ViaMedia

Category: Politics

  • Is God Inhuman?

    by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s and Vice Chair of the Ozanne Foundation


    I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s book The Body. It’s a fascinating read about the wonders of the human body and how much of it – of us – is incredibly complex and still little understood. But in Chapter 11 he refers to things medical science learnt about the body through experiments carried out during the second world war by Nazis in concentration camps and by occupying Japanese forces in a huge experimental facility in China. He doesn’t dwell on them, but they were horrifying in their cruelty. Some experiments were supposedly to help soldiers wounded in battle, but others were to satisfy doctors’ curiosity by doing things unspeakably unethical just because they could. And although many Nazis were brought to justice for their cruelty, the director of the research centre in China was debriefed by the Americans to get his medical knowledge and then allowed to return to normal life, while the existence of the Japanese facility was hidden for forty years.

    The Uighurs and Rohingya. Political and religious terrorism. Black Lives Matter. Child poverty and homelessness. Violence and discrimination against women, LGBTI and disabled people. Cruelty continues, and those with power who do it will find ways to justify the unjustifiable. We even do it in the Church – not only with repeated safeguarding failures, but by being complicit with society at large in structural discrimination against black people and poor people and women and LGBTI people. The Church goes further now than society does in maintaining exemptions from discrimination against women and gay people, and we justify it in the name of what is acceptable to God – which makes the Church and its God appear inhuman to many.

    What is ‘humane’? What is ‘inhuman’? After all, it’s human beings who act ‘inhumanly’ some of the time. Being cruel and discriminatory is something which every single human being is capable of. That’s you and me both. Which of us is without sin and can say that we have never acted in a way intended to be hurtful? Who has never done something which another person experienced as cruel and unkind?

    A healthy human body is a dynamic balance of many different systems and needs, where too much or not enough salt or other nutrients can be fatal. Like our body, our humanity is a balancing act, full of difficult compromises to enable life to happen at all, more or less good or evil. Being human means we are capable of being, not either good or bad, but both good and bad, both humane and inhuman. And yet we define acting ‘with humanity’ as being solely good: as the Oxford Dictionary puts it, being human or humane is having ‘attributes or behaviour proper or befitting to a man.’

    Why do we do think that being good and kind is ‘proper’ and ‘befitting’ human behaviour, when experience is that human behaviour includes so much that we want to reject as ‘inhuman’? Discrimination, violence, misogyny, racism and slavery come from dehumanising those who are ‘different’, excluding them from being our fully human neighbour, treating them as ‘other’ or as evil or to be eradicated like germs from the social body, acting as we do so out of the evil that has not been eradicated in us. (See the useful reflections by John Root around racism and binary thinking).

    The view that ‘acting with humanity’ or being ‘humane’ describes only the morally good aspects of human behaviour is not derived from the reality of the world around us. It is in the person of Jesus Christ that Christians believe humanity in its fulness is fully realised: the human being without sin, the Son of God who shows us what is ‘proper’ and ‘befitting’ to a human being, without hatred or cruelty or exclusion, bringing us together into the love of God in our redeemed humanity.

    It is no coincidence that the goodness of humanity is defined by the one who takes on himself our sin for our salvation. Repenting of our sins, cruelties and lack of love, and inviting Christ to dwell in our hearts in love to transform us, frees us to acknowledge both past and present evil in us; it enables us to become more humane, by letting go of the inhumanity of believing that we are good and others are bad.

    The case of Jonathan Fletcher is yet a further example of how avowedly orthodox faith can inculcate an atmosphere of fear and repression in which our humanity in Christ is denied and abused, and God is modelled in ways which are more inhuman than humane.

    It’s crucial to Christian faith that God is the God we see in Jesus: that God is humane, human, abounding in steadfast love. God is not the inhuman deity who many have experienced through the Church, and of which we must repent. Any Church or Christian disciple making either God or other people become less rather than more human and humane needs to repent and change.

    My former colleague Canon Mark Oakley often asks: ‘What do people become in my presence?’ More human, or less? And we might add, ‘What do people become in the presence of the God I worship?’

    Through your church and through encounter with you, do people and their God become more or less human?

  • Families – Love ‘Em, Hate ‘Em

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

    I’m experiencing an interesting collision of three family stories as I sit down to write this piece. The gospel reading for Sunday morning sees a dying man hand his mother into the care of his close friend. Meanwhile the daffodils are out and we celebrate Mother’s Day  -or, for those of you who enjoy being counter-cultural, Mothering Sunday. This is dwarfed by the drama of the world’s most famous dysfunctional family having their melt-down on the international stage.

    When all goes smoothly being part of a loving family is wonderful. We can feel assured of love even when we mess up. We know where we belong and we can trust that our family has our best interests at heart. This may be a genetic family, or a constructed family. It may be a social and faith-based family, such as a church. If your family is a really safe place it is also where you can have a good row. You can be free to say what is on your heart without the fear that you will be expelled.

    Within a healthy family system being loved and belonging are not up for negotiation. There is, or should be, no ‘deal’ – in other words, nothing transactional about your place within your family.

    Sadly, we know that it doesn’t always work out that way.

    For many people it is a defining aspect of their emotional life that they are always striving to please their judgemental parents. Long into adulthood they crave parental approval more than anything else. It’s fairly common for successful people on Desert Island Disks to say something along the lines of ‘I really wish my Dad had lived long enough to see me win an Oscar, he never thought I’d amount to much.’

