Elizaphanian

Dulce et decorum est, pro ecclesia mori

2012-05-26T13:15:00.000+01:00

So: another priest is being subjected to harassment from the noble and honourable legions of the printed media as a result of the discretions of a friend on Facebook. The allegation is that, as a result of these written disclosures, the priest is "unfit to serve the church at all in the opinion of many Doncaster residents". Well, good opinion, is, of course, the determining criterion for suitability for ministry. There is a deep issue here, which I want to try and tease out - not least because I too, have been blessed in the past by the tender ministrations of our legacy media.

There is something about being an ordained minister which can be captured in the phrase 'the dignity of the office'. Obviously this can be abused - I'm sure we're all familiar enough with the genus of pompous ass for the point not to need belabouring - but where that dignity is recklessly disregarded then the institution of the church is led into disrepute. This is, truly, a bad thing. What I want to explore for now, though, is what actually counts as godly dignity in an environment such as ours. After all, alongside the verse from 1 Timothy we must also assess the tradition of the prophets, culminating in our Lord Himself, in which the most direct and offensive language was deployed to tear down the dignity of offices, for the simple reason that those offices had ceased to serve the living God.

Take the present debate about women bishops legislation. How I wish we had people with philosophical training in positions of leadership in the church! Not for arcane expertise but simply for the ability to follow through the implications of a train of thought or a decision. What we see now is the necessary consequence of the short-term expediency deployed to get the original women-priests measure through. The more compromises that we reach for political purposes - without regard for the underlying principles - the more awful a mess we lead the church into. In this situation, Bishop Alan, for example, might be rightly accused of lacking collegiality with his fellow bishops through his forthright comments - and yet, he is also channeling some righteous rage at the follies that have led us into this situation. Which is more fitting for the dignity of his office - colluding with an inability to have real conversations, or speaking honestly? It is this inability to get real that is the root problem here - as with my brother priest in Doncaster. The idea that a clergyman might swear, might be exhausted or occasionally feel hatred for his work - this is to glimpse an unsettling truth, and preserving contrary illusions does not advance the Kingdom. I am reminded of a wonderful scene in the outstandingly good film Moneyball, which I watched the other night, and which led me to ponder all sorts of things about the church: "You guys are talking the same old nonsense... We've got to think differently."

If we are to truly preserve the divine dignity of the ordained office, does not a respect for truth have to figure somewhere along the line? Sadly, where the church has fallen so far from its divinely ordained purposes, all that is left is an ecclesiastical Game of Thrones, with ++Rowan having played the role of Ned Stark. What is needed is an understanding that 'you win or you die', and to succeed in that process we need integrity and honour and an understanding of the dignity of the office - coupled with an acceptance that blood must sometimes be shed. In other words, we need leadership that has an Old Testament Heart, not a Smallbone. Our leadership has been prepared to wound but not to kill, and as a result we have spent twenty years in further interminable argument, and the divisions have simply become more and more entrenched. We are bleeding to death, pummelled by the secularist and materialist cultural imperatives, denuded of our faith and our joy. This is the consequence of not recognising the fallen nature of our world and its implications for the church. Does the church actually want to live?

And just in case the full reference of my title is missed, let me state explicitly that I am channeling Wilfred Owen, not Horace; and, to be true, just a little bit of Mark Antony in my opening paragraph.

What is to be done?

2012-05-21T12:46:00.000+01:00

I read this in an article from the Guardian:

"I teach 400 children. Slightly more, actually, but we'll call it 400. That means your daughter counts for 0.25% of the children I teach. It is difficult for me to honestly and accurately tell you anything about her, so please forgive me if I speak in vague generalities at parents' evening and try to avoid using your daughter's name. I might have forgotten it.
I teach twenty five lessons a week. Despite my best intentions, some of these lessons are boring. To plan an outstanding lesson can take hours. I can't do that for every lesson I teach. Sometimes I stand in class delivering a lesson I know isn't as good as it could be. I know how to make it better. I just didn't have the time to do it. I don't think the children notice, they are used to this...
Schools are full of middle-management types....The school needs to improve, but I'm not sure it can. Common sense and trust in human communication is being forced out of the profession. A lot of teachers seem to like being told exactly what to do and how to do it. The status quo is just fine for a lot of middle and senior management too. It allows them to wield power, justify inflated salaries and be recognised by their peers as being "outstanding" teachers. A recognition the children in their classes would never give them. Never mind. They never really liked teaching children that much anyway."

