An orthodox Christian must be just as committed to the view that an omnipotent God in some sense wills everything that happens. But the Christian worldview has at least the potential for tragedy: an awareness that there is something stubborn and valuable in human beings to which submission to the will of God does not come easily, and perhaps not even naturally.Already, I hear listeners yawning. The natural form for radio is a story, which is why the best radio preachers are fundamentalists. By far the liveliest Christian radio is the most reprehensible: no one ever came away from Jimmy Swaggart bored.

The only other people with as much story- telling in their culture are rabbis such as Lionel Blue - and all everyone remembers about him is that he told stories about food.. The drive to equality sweeps through contemporary history like a tide. Its headwaters deepened even when Margaret Thatcher, the arch- priestess of inequality of income and wealth, was in power. In a Conservative acceptance of the value of equal opportunity and treatment, backbench Tories have had to sit there whingeing about political correctness even as the Cabinet Office published guidelines for its black, disabled and gay employees as individuals deserving equal treatment. Britain has become more unequal in terms of income distribution, but also arguably more equal in terms of treatment. Black people, disabled people and people labelling themselves as possessing different and distinct sexual personalities are recognised in public policies as possessors of the same civic identity as everyone else.