That phrase Revolutionary Christianity is fashionable. But what it describes is more often a way of talking than a way of walking. It is revolution at the level of argument rather than action. We take daring liberties with the Christianity of the Creeds and the traditional ideas about God. We go into the fray armed to rend an Altizer or Woolwich apart, or defend them to the death. We sup the heady wine of controversy and nail our colours to the mast — mixing our metaphors in the excitement! The Church, we cry, is in ferment. She has bestirred herself out of her defensive positions and is on the march! And so she is — on the march to the nearest bookshop or theological lecture room or avant garde church to expose herself to the latest hail of verbal or paper missiles. This is not revolution. It has more in common with the frenzied scratching of a dog to rid itself of fleas than an epic march on the Bastille or the Winter Palace. Revolutionary Christianity is so uncomplicated in comparison that it is almost embarrassing to have to put it into words. It is simply doing costly things for Jesus’ sake.

there’s a reason the New Testament talks about the number of people being saved on a regular basis. It’s because each of those people matters to God, and each of those people is someone we’re called to reach with the gospel. The CofE is currently failing in that task, and until we have reckoned with that, we call into question our claim to be called a church at all. Are we actually doing the task our Master has set us?

at the back of everyone’s mind will be the feeling that a rare opportunity has been missed for an heroic religious engagement. Either the camp will go quickly and brutally or the proceedings will come to resemble the Dale Farm debacle, with endless litigation, media summits, appeals, further clarifications of court orders and – eventually – a nasty moment when the camp is physically dismantled by the authorities.

If and when this does come about, the cathedral will have been primarily responsible. Had it adopted Fraser’s line, the protesters would probably be gone by now (as they had always intended), the institute’s report on the City would be a widely admired and much read document, and the Church’s commitment to economic justice would have been given a tremendous boost. Instead, we have this spectacle of a great cathedral acting not as a focus for Christian action but as a grand, religious Nimby.

Introverts are to extroverts what American women were to men in the 1950s — second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent.