St John the Bad, Peterborough

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 13/10/2025 - 00:00

The Church of St John the Baptist in the centre of Peterborough is the town’s official parish church. What is now the cathedral was once an abbey, and the townsfolk had no right to go and worship there. While only a stone’s throw apart, the two remain separate. Although it is a handsome building and able to hold its own, despite the proximity of its greater, grander neighbour, it was not a church at which I felt welcome. This is ironic, seeing as a sticker was attached to the door, stating:

EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE

Unfortunately, it was written over the colours of the ‘Progress Pride Flag’. The left-hand triangle represents the belief that there are more than two genders, and that one may alternate or choose between several, in defiance of biology. Whoever leads this church clearly believes this, and wishes to share it with the world. So for people like me who believe that there is male and female and nothing else, and what you are born as makes you what you are, this little sticker means I am not welcome. These beliefs of mine used to be called ‘normal’, ‘obvious’ and ‘common sense’, but now they are considered to belong to the Far Right or some kind of religious fundamentalism.

St John’s website is surprisingly comprehensive, and even explains its three principles under the heading How we decide what is true:

Scripture – The Bible. We accept this as an inspired work, which reveals timeless wisdom but it has to be understood in the context of its day so that we can work out how it can relate to our own times. It is the product of different writers, over centuries, using different styles including poetry, story, letters and reflections.

Meaning: we can change our beliefs when we wish.

Tradition. There is a long story of thought and reflection which maps out how we have got to where we are now. Over that time understandings have changed and deepened. While God doesn’t change, how we see God does and therefore what we think about significant issues changes. We are inheritors of a living tradition.

Meaning: we can change our beliefs when we wish.

Reason. There are many disciplines to help us understand the world, not least science and philosophy, history and the arts. These play vital roles in informing our faith and how that faith relates to our lives and contemporary world. So for instance, we accept that the universe that we know is some 13 billion years old and was not made in 6 days! Faith needs to make sense and be intelligible.

Meaning: we can change our beliefs when we wish.

Doubtless, when materialistic scientists add a few more billion years onto the earth’s age, the good leaders of St John’s will change their beliefs and website accordingly.

If you can change your doctrine on demand, alter beliefs when tastes change, adapt creeds as popularity shifts, adjust your orthodoxy when the occasion requires, then perhaps they were never worth holding to in the first place. Doubtless, the weather vane religion of Peterborough will one day celebrate three-way marriages, clinical lycanthropy and perhaps even atheism; doubtless there will be those churches that leap aboard the wagon, throwing orthodoxy to the wind -if there is any left.