    It is very hard to have a settled and confident sense of belonging if you are constantly feeling judged. Whatever you may think about ‘Megxit’ it does look as if she never developed a confident sense of belonging to her new family and always felt judged – maybe by them, maybe by the British press. Whatever the real story it has caused sadness and distress all round.

    When my mother moved to the UK following her marriage one of the first things that struck her was how people controlled their children though their inheritance. In Switzerland you simply cannot cut off a child you’ve fallen out with. The inheritance laws give an equal share to every child.

    So if ordinary human families so often mess this up maybe there is a second chance within God’s family?

    Justin Welby expressed this very clearly when the news broke that the man he had always supposed to be his father was not. In 2016 he said: “My own experience is typical of many people. To find that one’s father is other than imagined is not unusual. To be the child of families with great difficulties in relationships, with substance abuse or other matters, is far too normal.”  And he said that he found who he was in his religious faith, “not in genetics”.

    This is a very big deal. A whole new chance to find who you are in the context of the love of God and to become part of a healthy Christian family. I would even go so far as to suggest that this makes the church specially attractive to those who have challenging parental experiences. The offer is that you are adopted into the family of Christ and receive God’s unconditional love. It’s full of potential for healing and growth, stability and maturity.

    The incident where Jesus, in extremis, thinks more of his mother’s pain than his own and entrusts her in the care of John, is a highly charged example of the quality of love we all long for. In the gospels we hear of Jesus’ acts and his teachings but there are very few moments of personal intimacy. This is one of them.

    As Christians we invest very deeply in the ‘belonging’ part of faith. What could be better than becoming a child of God? How sad, how bitter then is the fact that huge energy goes into defining who ‘belongs’ and who doesn’t? This surely is an evil thing which betrays the love we proclaim.

    This week, Jayne Ozanne quit the government’s LGBT+ Advisory Panel. She was holding them to account for their commitment to ban “conversion therapy” – which they were failing to implement. Thankfully this bold action has drawn a fresh promise that a ban will happen.

    This is a way of putting action into the General Synod motion which also called for a ban.

    It matters so very much because so-called “conversion therapy” is the most cruel expression of the many ways in which LGBT+ people have been treated by their Christian family. Sadly church has never been a place where any minority has felt safe. We unknowingly transfer our dysfunctional family systems into the church. We pre-load God with a love which demands total conformity – a love which will cut you off if you are different or rebellious or challenging.

    We will never get this right until we repent of our idolatrous image of God and rediscover the God who is the very essence of love. Yes, as human beings, even within the church, we will probably go on being cruel and judgemental and capricious, but let’s stop calling that ‘God’ and own it and take responsibility. Goodness – just imagine if people were able to say ‘I don’t want you in my church’ instead of ‘God doesn’t want you in his church’!

    It is a massive challenge. Taking responsibility for our own prejudices and working to understand what’s going on and bring about change. The Christian family could be pretty wonderful if we could just grow up enough to treat one another as equal siblings.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • A Rock Climbers Guide to Church, History and the Future

    by the Very Revd Nicholas Henshall, Dean of Chelmsford

    “Always going forward; never uprooted”.

    At a tense meeting between Margaret Thatcher and David Sheppard in the aftermath of the Toxteth Riots, the Prime Minister asked the Bishop what he had studied at university. “History” he replied. The Prime Minister’s response was straight forward: “what a luxury”. It is not a story you find in David Sheppard’s official biography, but he was my sponsoring Bishop and I “heard it from the horse’s mouth”. The Prime Minister’s reflects a growing sense disconnection with the past that has been digging up our cultural roots over the last 70 years.

    When I lived in Derby I came to realise that those who had demolished the Georgian brick terraces and then built a large dual carriageway straight through the centre of the city had really meant it. Concrete was the future – an ideology rooted in some extraordinary assumptions about our relation to the past and our understanding of human flourishing. To be fair, at the same time he ||TV programme Tomorrow’s World was telling us that we would all be wearing jump suits, travelling around in flying cars and going on holiday to the moon.

    Our disconnect with the past is well summed up in the famous Jackson version of Tolkien, “And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost”. This is not mere nostalgia but a recognition of genuine rupture. We are heirs to the dislocations. Robert Taft, a great American liturgist and theologian, caught this in his powerful comment “those ignorant of history are victims of the latest cliché”. He was talking about patterns of worship, but it is a line worth pondering across church and wider society. Likewise, Goethe’s line that “the person who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth” could be the epitaph for our rootless, deracinated culture.

    In this way, set free from our moorings both as church and society, we can free-wheel and invent at will, casually unaware that in burying our history we are disabling the very mechanisms that open up the possibilities of the future.

    We find ourselves navigating several bogus approaches to tradition: a traditionalism that suggests that development stops at a certain point, and that a particular theologian such as Thomas Aquinas or Luther is somehow definitive for all time; or we rely on invented tradition to shore up our own view of reality; or like many artists, musicians and theologians in the post war period, simply decide to make a complete break with the past.

    By complete contrast, the great conductor / composer Gustav Mahler’s take on tradition may open up a fresh and helpful seam worth mining. He suggested that tradition is “not the veneration of the ashes but the tending of the living flame”. That sounds familiar from a New Testament perspective where every scribe trained for the kingdom brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (13.52). Whether or not that is Matthew expressing his understanding of his own role and mission as an evangelist, it certainly informs ours.

