[caption id="attachment_6076" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="(C) John Salmon. Used with permission. This is not a picture of the &#039;offending&#039; Church."]<a href="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/church-car-park.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6076" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/church-car-park-300x210.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="210" /></a>[/caption]

After a couple of weeks 'settling in' to my new home in a new part of the country (aka being lazy) this morning I took a walk through the Centre of town looking for a church to attend. The sound of the Church bells ringing out alerted me to the presence of St Mary's Church of England church which was otherwise overshadowed by the much larger apartment blocks and shooping complex that surrounded it. AlthoughI'm a nonconformist Christian at heart why not give it a go, I thought. And so with that decision made I followed the sound of the bells until I reached the building itself.

But, when it came to it, I did did not cross the Church doors.

My reason for not entering St Mary's was not any sudden reversal on my position on entering a 'Established' State Church or a realisation that theism is bunk and atheism is the eay to go but rather an instinctual revulsion at the church car park. Here I was in a town where over a quarter of children officially live in poverty but what struck me as I approached the door was the fact that not one of the twenty or so cars was not gleaming or otherwise clearly not more than three years old. Among the cars was a healthy smattering of BMW's and other cars of the like. Instinctually I knew that this was not a church that embodied Jesus' preference for 'the least of these' which, in this town, must surely number among it the large percentage of those of the town residents who do not have a secure professional income and a lovely cottage in the country. Instinctively I apprehended as the book of James puts it a faith that does not result in changed behaviour is no faith at all. And so, I concluded, if this church was indistinguishable from urbane middle class life it had ostensibly failed to respond to the call of the gospel of Jesus Christ. With that thought I