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We are all worried about the future and how to stay optimistic — or should that be hopeful? We have plenty to worry about. Currently top of the league for recorded Coronavirus infections is

the US followed by Russia. Brazil has jumped to third place. Astute observers may notice similarities between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Jair Bolsonaro, though finding exactly the

right word to describe what their leadership has in common is difficult. Shall we just say they are not noted for their overwhelming concern for the welfare of their citizens, or for their

moral scruples. So it is disturbing to find the UK in fourth place. If we use a different measure, Coronavirus deaths per 100,000 — only Belgium and Spain, comparable democracies with a

slightly higher median age than UK — are ahead of us. Germany, with a higher median age is way below. An analysis published today by the Financial Times found that: “The UK has suffered the

highest rate of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.” Anxiety is justified.

Of course, recorded infections depend on population size, demography and the amount of testing done. But the overall picture puts Britain in a bad light. If we think about our future it is

hard to be optimistic. Yet, perhaps a comforting ritual for some, at the end of television interviews with the scientific experts comes the standard question: “So are you optimistic?” and

what seems to be the required answer “Yes”. By this they do not mean, as did the 17th century German Enlightenment philosopher, Gottfried Leibnitz, that we live in the best of all

God-created worlds, or that imperfections in it are designed to draw us towards what is truly good. They mean that the belief in human ingenuity and scientific wisdom, in short, the diffuse

idea of “progress”, now interrupted, will resume its onward course.

The problem with faith in progress is that scientific knowledge does not bring about change in a vacuum.  Things, events, people get in the way. Chinese bureaucrats in Wuhan, terrified of

being the bearers of bad news to the top ranks of the Chinese Communist Party, initially suppressed and punished the scientific experts who identified a potential pandemic. British

government ministers became so immersed in the task of leaving the European Union that they neglected the necessary measures set out by “the science” for preparing for a pandemic. We are not

automatically drawn towards what is truly good or rational but towards immediate competition for scarce resources (PPEs, vaccines), in a narrow nationalism in which there is one rule for

the rich and the governing elite and another for the people, and yet another for foreigners. We know it doesn’t have to be like this. We hope for something better.

In this national and global crisis, we want to talk about our present predicament and our future. We want to have hope. But we have lost the language for such a discussion. An important

missing ingredient for the discussion is our formerly Christian understanding of what it means to be human. We no longer speak of bad actions, of evil or sin. Instead we make do with

“misspeaking” rather than lies, “inappropriate behaviour” and “mistakes” rather than intentional acts of deceit or criminality. If actions are really bad we resort to semi-therapeutic words

such as “sociopathic”. We hardly speak of what a good person or a good society is like. We end up with political leadership being the art of appearing to care about society’s wellbeing.

Being optimistic while saddled with unchecked governments, is not rational. We need more than scientific rigour. We need to talk about the cultivation of virtue and the purification of

desire and we need these habits of mind to be qualifiers for public office. If you baulk at Christian discourse on the nature of true leadership call it integrity if you like, but it is a

prerequisite for sustaining genuine hope. The absence of these qualities, or the absence of majority public concern about them, must not be taken as a political given within a secular

culture.

Hope, in its realism and in its refusal to despair and determination to act is the appropriate virtue for these times. Hope contains an element of desire for the good, or Common Good, and a

theological sense of expectation (understanding that the hoped-for future is not going to come by human agency and human desire and expectation alone). For hope to be rational it will

inevitably be a hoping against hope, for example, to imagine after Coronavirus a more just and peaceful world with leaders who care effectively for the planet.

And who could disagree with that in a world that automatically dismisses the political implementation of such an idea as utopian, a world dominated by two superpowers and one wannabe-again

superpower led by Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin? Those who have got into the habit of hoping also have reason to agree with another kind of leader, Nelson Mandela. “It always

seems impossible until it is done,” he once said. He was speaking, not abstractly, but from his own experience of leadership and of hope.

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