    Presciently, well before the pandemic, the Taizé Community planned to focus 2020 around the line “Toujours en avant; jamais déraciné” (always going forward; never uprooted) – words from the Polish nun, Urszula Ledóchowska. That captures perfectly the dynamic of tradition that we ourselves need going forward. Certainly Covid-19 has not exactly been our Babylonian Exile, but it has confronted us with some similar questions about our future – as church and society. An Ezra-like retreat behind well defended walls is not an option as we reimagine our mission.

    This is precisely not an argument for nostalgia but for radical (in the true sense) boldness. The power of Vatican II (however imperfectly realised) was that it called people back to a dynamic, future facing re-engagement with roots, rather than to an idealised version of the past painted in the colours of contemporary anxiety. Much of what we trademark as pioneering innovation proceeds not from that dynamic re-engagement but from anxiety (about numbers, survival, parish share payments, etc).

    The Victorian Church saw huge growth in impact, engagement, and numbers. But in the face of Darwin, Marx and what was perceived as secularisation, they lost their nerve. The Church historian Owen Chadwick’s judgement is devastating: “they drew up the drawbridge and boiled the oil”. We still live with some of the legacies of that defensive redrawing of the boundaries and our withdrawal into chaplaincy models of pastoral care – the “manicured sheep” model, as Pope Francis calls it in his re-telling of the parable.

    Faithful improvisation is a metaphor that has been used both in ethics and liturgy to suggest how we might move forward – rooted in the deposit of faith, the “tradition” if you like, But tradition not as a static body of ideas or teachings but as something more limber that never stops unfolding; tradition as dynamic, constantly providing the resources to move forward, Tradition like the rock climber moving forward with three points of contact and one hand or foot searching for the next step.

    A future-facing church is not well served either by a slavish obedience to the past or the pretence that the past has no power, especially in the context of whatever re-emergence from the pandemic turns out to look like. I would suggest that Mrs Thatcher was wrong about history. History is no luxury but the dynamic engine of renewal.

  • 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…

  • Wise Words for this Year’s End…

    by the Right Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

    And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
    “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
    And he replied:
    “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
    That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

    Minnie Louise Haskins, who wrote these words in 1908, does not often appear in anthologies of great English poetry. Her poem was privately published in a collection called “The Desert”, and would almost certainly have been forgotten, if it were not for King George VI who used them in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to (what was then) the British Empire.

    At the end of December 1939 the “phony war” had been running for almost three months. War had been declared, but nothing seemed to be happening. The bombs had not yet begun to fall on the UK. Dread and threat were certainly in people’s minds, but it was an invisible dread and a threat chiefly existing in the imagination. To that dread and threat the King’s quoting of Haskins’ poem spoke clearly, and the words became immensely popular, iconic and inspirational. They are carved in stone at the entrance to the George VI memorial chapel in Windsor.

    At first sight it’s not obvious that the King chose the right words. Anxious people in dark and complicated times long for a known way. And there are always those who will insist that they have a safe light – if only people will follow them blindly.

    This is certainly true this year, and indeed in the past few years.

    The ongoing strength of political populism in the West flows from this anxiety, as people look for strongmen in whose booming words they can lose their own voice. So does the growth of movements based on “alternative facts” such as the antics of the President of the United States and his supporters in the weeks after the election there, or the stridently anti-rational lockdown protests seen around the world, including here in Liverpool. Empty promises of certain light, the hate that says it will cast out fear, all detached from the world’s reality.

    Meanwhile Minnie Haskins, and King George, reached for a deeper wisdom, and people in 1939 were inspired by it, and I think we should be again. “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

    For me there’s another dimension to this, which goes beyond Haskins’ poem.

    Walking by faith is the way things work, and is in particular the calling of the Church; and in the end the way becomes clear as we walk – together. We are not called to a vacuous smoothing-out of the complexities of the world, but to a process of courageous contribution and mutual enriching, so that the wisdom of God, as shared with a diverse community, may become clearer for us.

    God’s wisdom becomes clearer as each person takes the opportunity to listen, and to speak, and to listen again. In short it becomes clearer through a diversity of voices and a mutual discerning.

    In the political arena we have seen this discerning process in action – sometimes despite the best efforts of a simplistic and over-optimistic boosterism. Scientific advice and the values of human life and flourishing have (eventually) shaped policy. Of course this policy has had to be nimble, and to steer quickly and sometimes erratically by a flickering light. But there is no known way, and together the world is moving in the dark.

    As I look back on the year and on the world, it seems to me that most of the political failures in dealing with the pandemic have come from a willed disregard of corporate wisdom, and from pretending there is a clear light. To feel our way in darkness and in faith is not heroic; but in the end it is the way the world works, and is working.

    The same is true for the conversations within the Church on the matters that vex us. As an example, “Living in Love and Faith” is a complex and steady process which seeks to listen to many voices, including those (the diverse lived-out voices of LGBTI+ people) which have hitherto been excluded from the room.

    Together we are seeking to discern a future for love, in faith. The bright lights and the booming words of a contentious certainty continue to attract some – but for most of us the way of mutual and gentle discerning is the way the church works, and is working.

    Whether in the world of politics or of organised religion, this is a slow and a modest way to proceed.

    Those who promise a simple light will continue to criticise it, indeed with an increasing shrillness. But for me Minnie Haskins and King George VI knew a thing or two, and I shall walk with them, into a future which is shrouded in darkness and filled with surprise but which is nonetheless assured by the presence of God.

