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On yet another crucial day for the process of Britain leaving the European Union, political events are moving fast. And as the pace quickens for the politicians, the identities of Leaver and Remainer among us as the electorate might become even more deeply felt and sharply drawn. It's one version of 'identity politics', increasingly on display in our public conversations. The reality is that we all carry multiple identities. There are some ways in which I am like every other human being: I need water and air to live, sometimes I am afraid to die, I dream of a better world. There are other ways in which I’m like some other human beings; I might speak a particular language, or have a particular colour of skin. And third, there are some ways in which I am unique; my eye colour, my finger print, the unique combination of life experiences that make me me. It’s in this middle category of identity that politics takes place. The challenge presented by the 2016 referendum and its aftermath is that our multiple identities; the fact that I might be a musician and a pilot, have a physical impairment or be vegetarian; all these identities, even the old traditional party political ones, are too easily collapsed into just one: Leave or Remain. The Indian Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen has argued that societies get themselves into profound trouble if we start collapsing our identities into an illusion of a single identity. And that to build a humane and compassionate society, we must resist this amongst ourselves. (cf 'Identity and Violence' Amartya Sen 2006). And Christian theology resolutely teaches the unity of all people, but will not ignore our lived experience in a specific time and place. St Paul could not have been clearer: in Christ there is no male or female, no slave nor free he said. It’s important to say that in the very naming of these different identities, St Paul doesn't ignore them or try to smooth them out in an unhelpful way. An appeal to the unity of humanity categorically does not try to make us all the same; we’re not pretending we all agree. But this Scripture does insist that we don’t allow ourselves to get trapped in a single identity which polarises and divides. My Christian faith will challenge me to remember that I am many things before I might be a Remainer or a Leaver and will insist that I find creative ways to state and re state that humane and compassionate connection, even and especially across the most acute of divides and at the most tense of times.