Category: Politics

A Call to “Take Sides”!
by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

In an increasingly polarised and angry West it may seem perverse to say that we need to be clear about taking sides. Surely the work of civilised people, and in particular of those who follow the Prince of Peace, is to avoid taking sides – to work instead at bringing all sides together and seeking consensus, agreement, emollience? Surely that would be the pastoral thing to do? And the Church is primarily a pastoral entity – isn’t it?

In “Liberating God”, his remarkable study of “Private care and public struggle”[1], Bishop Peter Selby has wise and prophetic things to say about this understanding. He writes of the default setting of our pastoral care, which is crystallised in words such as “attentiveness”, “empathy”, “caring”, “openness”, “a non-judgemental attitude” – and of course he knows and emphasises the value of all these things, especially as they apply to individual care for the hurting. But he also says that if this is all we do, and all we think we are for, then we may be missing a vital contribution to the public square.

We may indeed be missing something of what our Scripture and our tradition calls us to. And so he regrets that:

“The minimising of pain and the reduction of tension do not appear as one side of an argument, to be balanced against the possible value that disturbance may have.”

He continues:

“…we should at least consider a new aspect of the pastoral relationship. This aspect involves making pastoral care not only listening but also a taking of sides.”

This week a new biography of one of my predecessors as Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, was published. Called “Batting for the Poor”, it is written by Professor Andrew Bradstock[2]. It tells the story of a privileged young man, a sporting hero, who was changed and indeed radicalised by his conversion to Christianity and by his immersion in Scripture and in the life of the underprivileged, first in East and South London and then here in Liverpool. In short it tells the story of a man who was led to take sides.

Despite the accusations which were laid against Bishop David of political naïveté and of flirting with Marxism, Andrew Bradstock writes: “Sheppard had carefully avoided direct involvement in party politics while in Woolwich and Liverpool…”. But he then goes on: “Sheppard said he ‘would certainly accept the label of Christian socialism – which doesn’t always mean commitment to one particular programme.’” [3]

As I read this I was led to consider how bishops speak today, how language has changed over the years since Bishop David lived in the house where I now live.

Times change.

Ours is an overheated climate in more ways than one, with every political party ready to throw accusations of partisanship at anyone who speaks into the public square. In such an election climate it’s all too easy for people to misspeak, throwing verbal fuel on a pretty hot fire, producing more heat than light.

It would be better then to look for the fruit of thought, or in another image to identify the political compass which people try to follow, and which they invite others to follow in the particular currents and channels of each person’s own life and commitments. And a powerful and relevant example is to hand.

In their excellent joint letter for the General Election, published earlier this week, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York speak strongly of the need for prayer and respect for our politicians, for unity and for courtesy in public discourse, and very rightly so.

But their letter is also crystal clear as to the Christian imperative:

“…we must put the vulnerable and those on the edges of society first … That includes justice for the oppressed, protection for the persecuted, and a commitment to combat climate change and adapt to its effects. It also includes a just economic system, open and encouraging to aspiration and ambition, supportive of those who struggle.”

It does not seem to me that Bishop David Sheppard would find anything here with which to disagree. Certainly I agree with it. The Church follows its Lord who took the side of the poor. Taking sides need not mean taking up labels, but it must surely mean taking Jesus seriously.

My own public statements on this election are few, and very brief, but I believe they stand in the tradition lived out by Bishop David decades ago, the tradition mapped out by our Archbishops this week.

For better or worse I have chosen to express them on Twitter, and they stretch to three tweets. They constitute a pale echo of the stand taken by Bishop David and by Archbishop Sentamu and Archbishop Justin. But here they are:

Let me say again what I say in every election: if you’re a Christian, then (after praying, reading and learning) cast your vote in the way that you believe will help the poorest most. ?#Election ?#ChooseLife

Electing: six suggestions in two tweets.
1. Pray, read and think before you choose.
2. Seek the truth. It can still be found, even if it is harder to find nowadays. Dig.
3. Vote. It’s not true that they’re all a shower, not true that your vote will make no difference. Vote.
1. Vote in such a way as to help the poorest most.
2. Vote for a government – it’s not a referendum, not a presidential election.
3. Resist those everywhere who stir up fear of others, Antisemitism, Islamophobia.
I commend these simple ideas to you – in the hope that they might help you at the moment when, whatever side you choose to take, you take sides; that is, for the moment when you vote.

© 2019 +Paul Liverpool

[1] SPCK 1983

[2] SPCK 2019

[3] “Batting for the Poor”, p.274
November 25, 2019
The Challenge of Faith in the Quantum Era

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

I felt as if I’d been seriously told off by Jesus. A couple of weeks ago a verse from the gospel reading jumped out at me: “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and sky. Why don’t you know how to interpret the present time?” Luke 12: 56

Of course, it’s true!

