Category Archives: church

The worldly widowhood of the Church of England

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Sorry, bit of a rant coming…
As I am on lots of ‘green’ mailing lists, it hasn’t escaped my notice that the General Synod is about to debate climate change. This is, on a generous reading, about twenty years too late. If we had done this in the mid-1990s it would have been a timely move. Doing it now, however, is catching a bus just after the engine has failed. People are now getting off this particular bus.

Which of course is no problem at all if it is the right thing to do. We are – as the Gospel reading set for tomorrow tells us – to be salt and light in the world. We are to be distinctive, not following worldly values.

Yet this General Synod actually seems to me to be doing precisely the opposite of what we are called to. The aphorism is that ‘a church that marries the spirit of the age will be a widow in the next’. This time around it seems that the church is actually deciding to marry a dead body straight off, without getting the benefits of a living period first.

The worst thing is that the Church is missing the more important issues. If we look at environmental questions and social justice questions then we need to pay attention to the issue of the Limits to Growth more generally, recognise that we are crashing into them at great speed, and start taking steps to prepare people for coping with what is taking place. Most of all – and here I have an interest of course – we need to ground it in a much broader spiritual vision. To narrow down our attention to the one element of the green perspective that is increasingly (and rightly) being seen as profoundly mistaken seems doubly unfortunate. Yet again the Church hands over its thinking function to worldly authority, forgetting that ‘love God with your mind’ is in the first commandment, not the second. It’s not quite fiddling whilst Rome burns, more like knitting blankets when the house is on fire.

Ah well. The floods that are coming may well wash the CofE away. That too may be God’s will. Rant over.

Three steps to change the culture of the Church of England

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This is by way of a short summary of things that I’ve written about before; I wanted a single post to point people to.

Were I to be given dictatorial powers over the Church of England I would do three things:
1. abolish the parish share system and require parishes to do two things instead, a) tithe their income to the Diocese and b) pay for their own ministers (singly or shared across congregations);
2. install all ordinands approved for training into seven year training posts, housed and salaried, split 50:50 between academic training and incumbency mentoring. Ordinations would happen in years 3 and 5;
3. re-establish the position of ‘lay incumbent’ who takes on all the duties and responsibilities to do with church fabric and site management, letting priests just be priests.

I believe that these measures – which could be implemented fairly swiftly and straightforwardly – would release a great spiritual energy. All we need is faith and nerve on the part of the powers that be…

The Church of England and the Bakken Shale

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The Church of England and the Bakken Shale

People might have noticed some of the claims being made by politicians across the pond about how the US might soon be ‘energy independent’, that new discoveries of oil might lead the US to be called ‘Saudi America’ (eg here)

The particular trigger for this language is something called the ‘Bakken Shale’ in North Dakota, which has been developed heavily over the last few years (since the explosion in the oil price in 2008 basically). This oil resource has indeed made a difference to the oil produciton of the United States:

us oil 2012 staniford

The ‘puffers’ appear to believe that this increase in US production is a) going to be sustained over time, and b) will make a significant difference to the US economy. I believe that such a view is… misguided. This is the forecast:

us oil 2012 eia

In other words, the Bakken Shale represents a great short-term boost to a situation, but not a long term answer.

As I ponder this, I can’t help but be struck by the parallels with the Church of England. Membership of the church has been declining for a very long time, a trend partly disguised by the rise in population in England through the twentieth century. Measured as a proportion of the population, the number of CofE Easter communicants has declined steadily from 8.8% of adults in 1922 down to 2.3% of adults in 2010. (source)

Now, in the context of such a significant and long-standing decline, it is understandable that people seize upon the equivalents of ‘Bakken Shales’ – anything which offers the prospect of changing the pattern. The latest wheeze is ‘Fresh Expressions’. Yet the real solution to the oil crisis is not a more and more diligent search for new oil-fields; rather, it is to change our patterns of life in such a way that the demand for oil declines faster than the supply.

What is the equivalent for the church? Well, I’m not completely sure of the answer to that, but I’m pretty sure that it won’t involve holding on to the ‘sunk costs’ of the existing ‘drilling equipment’ and ‘oil-based infrastructure’. Our inherited architecture and establishment patterns of ministry may have served us well in a time of abundance; now they are simply costs that will sink us. We don’t need to keep the oil supply flowing; we don’t need to keep our extremely impressive ecclesiastical SUVs; rather, we need to learn to enjoy the riding of bicycles….

Being a church in exile – what changes?

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If we are living ‘post-Christendom’ then we are, in effect, living in Exile. Where once the institutions of society and state paid their respects in Christian terms, now the church is told to ‘get with the programme’ and fit in with the secular imperatives. That which the church once took for granted is now not only taken away from us but forbidden to us.

What I am wondering about is how we in the church will change to accommodate this new spiritual reality. Yes, there are lots of echoes of the early church environment but at that point everything was new. Now the most dominant perception of Christianity in the wider community is that it is old and outdated, something already proven to be false. Instead of a simple proclamation of the gospel in conventional terms, evangelism depends upon being rather more sly – at least, it does if it has integrity, and isn’t simply aping the cultural forms that are temporarily dominant.

When the Jews were in Babylon, their entire understanding of faith shifted. The Temple was no more, so all of the worship that had been centred upon the Temple simply ceased to exist – and the spiritual needs that had been met that way were then sublimated and turned to a different direction. Most especially, this was the time when the Jewish community began to emphasise the text, and the meetings that gathered around the text, ie the synagogue. The Text replaced the Temple.

I am simply wondering what Christians are called to do in a parallel context. One option is simply to repeat the inherited truths more loudly – this is what I see many churches doing, both evangelical and Radical Orthodox. Another option is assimilation into the wider culture; another option is simply a resigned despair, the acceptance that we will go down with the ship and let God look after what comes next.

What are the equivalents of the Temple in Jerusalem for Christians today? In a phrase: Word and Sacrament. I believe that what the Spirit is leading us to is an abandonment of both Word and Sacrament as those things have been dominantly understood in Christendom. I do not believe that it is possible to have the same attitude to a text – any text – as has historically been common for understanding the Bible. Similarly, I am starting to believe that it is impossible to have the same understanding of the sacraments in a world that has become thoroughly disenchanted and secularised. Of course, it is possible to come to an appreciation of both Word and Sacrament as a result of deep training – I would describe my own understanding as a fruit of such a process – but I see no way in which that can become an effective means for transmitting the gospel. In a society which treated words as sacred, or that treated objects as always potentially significant, sharing the gospel and the bread and wine is not inherently problematic. It is as if the playing field itself has shifted. Christianity as against the Greek gods or other Christianities can make all sorts of sense – for some of the most significant things are retained in common. The challenge is simply to show that Christianity gives the best answers to the questions.

Yet our situation is one where the questions have changed. If you understand questions of sin and redemption to be significant, that is a context in which the proclamation of the gospel can make sense. Yet what if such questions are seen as inherently neurotic? In other words, it is not that you are seeking an answer to these questions, you simply want to stop those questions being asked in the first place? (Yes, Mr Wittgenstein is hovering behind this thought).

In other words, the fundamental spiritual hunger has shifted. Such things have happened before – the time of Exile was one such, and Christ’s own ministry cannot be understood without understanding all the implications that exile had upon Jewish life (see Margaret Barker for more on this).

As I see it, the fundamental spiritual hunger, in the West at least, is no longer about salvation but about self-realisation. It is as if the metaphysics has been ‘bracketed out’ or ‘cancelled out’ – like with an algebraic equation. That is, all the issues about the after life, the salvation of souls, heaven and hell – these simply no longer have any purchase. That which was described in such terms, the use to which that language was put, such things are still real – but that language is no longer fit for purpose.

The language of a victorious YHWH made no sense in the evnironment of Babylon – and the response was the language of the suffering servant. It seems to me that we are in a situation where the language of the suffering servant makes no more sense and we are having to explore something different once again. The real question is whether the resources of Christianity are deep enough to enable that something new to retain continuity with the old, or whether the Spirit simply wants a break with what has gone before.

