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Tag: eucharist

  • A Response to “The Doctrine of Marriage and the Prayers of Love and Faith: Texts and Contexts: a Report of the Faith and Order Commission” (GS Misc 1430)

    Fr Thomas Sharp is a priest theologian based in the South East of England and is also Provincial Secretary of the Society of Catholic Priests

    This was the second report which briefed the House of Bishops before they made their decisions in October about Living in Love and Faith (LLF). This is another extraordinary document, with which I imagine many of the members of the Faith and Order Commission will not have been entirely content. At least, I hope they would not be.

    Its purpose is to determine ‘whether and how the Church’s public use of these prayers coheres with, realises new boundaries for, or departs from its established teaching on marriage’ (§1). It does not do this, as we shall see. But it does present a case, or perhaps more accurately talk around the assumption, that the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) (let alone equal marriage) would constitute a departure from the traditional doctrine of marriage. It does this around four general themes:

    1. public perception and theological significance of the PLF;
    2. ecclesial condoning of “life choices”;
    3. disagreement and liturgical diversity;
    4. the Church’s traditional teaching on marriage.

    1) Public Perception and Theological Significance

    The primary concern is not theological. It is about what we are seen to do. In §5 a distinction is established, between private prayers and public prayers, which is ‘not merely practical but theologically significant’. What is meant by this is that private prayers are less likely to be misinterpreted as condoning or blessing something which we actually think is bad and do not think should be blessed or condoned. Whereas, ‘In the setting of public worship, it is impossible to escape the reality that the use of the PLF is liable to be received, however unintentionally, as ecclesial endorsement of the relationship being blessed’ (§14, cf.§24). The primary problem is public perception, that people should misunderstand us and think we are blessing and approve of queer people, when in fact we are not and do not. This is not in fact a theological consideration, but a practical one of public perception.

    The argument gets stranger. A distinction is drawn between regular services and occasional ones. ‘Regular services,’ we are told, ‘carry a high presumption of normativity and significance.’ Yet ‘Bespoke services,… by their out-of-the-ordinary nature will also suggest a high level of normativity’ (§15). So it is hard to see what distinction is being drawn here.

    The essential point of the first section of the Report is that, whatever liturgical provision is offered for same-sex couples, it will be interpreted as a marriage by people at those services and by the Anglican Communion and wider society (§§26,28). Although ‘Many would maintain that audience perception does not in itself determine doctrine’ (§32), ‘The weight of audience reception, then, may tip the balance from pastoral care into apparent [doctrinal] contradiction’ (§30). And we are reminded twice that ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’ (§§29,34). In other words, liturgy should mean what we say it does, but it doesn’t, and in fact it does mean what people attending the liturgy or talking about it on ‘social media responses or press headlines’ think it does (§32). This argument is repeated in §§66-68 in the context of a discussion of the importance of published liturgy.

    There is much concern also in §27 about the clergy and lay leaders who will be affected by the ‘symbolic resonance and precedent of a prominent public LLF service’. It is not made clear what that means. It is a strangely evasive paragraph. Presumably a gay bishop and their partner using the prayers. But, of course, that would never happen, would it.

    2) Ecclesial Condoning of “Life Choices”

    After concerns about whether we might be seen to be blessing same-sex relationships, next is the question of whether the Church is condoning same-sex couples and their ‘life choice/s’. This overtly homophobic phrase of long standing is used at both §11 and §14.  We are told that there is agreement ‘that God’s blessing may be prayed for over persons and intentions without necessarily affirming all aspects of a relationship or life choice’ (§11). It is apparently entirely possible to bless a same-sex couple without blessing in any way any part of their life together. If this seems strange, we are reassured that, ‘The Church has long provided public prayers in circumstances of moral or pastoral ambiguity’ (§19). Here, you might be forgiven for thinking that a door was maybe being opened to permitting a liturgy which also allowed for moral ambiguity (however much it feels unreal to suggest that this aspect of my life and identity might be any more morally ambiguous than a straight person’s). But that door is rapidly slammed shut.

    The Report gives short paragraphs to deal with the supposed arguments of unidentified and unreferenced ‘supporters of the PLF’ in a way which suggests that they/we may not have been in the room at the time. These supporters ‘point to analogous liturgical acts which mark without enacting and bless without endorsing every moral dimension of the context’, like civic services and memorials (§33). If we bless at civic services and memorials without being seen to condone every aspect of what we are blessing, can we do the same here? Computer says no. ‘In these contexts, there are some fairly set cultural expectations within which the Church can navigate at such commemorative events’ (§33). Apparently, we are meant to understand that that could not possibly also be true for using the PLF, although that is not worked out for us. Indeed, so prone to confusion with marriage must the PLF be that clear differentiation from marriage would require ‘clarity of liturgical differentiation’ and ‘the willingness of Church leaders to undertake sustained theological communication’ (§35). Now, I enjoy a public lecture as much as the next theologian, but even I think that would be overkill before a church service.

