SO Easter’s here. A few people will go to church, the embattled minority.
Most folk will either traipse around some ghastly visitor attractions with screaming kids, eat a load of chocolate or visit distant family members they never liked anyway. Nightmare.
TV produces its “special� seasonal programmes which are even worse than the usual ones, which is saying something...

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to go into a rant about the religious significance of Easter, because this blog isn’t really the place for that.
But religion is a theme of sorts because, hey!, religion is important again on a world scale, having got mixed up with politics in case you hadn’t noticed.
The real meaning of Easter is, of course, now lost to several generations, and that is largely down to a failure to communicate by modern Christians leaders. Few people these days take any notice of them.
I have been thinking about this because we are fast approaching the 1,700th anniversary of the acclamation of Constantine as Caesar by his legionaries in York.
Roman citizens dwelling in Chester at that time (306 AD) will certainly have heard of Constantine. He was athletic and charismatic, and following the death of his dad he was suddenly boss of the western half of the Roman Empire.
Constantine became the greatest Roman Emperor of all and a brilliantly effective Christian leader. People took notice of him all right.
Many are the times that he knocked together the heads of obstinate, arguing bishops in the early Church, because he viewed episcopal feuds as a disgrace and displeasing to God.
Significantly for modern Europe and Britain, Constantine was the first Emperor to be a Christian and to proclaim religious freedom and toleration for the previously persecuted Christians of the Roman Empire.
And his tolerance went wider than that because although he was very tough on Christian schismatics he never persecuted non-believers or pagans.
As such he is a model for those important virtues the modern world is fast-losing – such as loyalty and obedience to the Church, and tolerance of other faiths.
If such values prevailed today in the West we would all have better lives.
And if a man like Constantine was alive today and wielding political power in Europe, then our Christian communities would not be so battered into submission by secular public authorities eager to ban such things as carol services, crosses in crematorium chapels, and bibles in hospital bedside tables, as has happened in recent years.
Constantine fought under the Christian banner, having been inspired by a vision of a cross in the sky and the words “In Hoc Signo Vinces�, meaning “by this sign you shall conquer�.
He was a hard man, but fair, in a phrase memorably coined by the Monty Python team.
We need Constantine’s inspiration today to bring us all back to a better way of living.
Because among modern Western churches, a liberal-humanist approach to life is gaining ground at the expense of a religious one. Constantine wouldn’t have liked that. He would have cracked some heads together.
Priests and ministers across the mainstream denominations today seem to prefer the notion of a humble church operating quietly without much public profile in an era of declining faith.
Constantine was a different sort of Christian leader. He didn’t hesitate to put Caesar’s sword to St Peter’s service, while protecting the freedoms of other faiths.
Is there anyone now of Constantine’s stature who will defend both the faith and its brilliant but flawed offspring, Western culture?
Well, perhaps Condoleezza Rice, a recent visitor to Liverpool, and a likely next President of the USA, might be “man� enough for the job.
Like Constantine, she knows the value of peace, tolerance, freedom and justice. She knows they are all worth fighting for.

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