We live in a time now in which we don’t want to accept flaws, we don’t want to accept contradiction, we don’t want to accept mistakes, we don’t want to accept ambiguities. . . Because the meta-universes that we’re creating don’t allow it. . . The journey of this generation is a journey towards certainty, and that to me is dangerous. We need to teach our young people the beauty of uncertainty, the beauty of ambiguity — that you don’t have to be right to be good

Bonnie Greer, speaking at Greenbelt Festival, 27 August

You could have just got rid of the people. The sheep didn’t do any wrong

Brian McLaren, critique of the Genesis story of the flood, Greenbelt, 26 August

The Psalms were not written for that annual outpouring of bad taste called Eurovision

John Bell, on the West’s lack of a vocabulary of lament, Greenbelt, 27 August

Nobody gets it easy — that should perhaps be the subtitle of the Bible

Ibid.

I don’t really understand what God exists for. . . Isn’t it possible for us to learn to come together and be civilised with each other without the threat of hell, for example?

Brian Eno, musician, Greenbelt, 27 August

Survivors of abuse are the Church’s best theologians, because they know what a person is when everything has been stripped away. If the Church of England survives for another 30 years, it will be because survivors have called it to repent and live up to its vocation to justice

OurCofELike, Twitter, 27 August

The soaring cost of everything and the scourge of inflation will mean that many of these community initiatives will close, depriving people of what is, quite literally in some cases, a lifeline. Be they after school clubs, pensioner lunches or community pantries, these groups are little reminders of humanity in a world that seems increasingly inhumane, and of abundant generosity even while belts are being tightened. Their peril might be an economic side effect, but it will also be a human tragedy

Fergus Butler-Gallie, The New Statesman, 29 August

We cannot do without church buildings as a physical mark of the Christian presence in the community but it is essential to maintain the congregations and priests, without whom the Church will cease to exist

George Harrison, Letter, The Times, 23 August

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