    Apparently, just telling people that it isn’t a legal wedding, as clergy I know have done who have used PLF so far, would still leave everyone confused. I am unconvinced. LGBTQIA+ people know that the Church is ambivalent towards us, and if we don’t know anything we assume that the Church is actively hostile. But these arguments are rehearsed again in §§81-83 and §86, just to make sure you heard them if you happened to be reading quickly before a meeting. The “theological question” is then summed up in terms which appear entirely out of the blue, unconnected as they are to the argument in the rest of the Report:

    Theologically, the question posed by the public use of the PLF is not primarily about whether God’s grace is available to all. It is about how the Church responds lovingly to the hope of those who come before God and desire to show forth their praise in thanksgiving for what God has given them. (§88)

    Is it? It hasn’t felt like that’s the theological question in this theological briefing. There’s nothing about the hope of those who come before God to give thanks to God. Perhaps they left that bit out. And if we are morally ambiguous and not-to-be-condoned then it is hard in any case to see what there is to give thanks for to God in Church. Our evil ways? What a strange thing to say.

    3) Disagreement and Liturgical Diversity

    The Report deals in some depth with how liturgical diversity has been handled in the Church of England in the past. The liturgical text is not a ‘narrow prescription’ but rather ‘a framework capable of bearing diverse theological interpretations’ (§42). This is presented as maybe a good thing, though in that section on how the public received liturgy it seemed to be a bad thing. There is a delightfully idealistic statement that Canons A5 and B5 ‘protect the liturgy from becoming an instrument of theological partisanship and ensure its function as a shared act of worship grounded in common faith’ (§43). Perhaps the authors are wilfully unaware of the many parishes and network churches in the Church of England which never or almost never use authorised liturgy, even if technically they perhaps do something which could be defended as a Service of the Word. The Catholicisation of the liturgy in Common Worship has not been accepted throughout the Church of England, and A5 and B5 have not ensured liturgical unity. Why would we expect them to now? Comments commending the ‘structured plurality’ of ‘theological sensibilities and liturgical styles’ in the deployment of different Eucharistic prayers (§45) and reminding us that prayers are not ‘neutral containers into which new meanings may simply be poured’ (§47) do not accord with the reality of the breadth of theological positions on the eucharist which are now accommodated by Common Worship’s diversity of prayers (if Common Worship or the Book of Common Prayer are used at all in a parish or network church).

    There is then a rather confusing but impressive argument about the Ritual Controversy and the tension between ‘prescription, rubric, and enactment’ (§§50-57). It seems to be strongly implied that, unlike other times when there have been debates and movements for change, we are somehow walking into this without proper discernment. But if the gruelling process of LLF which has lasted for the entirety of my training and ordained ministry was not discernment, I don’t know what discernment would look like.

    Suddenly the Report raises the tone, almost comically, warning us:

    Episcopal guidance becomes critical: without clear episcopal teaching and supervision, the national coherence of liturgical practice – and the doctrinal witness it sustains – may be compromised. (§60)

    It is precisely in the act of translating these prayers into public worship that the theological and doctrinal stakes become most acute. (§85)

    I think that we are intended to hear the warning that the national coherence of liturgical practice may be compromised with the same concern as a warning that the hull of our submarine might be compromised. However, this is not how it lands. It is hard to get upset about the stable door needing shutting when the horse is galloping gaily away over the horizon.

    And the Report is quite direct that this is in fact the reality:

    The Church’s embrace of liturgical diversity has hitherto been sustained by theological agreement on the central matters of faith. Where disagreement has existed – on baptism, the Eucharist, or the nature of ordination – it has generally been held within a framework of authorised texts and common structures. (§63)

    This is an extraordinary admission, given the picture presented that the PLF risked tearing up a unified doctrinal-liturgical fabric. In fact, on minor and unimportant issues, not at all central in any way, like baptism, the Eucharist or Holy Orders, we already disagree. And that is apparently fine. However, we are reminded, lest again a door towards living with disagreement be opened to us, that:

    If liturgical practice is allowed to diverge from doctrinal principle, then the Church’s claim to be a confessing body – one that worships according to what it believes may be placed in jeopardy. (§64)

    Jeopardy. Well, as much as I would like everyone to be of one mind, the Report has already said that disagreement and divergence has happened over central issues, and the Church is still one body with one head, however many times we have disagreed, done different things, or even gone our separate ways. This just reads strangely, along with the warning that suddenly liturgical difference is something about which we should now be terrified into inaction, now that LGBTQIA+ people are involved. This aspect of the report reads like an attempt to create panic where no panic is necessary. Or, if it was necessary, it was probably necessary over the past 40 years, when our present liturgical divergence was taking root.

