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Tag: justice

  • The Cost of Calling: Then and Now

    by the Rev’d Chantal Noppen – National Coordinator of the Inclusive Church Network, North-East based Anglican Priest and member of General Synod for Durham Diocese

    Seventeen years ago, a woman priest was told she would receive zero maternity pay because she might “take the money and run.”

    The assumption was clear: motherhood made her suspect. Her vocation was conditional. At no point in her three years of training had anyone from her diocese spoken to her about maternity provision, even though she had given birth to a baby in her second year of training and was pregnant when she was ordained deacon.

    As she began her curacy: “The first thing the Diocesan Secretary told me was that I would receive my full stipend throughout my maternity leave. I was delighted by the simplicity and generosity of this which I felt reflected my own commitment and a relationship of trust between clergy and Diocese. However, the next day he called me back and said he was very sorry but having consulted with other Dioceses we did in fact have a standard maternity policy which had been adopted from ‘standard business practice’.

    “What this meant was that I received no maternity pay at all. The ‘standard policy’ he referred to (but had 24 hours earlier been completely unaware of) meant that as I had been an ’employee’ for less than 12 months at the time of the leave, I was not entitled to any maternity pay. A clause designed to stop people exploiting maternity pay in the business world perhaps – but a slap in the face when you’ve just given your whole life to God and the service of God’s church in ordination. I was not an employee. Did anyone really feel I was going to take the money and run?”

    Because she had been an actual employee while training part-time for ministry, she was fortunate enough to qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay. Those training full-time were not in this position.

    Two years ago, I co-authored an independent audit of diocesan maternity provision across the Church of England. The report documented inconsistency, opacity and, in some cases, failure to implement the national guidance issued four years earlier. Over 100 recommendations were made. Some dioceses have since improved their policies. That is genuinely welcome.

    But the deeper question remains: what does our system reveal about the actual value of women? The woman whose experience opens this story writes “I felt like as a woman my job was to do it all – to prove it could all be done. It never crossed my mind at the time to ask for more help, better provision or new ways of doing things.”

    At General Synod I asked about the financial provision behind our theological commitments. From 2019–2023 the Church Commissioners spent on average £497,000 per year on stipend and working costs for the four Provincial Episcopal Visitors, plus £67,500 annually in housing costs. The same body provides no funding specifically in support of the ministry of ordained women.

    The only national funding stream directed toward women’s development in 2023 was £73,000 from the Women’s Continuing Ministerial Education Trust, administered by the Archbishops’ Council, not the Commissioners, and available to lay, ordained or religious women, in both the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church. This Trust is independent, and the CofE’s direct involvement is purely through some MinDiv support administratively. So we’re actually looking at over £550,000 versus nothing.

    Budgets are theology with spreadsheets.

    For thirty years we have structurally underwritten dissent. We have not structurally underwritten parity. We safeguard the inequitable status quo and struggle to raise up The Other. Justice isn’t cushioned.

    The maternity audit showed similar asymmetry at diocesan level. National guidelines were issued in 2020, yet implementation varies widely. In some dioceses maternity provision is clearly communicated and proactively managed. In others it depends on local interpretation, overstretched individuals or informal knowledge. While I have not done a similar audit on menopause policies and support, I have heard anecdotally that the same is true there. With the added aspect of the menopause being a far more uncomfortable topic to discuss openly, whereas women having babies is a bit more ‘acceptable’ to acknowledge.

    Policies may exist on paper, but the support to implement them and accountability if they are not, is missing. When I transferred part of my maternity leave as shared parental leave to my partner, whose NHS employer processed it smoothly, my diocese nearly failed to implement its own policy. Papers were misfiled. Approval came ten days before the transition was due. This stress was entirely avoidable.

    These are not dramatic scandals. They are accumulations of inequitable cost. They create stress at moments when clergy are already stretched.

    There is also what we do not measure. We lack robust national data on how many women are steered towards self-supporting ministry, house-for-duty posts, or part-time roles that in practice require full-time emotional and pastoral labour. We know this pattern exists. We hear it repeatedly. But without data, the system remains conveniently deniable.

