The papers remain full of disclosures about the Abu Hamza trial, raising questions about why action wasn't taken sooner. At the same time we've had the news about the burning down of nine churches in Alabama, several serving black congregations. And then yesterday we heard about the discovery of a seventeenth century manuscript by the great scientist Robert Hooke, recording proceedings of the Royal Society between 1661 and 1691.

Sometimes seemingly unrelated events come together to make us think about where we are in the human journey, and in this case I think they do. The growth of science in the seventeenth century came about after a long period of religious wars throughout Europe in the wake of the Reformation. If Protestants and Catholics couldn't agree, then a search had to be made for a source of knowledge that didn't rest on religious foundations.

That was why the Royal Society was formed in 1660. As Robert Hooke put it in the manuscript just discovered, it was founded so that people could be "directed by the great schoolmistress of reason - experience." Francis Bacon, another key figure in the rise of science, said that the cause of atheism was "divisions in religion, if they be many". Europe became secular not because people lost faith in God, but because they lost faith in the ability of people of God to live peaceably with one another.

Today the world is moving in the opposite direction - not because we've lost faith in science, but because science for good reasons of its own doesn't answer our deepest questions: Who are we? Why are we here? By what standards shall we live? But the return to religious or ethnic identities carries with it all the dangers it had in the 17th century: conflict, anger, the clash of worldviews, a loss of faith in the political process, and a turn instead to direct action and violence. The seventeenth century was a dangerous time to live, and so, thus far, is the twenty-first.

The liberal democratic state emerged only after devastating religious conflict, and a new social contract whereby each citizen renounced violence in favour of the state, which was charged with protecting us from violence. The religious name for such a contract is covenant; and that is what we must now renew. Society is the home we build together - and if violence wins, we will lose freedom itself: so hard to build, so easy to destroy.

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