    (4) The Church’s Traditional Teaching on Marriage

    Do you remember that the purpose of this Report was meant to be to work out whether the PLF departed from the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage? You could be forgiven for having forgotten, having worked through all of this. The so-called “traditional doctrine of marriage” is first stated at §38, though this is only to establish how much this conflicts with the PLF which ‘suggests at least a degree of ecclesial affirmation of the relationship’ (§37). That the authors believe that the PLF constitute a departure from the “traditional doctrine of marriage” is not explored, only the implications of this finding.

    The unchallenged assumption that the unchanging doctrine of marriage in the Church of England is and has always been that it be between one man and one woman for life runs throughout the Report. At §22 and in footnote 9, a reference is made to GS Misc 1407, which was the Episcopal Reference Group’s paper on marriage and its accompanying compendium of sources. The compendium is interesting in that it gives a useful overview of the ways in which the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage and human sexuality has changed a lot, even as the Church has professed not to change our teaching or doctrine, only our pastoral practice. This change is now normal.

    We do not actually believe (as a Church) that marriage is between one man and one woman, or if we do we certainly have not believed that unchangingly or traditionally. The Lambeth Conferences of 1888 and 1988 came to exactly opposing conclusions about polygamy. We also do not actually believe (as a Church) that marriage is for life, given that remarriage of divorcees is now routine in the Church of England, and not reserved to the ‘exceptional circumstances’ envisaged by Marriage in the Church After Divorce (2003). It now seems only in really exceptional circumstances that marriage of heterosexual couples after divorce is ever denied.

    I certainly have never heard of public penance being done by heterosexual divorcees to make clear that the Church does not condone their remarriage before their service of thanksgiving. But the Report uses divorce as an example of another ‘morally ambiguous’ situation which the church does not bless (§19). It is made clear in the liturgy, apparently, that what is offered to divorcees is not a blessing. But I have never known that service to be referred to in any terms other than as a ‘wedding blessing’.

    Conclusion

    This Report is frustrating, and disturbing. It presents the PLF as something of a worst-case scenario, with the potential to detonate the hitherto integral liturgical unity of the Church of England. However, it is not balanced. It is not theologically consistent. And its arguments are at times obfuscatory and self-referential. It does not evaluate whether the PLF are consistent with the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage(s). But it does make it appear as fait accompli that the PLF are inconsistent in a way that suggests that the House of Bishops has no freedom to exercise their episcopal prerogative to authorise them. As such, this was a confusing and at times needlessly offensive Report to read.

  • On Being Conservative

    by Charlie Bell, Fellow in Public Theology and Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, and Associate Vicar of St John the Divine, Kennington, in the Diocese of Southwark

    Labels are a dangerous thing. We spend a lot of time worrying about them – they’re a marker of identity, both our own and others’, and we fling them around rather haphazardly, often to our peril. Identity itself is always a contested thing – we like to own our own, yet we are also never short of labelling others to suit our own purposes. It’s a great way for us to confirm our prejudices – we are X, and they are Y – X is good, Y is bad, and by constantly reinforcing this, through the power of language, we can ensure that our virtue, and their lack of it, is writ large. Some words take on that meaning within our enclosed groups – think Republican or Democrat in the US – and some are rather more obviously imbued with a meaning specifically derived from how a group has decided to construct its identity. Chief amongst these, in the church and the world, must be the words liberal and conservative – and depending on one’s particular point of view, each of these might be seen as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

    They’re not the worst labels out there, of course. In the church, we hear silly monikers like ‘revisionist’ or ‘orthodox’ thrown around as though they are not politically loaded weapons, and I cannot be the only one who is so bored of hearing them that each time I do I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. The use of ‘orthodox’ (and its never-spoken-but-obviously-meant opposite number, heterodox) to describe one’s position on sexuality is so ludicrous that it’s not worth spending any time worrying over, however ‘winsome’ its proponents might think it is, and frankly it’s rather embarrassing that, in this anniversary year of Nicaea, it continues to be used even by some bishops. Get a grip – not least of history and doctrine – folks. Rather than worrying about those kind of insult-based identity markers, though, it is worth thinking a little more carefully about the ones we probably use the most – liberal, and conservative. Are they fit for purpose?

    The word ‘liberal’ has an interesting history, not least depending on whether there is a capital L involved or not. That’s a history found within and without the church, and its meaning is far more complex than ‘in favour of LGBTQIA affirmation’ might suggest. In many ways, though, liberal is used in the church more as a term of opposition than as a term of distinctive identity in its own right – to be ‘liberal’ is to not be conservative. Being ‘liberal’ on women’s ministry, being a ‘liberal Catholic’, being a ‘liberal’ on matters of same-sex and gender relationships, is ultimately making it clear what you are not, which is – I would suggest – that one is not steeped in unquestioned cis-heteronormative patriarchal understandings of the Gospel which are entirely unfit for purpose. So, in a sense, whilst I’m quite happy to be called liberal in some ways, I’m not sure that I entirely fit the bill if that term is used in its fullest sense, and nor do I think its use as a catch-all for all things is helpful (for example, it seems to surprise some people that I might be able to hold both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ views on different things, and that there is not a single shopping list of liberal causes to which we all sign up).

    But seeing ‘liberal’ as a term of opposition brings us to the much more interesting word: ‘conservative’. Its use is manifold, and it’s often worn as a badge of pride. On occasion I would like nothing less than to be known as ‘conservative’. Yet I think it is well overdue a revisit, because by allowing particular groups to own it, we allow them to set the narrative of our ecclesial conversations and, in doing so, to determine what it is that ought to be conserved. Conserving things – and choosing which things take the primacy in being conserved – is by no means as simple as is often made out. That is absolutely the case within the church. Our failure to name that – and to ask precisely what and why something deserves to be conserved – is very much at the root of many of our current problems. I think it’s about time we did something about that.

    At the moment, those things which reward you with the name ‘conservative’ appear, rather conveniently, to fit into the unthinking, unflinching, culture-infused patriarchal bucket that I described earlier. No women in ordained ministry; no gays in dog collars; no this, and no that. Yet many in this ‘conservative’ camp seem entirely happy to jettison much else that we might think needs to be conserved. The Eucharist becomes ‘inherited’ worship, and can be jettisoned at will. The established nature of the Church of England no longer matters, and can be ignored. The concept of the creeds being the foundation of orthodoxy is terribly old hat. The idea of our church being primarily the chaplain to the nation, its role not as purity cult but as local, embedded community of faith, can all be thrown away in the name of some fatuous idea of doctrinal unity relating to the gays. Catholic order – not least catholic, diocesan episcopacy: binned. Baptism of infants: not too sure about that. ‘Those forms of worship authorised or allowed by canon’: not on your nelly. Any basic semblance of being in historical continuity with the messy reality of the church in this land: no need.

    I’ve spent a fair bit of time recently talking to people outside the Synodical bubble about the future of the Church of England – people who think us being there is important, even if they might not see themselves as terribly involved in the political struggles of the church. One thing that has really surprised but also encouraged me is that the church that they – almost universally – want to see is the church that has been gifted to us down the ages. They don’t actually want pop-concert-church, or whatever faddy nonsense is the most recent recipient of the magical money pot that will surely solve all our problems. They really, really don’t want a church that is willing to bin everything it has been gifted. And they really do want a church that looks like the Church of England which they imagine might still have a role to play as an established church – one whose parishes are embedded in their communities, one where there is good, theologically informed, preaching, one where the forms of service are recognisably ‘church’, one where the poorest and the most vulnerable are put front and centre, one where the church can be a blessing to everyone in the community rather than to a select few, one which appears to have its head screwed on and isn’t endlessly reactionary, one that is – frankly – just bog standard Church of England.

    It seems to me that that this is all actually rather conservative. It’s conservative, because it conserves something of the essence of the Church of England that the neo-puritans currently assaulting our church structures and its very nature are trying to do away with in the name of ‘conservatism’. It isn’t going to be perfect, and there is going to need to be room for the messiness of church life that has characterised the Church of England since earliest times. But it is a thinking conservatism – a conservatism that asks first ‘what, why, how’, and then gets to work.

    So I’m going to own that ‘conservative’ title a little more from now on, because to the outside world, those of us denounced as ‘liberals’ by malcontents within General Synod are really the conservatives. We want the Church of England to continue as the established chaplain to the nation that it has been for centuries. We want the Church of England to simply be the Church of England. That will mean some changes – changes that will allow it to fulfil that role better into the future. It will mean interrogating our prejudices and asking how the Holy Spirit might be calling us to proclaim the faith afresh in this generation. Yet it is through doing that, and not holding onto the comfort blanket of conserved externalities, that we might conserve the essence of the great gift that is our church. The fight to do so is more than worth it.

  • Polluted Ground or Holy Ground? Going Forward to the November Synod

    by the Very Revd Dr Mandy Ford, Dean of Bristol

    I trained alongside men who did not believe that I could be a priest. We were friends, we learned together, we prayed together, we drank gin together. But as our period of training came towards its end and we were about to move to our new dioceses, I started asking the question of them, “When I celebrate the Eucharist, do you think Jesus will turn up?”

    The best of them were honest. Quite simply, the answer was “no”. The Church of England did not have the right, apart from the universal church, to ordain me.

    I’m still here. The Vicar of Dibley jokes have faded. No-one is surprised to see a woman at the altar or conducting a funeral any more. Yet, female colleagues still have to endure being abused or criticised because of their hair colour, tattoos, fashion sense, parenting choices or simply for existing.

    Perhaps I’ve grown more compassionate over time, but I don’t think I’ve ever confronted someone with the question, “Do you think I’m going to hell?”. But as a gay woman in a civil partnership, I probably know the answer.

    My response is the same. I’m still here.

    When we stand on polluted ground, as the theologian James Alison describes it, we do not have to allow ourselves to be poisoned.