Such things I shall continue to ponder. It may simply be, of course, that I am simply wanting to find a form of church that would enable me to become more truly myself…

This is a train of thought inspired by reading Graham’s post

Pope Francis and a church for the poor

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(Courier article)
You will doubtless have been aware of a significant puff of white smoke recently, which declared the election of a new Pope. His Holiness Pope Francis has talked about that significant moment, whilst he was sitting next to a fellow South American cardinal: “When things became a bit dangerous, he comforted me, and when the vote for me reached the two-thirds majority, a moment in which the cardinals started applauding because they had chosen a Pope, he hugged me, he kissed me and he said ‘don’t forget the poor’. “That word, the poor, lodged in me here,” Francis said, tapping his head. “It was then that I thought of St Francis. And then I thought of wars and about peace and that’s how the name came to me – a man of peace, a poor man … and how I would like a church of the poor, for the poor.”

Don’t forget the poor. The Bible is very clear about the priority that God gives to social justice – it is a theme running throughout both Old and New Testaments where there are over 2000 texts dealing with how the poor are to be treated, and included within wider society. Put simply, where there is no social justice, God is provoked into righteous anger. It is absolutely of the essence of the gospel that Christians have care for those who are excluded from participating in our society; it is not possible to be a Christian and to have no concern for social justice; it is, in sum, right at the heart of what we talk about when we Christians discuss ‘the Kingdom of God’. So I am delighted to see the new Pope making such a strong, clear and symbolic stand at the beginning of his pontificate. And yet…

When Jesus is asked what is the most important commandment to follow, he does not say ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor’ – that teaching comes in the context of specific instructions to a particular young man whom Jesus loved (Mark 10). No, when Jesus is asked what is the most important commandment, he says this: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I view one of the most dire problems that the church faces, and which vitiates all of its attempts to engage critically with the world, as salt and as yeast and as light, as being due to the evacuation of the sense of the first commandment into a comfortable affirmation of the “second, which is like it”. There is a reason why Jesus says that the first commandment comes first. The first commandment contains a distinct meaning, which cannot be disregarded. Yes, there is an intrinsic link between love of God and love of neighbour – and where there is no love of neighbour then that is a clear sign that the love of God is deficient – but I believe that Christians have become very comfortable with the idea that by doing good works for our neighbours we are doing all that we need to do in order to love God.

I believe that this is false, and is the principal reason why the church in all its forms is now so regularly trampled underfoot. There is more to the church than being just another charity, just another non-governmental organisation, just another group of people who do what seems to be right in the eyes of the world. I believe that if the church gets the first commandment right, the second will naturally follows. I am not persuaded that it happens in reverse; indeed, I suspect that the inverse is eventually self-defeating.

There is something non-negotiable and inescapable about the worship of God when it comes to actually living out a Christian life – and in writing these words I am aware of how strange it might seem that this needs to be said! The worship of God is not simply another particular hobby to be placed alongside other hobbies – some people like to play bowls, some like to sail, some like to sing strange songs in old and draughty buildings. No, in terms of a discussion about poverty there is a much more direct, internal and organic link between the right worship of God and the quest for social justice. If we in the church do not worship God correctly, then we do not discern our values correctly, and we inevitably end up engaged in something which can be called idolatry – and the Bible is very clear that the necessary consequence of idolatry is injustice. In contrast, the Bible is equally clear that where God is worshipped properly then the world and all of us within it are enabled to flourish. Christians cannot separate out the one from the other, for when we do, both commandments are broken.

I am sure that, as a Jesuit (some of the best teachers I have ever had), Pope Francis knows this in his bones. So my delight in his appointment and his pursuit of the second commandment is grounded in an assurance that the first will indeed be placed first. I had high hopes for the leadership that Pope Benedict was able to give, and those hopes were fulfilled. I have faith that my high hopes for Pope Francis will be met likewise. May God bless the work of his hands.

Is there a stable place to rest at the end of the progressive path?

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This is related to the TBLA thread, but I think it deserves to be kept apart from that series, at least for now.