    In 1939 the King ended his quote from Haskins’ poem with the line I quoted: “That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” But the poem goes on in words that make sense in the context of the Christmas story, the story of the Incarnation, and which I commend to all Via Media readers as the year turns and as our hopes gather for 2021:

    So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
    And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

  • Wise Leadership: Needed Now More Than Ever!

    by the Ven Elizabeth Adekunle, Archdeacon of Hackney

    Our leadership matters now more than ever, as we look to our leaders to steer us through these choppy and unpredictable waters. The world has been faced with grave uncertainty because of Covid-19 and there are questions around how leaders manage the effects of a pandemic they cannot control. We have seen first-hand the legislative decisions that leaders across the world have made in response to the spread of the virus, and this has led to comparisons about effective leadership.

    In addition to this uncertainty, the world watched on their screens the murder of George Floyd during lockdown and the subsequent protests and stories of injustice and discrimination that emerged. Despite lockdown many felt empowered by ‘Black Lives Matter’ to protest and to ask leaders to confront and address the racial discrimination within our structures and institutions.

    If this was not enough uncertainty, add to the list the future leadership of the United States. The turnout of voters this year has vastly surpassed the number who voted in the 2016 election. One reason for the increase is likely, in part, to the gradual expansion of voting rights but another more important reason, relates to the desperate desire for good judgement and wise leadership in an environment that seems overwhelmingly divided. The likelihood is that we will know the results later today and the outcome of this contested presidential election may well lead to anger, frustration and violence.

    How our leaders lead and implement change in this moment in time, affects us in ways that leadership has not dealt with in recent history. It seems crucial therefore that our leaders have the right tools to take on this immense level of power and responsibility.

    The bible offers key teachings, not only about the dangers of the allure of leadership, but about wise affective leadership. The Hebrew scriptures aptly refer to these books as Wisdom Literature. These five books deal precisely with our human struggles and real-life experiences. Armed with prayer and quiet reflection, within these pages we see nuggets and insights in to how to be wise. For example, Proverbs 8:12 says “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion.”

    In the New testament we see the practical application of such leadership in the mission and service of Jesus; in his trial and death. Jesus exhibits a counter-culture style of leadership that is not based on ego and progression but rather on humility and integrity. A list of qualities and characteristics can be found in the nine Fruits of the Spirit; all of which help to develop wise judgement.

    Biblical teachings are ongoing tools in an unpredictable world, in which God’s reflective wisdom is needed during times of trial and times of temptation, so that leaders do not pretend. The 1662 book of Common prayer offers these wise words:

    “Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain the same by his infinite goodness and mercy”.

    Wisdom can and should be nurtured, for wisdom brings good judgement, altruism, a perspective beyond the individual and an understanding of the power that leadership can wield, both positive and negative. Leadership can bring out the best and the worst in those who step up to the challenge. Therefore, recognising this and holding in tension these extremes is crucial for good clear judgement.

    In a world that demands immediacy and is often unreasonable and unwilling to see the opinion of others, or indeed the bigger picture, or the longer view it takes wise leadership not be to seduced by those that shout the loudest, or miss the voices of the ‘least of these’ and the crucial discernment process that comes from listening to others and learning from others.

    Nelson Mandela in his biography Long Walk to Freedom equated a great leader with a Shepherd, Mandela said, “He stays behind the flock, letting the nimblest go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind”.

    To lead wisely means to recognise that one does not have all the answers and cannot and will not know everything. Wise leadership involves a collective group of people with different gifts and skills in which different people at different times, depending on their strengths, or ‘nimbleness’ come forward to steer the group in the best direction. Mandela’s metaphor also hints at the strength and agility of a group that does not have to wait for and then respond to a command from (the front), the one in charge. That kind of agility is more likely to be developed by a group when a leader conceives of his/her role as creating the opportunity for collective leadership, as opposed to merely setting the direction that all should follow.

    Wise leadership can be counter-cultural, in fact a leader may represent traits that are the opposite of what the world has been trained to see its leaders do and say. There are times when great leadership means letting go of what others, including one’s seniors, perceive one’s actions ought to be as a leader. Jesus is a good example of this. Wise leadership will inevitably involve God’s commandment to love and an understanding of the long view.

    The wise leader understands that purposeful work is essential to human dignity and human flourishing and the immediacy of the short-term solution often does not create lasting impact.

    Let us pray therefore that we will have the courage to recognise and appoint wise leaders that can contemplate the long view and hold them to account in order to make the world a fairer more just place


    Archdeacon Liz will be in discussion with Cardinal Tagle on November 2nd 2020 for the first of the Autumn Westminster Abbey lecture series on ‘Wise Leadership’. The talk will be available on YouTube shortly.

    https://www.westminster-abbeyorg/abbey-events/lectures-and-talks/2020/november/religion-nurture-wisdom

  • Worldly Weddings – To Bless or Not to Bless?

    by the Very Revd Nicholas Henshall, Dean of Chelmsford

    On 14 February a former Bishop of Jarrow used to stand at the feet of the Angel of the North in Gateshead, and bless any couples who came along. Kitsch and worldly certainly. But it might tell us something important about marriage and the church as we seek to respond to Government proposals to change the rules on where people can get married and who can officiate at weddings.

    The history of marriage and the church is clear enough. For almost the whole of the first 1,000 years of Christian history there is simply no such thing as ‘Christian’ marriage. Christians get married, certainly. But they get married according to the laws and traditions of ‘secular’ culture. Christian clergy play no role. Indeed, there is nothing resembling a Christian marriage service, a liturgy, until at least the 8th century.