    Alison, drawing heavily on Girard’s anthropology of the victim, points us to Jesus. When Jesus was accused by the authorities, he remained silent. When he returned to face those who had abandoned or persecuted him, he did not retaliate. Jesus would not set the cycle of violence spinning round again. He stood on polluted ground but he did not spread the poison around.

    This is a tough space to stand.  Polluted ground can easily become toxic. Misogyny and homophobia become internalised as self-loathing, low self-esteem or victimisation without us noticing.

    What would it feel like to stand on holy ground instead?

    My experience of holy ground is closely tied to my experience of vocation, in coming to mature faith as an adult, in the call to ordination, in my relationship.

    In those things I experience being beloved as a child of God and if I look around, it becomes easier to see others as my sisters and brothers in Christ.

    I have been thinking about the Chamber of General Synod as a toxic space, as polluted ground. Instead, I ought to take off my shoes before I enter.

  • Bodies at Prayer

    by Dr Karen O’Donnell, Director of Studies at Westcott House Cambridge where she teaches Worship and Liturgy. She also teaches Gender and Christian Theology for the Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge. She has published widely in trauma and feminist theologies.

    As I’m writing this, I’m recovering from surgery on my spine to relieve a herniated disc that has been causing me serious problems for the last year or so. I’m conscious of my body in ways that are not usual to me; of the slight ache at the bottom of my back and that I’ll need to get up and stretch soon. I’m also conscious of the way in which this relatively minor injury has impacted my ability to pray. Just before Easter, as term was coming to an end, I entered Westcott’s chapel toward the end of a day for Evening Prayer. It’s a ritual I enjoy as it marks the end of my working day and helps me transition into the evening with my family. On this particular evening, my back was really painful. I hobbled down to the chapel and sat down in my usual seat. This evening, however, I found that I just couldn’t sit on the hard pew. I couldn’t stand for any length of time and I couldn’t sit down either. My body was in too much pain to pray.

    It is at times like this that we notice the place of our bodies at prayer: when they struggle to conform to our expectations, or when they are in pain. The rest of the time, we’re quite good at ignoring our bodies when we pray. Unlike our Muslim sisters and brothers, we do not have a set pattern of bodily movements to engage in when we pray. It is easy for prayer to become a cerebral thing –something that happens in our heads. Our bodies are (or can seem to be, at least!) largely superfluous.

    This isn’t new and is, I argue, a long-lasting result of the influence of Greek philosophy in the early church. The brilliant Hillary McBride charts the development of this thought in Christianity like this:

    We did not find our way to a disembodied existence on our own: we had millennia of help. Western philosophy and Gnostic religious thought influenced a popular line of thinking that goes something like this: The soul and the mind are distinct from the body (that’s Plato). The mind is where the truth is, but the body has needs, desires, and limitations (that’s Descartes, and some translations of the apostle Paul). Around the same time as Descartes lived, the Christian Reformation happened, which emphasized our mind’s ability to grasp the who and what of God: feminist and liberation theologians have written that this put the body in the straitjacket. (1)

    The result of this understanding of the body is that the body has been feared and distrusted and it is something that many spiritual seekers across the centuries have felt they have to transcend and subdue in order to make spiritual progress. When we bring our bodies to worship it is often as a problem that needs to be solved – a body that needs to be healed, a body that has accessibility requirements, a body that is in some way different to the other bodies around it. What might it mean to come into prayer recognising that we are our bodies, our bodies are not neutral, and that our bodies are not problems that need to be solved before we can really pray?

    In his new book, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of our Physical Bodies in Worship, W. David O. Taylor takes these questions seriously as he explores the ways in which our physical bodies engage in worship (2).  Christian liturgy – corporate, public acts of worship – is disposed to engaging the body. Not only does liturgy require our bodies in order to engage with worship (indeed, our bodies are the entrances into worship and sacrament), but Christian liturgy has great opportunity for embodied engagement.

    I used to be part of a very charismatic evangelical church and, as a youth leader, would regularly attend youth camps/festivals that included highly produced times of worship – a large rock band, lights, images, projections – all of which were, at times, accused of being manipulative. Perhaps these components were, but more traditional aspects of Christian worship do similar things. Yes, material things like incense, flowers, candles, art, architecture, the sharing of the Peace, participation in the Eucharist all have richly symbolic theological meanings but they also serve to make our worship distinctly sensory. Our senses are deeply connected to our memories, meaning that the way in which we encounter worship in our bodies can be profound. In our olfactory senses, for example, “odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory” (3).  The smell of incense, for me, is the smell of the divine.

    In a culture that has a curious relationship to bodies, sometimes acting as if completely disembodied, sometimes treating the body as something to be subdued and tamed, sometimes celebrating bodies, sometimes ignoring them completely, it is important that our spiritual encounters – both individual and corporate – attend positively to our bodies. It is important that we remember that it is only through our bodies that we encounter and come into relationship with God. It is through our bodies that we enter into prayer and liturgy. It’s not manipulative to engage the senses in worship but rather a mode of curating embodied encounter with God. It is important in our worshipping lives that we don’t replicate the dualistic ideologies of Greek philosophy but rather recognise the sense of whole being that is being human. Our bodies are not problems to solve in order that our minds or souls might be able to pray. Rather our bodies are how we pray; the very places in which we meet God.

