Archbishop's Hopes for 2007 - An Article for the Big Issue magazine

It's always tempting when you're asked for hopes for the year ahead to go for the large, grand and selfless ones and pretend to ignore what's really on your mind. So let me get one or two things out of the way that are really and personally things I'm hoping for. I hope I can lose a bit more weight. I hope the new book gets nice reviews. I hope my family will be happy. I hope that a couple of pretty difficult meetings for my Church in the early part of the year will pass without major disruption. And I hope to read just one complimentary article in a newspaper about the Church of England and its leadership (actually I made that last one up, but I wouldn't mind...).

But yes, there are some bigger issues, so to speak, that preoccupy me as well. Two or three are specially pressing. I hope we have a proper debate in this country about the upgrading of the Trident missile system, and about our whole nuclear policy - and personally I hope it results in the brakes being put on before we commit astronomical sums to this system.

And I hope that something can happen to stop the escalation of crisis in Israel and Palestine. We're near a moment of irreversible tipping over into chaos. It looks from the outside as though no-one is planning more than forty eight hours ahead and that reactive violence all round is what everyone is taking for granted. There's no renouncing of terror tactics; there's no strengthening of responsible authority in the Palestinian regions; the 'security fence' continues to grow, with all the consequences for local communities; and there seems to be a baffling lack of strategy about regional security. I'm sure plenty of people in the Holy Land share these anxieties and work at them - but to the observer, the whole thing looks frozen. What will it take to thaw it? Will our government - under new leadership by mid-year - manage to maintain effective leverage? Pulling back from the brink is not impossible: could this be the year?

Nearer home, I hope we can decide to be a bit more grown up about the whole business of 'faith' in public life. The last couple of months have felt rather surreal, if you read most of the press. 'Faith communities' and 'faith schools' are suddenly a matter for panic. We're supposed to believe that our society (which, of course, left to itself is naturally harmonious and just) is threatened with unspeakable disruption and division by religious fanatics who want partnership between statutory authorities and their own religious communities in education, or by tiresome zealots with no sense of humour who want to display signs of their most important personal allegiance.

It's pointless getting a persecution complex about this. But perhaps we might be allowed to ask for a bit of a reality check here- even to hope for a bit of recognition of how much basic bottom-line work for cohesion and access and emergency care depends on none other than these 'faith communities' in most of our urban and many of our rural settings. Too much to hope for? Surely not.

Happy Christmas!

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