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Good Morning Being proud has always been a bit of a problem for religious traditions. It implies thinking a lot of yourself, perhaps being a bit too big for your boots. Pride even gets top billing among the seven deadly sins, not listed in the Bible but reflected on by Christian theologians from the 4th century onwards as not only something to be avoided but the root of all the other sins. So I was struck by the thoughtful open letter written by the England men’s football manager Gareth Southgate on Tuesday in advance of the European championships. He described the young England team as ‘humble, proud and liberated’. And in one phrase expressed a paradox that religion has often struggled to say well. That humility and pride don’t need to be opposite ends of a spectrum of self-belief, they can go together in a vision of what human life can be like. Christian teaching about humility has been consistent: it’s our duty to put the needs of others before ourselves. Our habitual stance towards another person is to make way, to do to others as we would have them do to us. Seeing pride as a good thing has traditionally been more difficult for people of faith. But it seems to me that Christian teaching makes a mistake if it condemns pride out of hand. Because your life experience matters hugely in this regard. If you are a person who has suffered historic exclusion or discrimination, if you identify as gay for example. If you’ve suffered disadvantage and violence because of the colour of your skin, if you’ve been ridiculed because you can’t read or struggle with your mental health, then pride becomes not a sin in itself but a proper level of self-care and self-respect. The England manager is talking to football fans. He’s encouraging fans to be proud of the England team representing their country, as supporters Wales, Scotland and other national teams will be rightly proud of theirs. At the same time, he challenges the twisting of that concept of English pride that tries to make excuses for the inexcusable: the online abuse of Black players for being Black for example. In religious language, the sin, not of pride but of racism. Pride, coupled with humility, in turn linked with liberation in knowing who we are. This kind of pride is more gently expressed than the aggressive self-centredness that the Christian tradition wants to challenge. And as such, with the exemplars of Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Harry Kane, I can say, with humility and pride, come on Scotland, come on Wales and come on England.