Sixty-two thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine.‍ ‍

That is not the gate at a football match. It is the number of persons arrested in the United Kingdom over five years for what the law is pleased to call communications offences. Of that number, eighteen thousand five hundred and ten were charged and twelve thousand two hundred and ninety-two convicted. Subtract, and you are left with something in the order of forty-four thousand men and women who were seized by officers of the Crown, who in many cases had their doors knocked upon and their telephones carried away in a bag, and who were then released without anybody ever getting round to putting a charge to them.

The debate provoked by the Open Iftar in Trafalgar Square has been, on the whole, a depressing spectacle. It has revealed a Christian community — or what remains of it in the British public square — that is more comfortable with reactive indignation than with the hard work of evangelical renewal. It has revealed politicians who invoke Christianity as a cultural marker while showing little evidence of any personal acquaintance with its actual content. It has revealed media commentators who can generate heat around questions of religious identity without shedding much light on what any of the faiths in question actually teach.

What it has not revealed — at least not prominently — is the Christianity we actually need. The Christianity of the Holy Week processions. The Christianity of the open door and the burning lamp. The Christianity of the priest who takes the gospel to the streets, not because he wishes to dominate anyone, but because he has been grasped by something he cannot keep to himself.