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Tag: Church Commissioners

  • Power Games: Redemptive Violence or Redemptive Love?

    by Simon Friend, a property developer and lay member of General Synod and part of HTB/New Wine churches for the last 40 years; he is one of the conveners of The Evangelical Forum on General Synod

    The latest response from the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) to the latest set of proposals put forward to General Synod for the July 2024 sessions in York repeats a familiar tone from them that has echoed round the Synod chamber and the endless days of meetings many of us have been involved with, really ever since Shared Conversations in 2015. The message is No… No…. No…. No. The proposals and letters from various Bishops published just recently in Premier Christianity and by The Society of St Wilfred and St Hilda make the same, and now rather tiring suggestion, that we “need more time”. But I certainly get the feeling that no matter how much time we spend on this – the answer will still be No….. No…. No.

    Let me take just one point from CEEC’s June 21st statement: “…we do not believe this is an ‘agree to disagree’ issue – because the bible is clear that you cannot bless a sexually active relationship outside of male/female marriage.”

    So let’s be clear. This is about who is having sex with whom and who has the right to judge what is biblical in these matters. Many of us have been highlighting that this is the core issue we need to debate. Is sex outside of marriage of one man with one woman a ‘first order’ or as some would call it, a ‘salvation’ issue? I addressed this in my speech during the LLF debate in February this year. Here is what I said:

    “It’s clear that this drive for structural provision has at the root of it the doctrinal question: ‘Is sex outside of marriage of one man and one woman a 1st order salvation issue?’

    I am wondering what it is about this one particular aspect of the purity code, which has now become some sort of boundary marker of true faith; whereas justice, poverty, war, or the environment don’t seem to generate anything like the heat they should for us as Christians.

    Personally, I blame the doctrine of Original Sin. The Augustinian view of Original Sin that bound Adam and Eve’s action into a narrative of sexual shame intimately involved with The Fall. As John Gibson wrote back in 1981: “It’s high time that the doctrine of original sin in the sense of a sexually transmitted guilt going back to a primal guilty pair was abandoned” (John C. L. Gibson, Genesis, Volume 1, 1981, p.178).

    Original Sin wasn’t about sex. Nor should who’s having sex with whom in 2024 be cast as a ‘first order’ issue; something to tear the church apart over by making ‘structural provision’.

    The original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

    Funny isn’t it, that the one thing God asked us not to do – we can’t help but do, even all these millennia later. To know good and evil – well, that’s power, isn’t it? Something that elevates us to the status of gods, giving us mastery over mere mortals. And we are called to pay attention to power. Especially the use of the power of what we think is right or wrong.

    I wonder why God said – don’t eat this fruit. You will surely die.

    As Brueggemann writes: “No one dies in this text. This is not a reflection on death but a troubled, anxiety-ridden life. That is a greater problem than death.” (Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, 1982, p.252).

    We’ve been suffering this sort of living death ever since; devising mechanisms like scapegoating where we conveniently project the corruptness within our own hearts onto whoever we suppose to be more sinful over there; and banish them to the ‘structurally differentiated’ desert (or, as others would put it, the ‘pastorally provisioned desert!). And that makes us feel so much better. Doesn’t it?

    Sex isn’t the Original Sin. The use of the power of knowledge of good and evil to judge, split, condemn, and cast out the other – that’s Original Sin.”

    When I said this at Synod, it was around this point that I crashed into my 3 minute warning. I’d been intending to go on to say:

    “As Christians we believe that Jesus made himself the final scapegoat so that this cycle of shaming would end. So why can’t we let go? Why do we cling on to Redemptive Violence like a survival instinct – convinced it’s our prerogative and role to be the arbiters of right and wrong?

    When Jesus came, he resisted constantly this basic human need to judge and shame the other. He showed us the way of Redemptive Love intentionally drawing in those on the margins of society – the outsiders.

    It’s time we addressed this “sex and who is having sex” as a ‘first order’ salvation issue.

    I urge you to resist this amendment for structural provision.”

    And where are we now, in July? What has changed? If we just keep hearing the language of No…. No…. No… after all these years in which many people have put in huge amounts of effort to produce endless resources and workshops and endless group discussions … then really I think we need to ask the hard question: “How are we going to end this cycle of shaming and scapegoating if people keep using language which assumes a position of knowledge of what is right and wrong to judge, split and condemn – even cast others into some structurally differentiated part of the church?”

    So, I challenge the CEEC to ponder on this original sin and ask some self-reflective questions about how they, and indeed all of us, use a ‘knowledge of right and wrong’ when God clearly sets out from the beginning that that is precisely what we should not do. I challenge CEEC and The Alliance to reflect on how using their position of power in the Church of England, which they clearly have, is morally acceptable when it comes to the latest threat expressed in The Alliance letter of 26th June: “We will have no choice but rapidly to establish what would in effect be a new de facto ‘parallel Province’ within the Church of England and to seek pastoral oversight from bishops who remain faithful to orthodox teaching on marriage and sexuality.”

    When we play these power games based on a perceived knowledge of good and evil – then I think we abuse the power we hold. And theologically I would say it is a form of Redemptive Violence. Reasoning, that somehow believes that splitting the church makes the church a better bride of Christ. We have centuries of church splits to show that doesn’t lead anywhere positive. Some parishes in my diocese have already used their power over Common Fund to divert payments to The Ephesian Fund set up by CEEC, though I note that the moral imperative driving them does not stretch to giving back their houses, stipends or pension to the diocese from which they feel they simply have to ‘separate’ themselves.  No doubt The Alliance wants to take the Church Commissioners’ pot of funds into their new Province also. They have already benefited from vast swathes of it through SDF Funding.  At least now their behind-the-scenes planning is out in the open.  The Alliance letter states: “We will encourage all church leaders who are in sympathy with The Alliance to join the parallel Province.”

    Jesus clearly picks up the theme of Genesis 2 and how use of the power of knowledge of good and evil can lead to wrongly judging others, leading us away from considering the planks in our own eyes. He constantly berates the religious elites for judging and excluding and scapegoating the vulnerable and marginalised. Surely, it’s obvious, isn’t it? And I can hear the conservatives saying right now…. “But he told the woman caught in adultery to leave her life of sin…”. For me, even leaving aside the fact that the story was about unfaithfulness and this debate is about affirming faithful same sex partnerships, that is to completely miss the point of the story, which is that Jesus, the sinless one, should have fulfilled the law and stoned the woman himself… but instead he radically and transformatively, for himself and for the woman, said…”I do not condemn you.” That’s the point of the story, isn’t it? He is not going to condemn and judge her against a purity code and neither is he going to send her off hopeless. He gives her hope and says to her, like he says to all of us, “go and live a better life”.  Perhaps that was what Jesus was silently saying to the men who slunk away after his challenge to them.  They too needed to go and “live a better life”.

    I am sorry to say I am really, really tired of CEEC’s pronouncements. Like many others I have given up days and days to sit in group discussions with them and nothing changes.  But I still don’t want them to leave.  I still count them as my brothers and sisters in Christ.

    I want to say Yes….. Yes….. Yes…. to Jesus’ grace, love, intentional non-judgement, inclusion and acceptance. Redemptive Love, not a sort of redemptive violence.  Those of us on the affirming side of this debate have to keep believing that Redemptive Love will win and come to fruition in the end.

     

     

  • The Foundations for Ecclesial Instability: the Rock on the Sands

    by Martyn Percy, a Fellow of King’s College London and Harris Manchester College, Oxford 

    What is the connection between an obscure piece of research commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1990s and the current crisis in the Church of England? The research, mostly conducted by academics with particular involvement from the George Mason University Centre for Global Policy, grew out of earlier research conducted by Ted Gurr at the University of Maryland via the ‘State Failure Task Force’ under the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), later led by Monty Marshall. Gurr and Marshall identified the common ‘problem set’ of issues that were the grounds – shaky or quicksand – that gave rise to instability.  Today, this research finds its practical outcome in the PITF – the Political Instability Task Force.

    Instability is hardly a new problem for churches. Persecution, doctrinal disputes, scandals and heresies have all resulted in some shaking of the foundations.  Moreover, the New Testament itself, and the teachings of Jesus, are often consumed with questions of stability. Jesus’ parable of the houses built on rock or sand, or the more agricultural motifs centred on deep-rooted plants, fruitfulness and growth come to mind. In one sense, the entire basis of Christian faith rests on the paradox of forfeiting security and stability for a life of instability and uncertainty…in order to gain safekeeping. After all, what else is a vocation other than living out risk with no guarantees or assurances.

    That said, we do make these choices for God as individuals. But I may only say ‘yes’ to God as myself. I cannot commit another person to my ‘yes’, however much I hope and pray that they may share the same affirmation. But what happens when, instead of us choosing instability and learning to live with it, this interloper arrives uninvited, and is communal and countrywide? My personal negotiation with instability is one thing. Social and political instability, however, is of a different order. When the foundations of societies are shaking, how do we know if this is an episodic quake that will pass, or something more damaging that will reduce even the strongest foundations to rubble and dust?

    The PITF drew on over a hundred global instability ‘problem cases’ from 1955-2011. The researchers identified several categories of state failure:

    1. Revolutionary and Ethnic wars (emerging from civil strife).
    2. Genocides and Politicides (often rooted in perceived inequalities).
    3. Adverse Regime changes (arising from or leading to civil war).

    The PITF were interested in the common denominators and the cultural, social, climatic and political factors that gave rise to instability which tipped into revolt, revolution and/or violence. Why do regimes suddenly topple, and governments that were elected get swept away like political debris? Readers will have their own view as to whether there is sufficient civil strife in society at the moment to trigger some sort of revolution. I doubt it, though the risks are markedly higher than at the end of the 20th-century, and the current grammar of dissent and protest is perhaps comparable to what was witnessed in the 1960s.

    How might a ‘Polity Instability Task Force’ assess the wobbling churches of late modernity?  For sure, money, sex and power – that unholiest of trinities – afflicts all mainstream denominations. Consider the history, data and the internecine ecclesial wars, and try and name any exceptions. There are internal wranglings and unease over lack of money and its unequal distribution, the method of ‘taxing’ congregations, and how the revenues are spent; over same-sex relations, scandals on clergy and sexual abuse, divorce and remarriage, and gender; and balancing democracy, leadership, management and compliance.

    The original State Failure Task Force was alive to the social, political and cultural conditions that precipitated regime changes. In ecclesiology, the equations are no less complex, but they are slower to resolve. One might say that the major regime changes in ecclesiology are the East-West Schism and the Reformation. But in truth, smaller versions of these global ruptures occur in every generation, some resulting in permanent rifts and then further extended fragmentation.

    However, the cultural ground in which the foundations of mainline denominations sit is no longer stable. The emergence of meritocracy, less deference, mass mobilisation, greater individualism and consumerism in expressions and preferences all conspire to render this ground unstable and shifting. Mapped on to a global scale, sexuality, power and money quickly become enmeshed in North-South, First-World/Developing-World rivalries, with ethnicity and the legacy of empire and exploitation fuelling the complexity. Peter Turchin’s fine End Times (Allen Lane, 2023), explains how regimes rise and fall, and what it is about forms of control and the exercise of power that makes some types of governance especially susceptible to implosion or overthrow. Putin’s foray into Ukraine throws some light on how political disintegration gains traction when power is challenged, and elites lose their authority under the weight of their failures and ensuing disenchantment.

    It is Turchin who also coined the term cliodynamics – Clio being the muse of history in Greek mythology, and dynamics simply the study how and why change takes place over periods of time. Using mathematical models, a cliodynamic approach can predict expansion and retraction in economies, state collapse or implosion, social discontent and even civil wars. While not a perfect science, it can explain how and why institutions and societies disintegrate.

    So, what would cliodynamics and an ecclesial Polity Instability Task Force make of the Church of England at this moment? Several observations are apparent, and will create the conditions for instability:

    1. Major shifts away from more open electoral systems to ones that are more closed, authoritarian and managed systems of control produce boredom and detachment, festering resentment, and may result in speculative conspiracy theories (e.g., we know where all the money goes…).
    2. Elitism, whether it is quasi-monarchical or some ontologised managerialism, will result in a larger critical mass resenting the hierarchies and its powers of rule and decision-making. A lack of accountability, transparency, integrity and humility will also produce calls for regime-change.
    3. Loss or rapid erosion of devolved local powers, assertions of control (e.g., adopt the strategic vision) and penalties for daring to dissent will create a groundswell for secession, in which the exercise of despotic power will only produce tensions between central control mechanisms and those meant to comply.
    4. The collapse of the central governance, unable to manage external complexities and challenges, and unable to fund, manage and resource internal systems of order and control, will tend to question the capacity of the ruling elite to hold authority, power and any ability to govern.

    You might like to ponder how this all fits together with the Church of England and its leadership, and the grass roots. Here the Save the Parish movement is both a symptom and cause of widespread ecclesial dis-ease with the current regime. It has quickly won widespread support, largely due to growing fears over plutocratic-despotic episcopal leadership.

    A plutocracy is a society ruled and controlled by a handful of people who hold great wealth and income. The term combines Greek ploutos (wealth) and kratos (power).  Plutocracy is not a political philosophy so much as the name for a malaise, with the term first coined in English in the 1630s – times of Laudian and Stuart periods of governance, a decade before our own Civil War. The unaccountable and divine right to govern was the issue at stake, over and against the calls for proper democratic structures and political accountability.

    The term plutocracy is normally used critically and pejoratively to warn against an adverse and undesirable social context. Plutocracies are regimes distracted by their own fears and vanities, and quickly lose sight of social responsibility and the causes of poverty and inequality.

    Furthermore, whether left-wing or right-wing, plutocracies can ferment class division and conflict, and encourage individualistic wealth accumulation through competition for resources, replacing subsidised costs that were hitherto allocated on a needs-must basis into an economy of competitive bidding between those who are struggling. Plutocracies can go further, and insist that bids for essential subsidies and funding support now conform to the objectives, vision and goals of the regime and its elites.

    Now, nobody is suggesting for a moment that Bishops or Diocesan Secretaries have great personal wealth through their ecclesiastical preferment. The modern ecclesial plutocracy is more subtle. Diocesan HQ’s, Finance Committees, the Church Commissioners and the National Church Institutions have become the new quasi-baronial powers, whilst the ordinary person in the pew and the local parishes have seen their tax demands (i.e., parish share contributions) grow, whilst accountability and transparency over expenditure has declined.

    In short, demands by the centre for more money paired with less democratic accountability will eventually produce movements like Save the Parish. The elites demanding more and more while giving less and less are perceived to be bureaucratic plutocrats, spending money (not their own, but rather that of the people, laity and churches) on speculative projects and visions rather than supporting local clergy and ministry in parishes.

    The recent debacle over the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) has, for many churchgoers, and quite a number of onlookers, become an indicative sign of a leadership that is plutocratic, despotic and certainly elitist. Indeed, as a model of quasi-monarchical episcopacy, it has been high-handed and anti-democratic. Hiring and firing staff at will; asserting the independence of the ISB some days when it suits the regime to say so, yet on other days treating ISB staff as a subordinate body of subjects with few rights. It suggests a capricious use of power and authority.

    However, since the ISB ‘experiment’ cost Archbishops’ Council at least £500,000, Save the Parish would presumably like us all to know that this money could have been better spent. Or at least this expenditure could and should have been debated. Yet that could only have been achieved through greater democratic accountability, proper scrutiny and auditing, deliberation and examination.

    The Archbishops’ Council does not want that level of transparency. Whoever was in control of ‘Operation ISB’ no longer thought that independent oversight of safeguarding was in their interests or suited other objectives, so they shut it down. Charles I was against fiscal transparency and democratic scrutiny too, and the rest, as they say, was (tragic) history.

    Here we run into the opacity of those who control the money and the power, and are skilled in using the antediluvian structures which provide the reasoning for not being transparent and accountable (i.e., “it is too complex to explain…”; “we’ll need to think about that and then get back to you at our next meeting within the cycle…”; and “that probably needs to be looked at by a different committee…”). We’ve all been on the receiving end of such tropes. Some of us are also fluent in the language.

    The ecclesial scenario sketched above entirely corresponds to the findings of the PITF for the CIA in the 1990s. The Church of England, or rather its leadership, is on the brink. It has been whittling away at the democratic instruments such as General Synod for some time, turning what should be a proper auditorium for debate and deliberation into a theatrical spectacle more akin to party political bread and circus.

    Yet quite suddenly, serious and searching questions over the meaning and interpretation of the word ‘independent’ in safeguarding governance have now called into question the entire direction, structure and running of an ecclesial regime.  The stance of the two ISB board members was simple. They stood up for genuine independence, and advocated for victims of abuse – so they lost their jobs.

    Rather like the solitary ‘Tank Man of Tiananmen Square’ (June 5th 1989) they simply stood in the way of the prevailing power and would not be moved. Yes, they still lost – swept away by the force, assertion and power of a regime in control. But this time we have all been able to witness this action against them, and come to realise it was an action against us all. We have observed a brave act of defiance and the morally-principled and rightful exercise of disobedience. The regime expressed its regret, but has not apologised – indeed told us their actions were necessary and beneficial for our progress. But such assurances from the regime no longer carry weight or conviction; nor do they sound authentic.

    Like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, ecclesial communications and assertions no longer correspond to reality. Serious disenchantment has set in. Real questions are being asked. As with any regime, it finds itself on the brink when its citizens have to choose between unwavering loyalty and compliance – or the dangerous acts of dissent that might be involved in expressing a free mind that seeks better alternatives.

    At the moment, the regime remains in power, controlling the money, media and message. But something stronger than sullen resentment has been born out of this ongoing safeguarding omnishambles. Some now sense a change of mood and some real determination that there must be serious reform and wholesale revolution. True, it will take a lot to raise General Synod from its habitual torpor. And the agenda for the gathering and the set-piece speeches still evidence a politburo in full control of the party conference and the messaging to wider membership. Yet the ennui it breeds is undeniable.

    The Polity Instability Task Force are examining a growing corpus of evidence. There are some significant signs indicating winds of change. The Spirit blows where it wills.