Where are we at the start of 2017?
Barnabas Fund Editorial:
The year 2016 was a tumultuous twelve months, characterised by dramatic and largely unforeseen events such as the Brexit vote in the UK, the election of Donald Trump as president of the US, and the refugee crisis in Europe. The Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016 is “paranoid”, while the Oxford English Dictionary’s is “post-truth”.
If these two words accurately encapsulate the public mood last year, then we can say that now, at the beginning of 2017, people are feeling nervous, distrustful of institutions that they might previously have seen as reliable even protective, irrationally convinced that others are planning to harm them. At the same time we can say that people are being guided more by their emotions, feelings and personal beliefs than by objective facts. Putting these two together, we are looking at a deeply anxious world, a world which is indeed heavily destabilised and fraught with uncertainties, but all magnified in the minds of those who feel unsafe, unable to trust authorities or experts, with no expectation of distinguishing “fake news” from real truth, only able to trust themselves and their feelings. Given that those feelings are increasingly paranoid, the downward spiral towards febrile fear and ill-judged actions continues.
In this context, let us consider some of the challenges facing the Church.
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