Western society has embarked upon a radical restructuring of its cultural life in three inter-related issues, to do with homosexuality, marriage and divorce, and the economic role of women. The classical understanding of the church, that sexuality is only to be expressed within a heterosexual marriage, has been widely abandoned. The development of effective means of contraception, the abolition of traditional marriage, the massive economic empowerment of women – all of these together are utterly revolutionary. The church has been caught up in this cultural change and is now at risk of opprobrium and worse if it does not, in David Cameron’s ill-chosen words, ‘get with the programme’. It seems to me that there is a coherent position that is taken in opposition to this radical restructuring – the Roman Catholic stance is the most fully-worked out and potentially long-lasting form of opposition to the progressive path (I don’t see the conservative evangelical opposition as similarly substantial, despite its merits). The question I want to ask is: where is the progressive path going?

The RC stance is one that is deeply rooted in both Scripture and Tradition, and one which has proven workable for thousands of years. That is, the civilisation that we have inherited is, in large part, a product of a culture which adopted certain norms about the place and role of women and homosexuals. Clearly, power and influence were concentrated on men, and there were consequent injustices and exploitations. However, no human society is without injustices this side of the kingdom, and our present arrangements are certainly not without injustices either. The RC stance is one that is dominant in world Christianity and very unlikely to go away; it is more likely that there will continue to develop a deeper split between the traditionalist (majority) Christian faith and the progressive (post-Protestant) forms of Christianity. Does the progressive, secular, post-Protestant form of Christianity have a destination? Is it simply a reactive product of the social changes in the wider society? Or can it legitimately claim that there is a movement of the Spirit behind it?

Supporters of the progressive path will point to better treatment of women and minorities as a result of these changes. Opponents will concede (some of) this, but have a coherent case to say that the costs involved are not worth it. For example, in response to talking about the improved economic and social autonomy given to women, opponents can reference the rise in frivolous divorce, the misery passed on to children, the diminution of options for working class men and so on. I don’t want here to engage in a weighing up of this evidence, just to indicate that the progressive path is not without its (non-prejudiced) critics. More substantially, the critics of the progressive path are able to draw, not just on those economic arguments, but also on the fairly uniform voice of Scripture and Tradition. I am quite familiar with the arguments on this score – and, indeed, I have used the progressive arguments myself on repeated occasions. Yet one of the conservative evangelical criticisms of the progressive path does seem to be to be a true one – that it is not possible to maintain a commitment to the authority of Scripture, as understood in the evangelical tradition, if we accept the progressive developments (NB I don’t accept the authority of Scripture in that way).

What I am pondering is that the present ‘status quo’ of the progressive path is not stable. To bring this out, I want to ask: ‘what is wrong with polygamy?’ Once the move away from accepting the authority of Scripture and Tradition has been made – and, thus, there develops a primacy for personal autonomy and choice – what is to stop those who wish to pursue a polygamous marriage from doing so? There are many churches in the world where polygamy is at least tacitly accepted, as it still fits in with the local cultural context. In addition, a reasonably good argument can be made that it is not anti-Scriptural (a much stronger argument, in my view, than the equivalent one for homosexual relationships – and I’m sold on that). Yet I’m not sure that those who pursue the progressive path are fully aware that this is one of the destinations that their path is leading to, or what the implications of this path are.

What I’m really asking is: what are the fundamental principles from which a stable, progressive understanding of human sexuality and gender relationships might be formed? One of the best aspects of the traditional position is that it is rooted in a ‘theology of biology’; that is, there is an understanding of what it means to be male, and what it means to be female, which lies behind the more worked out and specific ethical teachings. The progressive understanding does not (yet) have that. One of the elements of the women bishops debate that has most strongly been borne in on me is an awareness that a) the conservative position is much more substantial and coherent than the progressives can countenance, and b) that the progressives do not know what it is that they are rejecting. In other words, they (we!) do not yet have anything that can take the place of the conservative understanding, and in consequence, we literally do not know what we are doing.