    Even then weddings remain firmly under civil jurisdiction for another 400 years. It is only in the post-Reformation period that, by canon law and custom, it becomes a requirement in both Catholic and Anglican traditions that a priest officiates at a wedding. Always of course the actual ministers of the sacrament are the couple themselves and not the priest.

    Marriage does not fit easily into Aquinas’ Aristotelian sacramental system. But the sacramentaliisation of marriage in the Middle Ages – rather like the monasticisation of the clergy – is a fascinating power grab by the medieval church, more to do with control than blessing.

    Marriage is robustly secular. Though often missed, this is precisely what informs Paul’s teaching on marriage. Getting married is what people do, and that is part of its ‘worldly’ nature. In the teaching of both Jesus and Paul, marriage is part of the “the present form of this world which is passing away (1 Corinthians 7.31) and Jesus is specific that in the resurrection “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22.30). These would not be comfortable texts to us at the funeral of a deeply loved spouse but this is not intended as a moral condemnation. Rather it reflects the eschatology of the New Testament writers.

    Christians have had to recognise for most of the last 2,000 years that marriage has taken a variety of forms and that these have largely been dictated and developed by ‘secular’ culture rather than by the church. Christopher Brooke’s classic, The Medieval Idea of Marriage, is hugely enjoyable in its own right, but leaves the reader in no doubt.

    The history of marriage and the church has not been helped by a deeply unbiblical  pessimism about sex. Rowan Williams notes that Gregory the Great had to reassure Augustine of Canterbury that someone who had had sex on a Saturday could still receive communion on Sunday. By contrast, in the Jewish tradition, the Sabbath is a specially favoured day for making love. Whilst the very positive statements of modern church leaders about marriage and the family are welcome, these have little resonance in the tradition, and often unintentionally echo the church’s earlier attempts to control marriage rather than demonstrating a desire to bless human relationships.

    When I was a vicar in North Yorkshire, I officiated at a minimum of at least 30 a year. It was a pretty church in a stunning location, and with a huge parish centre where we could even offer wedding receptions. This was a place where people still got married in large numbers, even though the registry office was just stone’s throw away. Wedding preparation in large groups on Saturday mornings was an excellent opportunity to get to know couples well and do some straight teaching and reflection. But although I was completely confident that we had wonderful good news to share – that we knew about love, sacrifice, life intention, vows, for better for worse – I also realised in those precious encounters that they were inviting me onto their sacred ground, not the other way round.

    And I think that’s why over recent years, I have learnt most from non-church weddings, especially a family wedding in a youth hostel in Derbyshire. Some non-church weddings have left me feeling empty and frustrated, to be sure. But so have some church weddings. This Derbyshire youth hostel wedding genuinely engaged and excited me. Location was determined by the bride and groom’s passion for rock climbing, and the ceremony itself – not just the party afterwards in a tent where the heating had failed – was a genuine opportunity for people to speak serious words about love and commitment, and make unique personal contributions. It seemed extraordinary to all of us that although there were several ordained ministers present, and the bride and groom would have loved to have their participation, the legalities prohibited any such religious content. But I realised through that day that I was learning at a ‘secular’ wedding things I thought I already knew.

    This is important. For many of us as Christian parents our children may well not make the same choices as us about marriage. Even devout Christians are sometimes opting for non-church weddings, because the rules we make exclude them or because what we offer seems to restrain rather than to bless.

    The experience of going to civil weddings has raised my game. If I were getting married now, it certainly would still be in a church, with full Nuptial Mass and all the trimmings. But we would seek to learn from non-church weddings, where the personal is often better honoured, the world better understood and the context better embraced. If Aquinas is right, these civil events are (at least in part) still sacraments, and the doctrine of the Incarnation tells us that Christ is there, just as he was at the similarly non-church wedding at Canaan in Galilee.

    The incarnation invites us to a recognise that it is the world in all its glorious variety that is the arena of God’s activity, the arena into which God sends us to serve, the context to which God invites us to pay attention.

    So, alongside welcoming the government’s long-overdue consultation on opening up the conversation about where people can get married and who can officiate at a wedding, let’s be bold enough – as confident missionary-minded churches have always been – to engage with the kitsch and the worldly next Valentine’s Day and do some serious blessing.

  • We Can’t Go Back….But We Will, Unless…

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of Via Media, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and a Member of General Synod

    Jayne Ozanne new

    “Real power lies in the people!”

    Earlier this week I was privileged to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu say these powerful words during a characteristically direct address ahead of a private screening of an epic new film about Africa, climate change and migration, The Great Green Wall.

    He was keen to draw on the words of Thomas Sankara, that set the tone of the film:

    “We must dare to invent the future – everything humanity can imagine we can create”

    For the last three months on Via Media we have had 24 vastly different and yet uniquely personal blogs from a range of contributors addressing the subject “We Can’t Go Back…” They have touched on a truly diverse set of topics from power and inequality to social care and justice, and from topics relating to our buildings to those relating to our well-being and mental health.

    For all their differences, they have each dared to invent a new future, to imagine things as they could be.  Indeed, the series itself found its genesis in words spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury during his Easter Day sermon, televised to the nation from his kitchen at the start of the lockdown, where he shared his own vision of a future filled with resurrection hope, saying:

    “After so much suffering, so much heroism from key workers and the NHS, so much effort, once this epidemic is conquered here and round the world, we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all is normal.  There needs to be a resurrection of our common life, something that links to the old, but is different and more beautiful.  We must dream it because it is the gift of God. Then we must build it in partnership with God.”