    Part-time pay rarely equates to part-time expectation.

    Culture compounds structure. Male clergy often receive visible parish care when they become parents (or just arrive in a parish). Women encounter suspicion about their commitment. During maternity leave, some are strongly discouraged from maintaining friendships within their congregations, creating isolation at precisely the moment community is most needed. Add neurodivergent literalism or rigid interpretations of “boundary,” and what might be intended as good practice becomes damaging exclusion.

    None of this is catastrophic in isolation. Together, it is exhausting. It impacts mental health and well-being, and constantly adds burden and cost to day-to-day existence.

    It would be easy to frame this as resentment. It is not. It is about reciprocity.

    When women were first ordained, significant institutional resource was provided for those who could not accept that development. Generous financial settlements were negotiated. Housing was provided. Pensions protected. Some left for Rome. Some later returned. The Church absorbed that cost and continues to do so.

    Women, meanwhile, continue to have to argue and negotiate for clarity around maternity provision diocese by diocese, to have to justify childcare, part-time ministry, and shared leave. Women have absorbed the cost. We’ve been constantly treated as second rate and have to prove ourselves continually in a way that men are not required to.

    If we believe women are equally called, then structural equity is not an aspirational extra. It is an ecclesiological necessity.

    The 2024 audit prompted some positive changes. Several dioceses revised policies before publication. Others have committed to clearer communication and better provision. Scrutiny can work. Transparency and accountability work.

    But transparency must go further. We need national data on patterns of deployment. We need honest examination of whether women are disproportionately steered into precarious or under-remunerated roles. We need systems that do not rely on personal resilience, goodwill, or quiet endurance.

    Motherhood is not a deviation from priesthood. Shared parenting is not radical. Women’s bodies are not a pastoral inconvenience. Gender is not a spiritual failing.

    The question is no longer whether change is possible. It is whether we have the will to pursue it beyond the minimum required to avoid embarrassment.

    We often speak of mutual flourishing. Mutuality requires reciprocity. Flourishing requires investment.

    If our financial structures still cushion objection more consistently than they sustain embodiment, what does that reveal about whose vocation we are most anxious to protect? Who do we more value?

    That is not a rhetorical question.

     

     

  • Why Progressive Christians Must Reclaim the Case for Church – Or Face the Consequences

    by Simon Cross, a minister in the United Reformed Church, a writer, and the chair of the Progressive Christianity Network

    [reprinted with permission from http://simonjcross.substack.com/]

    Progressive Christianity has done much to reframe theology – challenging exclusion, reimagining scripture, and putting justice issues at the centre of our worship. But in the enthusiasm to move away from conservatism, we’ve often neglected to reconstruct a compelling case for why church still matters.

    The consequences are striking. Churches that champion progressive theology are shrinking, not because their message lacks depth, but because their communal purpose is unclear. This has various knock-on effects: visible Christianity becomes limited to its more conservative expressions, new leaders are not nurtured, people are cut adrift from supportive communities.

    For centuries now, we’ve critiqued doctrine, questioned hierarchy, and sought to dismantle harmful traditions. But we’ve not always articulated what church is for. Why gather? Why commit? Why return week after week to a community that is imperfect, slow-moving, and sometimes exhausting?

    The hard truth is that if we don’t make the case for church, others will. And often, they’ll make it in ways that reinforce conformity, control, or nostalgia. If we, as progressive Christians, believe in a gospel of liberation, then we must also believe in the power of, and need for communities which embody that liberation – not just in theory, but in practice.

    Church as a School of Compassion

    Church, through a progressive lens, is not just a place to hear sermons, sing hymns or mumble prayers. It’s a dynamic, open space where we learn, together, to be compassionate. Not in abstract terms, but in the messy, embodied reality of shared life. It’s a place where we learn to sit with grief that isn’t ours. We learn to celebrate joy that doesn’t benefit us. We learn what it means to forgive, and to listen.