Having said all that, I remain quite open to the idea that the Spirit is genuinely behind all these developments – and, indeed, it may well be that proper work has been done on these matters that I’m not familiar with – and I certainly can’t see our society reversing many of them. Yet, as I also see our society as heading down the tubes with great rapidity, I don’t see that latter point as bearing much theological weight. I genuinely don’t know the answer to this, but it is what I am thinking about.

Veni Sancte Spiritus – but please don’t tell us anything we’d rather not hear

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This is a guest post by Rev Edward Dowler

First of all, let me state my own position, somewhat fence-sitting thought it is. Although I long for closer communion with my Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters, I realise that there is an anomaly about a church in which a certain category of priests cannot be considered for ordination to the episcopate. However, some aspects of the reaction to the recent vote on women bishops have deeply disturbed me.

The first of these was majoritarianism. One bishop pronounced with perhaps some sleight of hand that ‘the clear majority of the Church of England demands it, the people of this country expect it, and I believe that the Holy Spirit yearns for it’. Since forty two out of forty four dioceses (or, more accurately, diocesan synods) have expressed support for women bishops, it has been widely concluded that the legislation should certainly have been passed, despite not receiving the required majority in the General Synod. But majoritarianism is not democracy: as the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently pointed out, democracy is not just about enacting the will of the majority, but also, just as importantly, it is about protecting the rights of the minority: exactly the point about which the House of Laity was concerned.

Secondly, in the aftermath of the vote, there has been a nasty strain of clericalism in evidence. Members of the House of Laity were, it seemed, simply too thick and reactionary to get it; no surprises there if you believe in any case that they are ‘life-denying fun sponges obsessed with being right and with other people not having sex’. But it was noticeable that the key swing voters whose votes ensured that the legislation was defeated were in fact people who actually support the ordination of women to the episcopate. However, they felt unable to ignore an uncomfortable feeling that charity was not served by what seemed to them to be a ‘winner takes it all’ piece of legislation. At what has already turned out to be very considerable cost to themselves, they were not prepared to endorse this, despite their own desire to see women bishops.

Thirdly, there has been erastianism of the worst kind. As John Milbank has pointed out, the purpose of having an established Church is so that ‘the political nation is answerable to the Church: to God, to Christ and to Scripture’. But the Church of England seems largely to have accepted that it now goes the other way. The Prime Minister, in one of the milder comments from the House of Commons, has told the Church of England that it needs to ‘get with the programme (of secular equalities legislation)’. Despite all of the lessons that the twentieth century might teach us, even the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to believe that the Church should essentially keep in step with modern ‘trends and priorities’, as if it were in these that true wisdom is to be found. Other bishops meanwhile contend that the answer to this disagreement within the Church is to put it all in the hands of the secular courts (cf. 1 Cor 6.1-8).

Fourthly, we have seen what one might describe as a pneumatological deficiency. Are the prayers for guidance, the talk about seeking God’s will, the Synod Eucharists and all the rest of it just so many platitudes and pieces of empty flummery? For, rather than asking what it is that the Holy Spirit might be saying to the Church of England in and through this vote, the immediate response to the decision is hotly to protest that a way must be found of overturning it as soon as possible. In the words of the Greek Orthodox priest, Fr Stephen Maxfield (scroll to the last letter), ‘The Church of England is very odd. It invokes the Holy Spirit before meetings of its General Synod, but then it flatly refuses to believe that He has anything to do with the results of its deliberations’.

As several commentators have pointed out, one problem is a chronic lack of theology. Since we do not have an agreed theology of the episcopacy, we do not know whether bishops exist to provide leadership in the manner of secular gurus of that discipline, or bureaucratic managers, or fathers within a family. And because we do not know this, the conversation all too easily defaults to regarding episcopacy as just another ‘senior position’.

Similarly, since we do not have theology of gender, or indeed of the human person more generally, we default to secularised discourses of rights and equal opportunities. In the words of one priest in my own diocese, ‘young professional women aren’t used to being told they can’t do things’. So, putting it bluntly, we have been trying to decide whether to have women bishops without really having a clue what either a bishop or a woman (or a man) actually is.