    But the million-dollar question of course is – will things actually really change?

    Or perhaps more importantly – what will it take to bring about the change so many long for, write for, march for and in some cases, even die for?

    I suggest that there are three things that we can each do to help bring about the change we seek.  For power truly does “rest with the people” – we just need to understand how much power we have and how it can be harnessed, released and used to transform our Church, and our world.

    The first is, we need to pledge to always “call things out”.  We need to name the elephants in the room.  We need to stop admiring the “emperor’s new clothes”, and instead have the humanity and the decency to tell the emperors that they are in fact naked, that we will not go along with their charades any longer.  It takes courage and wisdom, and it requires a tone that is full of love rather than accusation – a balance that is not easy to strike.  In essence we need to stop colluding.  We need to stop colluding with the lies that have kept us all bound and which have often left us feeling that we have no option but to conform.

    What sort of lies?

    Well those that say our Church is not rich.  We are rich.  It is just that the money is locked up in ways few can access, and it is this that needs challenging.  It is the lies that say we, the Church, are united, when we all know that we are deeply divided and that it is those without power and influence who end up leaving by the back door, with few seeming to notice or care.  It is the lies that say we, the Church, have a respected voice in our nation, when in fact few are listening and frankly many no longer care as we lost their respect the moment we started preaching love to them and abjectly failing to show it to some of the most vulnerable in our midst.

    The second, which is closely related to the first, is that we need to stop being so deferential.  This does not mean that we stop showing respect to people, that is quite a different matter – mutual respect is healthy and essential.  However, there is an unhealthy level of deference in our Church that seems to put senior religious leaders on pedestals from which they can only fall.  They are human beings just like the rest of us.  They bleed, just like the rest of us.  They make mistakes, just like the rest of us.

    If we are honest, deference can act both ways – it can be as much about people in power expecting it as well as those “in the pews” kowtowing to it.  It may well have been an unspoken norm from our past, but it is not the model that Jesus shows us as he interacts with people around him – in fact quite the opposite.  The religious leaders of the day may have expected it, but He modelled something quite different – much to their frustration – and the people loved Him for it!

    Thirdly, we have to believe in ourselves. “There can be miracles, when you believe..” is not just a song sung by Mariah Carey.  It is something we each have to embrace and hold on to.  Right now there is so much that could happen, if only there were people willing to step forward and lead change.  We are in the midst of a major “reset” – there is a “reboot” that is happening not just in our Church, but in our nation and in the world itself.

    Never has there been such an opportune time for people to stand up and say “enough, I want to do things differently!”  What is stopping them?  Mostly, although I appreciate not always, it is their own levels of self-confidence and sense of self-worth.

    We are the key – we are also the barrier.  Change lies with us!

    So, in the words of Archbishop Tutu, who closed his address to us with the following challenge:

    “Let us not forget the transformative power of hope and imagination – we must dare to invent the future!”

    We must “dare”, and we must “do” – for real power lies with us!

  • #BlackLivesMatter: Protest & Prayer

    by the Very Revd Rogers Govender, Dean of Manchester

    Rogers Govender

    This was a reflection shared by the Dean of Manchester at the Protest and Prayer event organised for the Diocese of Manchester

    I want to begin by reminding us that we need to be very aware, very conscious that these issues are very painful experiences for the black community.

    Prayer meetings in the context of protests can sometimes seem a little dubious. It is very important that we pray – we should pray for the victims; we should pray for all those in the black BAME community struggling with racism in our society, in our world.

    However, if you – like me – have your origins in Africa, you’ll know that we have a saying that goes something like this:

    “When the white settlers came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land… they said ‘let us close our eyes to pray’ and we prayed… and when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible and they had the land”

    And that is the truth of so much of our African experience of colonialism.

    I have a little photograph which I keep on my telephone.  It’s from the city of Durban where I come from and it reads: “The city of Durban, under section 37 of the Durban Beach Bye-laws, this bathing area is reserved for the sole use of members of the white race group.”  It’s a very sharp reminder, to me again, and to all of us, of the legislated discrimination and racism that so many have lived with, and I certainly have lived with.

    This form of legislated discrimination continued right up until 1994 when freedom came to us black South Africans after Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years incarceration. So, keep in mind that as we pray we are reflecting on very painful realities today, and our praying must not attempt to mask that, and that we are also being reminded of historic racism that exists in the world and that continues in our minds today.

    Let me continue by reflecting on what’s going on right now…

    George Floyd

    The senseless killing of George Floyd in Minnesota USA has rightly caused deep anger  in that country and indeed in much of the world. I was absolutely horrified and outraged when I saw the video of George pleading for the chance to breathe as the officer had his knee on his neck and his hands in his pockets looking smug and powerful while George was literally dying on the street.  When bystanders protested and asked that this be stopped they were prevented by the other officers who stood by. I have to confess that I have not in a long time seen such awful cruelty in public; it will be a picture forever etched in my mind.

    Floyd’s killing has become the image that reflects the pain and distress that black people suffer on a daily basis in the United States and around the world. It brings to mind for me the pain and struggle for equality, respect and inclusion in virtually every sphere of life. The United Kingdom and the USA may have ended legislation regarding racism and discrimination as far as I know, as we did in South Africa, but BAME folk still experience it on a daily basis.

