“Now is the time to come together,” said Theresa May at the despatch box on 29 March. But how? Britain is more divided than I have ever known it, if my Facebook feed, lively with debate, is anything to go by. As I look at it, I keep hearing that mysterious sound in Act II of The Cherry Orchard, of something turning and twisting and tightening to breaking point. At first, I attributed it to tinnitus, the enduring legacy of my pop career, but now I wonder if others hear it, too, in exchanges between Remainers and Leavers – especially those happening in unlikely places and testing untested loyalties.
The Church, particularly the Church of England, with its historic commitment to the via media (“middle way”), has rich experience in seeking to bridge irreconcilable differences. The first Christians were formed by the first Easter into a new community that transcended all other commitments, encompassing the tax collector Matthew, a lackey of the occupying Romans, and Simon the Zealot, an insurrectionist.
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