Jamie and Daniel French take the reins for this special 20th edition of Irreverend! We review the recent governmental unveiling of a "roadmap" out of lockdown and the four tests that must be met if even this glacially paced timetable is to be met. We get our rant on about the conservative press who are now passionately advocating for a two-tier society in which vaccination passports are used to prove that you belong to the right group. We chat about the recent racial abuse that Calvin Robinson has received from the hard left, including a race relations charity called The Race Trust. We ask when the Church of England will issue a statement defending one of their own from racist abuse as they did when Jarel Robinson Brown received ostensibly similar treatment. We also talk about the shock story of the week, which is that Prince Charles visited his sick, 99 year old father in hospital. People are outraged apparently, but it probably says more about them than anything else. Email of the week comes from Rosemary who has rewritten 1 Corinthians 13 for the COVID-era. The text of her work is below these show notes for anyone who would like them. Thanks for listening. As always please contact us for any suggestions, criticisms, questions, excoriations at [email protected], follow us on Twitter @irreverendpod and/or on our YouTube page! Please also rate and review us on iTunes to help us ascend the algorithm. If you are looking for an open church in England, please visit www.uklockdownchurches.wordpress.com where there is a list available with some basic information. Alternatively if you have an open church and would like to list it, you are welcome to do so there.

1 Corinthians 13 (COVID rewrite) Though I speak with the tongues of virologists and epidemiologists, and have not Covid, I have become as a corrupted file, or an unconvincing symbol. And though I have the gift of modelling, and a tenured post at Imperial College, and though I have all algorithms, so that I can move mountains of data, and have not Covid, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my figures to terrify the masses, and though I allow my results to be turned around, and have not Covid, it profiteth me nothing. Covid lasteth long, and is a bind; Covid pardoneth not; Covid transmitteth itself, its statistics are puffed up, it perpetuateth itself nosocomially, seeketh out the old, is easily contracted, causeth much evil, rejoiceth not in compassion, but perverteth the truth; distorteth all things, devalueth all things, enslaveth all things, crusheth all things. Treatment for Covid never faileth; but whether there be cancer screening, it shall be suspended; whether there be heart problems, they shall be misdiagnosed; whether there be co-morbidities, they shall vanish away from the death certificate. For we bully in part, and we terrify in part. But when that which is totalitarian is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a human being, I spake as a human being, I understood as a human being, l thought as a human being; but when I became a terrified zombie, I put away human things. For now I breathe through a mask, hardly, but then with a deleted face; now I snitch in part, but then shall I snitch even as I am snitched on. And now abideth flu, pneumonia, and Covid, these three; but the greatest of these is Covid.

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