    Racism in the Church

    Ask any person of colour even in a liberal city like Manchester and they will tell you that it is difficult to find equal opportunities, and that we have to work doubly hard to get into senior jobs and positions of leadership. In the Church of England too this is very common, and I shall say something about that in a short while. Part of the challenge of racism and discrimination that we as BAME people experience, also hinges on the fact that we have experienced so much discrimination in the past that we have tended to internalise our oppression. So, we often do not apply for senior jobs because we know we won’t get it.

    There is a serious notion amongst many of us in the BAME community who believe that in the church white bishops already know who they want in senior vacancies and it is generally not a black or BAME candidate. The fact that BAME deaths to the coronavirus is higher in the BAME community says a lot. Even the government is reluctant to discuss this at the moment citing research that is ongoing around this subject.  The issues of poor health, diet, poor opportunities, high levels of poverty etc are reasons that add to these increased numbers of deaths in the BAME community. This has since been highlighted again with the issues of poverty in Leicester where a further period of lockdown and isolation has been put in place.

    I have done numerous interviews and radio broadcasts and postings on social media over the last two weeks at least on racism. And I have to say George Floyd’s death has made my blood boil because he brought back all the painful memories of my time when I lived in my native South Africa throughout all those apartheid years. As a young student I came to understand and then experienced the pain of discrimination and the violence that was used by the white minority government in South Africa to enforce racism. As an ordinand in training and later as a priest I witnessed overt blatant racism in my country where the lives of black folk were treated with a disdain, disrespect and even hate as they were treated worse than dirt. I have seen the abject poverty, lack of state provision in education, housing, job reservations, and the like, experienced by the black citizens of our country. I was not surprised when the Soweto uprising took place in 1976 and engulfed the country. Rather sadly it was the counter violence of the African National Congress to the violence of government that eventually brought the white minority government to the negotiating table. Moreover, economic sanctions that was encouraged by Archbishop Desmond Tutu brought the government to its knees. I am a supporter of on non-violent direct action to oppose racism and discrimination. That was the reality that I grew up in and George Floyd’s death has brought all of that once again to the surface in a very painful and stark way.

    The Cries of BAME Clergy

    Over these past 20 years that I’ve lived in England, I’ve heard the cries and pleas of many BAME clergy and laity in the Church of England who have experienced discrimination and exclusion because of the colour of their skin or their cultural backgrounds. I’ve listened to BAME clergy tell me that they are only offered junior positions as assistant curates and are rarely offered incumbencies in local parishes. I’ve heard the complaints of BAME clergy who say they were never considered for senior posts because they were deemed unsuitable culturally or even racially; you’ve seen some of that on social media in the last week or two.

    I have a very good friend who is a priest formerly from South Africa now living in the United States; keeping in mind that we’re talking about apartheid South Africa, he once wrote to a local newspaper in South Africa suggesting that perhaps the Holy Spirit was racist, which is why the leading of the Holy Spirit seemed not to lead to the appointment of black clergy to so called white parishes or to senior posts; he was severely reprimanded for that, however, I think it did seem to suggest a very moot point.

    Personal Experience in the Church of England

    At the February 2020 sessions of General Synod I shared a personal story of how a retired Bishop told me not to put my name forward for a diocesan bishop post because he said that that diocese did not, to quote his words, ‘’did not have lots of BAME people…’’ so I speak  from personal experience. I can tell you numerous experiences of being a parish priest and being mistaken for the local gardener or cleaner, especially when I was without my dog collar. This is not to disparage in any way the work of cleaners or gardeners! Its just the notion that a black person could not possibly be the vicar of the parish!

    I have so much more to say to you about the experiences of BAME people in this country, never mind the United States and South Africa.  Many of you who are on this zoom call or on Facebook perhaps have had similar experiences where you have been overlooked for positions of leadership or seniority in the church or in society.

    Speaking up against racism

    There is also a conversation that I had with a white friend, who now lives overseas –  who complained that I was pushing the racism issue very strongly over these last few weeks on social media; this is this is what he said to me, and this is what we often face as BAME clergy and laity; he said: ‘’Rogers you seem to be pushing the race issue a lot recently on Facebook, which is not the Rogers I remember from South Africa…you were always a rational unbiased person I admired but you don’t seem to be like that these days’’.  My response to him was as follows: we have a major racism problem; I chair a national committee that deals with this for the church; it is my responsibility to challenge racism today as I did in South Africa; it is a shame that this makes you uncomfortable; if you experience some of the things that I and my black colleagues do then you too would feel as passionate about it as I do… and that is the kind of typical things that we hear from many of our white colleagues and in my case friends. And this chap and his family are regular Anglican worshippers. I have since asked him to block me on social media if he didn’t like my posts. He has now blocked me!

    I believe that there ought to be a radical shift in our thinking about people of colour. This includes colour prejudice in places like India where dark-skinned people are regarded as less important and inferior.  We need to teach the history of slavery, racism and discrimination in our schools and in our universities; as priests and theologians we need to include African and BAME history in our theological colleges and universities.

    Addressing Racism in Sermons

    We must not be shy to speak about racism in our sermons. I once preached about this in my parish sermon and later that week a white member of my congregations shared with me that she suffered terrible racism from fellow white people in her community for going out with a black man in the 1960’s. Racist and vile language was regularly used towards her. She did marry her black Beau and they both have wonderful children and grandchildren. I had the joy of ministering to this mixed race family! However, she suffered terribly and never spoke about her pain for decades, until I preached about it. Suddenly she felt that she had ‘permission’ to speak about this terrible time in her life.

