The role of the Israelite prophet was vital, but often unpopular. The prophets
denounced evils which went hand in hand with worship. Shrines were frequented,
rituals performed and ceremonial went in full swing while the helpless were
exploited and multitudes starved.

I feel that prophets like Amos, Elijah and Daniel are almost non existent within
today's Church; because multitudes in the world are living below the poverty line
while affluent Christian civilizations spend billions to combat the ills of over
indulgence.

Suffering is not confined to humanity — animals are brutally tortured to
produce cheap food for man. Concrete animal 'Belsens' multiply, laboratory
animals are blinded — and all this is often condoned by those who seek
assurance that their sins are forgiven, and that a comfortable niche is reserved
for them in Heaven.

The hypocrisy of Victorianism, which conciliated regular worship with child
labour and industrial inhumanity, and the brutality of slavery with the daily
reading of the family Bible, still manifests its ugly head, though in a more
disguised and subtler form.

Christendom has become stinted. It has not evolved sufficiently. It has still to
learn that God's love and care is no more exclusive to the human species than it
was once thought to be to the Jewish race. Indeed, you can no more seek to
confine the true God's influence and domain to a species or a race than to a
tabernacle, an altar or a chapel!

The whole of the creation is God's concern. As the song—writer aptly
expressed it: 'He's got the whole world in His hands'. And, consequently, when
nailed to a cross, the Good Shepherd stretched out His lovely hands, figurative
of the extent of His embrace and died for the whole world — not merely for a
puny, pious 'self styled' elect of humanity!

A Christian's dominion over 'lower' forms of life, then, should be a reflection of
Christ's dominion over us! Or of a Christian husband's dominion over the
Woman he is called to cherish, protect, and possibly die for! It is, similarly,
comparable to the dominion that Christian parents are expected to have over
their offspring. Yes, it is all a dominion which is to be wed to a caring
stewardship. An authority which protects and nourishes defenseless or weaker
forms of life around.

Heaven help us if Christ's dominion over us were to be practiced as we do our
own dominion over the animals! Indeed, if that were to be the case, He would no
longer be viewed as a good shepherd, but, more appropriately, as a
manifestation of the supreme adversary!

Conversely, I sense we can wholeheartedly agree with a previous bishop of
Manchester's sentiments, which he expressed within the House of Lords in
1975: