ViaMedia

Category: Establishment

  • Women Bishops: The Legacy of Baroness Howe of Idlicote (8 February 1932-22 March 2022)

    by April Alexander, member of General Synod 2000-2021; Church Commissioner 2008-2018; member of Crown Nominations Commission 2013-2018

     

    Obituaries to Lady Howe saluted her well-known feminism, but few mentioned her Anglicanism.  For those of us who have worked for the ordination of women, however, Elspeth Howe is remembered with love and gratitude because, as a vice-president of WATCH (Women and the Church), she voiced in the House of Lords our joys and fears over the Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure (2014) and the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015.

    It is timely to look again at those joys and fears to see whether they have been realised.

    After the failure in the House of Laity in General Synod of the original 2012 Measure to allow women to be consecrated as bishops, in 2014 there was a determination not to allow the new and revised Measure to stumble at any point. It was Elspeth Howe who nevertheless asked further questions which forced the Archbishop of Canterbury (in 2013, Rowan Williams had been succeeded by Justin Welby) to address the rather embarrassing truth that discrimination against women would survive despite the indications to the contrary; indeed, such discrimination is actually embedded in the 2014 legislation and Guidance.

    To this day, parishes who want to may request from their Diocesan bishop – whether female or male – the episcopal oversight of an alternative bishop who will ‘protect’ the parish from ever having an ‘unacceptable’ Diocesan. In her speech to the House of Lords on 14 October 2014, Lady Howe asked whether the reverse would be the case. She pointed out that there were already parishes with a woman priest serving under a bishop who did not recognise her orders, and asked whether such a parish would be able to request the oversight of an inclusive bishop. The truthful answer would have been a plain ‘No’, as we have seen during the years since, but it was a fudge.

    Lady Howe also asked for reassurance that, despite all-encompassing nature of Clause 2 of the Measure, it was only the protected characteristic of gender from the Equality Act 2010 which would be overridden and not those characteristics relating to sexuality, marital status and so on. The Archbishop of Canterbury replied:

    As a matter of policy, the House of Bishops has advised that those in parochial appointments should act as though the [Equality] Act applied [to all protected characteristics other than gender]. This change is not a cloak for discrimination on sexuality, marital status, marital history or, for that matter, age (Hansard October 2014).

    This is also the answer I had been given in General Synod in July 2014 by the Chief Legal Adviser to the General Synod.  However, by the time she died, Lady Howe would have been forgiven for wondering why the debate on sexuality rumbles on, eight years after such a clear assurance, given in the House of Lords, by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

    Four months later, in February 2015, Baroness Howe spoke in the debate on the Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill which should have enabled new women bishops to ‘leapfrog’ over their male colleagues in being appointed to the Lords. In the event, of course, there have never been enough women to fill the places, and the provision lapses in 2025. She said:

    Given the great pleasure of seeing the first female bishop consecrated in the Church of England recently, it was sad to see that within a week the underlying divisions within the Church of England had begun to emerge once again…In October last year I asked the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury in this House whether archbishops would continue to consecrate all bishops in their respective Provinces. From his response and further debate in the other place I understood

    ‘that in the normal course of events, archbishops will consecrate all bishops but … there will be circumstances when an archbishop is ill or overseas’ (Commons 20/10/14; col 724).

    Then, he might delegate.

    Yet only one week after the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York (John Sentamu) had consecrated the first female bishop through the laying on of hands, he chose not to put his hands on the new Bishop of Burnley, although he was present at the time. He invited, as noble Lords will know, other bishops who were ‘acceptable’ to the new bishop to lay on hands in his place. There were only three such bishops. Thus, the contrast between the two services in that sense could not have been greater.

    This is still an important matter…. The archbishops [later] issued a statement that they would take each consecration on a case-by-case basis. Put simply, there are those in the Church of England who hold that once a bishop has laid hands on a female priest in ordination or on a female bishop in consecration he is no longer acceptable to consecrate members of the self-styled ‘traditional Catholic’ wing of the church. This is a notion of ‘taint’, however it is described by those who propose it.

    We should not forget that it has been a source of anguish among all women in the Church since alternative arrangements were introduced for ordination under the Act of Synod 1993.

    Readers should be aware that that the assurance quoted here by Lady Howe did not survive the passage of time. Citing not just the pandemic, but also ‘awareness of the sad reality that not all in the Church of England agree on issues of ordination’, the Archbishops issued another statement five years later on 20 July 2020. Rather than consecrating all bishops, they stated,

    We have agreed that the Metropolitan will normally ask another bishop to be the chief consecrator…From now on the Archbishops will ask three bishops to lay on hands with other bishops present and associating with the ordination but not in fact laying on their hands.

    From re-reading these debates, it is clear that assurances given even in the House of Lords, and even by the Archbishop of Canterbury, can turn out to be less than durable.

    What is also crystal clear is that Elspeth Howe had just the words to express the frustration and disappointment of the vast majority of women who had worked so hard for this legislation but who had no voice of their own in the legislature.

    May she rest in peace.

  • In Search of the ‘Optimal’

    by Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Exeter and co-editor (with Lucian Leustean) of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (2021)

    I was delighted to respond positively to the invitation to write a piece for Via Media – a chance to put my own thoughts in order. Too often invited to ‘take sides’, I want to explore ‘optimal’ as opposed to right or wrong answers to complex questions. Of course, there are principles that we need to respect, but even these should be debated with courtesy, and much, in my view, depends on asking the right question in the first place.

    Take, for example, the question of ‘establishment’. I have listened to arguments both for and against as if this was a black and white issue; but it cannot be so, given the weight of history. Like it or not, we have inherited a model from the past, meaning that we will feel its impact whatever we do. This does not mean that the present situation is immutable.

    What then is the best way forward in a society that is both increasingly secular and increasingly diverse? Is there any place for establishment in this mix?

    The Church of England is a ‘weak’ established church (no doubt about that) with a distinctive past – one of partial rather than total monopoly in a country that has housed significant religious minorities for centuries not decades. There are important positives in this combination: such a church has opportunities denied to more dominant equivalents. It is better placed to welcome rather than exclude, and to encourage rather than to condemn; deployed wisely, it can foster the maintenance of a tolerant and pluralist society. Specifically, it has the potential to promote and to sustain a constructive conversation about faith (of all kinds) at the centre of our society, an ever more necessary task. The goal in this respect is to extend privilege rather than remove it; to level up, rather than down.

    The parish raises both similar and different issues. Here again, is an inherited model but one that is ‘too big for itself’. How can the parish system (effectively a public utility) be sustained without the equivalent of a church tax?

    No one has spoken more eloquently of this model than Matthew Parris (The Times, 19 November 2021). His position is clear: ‘I don’t believe in God. But I love the Church, pay my subs to All Saints in Elton, sing hymns and delight in the Testaments Old and New’. The perceived ‘dangers’ are variously personified: the archbishops; diocesan plans; charismatic churches in general; church planting in particular; the new vicar and so on. The tone in the lengthy comments below the article is unforgiving, but none of them articulates the crucial point: this is a spectrum, not a zero-sum game. Many of us – whatever our churchmanship – can empathise with elements of Matthew Parris’ article, never more so than at the turning points in life. But all of us know that doing nothing will lead, as night follows day, to empty and decaying churches – hardly a good look.

    Rehearsing the same arguments over again won’t help. What might move the situation on is a clear analysis of what exactly we want to keep from our historical legacy and what can go? Quite a bit if only we could agree on priorities.

    Circumstances, moreover, alter cases – sometimes in unexpected ways. At one and the same time, COVID-19 has not only revealed the significance of church buildings for countless individuals (by no means all of them churchgoers) but vastly stimulated the online alternatives. Reactions to lockdown varied: some rejoiced in new-found freedoms; others mourned the loss of the familiar, physical as well as liturgical. Most hovered somewhere in between.

    Two points need careful underlining. The first addresses quality. Even a glance at what is on offer reveals that both in-person worship and its online equivalents are enormously varied, and that both can be good and less good. They are, moreover, complementary. Joining a Europe-wide service for Ukraine in early March, including the Anglican chaplaincies in both Moscow and Kyiv, was a deeply moving experience and necessarily online. Of course, this didn’t replace the fervent and continuing prayers of parishes up and down the land, but it most certainly enhanced that effort.

    Secondly, and finally, the new normal. ‘They (the congregation) are not coming back’ is a constant refrain. But a similar reticence is felt all over society; it is foolish to think that what is happening in the world of work, healthcare, leisure, and shopping will not be happening in the churches. None of us are where we were in 2019, nor will we be in the foreseeable future. We must aim for what is optimal. A carefully-planned and locally-based mix of in-person and online worship must be encouraged both within the parish and beyond it. Easier said than done, I know: but we have to start somewhere.

  • General Synod: The Challenge of Voting in Women Bishops

    by April Alexander, who served on General Synod (2000-2016) and was a Church Commissioner (2008-2018), an elected member of the Crown Nominations Commission (2013-2017) and Vice Chair of Church of England Pensions Board (2002-2008)

    Like Jenny Humphreys I, too, had refrained from standing for election to General Synod this year.  It is absolutely right that there should be a welcome for new and younger members (this is not difficult in my case) and I had been a member for longer than is good for Synod or for the Church.

    The reason I stayed so long was that I hung on for the Measure for Women Bishops to be passed (November 2014) and to go through the Houses of Parliament (early 2015). By that time, I was serving on the Crown Nominations Commission with the express purpose of participating in the nomination of the first women as Diocesan Bishops. To serve out my term of five years I had to be a continuing member of General Synod.

    Many people may not realise that the legislation allowing women as bishops has, within it, a massive caveat. Individuals and parishes are allowed to refuse to recognise the Episcopal Orders of women as they are allowed to refuse the recognise the Orders of ordained women. They may effectively opt out of the Diocesan structure and obedience and may seek the Ecclesiastical oversight of Bishops who hold similarly discriminatory views.

    The Church has been found to discriminate against UKME candidates for ordination and for Consecration as well as against the disabled (given their low  numbers amongst the ranks of priests and bishops), but in no case other than women is there provision in legislation to allow for this discrimination. The Church also discriminates against candidates in Civil Partnerships and does not allow its priests to enter into a same sex marriage, but none of these provisions are written into legislation. Synod is likely to be offered the opportunity to change this situation in the coming five years.

    In 2015, Parliament was so incensed about a whole bench of exclusively male bishops in their midst that they,  rather than Synod, legislated for the speedy introduction of women to the House of Lords by allowing them to leap frog over longer serving male bishops as vacancies occurred.  The embarrassment for the Church now is that there have not been enough new women appointed to fill those vacancies and, meanwhile, men continue to be appointed by default. This leap frogging provision only lasts for ten years (until 2025) and the outlook for women in the House of Lords and for those women and men who are anxious that they should be there, looks bleak.

    Since 2015, fifteen Diocesan Bishops have been appointed but only six were female, despite the fact that there was and remains a surplus of talent among the pioneering group as one might expect.  There are fewer female than male candidates partly because there are fewer females in senior positions from which to draw them from, but there are still far more than enough outstanding women than the figures would suggest.

    As mentioned above Diocesan Bishops are nominated by the Crown Nominations Commission and I was a member of it from 2013 – 2018.  It is a silent and very secretive body. A major factor mitigating against female appointments is the make-up of that body which includes those who, quite legally, hold this discriminatory view about women. Commonly they will number between four and six of the fourteen members.  The successful nominee needs to get a vote of support from two thirds of those fourteen members (ie 10 out of 14); it follows that women candidates are at a disadvantage from the very start and usually need to get 100% of the votes of those who are equally disposed to male and female candidates and sometimes even this is not enough. There are women who put themselves through this gruelling process when it is clear to the Commission and sometimes to themselves, that they have no chance at all of achieving the necessary ten votes.

    As a result of all this, it is vital that all electors for General Synod know the answers to three questions which should be put to each candidate

    1. “Are you unequivocally supportive of women as bishops and priests?”
    2. “Are you unequivocally supportive of people in civil partnerships as bishops or priests?”
    3. “If you are successful in this election, would you unfailingly vote in favour of these two groups whenever there is an opportunity to do so during your time on Synod?”

    Please note that those who are not in favour of those propositions are advised by their groups and associations NOT to make this clear and they are told how to duck the questions.

    If you look up this link and open the docs referred to at the bottom of it, you will see how Conservative Evangelical candidates are advised to duck the question when asked about these things and how to obfuscate.

    They offer evasive model answers for hustings.

    Their website “explains how orthodox Anglican Evangelicals can work together to elect a General Synod that safeguards the doctrine and teaching of the Church of England.”

    That “doctrine and teaching” is vehemently opposed to both women and gay people as priests and bishops.

    It is because of this that every elector needs to know what is meant by their obfuscatory and anodyne declarations. To this end, there is nothing to stop an elector contacting the candidates in her/his Diocese to ask the three questions above.

    Candidates, who are in possession of the email addresses of all electors, could email them all to tell them who are the candidates who reply positively to such questions.

    Finally, Inclusive Church has a list of those, Diocese by Diocese, who assent to their Statement which includes the following

     “We will continue to challenge the church where it continues to discriminate against people on grounds of disability, economic power, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, learning disability, mental health, neurodiversity, or sexuality.”

    Here is the list of those candidates in each Diocese who assent to the above:

    Please note:

    1.  People on that list may well help you with asking the questions and with the canvassing exercise set out above

    2.  You are certainly encouraged to vote for these candidates and you may find that there are enough of them in your Diocese to make up your voting list. Remember that the STV system of voting does not require that you use up all your votes and you are well advised not to vote for anyone about whom you are uncertain on these matters.

    Thank you and good luck!

  • We May be Winning the Fight Against the Virus, but We Risk Losing Something Else…

    by the Right Revd Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London

    It has been a long year. So many of us have suffered, whether through loss of those we love, loss of financial stability, loss of the freedom to see our family and friends, loss of freedom of movement or loss of our mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing. One way or another, we are all reeling from the sense that much has been removed from us. And this cannot help but raise questions of meaning, identity and belonging.

    In the midst of all this loss, it has been my observation that we are in danger of losing something else: the way that we relate to one another seems to be deteriorating.

    In particular, we have seen a rise in binary narratives.  One of the implications of this is that by definition you are either on the “right side” of the argument or the “wrong side.” The belief that I am right, and you are wrong, can so easily slide into being “I am good and you are bad.” From here, it is a short step to hate speech and violent isolation of those who hold different views.

    Perhaps it’s no surprise that, in this kind of climate, we hunker down with our own and, in consolidating our sense of belonging within our own communities – of whatever kind – we differentiate ourselves from others, setting ourselves apart. The Church is not exempt. We can use language which not everyone may understand. We have sometimes been quick to form different Christian tribes.  We have too often shut our doors to those we should have flung them open to. And as we do, we draw explicit and implicit categories which indicate who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’.

    Our challenge in this time is not to pretend that we are all alike. We clearly are not. But to recognise, and hopefully learn in some small way to overcome, our intrinsic nature which pushes away others and tries to carve out territory only for ourselves and to see our circumstances in the wider context of God.

    Digging Deeper

    Maybe the biggest reason for wanting to hunker down with our own is fear.

    I have reflected over the last few months since the publication of Living in Love and Faith that fear is the emotion that can hold the biggest risk in preventing us from listening to each other.

    I wonder what it is that we fear because of the process?  We may fear not being listened to, we may fear being marginalised, we may fear being misunderstood, we may fear for the future of the Church of England; we may fear abuse or bullying. And our flight or fight response can so easily turn to getting in our pre-emptive attack, as a form of defence, before we are attacked.

    Defence can look like denial – as Eli did with his wicked sons (1 Sam 2:22-25). In the end though it proves temporary and only makes matters worse.  It can also look like flight – as Hagar was forced to do from Sarai (Gen 16:6-8), but again fails to resolve the real issues.

    On the other hand, attack can look like assault – gossip, slander and efforts to damage people’s reputation as some did towards Stephen in the early church (Acts 6:8-15). Too often, this is precisely what we see on Twitter. It seems to increasingly be the default option and has led to a culture where it is deemed acceptable to publicly shame people, irrespective of the facts.

    Neither defence or attack leads to reconciliation or peace.  Defence pretends that there is peace when there isn’t, attack gives up on peace for the sake of getting what they want.

    The Bible pushes us in a different direction. Before running away in defence or lashing out in attack, it urges us to look within. It warns us that often conflict grows out of our sinful desires to have things our own way (James 4:1-2). Many conflicts would be far more quickly resolved if we were prepared to take the log out of our own eye before trying to take the speck out of somebody else’s (Luke 6:42).

    Pursuing Peace

    Despite the gravity of these words, they also mean that conflict is an opportunity – an opportunity to act in a counter-cultural way which reflects the love of God and brings God glory. A way that leads to peace. Paul writes to the church in Corinth, mired in religious, legal and dietary disputes and says:

    “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. 1 Cor 10:31-11:1”

    In other words, see conflict as an opportunity to glorify God by pursuing peace. This is a God who calls us to trust that His ways really are best (Prov 3:5-7), to serve others by putting their interests ahead of your own in love and mercy (Luke 6:27-28, 36) and to grow like Christ who not only said “love your enemies” (Luke 6:27-36) but loved us to the point of death (Luke 22:41-44).

    This does not come naturally. It requires brave people to step outside of the cultural norm and behave differently. People who are prepared to do the slow hard work of reconciliation where it is necessary. To head into difficult conversations with a humble, loving and hopeful heart. To walk the careful, slow, and sometimes painful path towards peace.

    Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air – if the tone of our debates focussed less on showing people how right we are but on how to care for those most vulnerable, those most likely to be hurt?

    Wouldn’t it be great if we could hold what is considered a minority opinion without being ridiculed or vilified as a traitor or troublemaker?

    Wouldn’t it bring great glory to God if we could avoid a culture in which we demonise each other for dissent?

    Wouldn’t it be a powerful witness to a watching world if we allowed each other the safe space we need for all views to be expressed and discussed in an atmosphere of compassion and respect?

    But as we gulp at the challenge, remember that we have a great ambassador who went before us. Jesus was stripped naked, mocked and shamed in a way so brutally humiliating, that Western art has shied away from depicting it. He endured more public shame than any of us ever will. He did it to welcome us into a community where boasting was ruled out, servants were now served and outcasts became children, where the status that he gave us mattered far more than the status we had on social media. He did it to transform us into people who count outward fame as rubbish, compared with gaining Him (Phil 3:4-9).

    For it is within Him that we find the answers to the questions of meaning, identity and belonging.

  • The Reckoning – Will the Church of England Survive?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of Via Media, Member of General Synod and Member of the Government’s LGBT Advisory Panel

    They say “people in glass houses should never throw stones” – although it seems to me that the Church of England is an expert at it, and the house now has very little glass left!

    I’m sure I wasn’t alone in finding myself choking on my proverbial cornflakes last Sunday when I read an exclusive interview in the Guardian with the Church Commissioners’ new Head of Responsible Investment, Bess Joffe, outlining how the Commissioners will be warning companies “that they must do more to protect biodiversity and increase the ethnic diversity of their senior teams or risk protest votes at upcoming shareholder meetings”.

    Explaining why they were taking this action, Joffe told the Guardian: “You want to be in a world where boards of directors, management teams and pipelines of talent look like the communities in which they exist.”

    She is of course absolutely right – it’s just rather embarrassing that the Church of England has such a poor record on doing just this themselves! We have woefully few senior church leaders from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In fact, we have a pretty poor record on most areas of inclusion – looking at the current House of Bishops, and even the make up of General Synod, we still remain predominantly white, male and middle-class. We have woefully few members from any of the areas relating to the protected characteristics in the Equality Act – save of course religious belief. And then, of course there is the Equality Act itself and the preposterous fact that the established Church, which is in the privileged position of being able to make and shape British law, has been granted exemption to the one law of which it should be the Moral Guardian.

    In short, Joffe has shown us that we are guilty, yet again, of not practising what we preach. In the real world, most would call this for what it is – rank hypocrisy.

    To be fair, the Church of England has named “hypocrisy” as one of the Six Deadly Sins that came out of the Pastoral Advisory Group (otherwise known as the Pastoral Principles for Living Well Together). However it’s not something that we are really very good at talking about or owning – I mean, have you ever been in a meeting when it has been called out or addressed? Instead we tend to excuse it away privately to ourselves, saying “well it’s really a lot more complicated than that, and things are changing!”

    But are they really changing or are we just getting better at creating more fog, where we get accustomed to living in our slightly surreal world of smoke and mirrors?

    At least Bess Joffe spoke out! I applaud her for wanting to use her position to change things – and particularly for wanting to use it to address inequality. But it’s interesting to pause for a moment and reflect on why she is able to do this when so few others aren’t?

    I’d suggest that one primary reason is because she is a member of the laity and is therefore not confined by the ridiculous covenant of silence that so many senior clergy seem to have embraced. This means, frankly, that she does not need to “behave well” in order to get any form of preferment – or in other words, she is not warned off saying anything that might “rock the boat” and put any hope of future promotion out of reach.

    I’m sorry to name it, but I think this is where so much of our real problems lie. We have created such large central structures at both diocesan and national levels – which we can barely afford in these financially strapped times – where in order to be able to be part of it you need “to conform”. And of course many understandably want to be “part of it” – they want to progress, often for the very honourable reason that they want to get to a place where they feel they can “make a real difference”. Although of course, few truly feel able to do so when they do actually get “there”. It’s “smoke and mirrors” after all!

    I am speaking perhaps more bluntly than I normally do because I am deeply concerned that the Church of England is currently facing a crisis of such enormity that I fear few have truly taken its severity onboard. It is my sincere belief that we have only a few years left (if that) before we implode – under the weight of our central structures, under our inability to make decisions, under our crushed and demoralised parish systems and under the glare of a general public who have given up on an institution that they see as steeped in hypocrisy and puritanical legalism.

    Believe it or not, God has not promised that the Church of England will continue for ever. The Christian faith most certainly will be carried from generation to generation, but God does not have to use an institution that has lost its ability to speak truthfully, act righteously and has chosen to exempt itself from standing up for the marginalised.

    These next few years will be years of reckoning, and it’s about time we started facing some hard truths…we need to come off our fences, come out from our hiding places and allow the wind of the Spirit to blow away the fog and smoke that has blinded us so that we can look ourselves clearly in the mirror, and be honest about what we see.

    Maybe then we’ll have a chance, but only if we’re humble enough to get on our knees and recognise how badly we’ve got so many things wrong – and how we have hurt so many people in the process!

    We can but pray…

  • We Can’t Go Back….to Power Games & Inequality

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham, Author, Member of General Synod and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation

    Rosie Haarper

    In France, apparently, one of the biggest worries about lockdown was how single Parisienne women would cope: all alone in a small flat and no partner. No dates, no secret affairs, no sex. All the assumptions were that these women would go into melt down. The framework of their lives and their relationships had been undone – it would not end well.

    Turns out many young single women in France have loved the shutdown. All the hectic man- (or woman-) pleasing internal drivers had been challenged. They enjoyed freedom from the pressure to have sex, they swapped sophistication for simplicity, they got in touch with how to be self contained and not dependent their partner. To everyone’s surprise it is OK – more than OK, it is very good.

    It is possible that as we emerge from isolation some of this self discovery will remain and the young single French woman will have a better life.

    This tale is an example of what Richard Rohr describes in The Wisdom Pattern as the process we are always experiencing in life, but which is technicolour at the moment: Order, Disorder, Reorder.

    Order is the pattern we thought we knew. The familiar. Some of us loved it, some of us found it had dark and controlling elements that needed change, but it was what we knew. It was life as we had learnt to live it.

    Then came the big Disorder. Present joys became past memories. Of course we fear it. Not just for the physical danger, but because it feels like anarchy. It teeters on the edge of chaos, of total melt down. We fear getting sucked into a vortex of unknowing.

    Let’s be honest here; both in society and within the Church at large we were already struggling. Struggling with the age of Quantum Physics where what we thought was linear and certain was, it transpires, nothing of the sort.

    Mystery, not knowing, holding multiple truths – all this was stretching our religious imagination. Around the edges interesting thinkers were rediscovering ineffable, unknowable layers of faith, whilst at the centre some pretty desperate measures were being taken to sure up the literal against the flow away from certainty .

    Now of course everything is virtual. Even the bread and wine. We shouldn’t be surprised. Pentecost tells us the virtual world is vibrant and powerful. Jesus is very much with us but we can’t see or touch him.

    This period of Disorder might be all sorts of things. It’s too soon to tell. What we can see is that the biggest mistake the church made in its response to Covid-19 was rooted in fear of chaos.

    As a society we have a contract with one another. We elect leaders who make decisions which some like and some dislike, but mostly we obey even the rules we think are mistaken. So our Government tells us what to do, and although we are not all confident that the best decisions are being made we abide by the rules.

    In the Church of England it seems our leaders thought the church worked this way too.

    Mimicking the Government they issued rules and regulations, forgetting that their relationship with their flock is different. They do not rule over us, but rather are shepherds whose calling is to offer hope and inner depth and strength through our faith in God.

    A bewildered nation expected words of lament, of comfort, of inspiration. Alas, although they were there, they got drowned out by the micro-management of Church buildings. We actually only needed to be told to apply the same rules as everyone else!

    So it fell to the local to inhabit the Disorder and it has done so in many wonderful ways. The edges between church and community got lovely and smudgy and people lived their faith by loving and helping one another. Some may think virtual services are a bit naff and amateurish but they are rather gloriously filled with heart and courage.

    Well, one day we will realise that the era of Covid-19 has passed. A Reordering has happened. Most people will want to go back to how it was before but of course that cannot be.

    I can tell you how I would like the new order to look. How I would love the church to be where every human being is loved and valued equally. Where anyone who was in any way different from the majority need never fear rejection or judgement from other Christians. I would love to see the choking tendrils of power, politics, entitlement, the class system to be unwrapped from around the heart of the Church of England. Where those who had been abused received loving care and just restoration. I would love to see us less obsessed by ourselves and more obsessed by our neighbour. As you might imagine I could go on…….

    What I think will happen is that we will make every good effort to carry on as before – and slowly the truth will emerge. The financial model, already strained to breaking point will prove unsustainable. Quite possibly the church in every parish model is bust. The trust of the people in a National Church, already horribly compromised by its internal moral failure to treat LGBTI+ people, women or abuse survivors honourably is gone forever and its place on the national and political stage will be seriously challenged.

    There will need to be a journey, probably accelerated by this crisis, which will involve letting go of a model of the Church of England which was probably always a fantasy anyway.

    I would like to think that a leaner, healthier, more equal community will emerge – a church that is much closer to the poorest, most marginalised in our society. More present in housing estates across the country and less bound up in Bishop’s palaces and London clubs.

    I don’t think this is impossible, indeed God could well be in this new destination. I fear, however, that for many, it will hurt like hell to get there.

  • Who’s Caring for our Nation’s Spiritual Health?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia, Member of General Synod and Director of the Ozanne Foundation

    Jayne Ozanne new

    We’ve heard much from the government in recent days about the importance of looking after our physical and mental health. It’s one of the reasons we are still able to go outside and exercise and a primary reason why our parks and gardens are being asked to stay open for as much as they can.

    It’s good to know that there are voices at the ‘top table’ speaking out for our well-being in this way. But it has left me wondering who is championing guarding the nation’s spiritual health?

    Maybe it’s not seen as so important. Maybe it’s seen as a “nice to have” amongst those “who think like that”, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be taken as seriously as our mental or physical health.

    I recognise that most of us who are already part of worshipping communities know where we can now go for support and sustenance (even if some miss physical services in their local church), but what of those who don’t? What of those who are going through crises of fear, doubt, anxiety or loss – and just want a place to run to? Where can they find sanctuary? Where can they “find God”?

    A friend told me this week how she had seen an elderly man approach the main door of their local cathedral only to find it locked. He had banged on the heavy wooden door with his fists before putting his head in his hands and wandering off in tears, obviously upset. Had he just lost a loved one? Had he just heard some worrying news? We don’t know. But we do know that his over-riding memory will be of trying to connect with God at a time of need and finding himself “shut out”.

    Research has shown that in times of crises people “retreat” to their places of sanctuary, where they feel safe and secure. For many in our nation, research has also shown, that is still their local (established) church. It is a physical place where they know they can find spiritual sustenance and refuge – a place that has weathered various storms through the ages, from World Wars to Black Death plagues. It is often done at a time of great mental stress and anguish, such as that we are experiencing right now, and is a time when they are keen to reach out and connect with the Divine.

    Now of course we need to be extremely careful about social distancing and indeed of any transmission risks, but surely we can find a way of keeping our larger churches open with clearly marked spaces indicating where people can stand and pray? Rather like our local supermarkets which have clearly marked footprint stickers on the ground showing where people should stand to queue, surely we could mark just as clearly where people can kneel or stand to pray? Could we not then also have volunteers, or indeed paid church staff if we still have them, on hand to wipe down the handrails and pews afterwards to minimise infections. They could also monitor and restrict numbers entering as well as the time spent inside.

    To be clear, I am not suggesting we reinstate church services – that to me is a completely different matter. For those of us who already have a faith know that we can connect with our loving God without the need for walls or pews. No, here I’m talking about a way of enabling the “gateway” to remain open – the lifesaving rescue ring to be still visible on the shore during the heavy storm.

    I personally believe that our spiritual health holds the key to our mental, emotional and indeed physical health. We are body, mind, soul and spirit. To be so dismissive of the latter is, I fear, a tragedy and one that we will learn the impact of over many years to come.

    Please, I pray, may we think again and find a way of creating a sanctuary for people to run to in order to connect – perhaps for the first time – with their Creator God, the source of love and the giver of hope. It is, after all, Easter – where the message of new life is more poignant than ever.

  • “Yoga-Gate” – Fundamentalism in a Twist

    by the Very Revd Nicholas Henshall, Dean of  Chelmsford

    Nicholas Henshall

    One of my fellow Deans recently faced “Yoga-gate”. A yoga class meeting in the nave of the Cathedral attracted negative attention. Just before Christmas a vicar banning yoga classes from church premises made it on to BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show. And then just as Covid-19 made its presence felt the comedian Jenny Eclair poured public scorn on the whole Christian community for obsessing about such trivia at such a time as this.

    On one level it is a side show that does not warrant serious attention. However, it is yet further evidence of a level of confusion and amnesia sometimes masquerading as “what the Bible really teaches” that is profoundly corrosive of the whole Scriptural witness.

    Part of the issue here is that many contemporary Christians are unfamiliar with contemplative practice in the Christian tradition itself. Breathing exercises while seated are characteristic of all meditation practice and that is true as much of Christianity as of Hinduism and Buddhism. And for Christians – from Jesus’ early morning prayer times to the desert fathers and mothers, through the Hesychast movement and the Cloud of Unknowing to the opening up of contemplative prayer in the last few decades – there are precious gifts to share.

    “Yoga-gate” also suggests that many of us are unfamiliar with the origins of yoga itself as practiced in the West. There is wide scholarly consensus that contemporary hatha yoga owes its origins to a combination of Danish and Indian gymnastics, plus British Army exercises as observed in 19th century Mysore. One of the perhaps quaint features of much contemporary yoga is that these origins are sometimes felt to be insufficiently glamorous. As a result, many yoga practitioners provide completely modern yoga postures with apparently ancient Sanskrit names. This is not helpful. It is what Eric Hobsbawm called “invented tradition”.

    Even if it were the case that hatha yoga did spring from a clear alternative faith tradition, banning yoga from church premises remains problematic, not least in terms of what the Bible says. Certainly, the Bible and the whole Judaeo-Christian tradition are radically opposed to doctrinal syncretism. However, from Melkizedek onwards, the Bible is quite clear that God blesses pagans, gentiles, unbelievers, followers of other faith traditions, and uses them as both instruments of God’s purpose and as examples for us to imitate. God even gives the pagan Persian king Cyrus the Jewish title “Messiah”.

    Jesus himself is clear in both teaching and practice. In Luke 4 the murderous anger of the synagogue congregation at Nazareth against Jesus is provoked not by his challenging manifesto (“the Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”) but by his insistence that God chooses to bless pagans like the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian rather than the faithful gathered in the synagogue. They are so shocked and appalled that they attempt a summary execution. It is no accident that Jesus makes the hero of his most famous story the despised follower of a heretical religion. We call him the good Samaritan.

    Learning from the practice of other faith communities is also deeply characteristic of the Christian tradition. Christians inevitably inherited extraordinary gifts from Judaism, and – despite our contemporary stereotypes – Islam and Christianity have been very generous in learning from one another. Christians probably taught Muslims the practice of prostration in prayer, and then stopped practicing it ourselves. The ringing of bells before Christian worship derives directly from Francis of Assisi’s delight in the Muslim call to prayer during his visit to the Sultan. Again, the use of prayer beads – from the western rosary to the eastern prayer rope – is almost certainly a gift from Islam.

    Most significantly, medieval Islamic scholars made Aristotle available to Christian theologians, something that changed the nature of western theology – catholic and evangelical – fundamentally. I love it that the leading UK Muslim lifestyle magazine, Emel, regularly runs features on St George as patron saint and common heritage for both English Christians and English Muslims. On a very pragmatic level it was beautiful to hear the Ethiopian Orthodox priest, Abba Aklilemariyam Komos, recently insisting that only building a new church in his community without restoring the local mosque would “disappoint God”.

    Thomas Merton engaged deeply with other faith traditions. He was completely uninterested in their doctrinal superstructure as he fully recognised that different faith traditions believed different and incompatible things. But he was equally clear that people of different faith traditions can and should learn from each other’s practice without any doctrinal syncretism. Thus Sufis, Buddhists and Christians have little doctrinal shared ground but huge areas of shared contemplative practice from which they can and do all learn together. Indeed, I would suggest that over-busy Christians who have forgotten their contemplative roots have a great deal to learn about their own tradition from the contemplative practice of other faith traditions.