    Notes
    (1) Hillary L. McBride, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living (Brazos Press, 2021), 215.
    (2) W. David O. Taylor, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship (Baker Books, 2023).
    (3) Colleen Walsh, “How Scent, Emotion, and Memory Are Intertwined — and Exploited,” Harvard Gazette (blog), February 27, 2020, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/how-scent-emotion-and-memory-are-intertwined-and-exploited/.
  • Real Presence in Sex and Sacrament

    Real Presence in Sex and Sacrament

    by Jessica Martin, Canon Residentiary at Ely Cathedral. Her book Holiness and Desire (Canterbury Press, 2020) explored the relationship between human and divine desire in an age of commodification. The concerns of this article were first explored in the 2021 Bampton Lectures (https://www.theology.oxford.ac.uk,/article/bampton-lectures-11 ) and are explored in The Eucharist in Four Dimensions (Canterbury Press, summer 2023).

    The pandemic and its lockdowns has had one strange effect for sacramental Christians.  It has destabilised the awkward theological truce on the eucharist. In Anglicanism, the range of sacramental understanding has long embraced the widest possible range of positions, from memorialism (“Do this in remembrance of me”) to Real Presence. Our liturgies (from 1549 onwards) gesture towards both and land on neither. The rise both of ecumenism and the parish communion movement have made too much theological clarity undesirable. So we look away, do what we do, and hope the Holy Spirit will supply all deficiencies.

    Until, that is, lockdowns forced us to think about it. The eucharist moved online. In the absence of either bread or bodies, in what lay the transforming work of the sacrament? The question became urgent, for a time, much discussed – even within Roman Catholic circles where sacramental orthodoxy is less commodious. The urgency has diminished as people have returned to physical worship, with real bread and even (for some) real wine, but not because the question is answered. Rather, it has made a wider question more visible.

    Because, even with restored physical freedoms, we inhabit an image-dominated digital world anyway. Those images hover between and across the boundary between the fully fictive and the representatively ‘real’, blurring the distinction between thought and the material world – just as the more evasive of our sacramental liturgies do.

    Even in secular encounter we do not seem to know what constitutes a present, unambiguous action, as distinct from reflecting or representing an action (itself perhaps ‘unreal’) that took place elsewhere. So business meetings online may be ‘real’ meetings taking real-world decisions; but other forms of online encounter claim a freedom from real-world consequences by defining the online world as closer to thought than to action. In such a definition, online speech should have no real-world outworkings, and online images of events no weighty, real-world counterparts. In fact, truth and fakery merge in the online world of represented things – and the shadowlands between the two contain monsters more powerful than they claim.

    Meanwhile, sacramental action (in person or online) has at its centre a presence-in-absence, Jesus. That presence-in-absence, the reality of Jesus at the heart of the eucharist, both underpins and fiercely divides our collective understanding of what counts as ‘real’. How significant is ‘the material’ to this?

    Is the Real what happens in the transformed believing heart, the bread no more than a materialised idea? Or does the Real lie, not in the bread as bread, but in the performative power of Jesus’s words at the Last Supper: ‘this is my Body: do this in remembrance of me’? In this reading, repeating the divine command within the liturgy gives the words their power to transform what the bread is, from one substance to another. And, in those cases, place, and even time, might not be important. As long as the words were said, and the person listening were participating in the rite at which they were said, any bread might do. (Theological opinions on this differ; but in practice, many eat bread at home at the point of reception onscreen, even when watching a recording of a service celebrated at some other time and in, of course, another place)

    Finally, the bread itself may, within that divinely performative liturgical event made by the priest at a particular place and time, be so fused with the absent body of Jesus as to allow no gap at all between the materiality of one and the Real Presence of the other. In such a case an online eucharist, for the one watching, is not a eucharist at which she can receive.

    The historic divisions on eucharistic theology underpinning these different positions have had a profound influence on our modern assumptions about the reality status of represented things. That’s too long a story for this article. But we can see how it has come to matter by comparing two activities that are not as different as they seem: the holy Sacrament, and sex.

    Sex and sacrament both assume a real encounter with an Other. Yet, for both, though the realness of the encounter is in some sense guaranteed by the sensory apprehension of a material thing (bread, a body), online that material thing must also be, as material, absent. It is represented.  How far that representation is presence depends on the reality-status accorded to it.

