‘You said that Christ's mission was directed to the poor … You instanced various healing actions: the opening of the eyes of the blind, the unstopping of the ears of the deaf, etc. Having noticed that, you omitted something else which Jesus did but which is not within the scope of the National Health Service …–the raising of the dead. What I am saying is that Christ's mission to the blind, the poor, the deaf and all the rest is only another part of his mission to raise the dead; that, as the raising of the dead is supernatural – is religious, if you like – so also is the rest of the healing mission of Christ, and that we are not imitating Christ, or fulfilling his commandments, when we are engaged in healing anymore than when we are engaged in banking.’

‘To those who are sceptical of all versions of Christian politics, including conservative ones – and this is my own position – the present identification of Christianity with western bourgeois liberalism seems an unnecessary consecration of a highly relative and unstable set of values, the more unsatisfactory because it is generally done unconsciously. Liberalism actually occupies a very narrow band in the possible spectrum of political theories. To regard it as the distillation of Christian wisdom, … is, to say the least, a short-term view.