We are living through the rise of heartless authoritarianism across the world, itself borne out of and sustained by fear; the seeming destruction of a sense of integrity, public truth and reason before our very eyes, daily on our screens and in our newspapers.

When an immensely rich US president cancels charitable aid to the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, suggests ethnic cleansing as a way to bring peace to the Middle-East, – and now levies personal sanctions against staff of the International Criminal Court who seek to bring some measure of justice to victims of crimes against humanity and genocide – then we know that the time for Christians to be courageous and stand up is now.

And when the new vice-president of America says that a Christian teaching is that ‘charity begins at home’ – and let me remind you that the phrase received its greatest exposition in Charles Dicken’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewitt, where it was used by the villain of the book, Montague Tigg, a con man and a thief, to justify his own swindling and corruption.

The salad days are over - If our Christian faith does not inspire us to condemn, to object and to resist then we must question whether our convictions are merely fair-weather affectations – as the saying goes, ‘all for show and not for blow’.