    In the online world, representation is the only presence. Online, the sacrament hopes against hope to convince its participants of the reality status of its representative actions. Sex, on the other hand, is the activity of all activities most represented digitally. It is the focus of the most intense interest and engagement – and of the most contempt and exploitation. Taking the porn industry, for example – the internet’s biggest sexual expression – it is highly reliant on maintaining a boundary between the fictive and the real, because its imaginings are so frequently violent. Just one true example: when 14-year old Rose found video of her real rape by older men online (under the tag ‘teen getting destroyed’) her challenge to the platform, Pornhub, was ignored until she had the bright idea of writing to them, not as herself, but as a lawyer – at which point the platform took that video down. But it blended unnoticeably with the mass of other content similarly tagged: ‘extreme teen abuse’; ‘teen abused while sleeping’. When Pornhub was challenged about providing such content at all, it took refuge in the idea of representation as a form of thought: ‘We allow all forms of sexual expression that follow our Terms of Use, and while some people may find these fantasies inappropriate, they do appeal to many people around the world and are protected by various freedom of speech laws’.

    There are many, many Roses – and the boundary’s permeability is also porn’s great promise for its users. Imagining something might be true is the point – transforming, or corrupting – of fantasy. For, at some level, all digital encounter piggybacks on the idea of having reality status, however deniable.

    And, in all digital encounter, the ‘real presence’ experience is actually very elusive. In online sacrament as in online sex, the watcher may conclude, at the end, that the Other they sought was no more than a chimera, an ephemeral set of internal brain-to-body responses, with no ‘real’ meeting here to walk the heart into knowledge – heavenly or horrifying, transcendent or disappointed, all fading into the shadows from which it came.

    Yet both sex and sacrament, across the centuries, have made very similar kinds of claims to be an irreducible encounter – an encounter of transforming power, to which no calculable value can be assigned. ‘If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned’ writes the Bible’s erotic poet (Song of Songs, 8.7). The parallels between meeting God and meeting a lover run throughout humanity’s long history of desire, which is why the reading history of Song of Songs has as much in it about God as about sex. Now that sex is, in almost all its forms, so fully transactional – whether in swiping right, or in matching identity-statuses, or in becoming product as one consumes product technologically – so that only friendship is left as the great desideratum – it is curious to remember a history where human desire, in some circumstances, had no price-tag to it.

    This old-fashioned characterisation of desire as literally a priceless quality asks of us another question about its expression online. Because the online medium is not simply a transparent, neutral means for access to experience that would otherwise be remote or inaccessible.  Sex and sacrament, in fact, share the same difficulties with the platform: that the ’free’ digital experience automatically monetizes ‘presence’ for gain.

    So it’s not good enough to treat the online medium as a fully transparent open window onto experience, as unambiguous in the nature of its seeing as the corporeal gaze of the human eye. Online seeing is an inexplicit transaction to which the seer assents simply by entering the portal. The ‘free’ model for internet encounter, based on the harvesting of customer data, was not an inevitable market model for online presence, but it has become so. It is the dominant mode for all non-physical encounter. And the point about it is that it requires the one who sees to be both consumer and consumed, without ever quite telling its users that the stuff of their lives are its ongoing and continual price. That is why a corporation can peddle the cruel and violent destruction of the young and the corruption of all whose desires are stirred by it, and call it business-as-usual. Just people thinking stuff they would think anyway, monetized. So they say.

    And this medium – the speeded up, logical end of a society based upon consumption – is the one into which we have decided to put a most sacred ritual at the centre of which is a body broken and consumed.

    When communion re-enacts, in symbol and in narrative, the consumption of a body, it does this out of a conviction that eating people is wrong. Deathly wrong. ‘Their throat is an open sepulchre’ writes the psalmist of the wicked, ‘eating up my people as it were bread’ (Psalms 14 and 53). Jesus (who thought through the language of the psalms), said to his companions, ‘take; eat; this is my body’.  He knew what he was doing when he asked people to eat him as if he were bread.

    His offer: take me as a sacrifice, in exchange for every act of devouring the human race ever has or ever could make. Take, break and consume me, just as you take, break and consume each other in the commonplace voracity of the world, but learn that my ordinary act of sacrifice is of infinite value because I am also the infinite God. Devour me, in order to be freed of the appalling consequences of your devourings of each other.  Eat me, to enter, however briefly, into a world where your needy emptiness no longer drives you to prey upon those around you, freed from the cruelty of your being by the constant gift of my self.

    I am not sure that we meant to place the holy eucharist inside the temple to the marketplace gods; but we did. We put it there for consumption (along with a lot of the Church’s other highly marketised ‘missional’ activity).  Perhaps by doing it we have become subversives on the marketplace gods’ territory. Or perhaps we are the subverted. The internet is a strange platform upon which to choose to place the ritual that reverses all other greeds.

    It might be the boldest thing we could do – placing communion in the heart of all commodification. Or it could be the silliest choice, the most foolhardy. Are we blaspheming? Or are we, urgently hungry, sick of gobbling shadows, filling ourselves with the bread of the Presence?

    I don’t know the answer. We took the eucharist online at a tricky time, for terribly practical, sensible reasons – and we are still doing it, because otherwise, in our world dominated by online representation, we feel our physical expressions to be ephemeral, powerless, invisible. If we are not on the internet, we think we are not really present at all.