Time and time again we try to get our message across by trying harder and expecting a different outcome. We find it so very hard to believe that the world has changed, so now there is a burning platform. You’ll have seen the stats -published 4 months ago by the National Centre for Social Research –that in 2018 2% of 18-24 year olds identified as Anglican, and only 1% indicating they belonged to a church.

If we are genuine about our longing to communicate our story – the story of the love of God which can change people and bring life and hope and joy to all humanity – we have got to get our heads round this fact:

No one wants what we are offering any more.

We are trying to say things in a way that people can’t, not won’t, but can’t hear.

History shows that in the end the Church is able to adapt, but as we move into the “Quantum Era” we are really struggling.

Most Christians of my generation have deep roots in the Enlightenment. It was a time when everything was either known, or not yet known. Newton’s laws gave us the world as mathematically quantifiable. The printing press eventually led us out of feudalism and towards democracy and capitalism and the Church thrived in this linear, measurable world view. Things were either right or wrong. Our religion became solid, precise, and mechanical. Scouring the scriptures, we came up with a clearly articulated, highly understandable belief system. We determined all the right doctrines, systematized them in books.

We figured out a proper doctrine for God, Jesus, human nature, sin, redemption, and the afterlife. We perfectly mirrored the culture. We became steeped in certitude; confident we had the right doctrines. The culture was looking for dependable answers to spiritual questions, and we had answers aplenty. These are the roots of that confident phrase we still hear today: ‘The Bible clearly says.’ The Alpha Course is the epitome of this way.

But physics has moved on. At the beginning of last century we discovered that stuff we though was solid, wasn’t at all. The table I’m working at looks firm enough, but it is actually made up of empty space and electrical charges. Einstein and then Heisenberg showed how little, not how much we know.

The world is working out what this means. Certainty is giving way to mystery. Power is fragmented, and as for ‘truth’ – well, who knows?

This could be such a wonderful opportunity. We surely secretly knew that it was foolish to be certain about God. We could inhabit this world so much better with a focus on what really matters: consciousness, mystery, empathy, purpose, creativity, love, God.

Non-religious people see this better than us.

There is a new play on at the Soho Theatre in London by David Baddiel. Called “God’s Dice” it explores this quantum era in terms of religious faith. Baddiel doesn’t have an ounce of traditional faith. ‘I think I’m more of an atheist than Richard Dawkins’ he says, but he is very interested in the human need for religion describing it this way: ‘the beauty and poetry and magic and morality and the theatre indeed of religion.’

In his play the protagonist’s ‘proof’ of God’s existence comes from depicting Jesus’ miracles as scientific equations. Done in this way – as equations – Jesus’ miracles go from being impossible to merely very, very, very unlikely.

Here’s the rub: if you are doing quantum physics you are also studying the very, very, very unlikely. How can one electron be in two places at once as quantum physics seems to suggest? Is that solid science, or does it require the same leap of faith as religion requires?

In other words – It’s a mystery, but it’s real!

When something goes viral through the power of new media there seem to be two features common to many ideas. The first is that they tend to touch people’s hearts more than their reason. Remember: That elusive truth now resides in emotion not fact. The second is that life on the internet is egalitarian – the powerless can feel empowered. A shepherd on a hillside in a third world country can now be part of a world-wide movement.

These are both areas where the Church is weak. Locked into a way of thinking about communicating faith that is linear.

An example? Well in my Diocese, Oxford, the number of confirmations has fallen off a cliff. Lots of soul searching later, the answer from the top is that we must revive the tradition of catechism and teach people better. We suppose that imparting our truth systematically as a series of ideas cannot fail to convince people. There is a concept called ‘lock-in’, where it is almost impossible to change perspective – which seems to apply here.

We are also obviously horrendously weak on equality. Women, BAME, LGBT, those with disabilities. We can’t seem to understand that these are issues that really matter to people. They don’t simply disagree, they are disgusted.

But it could be so different because our faith is about the heart. Our faith is about equality, equity.

A few days ago, Jayne Ozanne was the subject of an unpleasant piece in which she was called a “Notorious Anglican Lesbian Activist”. Instead of getting upset, or arguing, she embraced it with a sense of fun and now there are NALA badges and T-Shirts. It gave me a little glimpse in to how the Church is just as fragmented as the rest of the world and that trading clobber texts the way my parents did simply makes no sense anymore.

We need to occupy the space with creativity and learn to see the quantum age as bursting with energy where God reveals the full glory of mystery, uncertainty and diversity.

November 21, 2019
Remembrance, Inclusion & Identity

by Lord Ian Blair of Broughton, cross bench peer, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner and parishioner in the Diocese of Oxford

In this period of remembrance, I have been reflecting on the time-limited nature of memory. I was born after World War II in 1953 but my childhood was dominated by it, with poppies and remembrance services being as absolute a fixed part of the year as Christmas. My childhood games and comics were all about Gerries, Nazis and Brits.

This last decade has seen an outpouring of remembrance as the 100 year anniversaries of the First World War slipped past, followed by the 75 the anniversary of D Day this year and with the 75th anniversary of VE day still to come next year.

A number of issues have been striking me this weekend, two of them very strongly. The first is the question of how long the significance of these particular acts of remembrance will continue. The second is whether we are necessarily remembering things quite right.

The industrialised slaughter of 1914-8 and the loss of so many brilliant young lives is burned into British, German and French national memories. My uncle was killed in France in 1915.

We also now pretty much understand that the Second World War was effectively a continuation of the First and its victors’ peace. But if we look ahead 30 years, will people still be remembering the bravery and the futility of these events? And what will people be remembering?

The way in which a small pebble can start an avalanche caused me to think about this when I noticed a newspaper article to the effect that a number of police forces were no longer prepared to devote manpower to all the remembrance services in their particular region and were asking village events to be subsumed into larger city ones. Where does this lead?

Soon, all those with direct memory of these titanic struggles will be dead, with all respect to those mourning losses from more recent but thankfully smaller conflicts. What then?

Who knows what future generations will do but what it made me think is that those who do survive and those of us whose lives have been was so influenced by it need to make sure that the memory of all that sacrifice is accurate and comprehensive and not able to be twisted into a narrative of British or even English exceptionalism and nationalism.

The great 1940 cartoon by David Lowe entitled ‘Very Well, Alone’ pictures a single British Tommy standing on the white cliffs of Dover, fist raised aloft against German bombers streaming in overhead. It was published after the fall of France earlier that year. It was a wonderful piece of propaganda and those who come after should not disregard its significance.

The sheer raw courage of the Churchill-led government in refusing peace terms with Nazi Germany should never be discounted.

But even when Lowe’s cartoon was published, ‘Alone’ was rapidly becoming less true. Soldiers from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa were already steaming towards our shores. Resistance movements from Holland, Poland and France fought and flew with us. Then the Americans came in and eventually Germany was to be defeated by huge Soviet sacrifice. All this is compatible with my childhood memories – these were all people recognisably like us.

But people recognisably not like us, not like anyone in my entirely white Cheshire home town, came as well. And my childhood memories do not include any understanding that those who fought alongside the British included hundreds of thousands of non-white citizens of the British Empire and Commonwealth.

This was brought home to me sharply at a Remembrance event in Hounslow in west London, which I was attending in an official capacity sometime in the 2000’s. I met an elderly Sikh, with a slew of medals across his chest. I was very surprised indeed when he told me that he had been a Squadron Leader in the Battle of Britain. Where did this story fit in to my understanding of the past? Turbans among the Few?

Ever since, I have been tracing the stories of Black and Minority Ethnic contributions to the events Remembrance Day commemorates.

I am just going to take the example of India. One million Indian soldiers served in the First World War, as the magnificent Indian War Memorial in northern France makes clear: 75000 died, while 87000 died in the Second World War.

But their contribution is scarcely remembered in most of Britain.

I always see Jesus Christ as the epitome of diversity. Christ outraged the Jewish religious authorities of his time by mingling with tax-gatherers and sinners. He enjoyed the company of women not of his family, a very unusual course of action at the time, appeared first to one of those women after His Resurrection and protected an adulteress from being attacked.

He spoke at length to a Samaritan woman – regarded as an apostate by Jews at that time – at a well and then stayed in her village.

Jesus preached at and stayed on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem. This was then the site of Jerusalem’s leper colony. He was inclusive above all.

The Temple in Jerusalem was divided into concentric courts, first the court of the Gentiles into which anyone could go, then the court of the Jews open to both men and women, then one only for Jewish men, then one only for priests and then the Holy of Holies, which could be entered only by the High Priest, only on one day a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The deeds and words of Jesus challenge this exclusivity, as did His early followers in taking Christ’s teaching to the ends of the earth, offering Christianity to all the world.

We need to follow His example and ensure that, for future generations, the message of Remembrance Sunday is not only about – although certainly including – a British (Scottish, Welsh, Irish as well as English) triumph and sacrifice but a wonderful diverse achievement by all faiths and none against all the odds, against world-wide evil and brutality.

At the going down of the sun, we need to remember all of them. And that inclusive memory will help future generations combat the evils to come in their day, rather than allowing such a glorious moment in our national history to dwindle into a little Englander motif.

November 11, 2019
The All-Seeing Eye

by Jayne Ozanne, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and Editor of Via Media

Some call it the ultimate Hunger Monster – the creature with the insatiable appetite.

Others liken it euphemistically to the apocalyptic beast depicted in Ezekiel and Revelation, whose multiple eyes look in all directions at the same time.

I myself just call it the “all-seeing eye” – the giant eye of Horus which hardly ever blinks, and certainly never sleeps.

I speak of course of our 24-hour media – the “free press”, that is a prize mark of a free democracy.

I’m beginning to fear however that history will show that this beast has shaped our culture and most certainly our political landscape far more than anything or anyone else over the past decade.

We all know the game by now.

Ambitious media outlet wants a scoop. It invites its prey (enter stage left a celebrity or a politician) into its lair where it tries to prize out of said prey a soundbite that can become the next major headline. Triumphantly, the outlet then claims they are “the first with the news”, that they can “exclusively reveal”, and that only they can be trusted to bring “the true story” to the public.

To achieve such a coup, an army of backroom researchers trawl through years of social media posts, or better still they find a soundbite from a speech (nearly always taken out of context) from a fellow politician, so as to try and find that precious proof that their latest victim is not to be trusted, that they don’t really mean what they say, or that there has now been some “major U-turn” in policy.

And so the dance begins…or should we say, the bear-baiting starts. The only contestants that survive are those who can win a near-perfect score in some virtual reality version of “Strictly Come Dancing”.

And I for one am sick of it.

I’m sick of the games. I’m sick of the tap dancing – which seems to come straight from a scene in Chicago, where lawyer Billy (one smooth fast-footed Richard Gere) deftly dances around (ie manipulates) the media to save his guilty client. It’s the ultimate dance-off in which some will survive, and others sadly don’t.

We now know the tune, inside out, and I myself know hardly anyone who wants to dance to it anymore, let alone listen to it.

It reminds me of Jesus saying that this generation is like children crying out: “We piped a tune for you and you did not dance, we sang a dirge for you and your did not mourn” (Matt 11:16-17)

You see, we’ve all seen through it now. We don’t trust it anymore. Indeed, we don’t seem to trust anyone at all anymore. It all seems so pointless. Mud-slinging, name calling, fact twisting, cat calling – it’s all there, and no one comes out of it with much dignity.

The 24-hour news service, which is meant to help us maintain our freedom has I fear begun to sew seeds that risk fundamentally undermining it. For we now take everything we hear with a very large pinch of salt, and we see the dance for the staged theatre that it is. The news frequently leaves us none the wiser, and more often than not results in us feeling even more frustrated and in the dark.

However, there is Good News afoot.

For there is one All-Seeing Eye, who knows all truth, and sees all truth. God knows what is going to happen. Quite literally. The source of truth can reveal all truth, and with the help of the Holy Spirit brings witness to that truth.

You see I believe that thanks to Holy Spirit, we can recognise when we hear truth spoken – even from those we disagree with politically. And when we recognise the integrity of what is being said, when there is a “witness in our spirit” to the voice of truth that seeks to cut through all the political posturing and point scoring, then we start to tentatively take steps towards rebuilding some trust and with it, some hope.

Such as when the new Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle spoke this week about the need to reform politics and remove the tarnish that has become such a stain on everybody.

Trust urgently needs to be re-established in our country, and that will only occur when the media start to play their part in enabling this. When they change the music and enable people to dance a different dance. When we move away from Tarantellas focused on the feverish foot stamping of individuals to ones that provide forums to model elegance and grace.

Until we’re able to do that, our hungry 24 hour media monster will continue to eat away at some of the foundations on which our society is based, rather than helping to strengthen the main pillars of truth and trust on which our communities can all flourish and grow.

Maybe its time for some eyes to sleep, to take a rest, and to wake refreshed in the morning?

November 5, 2019
Unity or Truth?

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

I was talking with a church leader the other day who lamented that they kept getting criticised by Christians who accused them of valuing Unity above Truth.

This is a variant of the ‘good disagreement is bad disagreement’ argument, which goes:

as Christians we must agree on the Truth of the Christian Gospel –

but we don’t agree on what we think are fundamental Christian truths –

therefore we cannot be in Unity, and saying that we can disagree yet live together in Unity is dishonest.

One of the subtexts of this argument is the question of how Truth is defined and who defines it? The call to believe ‘biblical truth’ is a demand to share my particular view about ‘what the Bible says’; the call to ‘believe what the Church has believed in every place and time’ begs the question of how the Church is defined and who assesses its history; the call to use reason and experience requires defining what assumptions you start with and whose experience you’re talking about.

Another subtext is the question of belonging.

To adapt Grace Davie’s sociological question about faith: do you believe first and then find a group that you agree with, or do you find a group to belong to first and adopt the views of that particular group over against others? Can you change your mind and still stay in your group? How do individuals and the group check that what they believe is Truth, compared with the views of others and the realities around them?

These are all big questions, which politicians as well as religious believers are grappling with. How far can you follow your conscience, your view of the Truth, in politics or faith, without getting expelled from the party? Do you swallow hard and vote for what you don’t like because you think Unity is more important? Or do you exit on a point of principle?

If you have a propositional view of Truth, a binary and credal approach (‘true or false, believe or not?’) then you’ll want to know that you and others are in propositional step with each other as the basis for Unity, and expel others from your party.

But in Christian thinking, Unity is not uniformity, and the joy of the Christian Gospel is that it’s not propositional, but relational. It’s not about believing all the right things about God and salvation (‘even demons believe – and shudder’, James 2.19); it’s putting your trust in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and being his disciple.

The great diversity of the Christian Church is its strength: it requires us to look at ourselves through the eyes of other disciples, to help us answer the question as to whether we follow the one who is the Truth (the Way and the Life), or follow rather the gospel according to ourselves. We need one another’s criticisms and questions, in a spirit of openness and humility, in order to be faithful to the Word who is Truth. We aren’t made to be uniform, but to be united in Christ.

That’s why the Eucharist is central to Christian faith: we share the sacrament of Jesus Christ, and we are united to one another through him. Whatever boundaries we draw around Christ’s table are provisional, because they’re our boundaries not His. Our denomination may not be ‘in communion’ with other Christians or churches, but we’re all in communion with Jesus Christ nonetheless, and therefore with each other. Like it or not. Our Unity is based on the Truth of God’s saving love for us in Jesus Christ.

Unity or Truth? It’s both, of course; not as defined by us, but by God’s love for us in Christ.

In the words of the Percy Dearmer hymn I was singing in St Paul’s the day I wrote this:

Jesus, who our sorrows bearest, all our thoughts and hopes thou sharest,

thou to us the truth declarest; help us all thy truth to hear.

Lord, in all our doings guide us; pride and hate shall ne’er divide us;

We’ll go on with thee beside us, and with joy we’ll persevere!

October 25, 2019
On Brexit, Becket and Signs of the Times

by Lord Blair of Boughton, cross bench peer, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner and parishioner in the Diocese of Oxford

As a newcomer to this site, my task in writing a first post has not been made much easier by looking over some of the recent posts. I could not agree more with the Bishop of Manchester on the extraordinary outburst of unpleasant language in the Commons after the Supreme Court Verdict on prorogation. Then I found a fellow traveller in the post before that by Helen King, quoting from my favourite hymn, Faber’s ‘There is a wideness in God’s mercy’.

These posts cover just the kind of subject about which I thought I would be writing: pleas for decency and tolerance in a country more deeply divided than I have ever known it to be.

I am going to cover some of the same ground but thought I would do so perhaps from a slightly different and hopeful angle, although I particularly want to commend the Bishops and Archbishops for writing their letter of protest. I have no truck with any suggestion that the Church should not have a voice in politics in ordinary times, let alone these Brexit-filled days.

I want to reflect a bit on the nature of time, dividing it into those two Greek words, Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is what we think of as sequential time, with Kairos being a moment of indeterminate time in which something momentous happens.

These last few years have seen the breakup of many old certainties, whether of standards of behaviour in public life or the questioning of multi-national entities from the United Nations to the EU to NATO, together with the rise of populist leaders, irrespective of and sometimes not corresponding to left or right. Who would have dreamed of ministers of the Crown musing as to whether the Government needs to obey the Rule of Law: who would have dreamed of a US president allegedly pursuing a domestic political rival through the intervention of a foreign government?

And yet and yet, the Supreme Court did rule, unanimously, that the Prorogation was null and void, effectively had not happened. Impeachment proceedings against a sitting President have begun. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party has lost the election and fallen out of government: ditto, Matteo Salvini and the Northern League in Italy. The refugee boats are landing again.

We live in Chronos but maybe, just maybe, there is some hope that a tide begins to turn. Maybe Kairos is just around the corner. This is a thought that has been growing on me since a visit my wife and I made to Canterbury Cathedral in August. We went to Morning Prayer at 8 am and then had a wonderful half hour, almost alone in the Cathedral, before the general public came in.

The Precentor very kindly guided us to the memorial altar to Thomas a Becket. I had not been there for years and it was a revelation – here is a photograph, with its crucifixes made of swords.

Murdered beside his altar, the death of Becket must have been the darkest of dark times for the Church and for people of good will. And yet. Thomas a Becket’s canonisation was one of the fastest in Christian history. Within two years, King Henry II, apparently responsible for Becket’s murder, had had to choose to walk barefoot into Canterbury and to suffer public and physical humiliation. The name of the saint was one of the most famous in Europe.

I am making no parallel between Becket and Brexit (probably the first time those two words have been put together!) but some parallel emerges between the feeling of helplessness in the 12^th century and now, as bad events and unpleasant behaviours seem to gather unrelentingly. However, we do not know what the future holds and what God’s purpose might be.

It seems to me that we need people of good will, including churchmen and churchwomen to be outspoken, not necessarily in support of one or other of Remain and Leave, but for the common weal, the common good, in support of decency and truthfulness and respect between us all. And that is on both sides.

In the great Commission at the end of St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that he is with them until the end of time. I know that he is in both chronological time and eternal time and that the outcome of our difficult issues may surprise us all. I can certainly conceive of it being surprisingly less bad than the outcomes to which the chronological sequence of events seems to be pointing. Pandora may emerge out of the box. The long history of British decency may prevail.

And those who appear ready to sacrifice decency in public life and language, may themselves not succeed. In the same chapel as the Becket memorial altar, the Dean and Chapter have placed four large ceramics, shaped rather like vases, to represent the four knights/tempters, who appear in TS Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. What transpired after the murder was the complete opposite of what the king hoped and the knights sought to accomplish. In that chapel, I noticed was it was difficult to tell whether the ceramics depicted knights or pawns. Who knows?

October 8, 2019
Power, Men & Politics

by the Ven Canon Peter Leonard, Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight, Chair of One Body One Faith and Member of General Synod

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.” So said Plato.

I have been reflecting on this statement a lot over the past week of so as I have watched the news. As I have seen politicians behaving like football hooligans and as I have seen grown men write disparaging tweets about a 16 year old girl attempting to do something about our climate emergency I have been wondering what it says about these particular men.

And it is men generally isn’t it?

I was going to start by excusing Plato’s blatant patriarchal approach to the world but on reflection is it mainly white middle-aged men in positions of power and privilege who have behaved in this way and been the reasons for my shock and reflection.

But why?

Why does any member of the UK government feel the need to use aggressive confrontational words? Words which they know will encourage others to behave in a similar fashion and indeed the threats against other members of Parliament is evidence of this. Why would any educated public servant think that sneering and laughing at another whilst lounging about in their place of work appropriate? What are these members of Parliament, usually white middle-aged men very keen on shouting down the women MPs, doing with their power? How are they displaying it to others?

I referred to them as public servants earlier on and indeed that is what they should be, but it occurs to me that there was very little going on in the Palace of Westminster which served the public. It seemed to be a fight about who had the real power, who was really in charge and pushing the boundaries as to how untouchable that power made them.

So back to my question why? It seems to be something about being challenged, about having the power questioned, or at least what they are doing with the power. And what happens when we are challenged? We react, we summon all the power we have to reassert ourselves as the powerful one. We shout, we’re rude, we use aggressive language. We try our very best to maintain our alpha male status like so many apes in a pack.

Alongside the scenes in Parliament we have seen the outrageous comments made on social media about Greta Thunberg. A 16 year old girl who is taking seriously the climate emergency facing us and trying to do something about it. That includes challenging others. It includes challenging the ‘adults’ who are in charge, leaders of nations, CEOs of multinationals and those of us who are so ingrained into the consumer society we can’t see what our actions are doing to the planet.

Once again those who hold power and privilege are challenged and they don’t like it. So they post criticisms, insults, sarcastic and unkind comments to try and reassert their power and regain their dominance. To ridicule the person making the challenge so that they are not taken seriously and written off by the masses.

When power is challenged it fights back, or rather those with the power fight back.

This is a story as old as humanity itself and we only have to read the Gospels to see that Jesus encountered it as well.

Jesus challenged those in positions of power, the Scribes and Pharisees and, much like those in the Houses of Parliament or venting on social media this last week, they didn’t like it. They argued back, they shouted, they ridiculed and attempted to make Jesus look stupid and eventually they incited others to do the same, ultimately convincing them to shout “Crucify, Crucify”.

It was amidst this, admittedly rather sad process of reflection, that I saw the following advert for The Guardian newspaper:

Change is possible. Hope is power.

In the gospels we see that the real power lay with the one who could not be defeated even by death. That real power lay in washing the feet of others, of riding on a donkey rather than in a grand parade, of a simple supper with friends and prayers in a garden, of a seemingly helpless man condemned to die yet forgives others as he does. Real power lays in the hope of making the world a better place and that change is possible.

Perhaps when it comes to the climate emergency the real power lays in the hands of a 16 year old Swedish girl who is persistent in raising the issue and taking action despite the resistance she encounters; perhaps the real power is not in the hands of the adults but in the hands of the school children who go on strike to highlight the crisis we find ourselves in which us adults seem to be doing so little about?

Real power lays in the hope of making the world a better place and that change is possible.

In Parliament maybe the real power lays in the hands of the many Members of Parliament who are fighting for a better world, who truly are public servants and who faithfully serve their constituents day by day? Does the real power exist in those who don’t resort to shouting and name calling, who retain their dignity rather than stoop to the lowest comment denominator? Is the power in those who believe change is possible and hope to play a part in making the world a better place?

For those of us who profess to be Christians we need to take Philippians 2:5-11 seriously:

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father

We need to consider carefully how people could measure us by what we do with power, as individuals and as Church institutions. Who challenges us and how do we react when they do? Are we on the right side of the power struggle? Do we believe change is possible?

Is our hope in Christ our real power?

October 4, 2019
Rhetoric of a Playground Bully or Political Discourse?

by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

At the heart of Britain’s, largely unwritten, constitution lies the principle that those charged with making decisions should do so free of improper influence or pressure. Members of governing bodies, whether they are responsible for a multi-million pound business or a tiny local charity, must act not in personal interest but in the best interest of whatever body they are appointed to serve.

At the top of the agenda of many of the meetings I attend or chair, just after “Welcomes and Apologies”, comes another standard item, “Declarations of Interest”. Members are required to let colleagues know if any matter for consideration impacts on them personally, especially if it might appear to a fair minded observer that their views might be biased in consequence. Sometimes that leads to me having to withdraw from part of a meeting, for example when the Housing Association I chair was considering buying some property from my diocese. Some public bodies, such as the House of Commons, maintain a public “Register of Interests”, to improve our chance of knowing if a member might be taking a particular position in order to feather their own nest.

Good decisions are hard to make in a climate of corruption. But they are perhaps even harder to make in an atmosphere of fear and threat.

My own diocese is twinned with one in Pakistan, where the Christian community lives in constant fear that any accusation of blasphemy will not be met with a fair trial. They have good reason, and not only because they are personally at risk of lynch law. Reputable lawyers are frightened to defend them, because of the enormous personal risk to their own lives. Judges who acquit them may also suffer death threats. The same has been the case for politicians who even suggest that the law be changed. Some such threats have been carried out. For many Christians the fear of unjust accusation and unfair trial is more debilitating than living with the perennial risk of terrorism.

And yet how can the nation move forward, whilst it retains an atmosphere where debate is stifled by threat, and decisions are hemmed in by the risk of extreme violence, even death?

I’d never thought that the lessons I have learned from my Diocesan link would be ones that had direct implication for the UK. But in these most recent months, and especially this last week, I’ve had to revise my opinion. Good and gracious politicians, men and women who have served their constituents and nation with integrity and courage, are making it known that they will not stand for election again. They cite the direct personal threats being made to them, their staff, and their families.

The contrast between the clear and calm way in which the unanimous decision by eleven Supreme Court judges was handed down, and the words spoken by some in Parliament a day or so later, could hardly be greater. Careful argument, and attention to the letter and spirit of our law, gave way to words likely, and possibly even by some calculated, to raise the emotional temperature beyond boiling point. When a powerful individual suggests that the way to reduce the threat of personal harm is for his opponents to give up their cause, this is the rhetoric of the playground bully, not of political discourse.

The letter now issued on behalf of the entire College of Bishops is almost unprecedented.

That in itself should indicate how gravely we view the tone of current argument. No matter how passionately any protagonist might want their own view to prevail, sincerely believing it to be in the best interest of our country, we cannot reach a good outcome by raising the threat of violence to such an extent that our opponents are cowed into submission.

We might win the battle but would have lost the war. Our nation would be immeasurably poorer in character and morality for a generation to come.

September 27, 2019
Donkeys, Leaders and Fairy Tales

by the Rt Revd Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

What a mess to be in!

The metropolitan elite, secular and religious, is totally out of touch with the mood of the wider population. Caught up in its own petty power plays, it blunders on, disconnected from the anger endemic in the rest of the nation.

Ordinary people feel, with good reason, that nothing ever gets done to benefit them. Nor does it help when those who do articulate a different future, one that breaks free from the shackles of subjugation to foreign powers, seem to have little to offer beyond a vague return to former glories.

Maybe what’s needed is a populist leader. Someone untainted by past compromises and connections. Someone who can latch onto their religious and cultural identity. A leader who puts things in simple and straightforward ways. A person with a natural, charismatic authority. Someone who will shake everything up.

Better than the current load of donkeys!

If there’s one clear, consistent message from every fairy story in history, it’s to be careful what you wish for.

It never turns out the way it was expected. The tale twists, the prize being grasped turns to dust or destruction. Things that were meant to get better end up vastly worse. The hoped for saviour turns out, after at most a couple of years, to be just another donkey, braying pompously in the breeze.

Except once, when the tale is turned on its head.

This time we start with the donkey. It won’t take long for the wildly acclaimed popular leader riding it to see his opinion poll rating to dive from hero to zero.

His moment of glory will be measured not in years or months, but in days. He’ll be dumped on the rubbish heap long before ever he reaches a position of power. Discarded for not playing to the prejudices of the mob, for being as critical of power and its abuses as some Old Testament prophet.

The end.

Except, not the end.

April 14, 2019
A Special Place in Hell….and the Road to Heaven

by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

In perhaps the most metaphysical intervention of the Brexit debate thus far, suddenly Hell has become part of the debate. It arrived with the suggestion from one European leader that it contains a special place for those who advocate solutions without sufficient planning. Maybe the next stage of the negotiations will be to determine whether the infernal realm can simultaneously have a frictionless border with both the EU and UK. But, at least, it got me thinking about Hell.

Contrary to the famous quote from Jean-Paul Sartre, Hell is not, as far as I would see it, other people. Hell is the absence of others, the absence of friends and companions, and of God. Hell is to be isolated, alone, cut adrift from the rest of eternity, with only ones own demons for company. Heaven, by contrast, is the place of intimacy, of being known as one truly is, and yet accepted and loved by both God and our companions. In Heaven we shall nurse no shameful secrets, all shall be understood and forgiven.

Apologies if that all sounds a bit abstract, but it’s something that affects how I behave here and now. I need it to maintain my Christian values in the teeth of a culture of individualism that tries to make everything about “me”. The more I submit to that societal norm, viewing everything from the perspective of my rights, my aspirations, and my ability to choose and enforce my understanding of myself over against any other, the more it feels I am preparing myself for the loneliness of Hell rather than the intimacy of Heaven. In Hell, mine is the only and unchallengeable perspective.

In this sense, a lot of what currently passes for political discourse in Britain, including Brexit, is pretty hellish. And sadly, many religious debates are conducted in a tone not much better. But it doesn’t have to be like that. I was recently in a small meeting, dealing with a conflicted issue, where we laughed and cried, shared pain and hurt and hope, and emerged with a way forward that none of us could have imagined an hour and a half earlier. That was truly heavenly. Nor was it unique. Again and again, I find that when I, and others, move away from defensive positions, and try to see things through other eyes, something marvellous happens.

Especially as a person of privilege, I am having to learn that the pathway to Heaven is not found by seeking my own rights and flourishing, let alone the interests of my own tribes and factions, but by attending to the needs and nurture of those who are deeply different from me. To do so is not to abandon the belongings and affiliations that sustain me and my kind, but to enrich them, and me, through a wider empathy.

Thirty years ago, I began my journey into Franciscan community. We’re a mixed bunch, one that cuts across age, class, gender, background and personality, as well as most of the major divisions in churchmanship and theological stance. My vows commit me not merely to follow the example of Francis in my own private fashion, but to journey alongside my brothers and sisters within the Order. The fact that perhaps the only common characteristic of Franciscans is a never articulated belief that being well organised is a sin, simply adds to the challenge of rubbing along together.

The original disciples whom Jesus gathered around himself were a similarly unlikely group, diverse and prone to dispute. Yet I wonder whether the fact that we have only partial and contradictory lists of their names, men and women, is because it is what they are together that matters far more than their individuality. Modern minds want to distinguish Peter from Thomas, James from John, in ways perhaps inimical to the gospel. Jesus, after all, sent them out in pairs, never alone.

It wasn’t of course Sartre who said that Hell was other people, it was one of the three main characters in his play, No Exit. Sentenced to share eternity in a room, it is their inability to move beyond their own self centred perspectives, and to see their companions as anything beyond instruments for their own use, that makes each other’s presence torture. The self obsession that has been at the heart of their earthly lives has become their condemnation.

The life long Christian process of sanctification is about rejecting that road to Hell and instead finding our belonging, our true identity, through the intimacy of membership in the Body of Christ. That is the road to Heaven.

February 11, 2019