think (or not to think). There is still poverty but not the degrading poverty which even in the 19th century was true of London and an inheritance from our past history. Church is for most people an alien culture and off limits both intellectually and emotionally.

Secondly, after the virtual Calvinistic thrust and control of the population in the years during and after the civil war, before the Restoration of the monarchy in 1688, one might concede that authoritative Christianity was virtually ditched by most people - and with a sigh of relief. Some might still proffer arguments for their continuing belief but the majority, eventually, would reject Christianity either as a 'church' thing which no longer bothered them or as a belief which no longer made sense of their understanding of the world as they had come to understand it.

In the 21st century the process of separation from 'church' has been completed for most people in the UK even for baptisms and weddings if not for funerals. The pastor or vicar or dean, do not, today, have the same automatic respect that they once had in society. Church and the surrounding community have become finally separated. And looking at the beginnings of faith, with Jesus as encountered in the gospels, that is absolutely right - 'My kingdom is not of this world'. However, from both good and bad reasons, the church has never felt bound by that outlook of Jesus. Christians have always needed to be in a position to be in dialogue with the rulers of the state. In times of persecution and peace Christians have been found defending their love of Jesus in the community of faith.

Community. Maybe, today, church needs to be seen to be 'community' both by the church itself and by those of the wider community? It is quite difficult for the traditional churches to re-invent their own image - St Paul's towering over the city and village churches at the centre of their communities. But, both from a human point of view and also from the Christian herself, this might be seen as a realistic up-dating of church for our own times. To be, as it were, in step, humanly, with all that has been won for the individual through the past three centuries. With the ascendancy of church gone for ever, the idea of church as 'community' helps us to be alongside everyone else in society. This is not a new idea! Some Christians through the centuries have often felt the need to distance themselves from the idea of church that they experienced as over-regulative and opaque. It's a perennial, human problem, let us admit it!

Looking at 'church' throughout the centuries, as we have been looking at the state and the individual, it is obvious to everyone that, from the human point of view, church has always suffered from similar problems. But church in the New Testament sense is the communion of those who are 'in Christ'. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3: 17-18 -

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

How church can become more transparent - transparent in worship and life - is something Paul might have said will only come from the Lord enabling us. But it is also a matter of thinking that we might see ourselves as a community in the risen Christ - as necessary for ourselves in friendship as for those in the City who see us as followers of him whom they have not yet known in love.