    This vision of church is profoundly counter-cultural. While contemporary culture prizes individualism and efficiency, wealth and success, church offers a counter-formative rhythm. It slows us down. It asks us to notice. It invites us into relationships that aren’t transactional – or at least aren’t as transactional. Over time, it shapes us into people who can look beyond ourselves.

    Church as a Place of Ritual

    Progressive Christians often shy away from ritual, fearing it will become empty or oppressive. But in my own life, and my own experience of ministry, I have come to recognise that rituals are not the enemy. They are, in some ways, the scaffolding of meaning. (Don’t believe me? Read Ritual by Dimitris Xygalatas).

    In church, we enact rituals of restoration and renewal: communion being the most obvious one. Moments when we stop – recentre, renew. We also enact rituals of resistance – the most notable of which is baptism. In my tradition these two rituals are called ‘sacraments’ – for good reason.

    These rituals remind us who we are and who we’re becoming. They connect us to generations before us and to movements beyond us. They give shape to our longings and language to our hope.

    Church as a Community of Resistance

    Sometimes when I go into a church I find, in effect, a living history museum. A place where a group find comfort. But if church is only a place of comfort, it will not survive.

    At its best, church becomes a community of resistance. A place where we can come together, partly for comfort perhaps, but also to find a way to fight against injustice, against despair, against isolation. The earliest Christians gathered for this reason – they shared resources, they dismantled hierarchies, they cared for each other.

    Progressive churches have the theological tools to be communities of resistance. We speak of inclusion, of equity, of ecological care. But we must also embody these values in our structures, our budgets, our liturgies, and our relationships. Resistance is not just what we preach – it’s how we live together.

    Making the Case

    So how do we make the case for church?

    Perhaps we start by telling the truth, to ourselves and to one another: church is hard. It’s slow. It’s full of people who disappoint us. But it’s also one of the few places where we commit to one another not because we agree with each other (we don’t), but because we belong.

    Then maybe we tell stories – stories of meals shared, of burdens carried, of prayers whispered in hospital rooms. We name the ways that church has saved us by being present to us.

    We invite people not to consume church, but to co-create it. To bring their gifts, their questions, their wounds. To help shape a community that reflects the gospel we believe in.

    And we remind ourselves that church is not a building or a brand. It’s a practice. A discipline. A way of being in the world that says: we are not alone, and we are not powerless.

    Mostly, though, we simply need to understand the case for church in ourselves – we need to internalise it. We need to recognise that ‘this’ is why its worth being part of.

    A Progressive Future

    If progressive Christianity is to thrive, it must reclaim church. It must cultivate it, and tend to it. We must actively make the case for gathering together, and we must ensure our spaces are such that genuine discipleship can happen in them. We can’t really afford to just keep going through the motions.

    Church can be a place where justice is not just preached, but practised. Where compassion is not just felt, but formed. Where resistance is not just imagined, but enacted. We all know it – just as we know it can be the opposite. We need to make the case for church.

  • Posing a Problem: Not Equal Yet

    by Ruth Harley, curate in the Watling Valley Ecumenical Partnership

    “When you expose a problem, you pose a problem.” So writes Sara Ahmed in her book Living a Feminist Life. Ahmed is talking about that phenomenon, well known to many of us, by which the person who names a problem within an institution, group or culture, becomes seen as the source of the problem. It happens to black people exposing racism, to women exposing misogyny, to disabled people exposing ablism, to LGBTQ+ people exposing homophobia and transphobia, indeed to any person naming a dynamic to which the institution would prefer to remain oblivious.

    It happens to women when we expose misogyny and sexism in all sorts of places: in the academy, which is Ahmed’s context, in the workplace, in our communities, our families and, yes, in our churches. It is so much easier to say that the problem is these uppity women who won’t shut up and be grateful for what they’ve got, rather than to confront the underlying and persistent inequalities which they are naming. (“Easier for whom?” we might ask.)