Perhaps the egregious Chris Bryant MP is right – although not for the reasons that he thinks he is – that we should simply appoint no more bishops of either gender for the time being. Perhaps (and I owe this point to the Anglican solitary, Maggie Ross) we need to put aside our anxious, self-preoccupied strivings, our worldly perceptions that things can be fixed if only this or that group of people can be outflanked and defeated. Perhaps the Holy Spirit has indicated to us in and through this vote that the old way of doing things has now reached a dead end and that, instead, we must now just wait in stillness and silence before the Lord who waits to be gracious to us. If we did that, people really might take some notice.

The Revd Dr Edward Dowler is Vicar of Clay Hill, Enfield in the Diocese of London. He was formerly Vice-Principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford and a member of the Theology Faculty at the University of Oxford. He has recently written the SCM Core Text in Christian Ethics (SCM: 2011) and The Church and the Big Society (Grove Books: forthcoming).

Population or congregation – where the ghost of establishment resides

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I’ve been doing a bit of research on the Sheffield formula, and thinking about the implications of it (and I’m aware of coming late to the party so if people know of good discussions of this elsewhere, I’d be grateful for pointers in the comments). For those in a blissful state of non-initiation into the arcane mysteries, the Sheffield formula is a way of calculating how clergy should be deployed. It was developed by the eponymous Bishop in a report published in the mid-1970s and takes four factors into account: local population, area, church buildings and church membership. To quote Gordon Kuhrt, “The greatest emphasis was given to population and reflected the priority given to the idea of the Church ministering to the whole nation, not just to its members.”

I’m coming to see that decision as possibly the prime disaster of the post-war church, principally in terms of mission. A few bullet points on the dimensions of that disaster:

– Where population is given that strong weight, there is no direct link between staffing and growth (or diminishment) of the congregation.

– There isn’t even a direct link between population and workload, for the missing link between them is culture – a smaller population of more traditional culture will likely generate a larger workload for clergy than a larger population that is completely secular.

– It can cosset comfortable churches and set ceilings to growth, making it very difficult to reinforce success.

– It entrenches centralised management of resources rather than enabling local initiative.

– It confuses the mission of the church with maintenance of the status quo (that is, it equates the former with the latter) – and the status quo that was assumed in the mid-1970s is very far from being a healthy assumption to make about the church in the 2010s.

In my view the central diocese should step back from making such determinations, and hand over the responsibility for funding clergy to the parishes themselves, supplemented by a mission fund to support churches in more vulnerable areas. Failing that, we could at least shift to a system that excluded population from consideration, and tied the deployment of clergy directly to the size of congregations.

However, there is one aspect of population that I think would make a useful measure. There is, presumably, an average figure for how many from a local population are likely to become part of an Anglican church – let’s say that it’s 2.5% for ease – so for every 1,000 population we might expect a congregation of 25 people. We might then set up a system whereby any church which has a congregation of between 2% and 3% of the local population is considered ‘average’; those with a congregation of less than 2% are less than average, those with more than 3% are more than average. This would give a rough and ready guide to how churches are doing (and obviously, other factors would need to be taken into account, along the same lines of the ‘culture’ mentioned earlier. Mission posts would not be expected to be ‘average’!)

At the moment, a town of 20,000 people with a single church might have one that seemed to be thriving, with a church membership of 300 and all sorts of activities and services, whereas a small village with a population of less than 500 might seem to be failing, with a church membership of 16 – yet the latter would be ‘above average’ and the former quite significantly below. A formula for deploying clergy that places emphasis upon population will never challenge the former to grow, and will continue to reduce the resources available to the latter despite their progress in advancing the cause of the Kingdom.

Faramir, Fraser and the folly of a fast church

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One of the many deeply moving elements in the Lord of the Rings is the story of Faramir, younger brother of Boromir, and his quest to gain his father’s approval – leading, in the end, to his sacrificial attempt to retake Osgiliath.

