What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions - our visions of “the good life” and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs of our thinking? … What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know but about what we love?

True freedom is a gift of grace given by the one who is in fact Lord; that gift, freely given, can only be received in freedom. It follows that the church cannot bear witness to that gift unless there is freedom to refuse it. Yet the church must still bear witness that this is the only true freedom: to belong wholly to the one by whom the space of freedom is created, and whose service is perfect freedom.

The idea that there is no third way between agnostic pluralism and a despotic theocracy is another by-product of the split between a false objectivity and a false subjectivity. It is surely possible to envision, and therefore also obligatory to work for, a society that is pluralist in the sense that the scientific community is pluralist, a society that believes in the possibility of knowing the truth about human nature and destiny and that is committed to seeking further understanding. Within such a society the Christian Church would be free and would be in duty bound to put forth its belief with the fullest confidence into the public argument about all human affairs.