But you wouldn't know any of that from the report of the Oversight Group that the Commissioners set up to advise on the use of a £100m investment fund that had already committed to. Reading the report, you would get the impression that the historical chattel slave trade was the cause of all the world's racist ills, and that the Church of England was responsible for all of this.

Mike Sabo highlights this dynamic well in his recent piece about the cage-stage phenomenon. "Theological cage-stagers can become puffed up with an assortment of facts but have little wisdom... They spend their days in fruitless 'debates' in Facebook groups, hammering away on their phones as dust gathers on their Bibles." With an abundance of knowledge at our fingertips, many are able to parrot and mimic the newfound argument.

From our Great Generation legacy, my family received a strong work ethic and biblical morality that laid the foundation for our success in the world. The unfortunate side-effect of this legacy is that it also created the burden of a performance-based sense of self-worth and a susceptibility to a works-oriented (instead of grace-oriented) soteriology. American Christians too easily accept the idea that we were saved only to serve and succeed.

In 1984 I was attending Fuller Theological Seminary, working toward graduate degrees in both the School of Psychology and the School of Theology... and I was wrestling (both personally and academically) with this issue of self-esteem. What I discovered in both my study of theology and clinical research in the behavioral sciences was a mixed bag of expert opinions, with a lot of hints but no unequivocal answers to my questions.