I was reminded of this when reading Giles Fraser’s latest column in the Guardian (which seem better than his Church Times articles – perhaps it is his new context). Fraser writes: “my former therapist made much of the pathologies of the English boarding school system and that those of us who are its victims often have an unhealthy relationship with establishment, looking towards it as some sort of substitute parent. But that, of course, is looking for love and acceptance in quite the wrong place. Larkin may have been overly cynical about “your Mum and Dad” but it was a cynicism that would not have been misplaced about the establishment – places like the army and the church. “Get out of this thing whilst you can”, can feel like pretty sound advice.”

My earlier post about the stupid and ungodly culture of the church seemed to strike a chord – normally, a well-read post here gets up to 400 reads – that one has had over 2,500 and is still rising. I think Fraser is putting his finger on one particular aspect of the ungodly culture of the Church, one particular way in which the church devours its own children, and it is to do with how the hierarchy expresses or withholds approval.

I think Denethor is a good proxy to use to describe this. Denethor is a steward – in other words, someone entrusted with looking after something glorious, with passing it on safely to his successors (in order that it is in good order at the time of the Return of the King). Because of his use of the Palantir, Denethor has given in to the despiser’s promptings and succumbed to despair. He sees no way in which he will be able to achieve what he has been commanded to achieve. This fear, this lack of faith, is what lies behind his corrupt actions and his lack of regard for Faramir – a son that truly loves him, and is an exemplary leader. Out of fear, Denethor seeks for any remedy that might stave off the darkness, is willing to sacrifice his son in folly, and would be even willing to use the Ring in order to see Gondor preserved. In other words, the leadership is gripped with fear and the actions are conditioned by a desire to ‘hold fast’ to what has been inherited. It is this holding fast which is, in the end, the problem, and which leads to such a sad end for Denethor.

In the same way it seems that our hierarchy is gripped by fear at losing what has been inherited, and spends time and energy on holding fast. This is not so much a question of holding on to particular churches despite losing so many clergy (something I actually agree with) so much as holding on to a particular attitude and understanding of what the Church of England actually is. That is, I believe it is a particular vision of the Church – a particular vision of the role of the church within our English society – which is being held on to. It is the sort of thing that comes to the forefront at times like last year’s Royal Wedding and it is, of course, exactly what was at stake in Giles Fraser’s conflict at St Paul’s. There the conflict came out into the open – the great unwashed had parked themselves outside the symbol of old establishment glory, and this really wouldn’t do. What greater symbolism could there be than the closing of the cathedral doors for fear of contamination by these ‘witless halflings’?

Fraser touches on how the hierarchy has rallied to preserve respectability in the sight of the world: “I’ve had my fill of polite rejections since resigning from St Paul’s – too many unconvincing smiles in the street by former friends and colleagues who suddenly wouldn’t break step to say hello… The more you seriously piss off the church authorities, the nicer they are to you in public. Ostracism is achieved with a well-rehearsed Christian smile and the rhetoric of pastoral care. Good social skills camouflage a deep irritation that you have betrayed the club.” This is how Denethor manipulates Faramir into self-sacrifice – the exercise of control through the withholding of approval. (The thought that occurs to me – to change the image for a moment – is that it is strange to disapprove of those who rock the boat when the boat itself is sinking, and holding fast to the status quo merely guarantees that the vessel sinks.)

The dark theology here has many aspects, but one in particular I would like to pick out. Those gripped by fear seek to hold fast to what has been inherited – and their clinging to old patterns develops into a strangling of the new. Yet there is another sense of ‘fast’ – the sense of something being quick, or immediate, something lacking in mediation. This is a hallmark of Protestant culture. It might be suggested to Fraser that he shouldn’t be seeking such reassurance and approval from the hierarchy – that a sense of doing God’s will should be enough for anyone with a living faith. Yet this is to deny that God has no hands but ours, no eyes but ours. It is a rejection of sacramentality and incarnation – in other words, it is primarily through the love and respect shown by other human beings that we experience the love and respect on offer to us from God. When that love and respect is withheld – when we are disciplined by disapproval – then this is experienced as a rejection by God. I don’t believe that this is simply down to having had a boarding school background (having one myself) – it is more that this aspect of boarding school culture is itself an expression of a particular form of English culture, and it is precisely this form of English culture which seems to control the Church, and it is this form of English culture that seems incapable of recognising holiness, as with Rowan.