    To say, 30 years on from the ordination of the first women as priests in the Church of England, that women are still not equal yet in the church is to expose a problem. But it is also to state a fact. The statistics back it up: in the most recently available set of ministry statistics, just 33% of stipendiary clergy are women, and women continue to be under-represented in senior roles, with just 7 women out of 42 diocesan bishops. Women’s experiences back it up too, though that hard-won knowledge and wisdom is rarely afforded the respect or consideration it is due.

    Indeed, that women in the Church of England are not equal yet is enshrined in the legislation of the church, in the form of the House of Bishops Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests (GS Misc 1076) which, among other things, introduced the Five Guiding Principles. There are churches in which women are prohibited from presiding at the altar. There are no churches in which men are prohibited from presiding at the altar. We are not equal yet.

    But to say that, to state that women are not equal yet (in this and so many other ways) will always attract a hostile response. Why can’t we just be grateful for what we’ve got? Why do we have to make everything about gender? What about the feelings of those who can’t or won’t accept our ministry? Why can’t we just be kind?

    This is exactly the sort of response Sara Ahmed predicts: “When you expose a problem, you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about it, or if you went away.” But of course, that is not true. If we never spoke about it, the problem would still remain. But those who are unaffected by the problem would be allowed to preserve the privilege of their obliviousness. They would not be confronted with the problem. The problem would persist, but the burden would be carried only by those who do not have the luxury of being able to choose to ignore it: in this case, women.

    So we must speak. We must say what we know to be true. Women are not equal yet in the Church of England.

    And we must say other things we know to be true too. Women are made, equally with men, in the image of God. The subjugation of women is not the will of God. The body of Christ is damaged when women are not able to exercise their God-given gifts and vocations. The fact that women are not equal yet is not just a problem for women, but for the whole church. And it is not only an ethical problem, but also a theological and ecclesiological one.

    Women are not equal yet. And that is a problem. Like any problem, it will not be solved by being hidden away. It can only be addressed by being brought into the light, spoken about openly and without fear. The Not Equal Yet conference organised by WATCH, aims to do just that: to state openly that women are not equal yet. And to ask what we, as a church, are going to do about it.

    We have to be able to have that conversation, however difficult or painful it might be. To expose a problem is to pose a problem. But I would rather pose a problem, than persist in the lie of pretending that there is no problem here to be exposed.

    It is obvious already from conversations online and offline that even to have the conversation, even to state the truth that women in the Church of England are not equal yet, evokes angry and defensive responses from some. That should not deter us. As Jesus said: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And as Gloria Steinem said: “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

    Exposing the truth of women’s inequality in the church is a vital step toward ending that inequality. And a church in which women and men are equal, a church which reflects the equality of people of all genders in God’s sight, is good and liberating news for all.

    To expose a problem, to pose a problem, is hard. It is hard to make ourselves so exposed by admitting the truth: that we are not equal yet. The naming of truth is hard and holy work. And it is necessary work, in order to live ever more fully in the way of Jesus, who was never afraid to name the hard and exposing truths of injustice, and in order to bring God’s church ever closer to embodying the justice of God’s kingdom.

     

     

  • Language, Warfare and Lawfare – Gaza in Perspective

    by the Very Revd. Canon Professor Martyn Percy, Fellow at University of Edinburgh, King’s College London & Harris Manchester College Oxford

    An obvious observation to make is, ‘what perspective?’ There seems to be so little on the current crisis engulfing Gaza and beyond, only noise, solidarity-signalling and fury matched by long silences and the unsaid. There are plenty of points of view, to be sure. But they’re not quite the same as perspectives.

    The terms ‘perspective’ and ‘point of view’ are frequently used as though synonymous. They are not. A point of view is a space or place from which a story is told or unfolds. A perspective, however, is the analysis of the events and actors, and their motivations, beliefs and conduct. Perspectives can take account of worldviews, culture, heritage and experience. While a point of view might assert or argue the ‘when’, ‘who’ and the ‘what’ of history, a perspective should offer illumination on the ‘why’, ‘how’ and intended meanings of sources.