    Which brings me back round to some serious theology. In the incarnation, God says a fantastic YES to the fact that we are embodied. Unfortunately, an overdose of Neo-Platonism in early Christianity and Augustine’s pessimism about the human body (for the west at least) has left a complicated legacy. Even extraordinary figures such as Francis of Assisi could still only see the body as “Brother Ass” to be drilled into submission. That has engendered among Christians a negativity about the body quite alien to the Bible.

    The failure of the Christian tradition to find a way of giving a positive account of the body, with the consequent disastrous outcomes for our understanding of human sexuality, human dignity, the impact of poverty and so on, means that we urgently need better ways of discovering for ourselves the glorious and challenging implications of God “being found in human form”. Yoga is just one small way in which Christians can learn some great biblical values about the body.

    Finally, maybe I need to declare an interest.

    I wrecked my right shoulder in a road accident some fifteen years ago. They were in a car and I was on a bike, an unequal battle. Without yoga practice (much of it learned from physiotherapy) my right arm wouldn’t work and I wouldn’t be able to type these words. If you are interested in exploring yoga practice – especially as many of us will have enforced leisure in the months ahead – my own personal recommendation would be the videos of Barbara Curry. My three children (all in their mid-20s) would firmly go for Yoga with Adrienne (available online), but I am no longer quite that flexible! There is no evidence that either yoga teacher has ever misled us practitioners into worshipping foreign gods.

  • Church and State – The State We’re In!

    by Anthony Archer, Central Member of the Crown Nominations Commission, member of General Synod and trustee of the Ozanne Foundation

    anthony-archer

    To be established or not to be established, is that the question?

    The Church of England is having a torrid time, for reasons most will understand and regret. Certainly, at the level of the National Church, including General Synod, few are proud of what is going on.  A Church that increasingly defines itself by those it excludes is hardly a potent missionary symbol.  For all that, at the parish level much good is evident, even without the “missing generations”.  It will be left to church historians to make something of this confused picture.

    Against the background of the issues, including the unmet needs of victims and survivors of non-recent sexual abuse, the injustices towards those who identify as LGBT+ and ongoing discrimination against women in ministry (masked in the name of mutual flourishing), there are calls for the Church of England to justify its privileges and precedence.

    Since the Reformation, the Church of England has been described as ‘the church by law established’, a phrase not as precise as it sounds.  The Queen is its Supreme Governor; bishops (and some deans and others) are appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Prime Minister; General Synod approves Measures (which, on receiving the Royal Assent, have the force and effect of Acts of Parliament), they first having been declared expedient by the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament.  Synod legislates itself by making Canons on such issues as worship and doctrine, largely unfettered, save for example by not being able to dispense with the Book of Common Prayer.  In terms of rights and duties, apart from the Church crucially being a visible presence in every parish, a primary duty is that the Archbishop crowns the Sovereign, and that there are prayers in Parliament before every session.

    Significantly and more publicly, 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords, with five places reserved for the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester.  The other 21 go to the remaining diocesan bishops who have served the longest time in office, with recent provision for women bishops to jump the queue for a transitional period of ten years.  Constitutional reform watchers might be forgiven for wondering why there are still so many Lords Spiritual given the efforts of successive Governments to reform the House of Lords, but that is not the subject of this blog post.

    Those who take aim at establishment usually go for the Lords Spiritual and there have been two recent examples in Parliament.  Lord Taverne introduced his House of Lords (Removal of Bishops) Bill in January.  It remains to be seen what progress it might make.  It does not seem to be a swipe at the Church of England per se, but part of the broader agenda of the National Secular Society and its adherents.  The views of peers will become apparent when it receives its second reading.  More pointedly, Ben Bradshaw MP recently engaged with the new Second Church Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous MP, over the House of Bishops’ ill-advised Pastoral Statement on civil partnerships.  He said:

    “It is bad enough that the Church still treats its LGBT+ members as second-class Christians, but to say to the child of a heterosexual couple in a civil partnership that they should not exist because their parents should not have had or be having sex is so hurtful.  Will he tell the bishops that unless this nonsense stops serious questions will be asked in this place about the legitimacy of the established status of the Church of England?” 

    The removal of the bishops from the House of Lords would represent an Exocet strike at establishment.  A less direct strike, but potentially more controversial, would be an attempt by Parliament to remove the right of clergy to solemnize a marriage, until such time as the Church permitted marriage of same-sex couples.  That would create a level playing field, with all couples being required to have a civil marriage and obviate the need for the quadruple lock in the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.

    For all the chatter about establishment over the years, there has been no focused work on the Church/State relationship since the Chadwick Commission, which reported in 1970.  It came at a time when the Church was frustrated at the continued role of Downing Street in appointments to bishoprics, and the fact that matters of worship and doctrine were yet to be reserved to the new General Synod.  The Commission agreed on little, other than that greater distance should be set between Church and State.  There were a wide variety of views, and some dissent from the main report – views which might well be held today.  Is the Church of England’s established status a handicap to mission?  Does it invest the Church with an aura of privilege which impedes missionary work among those who resent privilege on principle or because they lack it?

    Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark, regarded the debate at the time as being empty:

    “Perhaps the next commission on Church and state will produce more helpful recommendations if it bears in mind some deeply disturbing comments of its predecessor. There is talk of “the Church” and of “the rights of the laity” but what is “the Church” and who are “the laity”?  According to the report: “The figure for Easter communicants are a little over four per cent of the population.” As for the laity: “We do not know the present social composition of the House of Laity, but it is a fair guess that it does not, even today, contain the five per cent working class members recommended by the Selbourne Committee in 1918.”  If this is true, then the Church of England might be better employed in finding ways and means of making the Church a reality in the life of the state rather than concerning itself with constitutional proprieties.  Should this happen, the next commission may attract members and testifiers better qualified to represent the interests and outlooks in our national life.”

