Ricky Ross

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside letting the door thud shut The opening lines of Philp Larkin’s ‘Church Going’ sum up a common interaction with churches for most British people. We like them better when they’re empty; at least then we can imagine what we’d like to be happening inside. Most of us now see churches, church-going and general matters of faith as a fringe concern. If the Church does take centre-stage, it’s usually because they are on the wrong side of the current social argument. Take the example of the Roman Catholic Church in the West of Scotland, where one priest told me that he avoids walking through the town centre in clerical collar for fear of verbal abuse from passers-by.

It’s almost 25 years since the atrocity at of Srebrenica, the last massacre on European soil. It’s not the kind of event that anyone will be too keen to remember: we quite rightly salute D-Day veterans, a reminder of those whose sacrifice led to the freedom we have today. But it’s worth remembering Srebrenica too - it offers a shocking case study in how a perfectly peaceful community could be almost destroyed when forces of xenophobia, racism and imperialism are allowed to proceed unchallenged. I was in Sarajevo recently to listen to the stories about that massacre.