Daily Inspiration Quote by Geoffrey Fisher

Fisher’s line lands like a polite ecclesiastical bomb: the real scandal isn’t doctrinal difference, it’s the way labels get weaponized long after their theological precision has evaporated. As Archbishop of Canterbury in the early Cold War years, visiting the pope was not a sentimental photo-op; it was a deliberate piece of institutional stagecraft. He’s telling his own camp that the future of Christian public life depends less on rehearsing inherited antagonisms than on refusing the vocabulary that keeps them alive.

The intent is pragmatic and tactical. “Out of date” sounds mild, even managerial, but it’s a demolition charge aimed at centuries of reflexive tribalism. By stressing “as ordinarily used,” Fisher concedes the terms still have technical meaning inside churches while arguing that in public they’ve become slogans. That “propaganda” is doing heavy lifting: it casts sectarian identity not as sincere belief but as a tool for mobilizing fear, loyalty, and political leverage. In a Britain still shadowed by Irish conflict and European confessional history, that’s an indictment of the way religion gets conscripted into nationhood and party lines.

The subtext is also self-protective. Fisher frames the papal visit as evidence - “enabled everybody to see” - positioning himself as a moderator of perception, not a renegade collapsing boundaries. He’s trying to move ecumenism from the realm of daring theology into common sense: if the labels chiefly create “trouble,” then clinging to them looks less like fidelity and more like irresponsibility.