The reason why this article struck me this morning is that - if you change the relevant terms (including 'outstanding teacher' to 'senior priest'!) then the same analysis applies to the life of an increasing number of parish priests. That is of interest, not because I want to share in the groaning - done enough of that recently - but because it shows how far the Church of England has become bound up in the prevailing patterns of our culture.

That culture is one of expecting more and more to be achieved by less and less - and of putting bureaucratic control systems in place to achieve it. So, in teaching, it means a significant increase in central government direction and intervention, carried through by qualified consultants and enforced by Ofsted. Similar things happen in other fields, like the NHS. The church - being behind the times - is only now starting to move in this direction, but it is clear that Common Tenure is from this stable, and this pattern of thought has clearly infected many.

I say that with confidence because I think it has also infected me - and I'm trying to extirpate it (which I do, through things like writing out my thoughts in a blogpost). For example, I am closely involved in Deanery discussions planning for the future - specifically, how to negotiate a reduction in stipendiary clergy of around a third (from 13.5 to 9, covering 27 parishes). My first reaction was to develop a plan to restructure the Deanery around geographical clusters, each with at least two clergy, so that the workload is distributed fairly. So, from an average ratio of clergy to people of 1:120, it will shift to around 1:180; or, using a Deployment Indicator that takes account of local population and number of churches, it will shift from an average of 101 per priest to an average of 144 per priest - either way, it will effectively mean a 50% increase in workload for clergy here. (For comparison, and in lieu of another moan from me, the figures for Mersea are 1:300 on the former measure, and 186 on the latter, so I do have a very good idea of what these implied changes mean in practice). Yet as time has gone on, I become more and more dubious about this type of change - the notion of spreading clergy around in a perfectly balanced distribution seems simply to be about managing the decline.

What, after all, will be the consequences of proceeding with this plan? We will be asking clergy (and bishops) to do more and more with less and less - exactly the situation that the teacher in the Guardian article is describing. We will end up either with ever-increasing levels of clergy burn-out; or with ever-increasing congregational decline and disillusionment; or, most probably, both. This is exactly the pattern of thinking that led us into our present problems, so why do we expect a different result from continuing with it?

So what is to be done? One answer is to 're-imagine ministry' - along the lines that Bishop Stephen is calling for here in Chelmsford Diocese. I strongly support what +Stephen is attempting to do, but I suspect that we are still not digging down into the real roots of the problem. Do we: change our understandings of priesthood; change our understandings of lay ministry; or - increase the numbers of clergy?

After all, one of the great challenges about 're-imagining ministry' is to make sure that we don't re-imagine ministry away completely. The reason why Killing George Herbert has always resonated with me is simply because the George Herbert model of ministry is so tremendously attractive. To be a pastor and a teacher building up strong relationships with a group of disciples - and through that to enable each of them to live out their calling with joy and giving glory to God - what priest could possibly object to that? If we are to have a truly enabled and energised, inspired and inspiring laity - is there not a role there for those whose job it is to help such a thing come about? That is, I am not sure that the answer to the problem of a shortage of clergy is to do away with such clergy altogether. The answer is two-fold, it seems to me - we need more clergy and we need to have a much clearer idea of what clergy are for.

In the secular world, to provide resources for training and development is straightforward and obvious. It is an investment in the future. The Church of England doesn't do this - and I sometimes wonder if there is something in our ecclesiology that says we are only allowed to take the bad bits of management practice and have to ignore the good. If we were serious about priestly ministry then we would invest a much greater proportion of our resources in training and developing priests - and we would then set those priests free to do the work that they have been called and trained to do. There are many ways in which this might be done. Personally I am coming around to the view that anyone accepted for training should be installed as a curate in a parish, with housing and a stipend, and then spend the next seven years doing 50% work in the parish and 50% formational training. I am very aware of the benefits of full-time residential training, but that model only really works with people who are single, and probably young as well.

More crucially, I believe that we need to make a decision about what we expect priestly ministry to look like. This is a long conversation but one key element of it, surely, has to do with the size of the congregation - that is, how many people is one priest expected to pastor? Bob Jackson's research pertains to this - for me, I would suggest a ball-park figure of around 100 as the limit for what one person can effectively minister to. Beyond that number the possibility of genuine relationships with each member of a congregation diminishes exponentially. If something like this is accepted, then it has a direct implication for the recruitment and training of clergy. If we have 10,000 people needing to be pastored, then we will need 100 clergy, and we will need to ask each of those 10,000 people to give 1% of their income in order to pay for them. All that is happening now is that we are a long way into the spiral of decline that spreading butter over too much bread inevitably causes. Put another way, we need to abandon the use of the Sheffield formula and its equivalents in working out how to deploy clergy.