    So when a group of prominent Jewish lawyers recently published a letter (Financial Times, 17 October) and issued a statement from the Balfour Project, it was immediately apparent that this was a perspective worthy of heeding. Lord Neuberger, Former President of the UK Supreme Court, Philippe Sands KC, Sandra Fredman, University of Oxford, with several others, argued that the laws of war must guide Israel’s response to the Hamas atrocity of October 7th:

    We write as Jews, many of us with family and friends directly affected by the tragedy that has befallen Israel. Like so many others, the vile crimes perpetrated by Hamas in Israel have shaken us to our core. We also write in our capacity as lawyers. We do so because, instilled with our Jewish values, we believe that law, and the adherence to the rule of law, provide an invaluable guide to begin to make sense of what we are witnessing and to provide a path to govern responses to it. In these darkest of days, we write to emphasise the importance of international law as a guide to all.

    In their published statement, they go on to say that “one war crime must not…be avenged by committing another”, and that

    …nothing can justify the ‘complete siege of the Gaza Strip’ declared by the Israeli Government. Denying electricity, food, water, medicine and fuel to a civilian population is a war crime committed by a state… All human life is equal.

    The authors note that Gaza is the most densely populated land on our planet and, as the occupying power, “Israel has a clear legal obligation to safeguard the welfare of the civilians” yet by an “unprecedented aerial bombardment and threatened ground offensive, Israel is inflicting horrendous loss of life on over two million civilians”. Others will claim the rules of war allow for an entirely different perspective, and may argue that action in the cause of self-defence, even proactive, is legitimate. That the ends justify the means, no matter the cost.

    Where mediation may yet help all the parties out of this apocalypse, it will be the law that resolves the crisis. The Balfour Project statement was judicious in referring to Jewish law and our shared obligations under international law. At this moment, that emphasis is right and proper. Yet ancient Jewish law also offers a helpful perspective on the present conflict, not least because, at core level, this is part of our shared legal ecology across the developed world.

    In the New University Library at St. Andrews, Fife, affixed to a wall, is a quotation from James Wilson, dating from Philadelphia in 1768. Wilson grew up in Fife. In the New World he became a leading legal authority who helped to frame the independence declared from 1776. His words are bold in their simplicity:

    All men are by nature equal and free. No-one has a right to any authority over another without his consent…lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it.

    Contemporary readers of Thomas Paine’s influential pamphlet Common Sense (1776) are frequently surprised by the amount of space he devotes to scriptural reasoning. Paine, a British-born but pro-American independence politician, noted that, for the ancient Jews, monarchy was an idolatrous delusion contrary to Mosaic Law. In the Old Testament, strong, singular, entitled and unaccountable leadership was forbidden.

    Instead the Israelites’ preferred form of governance was that of the Judges – Joshua, Gideon, Deborah and others – who placed themselves under the Law, clear that it was “the Lord God who rules over you”. Gideon declined to be anointed King (Judges 8), telling the Israelites that kingship was not theirs to bestow upon him. Gideon was opposed to dynastic, inherited kingship, regarding it as ‘heathen’.

    The Old Testament promoted an alternative – a form of ‘positive liberty’ that was based on a just social order (c.f. Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (OUP, 1969), pp. 118-172). Leviticus, for example, demands that those who lose their livelihoods are supported by their neighbours. The lives, lands, and livestock of the vulnerable are protected. The Old Testament holiness code is one that promotes interdependence.

    The holiness code also limited the power of any monarch or ruler. A king must be one of your kin (Deuteronomy 17:14-20), and not above the citizens. Crucially, the only role the monarch has is to study, practice, dispense and obey the law. Please note, our leaders today – whether elected or imposed – should be upholders of the law, not lobbying the Court of Appeal trying to change law in order to secure conservative right-wing political cache.

    Old Testament laws were regarded as directly mediated from God. As the covenant between God and humanity, they transformed a legal code into collective sacred duty. The covenant reminded Israel of its fate when it was denied rights and legal protection:

    …remember when you were a slave in Egypt…God redeemed you from there. I, God, therefore command you to observe and protect the rights of the orphan, widow, alien and vulnerable (Deuteronomy 24: 18-22).

    What was crucial to Jewish identity (and arguably remains the case) is not whether an individual believes in God, but rather, do they observe the law? The obligations to follow the law are fundamental.

    Today, this attitude to law has transmuted into a much wider fundamental respect for judges, legislature and the jurisdiction of the state. We believe it is the law that is the ultimate authority, with politicians, including any President, constrained by their constitution.

    Which brings us to Gaza. Since 1650 BCE it probably ranks as one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in history. In old Arabic, its name means ‘fierce, strong’. Conquered by ancient empires – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Philistine, Canaanite and Persian – by the time of Jesus’ ministry, it was a model of diversity with a multi-ethnic governing assembly.

    Gaza is cited by name in Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred writings. Sometimes it is just a geographical reference, and no more. The Ethiopian Eunuch – a black, African transgendered individual whose name we never learn, became the first recorded African convert to Christianity (Acts Chapter 8) while travelling in a chariot on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza.

    Over the last two thousand years Gaza city has been held by the Byzantine and Mongol empires, captured by the crusaders, and conquered by Islamic and Ottoman forces. Today, around two million people live there – a mixture of Sunni Muslims and Palestinian Christians, comprising Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic. Several hundred thousand live in one of the eight refugee camps in the territory, after exile from the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948, 1967 (Six Day War) and 1973 (Yom Kippur War). The Gaza Strip was ceded to the Palestinian Authority under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accord, with Israel finally vacating possession in 2004.

    In the wider Gaza province and suburbs, the population numbers around two million people, crammed into an area the size of Sevenoaks in Kent. Incidentally, Sevenoaks has a population of 29,000 – and one need not dwell too much on what expanding a Kentish town’s population by close to one-hundredfold might do to a sitting Conservative MP’s prospects at the next election.

    So far as we know, Jesus never visited Gaza. Yet he was well-acquainted with places and peoples who had been subjected to multiple illegal occupation, exile, invasion and domination. One could say that Jesus’ entire ministry is spent among an assortment of the dispossessed, disinherited and decimated. Yet the core proclamation from this young rabbi was essentially one of peace and justice.

    Jesus came from Nazareth (Galilee), but his birth was in Bethlehem, Judea. But had there been no census at Bethlehem, Jesus would have been born in Galilee. This territory was not part of the Roman Empire. Galilee was a ‘client province’ of the Empire, and under the heel of Rome, but allowed to be ruled by the Herodian Dynasty. Herod and his son, Antipas were ‘kings’ in the lifetime of Jesus, but mere puppet rulers there to keep order on the edge of an Empire, granted titles and freedoms in return for loyalty.

    When it came to the trials of Jesus prior to his crucifixion, Pilate washed his hands of the affair because Jesus, as a Galilean, was not subject to Roman law or jurisdiction. Nor was Jesus subject to Judean law. The Sadducees, Scribes and Pharisees wanted Jesus tried under Jewish law, but neither Herod nor Pilate could oblige. The High Priests argued blasphemy should lead to the automatic death penalty, but the only way of achieving that end was to avoid a trial altogether, and judge and condemn Jesus without any due legal process. That is precisely what happens. Remember Caiaphas’ words: “…what need have we of witnesses?!”

    Such was the vengeful hysteria, sentence was passed on Jesus before trial. He was denied due legal process, because were that to have happened, he would most likely have been acquitted.

    The statement from the eminent Jewish lawyers of the Balfour Project is a reminder that the only common ground we stand on in a screaming, violent apocalyptic crisis is uncompromising practice of the law. It is the calm reasoning of human rights and due legal process that need to be heard above the cacophony of shouts for vengeance. The only way to bring about peace – and quiet – is justice.