    Solidarity to Action

    We need to see change and we need to move from statements of solidarity to action.  And I’m very grateful to Bishop David Walker (Manchester) for his stance on inclusion in our diocese.  He’s always seeking to ensure that diversity is visible in our public events and services.  It makes a huge difference because this models a different way to be and to serve our community. I plead, let us not wait for the next murder of another black person for us to get our act together to provide leadership and an alternate vision of inclusion for all people and especially of black people in our very divided world that is crying out for respect, equality and justice.

    A Prayer by Desmond Tutu

    Let me end with a short prayer offered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

    ‘’Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, victory is ours through God who loves us. Victory is ours, victory is ours through God who loves us’’.

    God bless you as you pick up the fight for equality; for an end to racism in our society and in the Church of England. Thank you very much for listening to me.

     

  • We Can’t Go Back…To Looking After No 1!

    by the Ven Malcolm Chamberlain, Archdeacon of Sheffield & Rotherham and Member of General Synod

    Malcolm

    On Monday 4th May, six weeks into the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown, The Guardian newspaper published an article by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett under the heading ‘Why coronavirus might just create a more equal society in Britain.’ In it they wrote about how the present crisis “has given rise to more neighbourliness, sociability and a desire to take care of each other.”

    It would be a fascinating study, well beyond the scope of this blog post, to put that statement to the test. Perhaps even more fascinating to chart a journey from how we were as a nation to what we may have become. At a superficial level, I can’t be the only one to have noticed how the initial selfish stockpiling of loo-rolls and pasta soon gave way to wonderful acts of human kindness. Indeed, in the midst of much tragic loss and disturbing uncertainty, time and time again we’ve been reminded of the human capacity for great generosity.

    I was particularly moved, for example, when, right at the beginning of the lockdown, the carers at Bridgedale House care home, not far from where I live in Sheffield, made the sacrificial decision to isolate with the residents in order to minimise the risk of transmitting the disease to those vulnerable people. For some this meant leaving behind partners and young children for several weeks, at a time when their lives were being affected too.

    We’ve heard stories of people spending their time and money to shop for and deliver groceries to those unable to leave their homes; of generous donations to foodbanks at a time of unprecedented demand; of holiday cottage owners housing NHS and other frontline workers free of charge; of café and restaurant owners providing food and refreshments for essential workers at heavily discounted prices or even for free; and, of course, there was Captain Tom’s incredible 100th birthday walk. As a fan of David Bowie, I still wish the army had given him an honorary promotion, so we could have sung about ‘Major Tom’!

    And I haven’t even mentioned the countless small, but no less significant, acts of generosity carried out by ordinary people day after day after day. If one positive effect of the Coronavirus pandemic is the much-needed reminder of the power of human generosity in overcoming adversity, we simply cannot go back to the self-obsessed ‘look after number one’ culture we have previously inhabited.

    We are not lone islands, even if economic policy has at times seduced us to such self-centredness. We are co-members of the human race, lovingly created by the same God who calls us into relationship with our Creator and with one another. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the awful consequences of poverty, institutional racism and injustice, as evidence suggests that the virus has a more devastating impact on the poor and on BAME communities. More positively, the COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the benefits of cleaner air, with enforced travel restrictions reducing global carbon emissions by some 17%. We cannot go back.

    But let’s be honest. We can go back and, sadly, we probably will.

    When we eventually return to a new normality free from restrictions, it will be all too easy for us to forget that feeling of sharing in a common crisis, and return again to simply looking after number one. I’m writing this in the week that non-essential shops were allowed to open again, and was gobsmacked (not in a good way) by images of one such store where eager shoppers were literally wrestling with each other to get in the door as it opened – no thoughts of social distancing or, it seems, of anyone else’s needs. Faced with such images, it can seem as though nothing has really changed.

    So how can we live differently? How might we emerge from the lockdown as more generous and caring people? And how might such generosity demonstrate our oneness both as members of the human race and, for those of us who might call ourselves ‘Christian’, as followers of Jesus Christ?

    There may be a clue in the letters of the New Testament. As the Church began to spread across Asia Minor, St Paul regarded generously giving to meet the needs of others as a key sign of commitment to Christ and a powerful demonstration of unity. Tom Wright comments that, having realised just how poor the Jerusalem Church had become, Paul started to imagine “what an impact it would have if the churches of which Jerusalem had been so suspicious … were to band together and send real and lasting financial help.”[1]

    And so, Paul closes his first letter to the Corinthian church by explaining how they were to go about collecting gifts for their fellow believers in Jerusalem. And it wasn’t only the wealthy that gave generously. In chapter 8 of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul points to the example of the Macedonian Christians, who, by the grace of God, had been giving voluntarily out of their relative poverty, begging earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry. I love that! These materially poor followers of Jesus were literally begging for the chance to enjoy the privilege of giving!

    As we potentially begin to slip back into old habits and power structures that advantage some over others, I wonder, do you, do I, regard generous giving as ‘a privilege’? Might we have more to learn from God about this essential mark of Christian discipleship. Whatever our financial means, however much spare time we have, whatever our gifts and abilities, might we have room to more fully reflect the generosity and abundance of the God who created us? Or what about our church or our diocese or our other networks – can we see ways of working together to better embody the kind of generosity that reflects our shared humanity?

    If the coronavirus pandemic has caused us to live more generously and pursue the common good in the face of adversity, surely we cannot go back.

    [1] Wright, Tom, Paul A Biography, SPCK: London, 2018, p257