    Stockwood went on to note that the report gave the list of the members of the commission and those who gave evidence. “Neither list includes a carpenter, a fisherman or even a secretary of a trades union!”

    Chadwick eventually led to the Worship and Doctrine Measure 1974 and more significantly the creation of the Crown Appointments Commission (now CNC) in 1975. Not much developed thereafter, save for Gordon Brown’s Green Paper The Governance of Britain published in 2007 which inter alia included the decision that going forward Downing Street would only request one name for a diocesan bishopric, thereby leaving the decision entirely with the Church – the same convention that has applied for suffragan bishops for ages.

    Where does that history leave the Church of England today?

    When I suggested putting down a Private Member’s Motion in General Synod on establishment some 10 years ago, those I consulted took the view that is was not for the Church to initiate a debate.  Should Parliament wish to do that, that was its clear right.  Given the state of the Church today, despite the recent shots across the bows, it seems that few think a debate on establishment would represent time well spent.

    The Church needs to sort itself out.

    The problem with that thesis is that many are doubtful that it has the capacity to do that, whether in the context of safeguarding or same sex marriage.

    Expect more discussion in the very near future.  Might disestablishment be part of a much needed “pruning of the vine”?

     

  • After the Apology – Surely the Centre Cannot Hold?

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham, Member of General Synod and Ozanne Foundation Trustee

    Rosie Haarper

    There has been an apology. I confess I don’t get it.

    The apology from the Archbishops was about the tone and the timing of their Pastoral Letter, and it totally missed the point. Yes, the timing could have been better. It cut right across the Living in Love and Faith process, a very lengthy process during which we have been told to hold fire. Yes, the tone was appalling. It was patronising and churchy and excluding. People rightly objected to both those problems, but it was the content that gave deep offence and for that there was no apology.

    A lot has now been written about this but surely we have yet to experience the longer term effects?

    I have heard explanations about how this document got into the public domain. It was basically “cock-up” rather than conspiracy. In an institution which does “high control” rather than “high trust” that is actually quite funny. As someone who knows their Facebook posts and tweets are carefully observed there is a childish delight in the banana skin moment!

    It would be easy to think this is an in-house matter and it will blow over. Living in Love and Faith will be published and the usual motherhood and apple pie response will kick the deeper issues into the long grass.

    However, I suspect that this is more than a domestic matter.

    We have now declared in a very public way that the relationships of many of the people we love and care about are sub-optimal. Anyone who has sex outside a heterosexual marriage is falling short.  So that’s your own relationship, your sons and daughters, your friends and colleagues, in fact a large proportion of the whole nation.

    How does that play?

    How sustainable is it to pretend to be the national church when you write off the deepest and most meaningful part of most people’s life in a careless and patronising press release? The document is all about sex in a most lightweight and mechanistic way and completely misses the really profound dimension of people’s lives, which is about love.

    To be an established church in any worthwhile way involves a synchronicity, a recognition of the realities of people’s lives. It involves living in the same space and speaking the same language.

    Archbishop John recognised this way back. In Jamaica in Feb 2012 he said: ‘The only thing the Church of England needs to do is to ensure that its worship, its life, begins to reflect the community it serves. Its leadership needs to do that as well.’

    He was talking about needing more black people in the CofE, but of course the same principle applies across the board.

    Let’s not kid ourselves that we can get away with this or that we can pretend it never happened. The National Secular Society are all over it.

    There is now a bill (House of Lords (Removal of Bishops) Bill’ to end the automatic right of Anglican bishops to sit in the House of Lords, which the National Secular Society helped to draft, and has been introduced to parliament by the Liberal Democrat peer and NSS honorary associate, Dick Taverne.

    This private member’s bill would mean that the 26 places in the House of Lords which are reserved for the Church of England’s bishops and archbishops would end .

    The Pastoral Letter sadly demonstrated that they are indeed so utterly out of touch with our society that it is hard to see how they can legislate effectively in a relevant way.

    This gulf between the pronouncements of the Church and the ethical temperature of the country is mirrored by a gulf between the leadership and the parish. I find myself apologising all the time. ‘Yes I’m a Christian, but not that kind of a Christian.’ ‘ Despite the Pastoral Statement here in this parish all are welcome and all are blessed by God.’

    Maybe the reason is that our faith is not at core propositional, but the Church has become increasingly so.  As some parts of the Church look for high definition we are losing the blurred edges.  There is a desire to prescribe ‘the true’ believer. It seems possible to be on the right side of the righteousness line even though your faith makes you a nasty person.  You can be someone who genuinely thinks that you can follow Jesus and at the same time exclude people. The opposite should be true. At funeral visits, people tell me: He wasn’t much of a church person, but he was a good Christian. Most people feel that Christian is how you behave not what you believe. The Pastoral Letter got that completely the wrong way round.

    Perhaps we can learn from our Catholic sisters and brothers? Yes, there are those who are aligned to the full scope of Catholic teaching, but the vast majority don’t sweat that stuff at all. In conversation with a Catholic family in Germany a couple of years ago I asked, ‘But how can you go along with the whole contraception thing?’ ‘ Ah Rosie, we know they have to say it, but we don’t take any notice.’

    When I stood for General Synod 10 years ago I honestly thought that the gulf between the Church of Lambeth Palace & Church House, and the local Parish, could be bridged.

    I have reluctantly concluded that its probably impossible.

    The Pastoral Letter cemented my resolve. I won’t be standing again.