Heroes of the Faith: with J.John and Killy

Thomas Cranmer lived in a difficult time and was often forced to make hard and sometimes questionable decisions. Nevertheless, he remains a hero; let me share three things that I admire about him.

At the age of twenty-three, Angela was stunned to discover that a family will had made her the sole beneficiary of £1.8 million – around £200 million today – and the control of Britain’s most prestigious bank, Coutts. Angela, now the richest woman in Europe, changed her name to Burdett-Coutts and considered what to do with her fortune. She decided that the money was a ‘trust placed on her by God’ and that, in the spirit of Jesus’ image of the Good Shepherd (John 10:1–21), she was called ‘to feed the sheep’. And, for the rest of her life, that is exactly what she did.

Handel’s Messiah, now as much a part of Christmas as mince pies and mistletoe, is one of the world’s greatest expressions of the Christian faith in music.

Its composer, George Frideric Handel, was born in what is now Germany in 1685. Although his family discouraged him from a musical career, his astonishing natural talent proved unstoppable. Acquiring a wide range of skills, the young Handel found himself in Italy, where he began writing operas.

Mary Slessor was an inspirational missionary. She preached powerfully and encouraged the development of churches. A pioneer of what we now would call holistic mission, she battled against every kind of social evil, imposed peace, laid down the law and encouraged education. She was utterly unconventional to the point of eccentricity and reckless in how she existed.

Grenfell’s achievements are astonishing. One account claims he was directly or indirectly responsible for the existence of six hospitals, four hospital ships, seven nursing stations, two orphanages, two schools, fourteen industrial centres and various cooperatives.

Dorothy Sayers was not just one of the most popular novelists and playwrights of mid-twentieth-century Britain but also a firm defender of the Christian faith.

One of the most remarkable stories in modern Christianity is the explosive growth of the Iranian church. At the end of the 1970s there were a few hundred Christians in Iran; it is now estimated that there are as many as a million. It’s a worldwide pattern too; Britain alone now has several thousand Iranian believers. I believe it’s a work of God, but it has also involved many courageous individuals who have paid the price for their witness. One of the many I could name is Haik Hovsepian.

The story of the eighteenth-century French Christian, Marie Durand, who spent almost all her life in jail for her faith, is challenging.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings now stands high on any list of favourite books. Few people know that Tolkien was a Christian and that his beliefs underlie his writing.

Of the many accounts of the martyrdom of early Christians, one of the most compelling is that of a woman, Perpetua, who was executed in an arena at Carthage, now a suburb of Tunis in Tunisia, in the year 203.