With war in Europe, regime change in the USA, the effects of climate change, and world leaders gathering in Davos for the World Economic Forum, all of us are aware of the impact of globalisation on our lives. The world is more connected in terms of commerce, communication and travel than ever before. We are conscious of being part of a global community. But not everyone has benefitted from globalisation. There is a disconcerting tension between the local and the universal, and this is manifest in conflict over migration, tariffs and border controls.          

I have been thinking about this in the context of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. When we say the Creed, we say that we believe in 'one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church'. And yet, as the Revd Dr Jesse Zink points out in his recent book Faithful, Creative, Hopeful: Fifteen Theses for Christians in a Crisis-Shaped World, the word 'catholic' can be misleading. Catholic is often translated 'universal' and yet the Greek word from which it stems means 'according to the whole'. The church is catholic in the sense that it is present around the world, but when the first Christians gathered on the day of Pentecost before their missionary journeys had begun, the church was still 'catholic'. In the fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem wrote that the word referred to the fact that the church could be found everywhere, but it also described the comprehensiveness of its teaching, its desire to manifest every form of virtue, and its commitment to bring salvation to everyone.

But is 'catholicity' just another form of 'globalisation'? Jesse Zink points out that while there may be parallels (for example, the church is constantly wrestling with the tension between the local and the universal), there is an important difference. He says, 'the tendency of globalisation is toward homogenization. The more that consumers around the world can be the same and want the same things, the easier it is for globe spanning corporations to serve us'. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, suggests that 'the catholic is the opposite of the globalized, because the catholic is about wholeness, about the wholeness of the person, the wholeness of local culture and language. Therefore it's not simply opening the same fast-food shop in every village on the globe, and it's not like the global economy, in which people are drawn into somebody's story and somebody's interests which in fact makes others poor and excluded.' Indeed, while there are people who like their religion to be neat and tidy, perhaps we need to remember that there is something about the catholicity of the Christian church which is profoundly resistant to uniformity and homogeneity. As we contemplate the gift of unity, perhaps we need to remember that our diversity is not a problem to be solved, but a gift which we can share.