    And – however our merciful God might redeem our terrible choices –  there’s something very, very wrong about that.

     

     

  • Gatecrashing God’s Party: Parish Ministry Today

    by Jo Stobart, a parish priest in South Somerset. Along with fellow parish priest Claire Lording, she is standing as a ‘pair’ for election to the Crown Nominations Commission

     

    I was recently asked, ‘What has changed about your calling since you embarked on exploring a vocation to ordained ministry?’ It’s a question I found myself reflecting on again as I sat in Taunton Minster last weekend, watching our benefice’s curate being ordained priest. It’s almost five years since I made those vows myself. Although in ministerial terms that’s a blink of an eye, now seems a significant moment to pause and ponder the answer I gave to my original questioner.

    My first response was that I could never have predicted just how much I would love this role. If Buechner’s oft-quoted ‘The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet’ is true, then I am blessed to find myself at that sweet spot of intersection. I serve as Vicar in places that, alongside Fr Alex Frost’s parish, do a pretty good job of representing the breadth of the Church of England. Ilminster is a small market town in South Somerset and Whitelackington an outlying village.

    The Minster sits right at the heart of the town and generations of families are connected to the building by baptisms, weddings and funerals. The church still has a recognised place in the life of the town. Most of the children attend the Church of England First School and civic events regularly find expression through a church service. I’m often greeted in the main street with ‘Morning Vicar’. Parish ministry here looks remarkably ‘traditional’.

    But traditions change too. On the list of vicars in our Lady Chapel, dating back to the Norman Conquest, I’m the first woman incumbent. I’m still asked tentative questions about how I should be addressed (‘Jo? But Vicar’s fine too.’). People here would instinctively tick a ‘Church of England’ box on a form, but this connection now usually relies on the regular attendance of a parent or, more often, a grandparent. The story of Christianity is one that’s remembered as an echo through the generations.

    What this means is that doing the work of a parish priest doesn’t need to be ground-breaking to be innovative or ‘fresh’. Each day brings the opportunity to share our faith, potentially for the first time with that person, and Mary Lennox-like to open together the overgrown door of The Secret Garden. As well as sharing faith in traditional ways, as so many parishes up and down the country are doing so faithfully, we are blessed to have pioneers working on the margins. There are voices calling us to work alongside those of good will in the community on green issues, or the refugee crisis. Our churches, alongside other Christian communities here, run the town’s food bank.

    And at the heart of it all there’s the worship we offer to God. Sunday by Sunday we celebrate the Eucharist – when the mystery of God’s love in Christ is made present to us – and listen to Scripture – discerning words of hope that are for all people.

    I love being a parish priest.

    But my answer to that original question contained a second part, which on the face of it was more ambivalent. I said, ‘I’m less patient.’ While five years ago I had some sense of the way in which the Church of England might need to change, I didn’t feel the same urgency I do now. I’m not from a Christian family but as a child the Church of England nurtured my faith and, for all its flaws, is my home. I have worshipped across the breadth of our denomination and, whilst some of that breadth I find personally challenging, I remain committed to finding a way for our whole church to flourish. As one we should be sharing the joy of the Good News.

    Given half a chance, I’d spend all day reading a novel because stories give me life. So it won’t come as a surprise that my faith is profoundly shaped by the stories we encounter in Scripture – especially the parables that Jesus told. In those parables two themes particularly shape my life as a follower of Christ, and then as a priest.

    First, the faithfulness that God requires of us. The sowing of the seed with no sense of what the return will be. And second, the generosity and hospitality of the God we worship – a God who bids us welcome. It’s a picture of abundance, but in my day-to-day life too often I’m forced to see things through a lens of scarcity. Post-pandemic, the volunteers we don’t have, the funds we can’t find, the stipendiary ministry roles we need to reduce, the scale of the need we are facing in our community and the struggle to keep pace with that. Sometimes it’s hard to remember we’re serving a God who invites us to a party.

    I long for our church to recapture that vision of a party so good you want to bring all your friends along as well, the festival you’d climb the fences to get into. And perhaps that last Glastonbury-based allusion is the root cause of my impatience. We’ve been invited to the best headline act ever and yet we’ve built high fences all round it to keep others out. Whereas God goes out on to the streets to welcome everyone in, we’ve too often been a church that serves only the people who look and think like ‘us’.

    My sense is that those of us who might describe ourselves as either ‘Inclusive’ or ‘liberal’ can sometimes be perceived as lukewarm in our longing to make Christ known. Of course this isn’t true, but I think those of us who hold those perspectives need to tell in a compelling way the story of a God whose arms are open wide to all. A God whose invitations to the party are surprising and unsettling to the older brothers of the world. A God who delights in and loves each and every one of us.

    Five years on from ordination to the priesthood, I’m impatient for a church that tells that amazing story with one voice.