TWO hundred years ago, community justice was the stocks; visible justice was the gallows.

Society is unrecognisable now, but if I’m quite often beaten up (in an entirely verbal way) by friends and colleagues who claim that I’m old-fashioned, sentimental, or both in seeking to prevent our society and its institutions from becoming exclusively secular, and actively hostile to religion.

But hurray! It turns out I’m not quite such a crusty after all.

I (even) have the BBC, and much of the British public on my side.

In a poll almost two-thirds of those questioned for the launch of the BBC Faith Diary said that the “law should respect and be influenced by UK religious values”, and a similar proportion agreed that “religion has an important part to play in public life”.

But this should not be too surprising. Islam traces its roots back to the same prophet – Abraham – as Judaism and Christianity.

All three religions are seen as “religions of the book”.

There have been many centuries when Jews, Christians, and Muslims have lived happily side by side (more often when there’s been a Muslim ruler, as it happens).

And Moses and Jesus are regarded as revered prophets in Islam.

Because Islam was founded seven centuries after Christ, millennia after Judaism, and draws on a shared history and in some respects a shared theology, those of the Muslim faith tend in my experience to have a more instinctive grasp of these “earlier” faiths than Christians and Jews do of theirs.

I was put in mind of all these shared values and experiences at a residents’ meeting I chaired at the United Reform Church, Revidge on Friday.

Many people turned up to discuss where they lived with police chief Andy Rhodes, Health Service boss Judith Griffin, Council Leader Mike Lee, and me.

About half those present were white, half of Asian heritage.

The accents were similar, and so were the concerns.

Parking problems, especially regarding St Mary’s College topped the list, with complaints about drug dealing in one street a near second.

Chief Superintendent Rhodes gave out figures about crime levels.

Burglary and car crime “is at its lowest for 30 years in the Lancashire areas”, he said.

Drug dealing concerns notwithstanding, no one disputed Mr Rhodes’ claim that the area is now much safer than it’s been for years.

Interestingly, when Mr Rhodes raised the issue, directed at the Asian residents, about the impact of the counter-terrorist arrests which took place the weekend before there was silence.

Not a single comment. What the residents were united about was what could be done to improve the quality of their lives in their area.

We hear a lot about “parallel communities”, and “separate lives”.

I’m not so dewy eyed not to recognise there are significant problems in better binding two sets of communities with a different faith and different cultural traditions.

But this BBC poll, and the residents’ meeting, shows our society is making progress, and there is more to be hopeful about than there is to fear.