How might those who still love the church – as with Fraser – and who wish to see it prosper take forward the necessary remedial work? Two thoughts. The first is that – in a church which has become too fast in every sense, and which is distracted by passing, glittering fancies as it seeks the next Red Bull to assuage the neurotic void and spiritual lack at its heart – we have to prioritise the opposite of the fast, which is the slow. A remark attributed to Jung is that ‘haste is not of the devil, it IS the devil’, which I believe contains much truth. We have lost our sense of rootedness in prayer, our sense that God is in charge and that, whatever goes wrong, He has the capacity to redeem it and the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church. We need to get back to putting the first commandment first – that is the only thing that will remove our fear.

The second is that we have to reform the structures of the church. Structures – principalities and powers – embody and maintain a particular culture, and even good people can become distorted out of God’s plan by living within fallen structures. I am more and more convinced that we need to disestablish the church, for it is precisely establishment which is the bulwark propping up this particular culture. (Disestablishment would also bring us into line with the global Anglican Communion, which I thought was a particular desire of the hierarchy… Hmmm.)

I believe in the gospel more firmly than I ever have, and I believe in the local church – that it is where Christ can be met and incarnated, and which has a vibrant future to look forward to – but the wider structures of our Church, the wider culture or soul of this institution – there I have ever-increasing doubts. I believe that it can only be saved if it is significantly reformed. Has it gone too far to be redeemed? Has the glory of the Lord actually departed from it? Is the future of the Church of England simply to be the Anglican denomination in this land? Probably, but, as with Fraser, I still hold on to a hope in the God of surprises.

Priestly priorities: ordination, orders and the permanent diaconate

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Whilst I’m happy with the three-fold understanding of leadership mentioned in my last post in this sequence – good character, sound doctrine, ability to teach – I think that more needs to be said. Most especially, I think that there is something essential to the priestly role which comes about through ordination. Here my Anglo-Catholic nature asserts itself!

As I understand it, one of the essential elements of ordination is that a person is being entrusted with authority by the wider church, and therefore carries that authority into their work within the local church. It is this authority – derived from the authority and nature of the Bishop’s work – which makes the difference between a congregational church and an episcopal church. Note – it is this and nothing about how people are paid (eg parish share or not) that makes the difference.

Furthermore, this authority carries over into sacramental worship; that is, sacramental worship – most especially our communion – is only rightly ordered when it is not simply a communion of a gathered congregation but the communion of that congregation with the wider church. This is why lay presidency is anathema and would destroy Anglicanism as an episcopal church. I see this ‘bearing of authority’ as an essential element of the work of the stipendiary priest, and it carries over into the nature of the work that they do.

This is why we need to be careful in considering ‘good character’ a prerequisite of ministry. There is an undoubted sense in which a church leader needs to embody the doctrine which they teach, and ‘notorious and unrepentant sinners’ are by that measure disqualified from acting in leadership. Yet sometimes the priest needs to stand over-against a particular congregation – or group within a congregation – for perfectly holy reasons, and it is through resting in that episcopally-derived authority that this becomes possible. This is an element of the Anglican patrimony that I think is quite precious. (I think there is also an aspect of priestly ministry as it relates to communion bound up with a healthy understanding of the New Temple and sacrifice – but this isn’t the post for that, I’m just putting down a marker!)

Having said the above about ordination, I would want to emphasise that priests are not the only ‘orders’ in the church. Most especially I would argue that a recovered understanding of the diaconal ministry is essential for meeting the needs that we now face, and, moreover, such a diaconal ministry needs to be based on Acts 6: “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

Doug said some good things on this here, and it is a subject dear to my own heart. I believe that one of the things that we are presently being called to do is to simultaneously a) call many, many more people to ministry for the church and b) become much clearer about the specific vocations to each order, and the differences between them. Then, perhaps, all the different parts of the body might be enabled to work together, for the greater glory of God.