Personally, I don't believe that this challenge can ever be met without at the same time addressing the folly of the parish share system. That is, without some sense of direct relationship between what parishioners give, and what they receive there will be no chance of increasing - that is, financing - the necessary numbers of clergy. Of course, this immediately runs up against some of the principal taboos of church culture - taboos which are, sadly, principally twentieth century in origin. After all, one of the roots of the blight of management culture across the different areas of our lives is the huge growth in centralised state control - and the parish share system is simply one aspect of that, as applied to the church. The sort of system that I would like to see - benefices tithing their income, then paying for the costs of their own ministers - is a massively decentralising process. I happen to believe, not only that this is the form that the Spirit prefers, but also that it is in profound harmony with the way that the world is developing at the moment. Yet like all release of centralised power, those who hold such power will not release it voluntarily, they will have to be persuaded by non-rational means.

Essentially, what I am describing is the shift from maintenance to mission - and in saying that, I am depressingly aware of what a cliche it is. I am sure this has all been said before, and much more articulately. So the question becomes - why has there been no change? Why is it that we are still circling the plug-hole? I believe that the answer is to do with our capacity to make decisions. To actually address these issues properly requires painful choices to be made, and it is the incapacity to make those choices which is our fundamental problem. I don't believe that we can escape from the truth that the church is in crisis because it has lost its spiritual moorings – and this has led to our culture being in crisis (see my book for more detail). We can't discriminate between good and bad management because that requires spiritual discernment – and in an environment that doesn't take spirituality seriously (the church) that sort of discernment is not encouraged as it is too challenging to the existing powers.

So what is to be done? I hear the words that say 'leave with the others', to which I want to respond to the church 'but you have the words of eternal life'. What can those who are loyal to the CofE actually do? That is, what do those who actually believe in the gospel as the Church of England has received it do when that very same Church becomes the obstacle to the proclamation of the gospel? I think that my heart's desire is to do the work of a Samuel, and change the structures in such a way that it becomes possible for the priests to do their job once again. Yet in my darker moments I wonder whether what is truly needed isn't a Samuel but a Samson - someone to pull down the pillars of establishment and leave nothing but rubble and dead bodies behind.

If I were Roman Abramovich...

2012-05-21T07:34:00.000+01:00

I'd keep RDM and let Drogba leave as a legend - along with half a dozen other squad members.
And then if I was RDM...
I'd make Terry a player-coach (simply because, politically, you couldn't sell him).
I'd make Lampard captain, Cahill vice-captain.
And I'd build the side around Torres - solid base, fast counter-attacks, Mata, Marin, Ramires - maybe Modric and Hazard as well - providing the ammunition.

I'd also make my kids ball-boys for the next home match...

What does the Bible say about homosexuality?

2012-05-17T10:07:00.000+01:00

Nothing. That is, the short answer to my titular question is: the Bible says nothing about homosexuality. This is because 'homosexuality' as a concept was developed in the nineteenth century, and the word 'homosexual' does not occur in the Bible, and Jesus never discusses this issue. What the Bible does discuss, in a small number of texts, are the ethics (or holiness) of particular actions. What I want to do in this article is go through three of the main relevant texts in turn but I will return to this first point at the end – the Bible doesn't say anything about homosexuality – because it is actually fundamental to the conversation which our church and society is having at the moment.

The first text to consider is Genesis 19, the sin of Sodom leading to their destruction in fire and brimstone. This is the story from which the word 'sodomy' derives, and it is a deeply unpleasant tale – and yet, it is also a tale that can be read in various different ways. In brief, two men – who are actually angels – come to stay with Lot. At night, the men of the 'city' (probably a village smaller than Mersea) surround Lot's house and tell him to cast out the angels so that the resident men can have sex with them. Lot refuses, the angels blind the men, and in the morning Lot escapes and the Lord destroys the city. Now, in our sex-obsessed culture, we tend to emphasise the sexual elements of this story and say 'this is all about how God hates homosexuals'. This is not the emphasis of the story itself. After all, if the emphasis was on bad sexual behaviour then Lot – who is the righteous man in the story – would not say to the men outside his house “Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them.” (Compare and contrast this story – where the daughters actually get away – with the similar story in Judges 19.22-29 which doesn't have such a 'happy' ending.)

So if the sin of Sodom is not principally about sexuality, what is it about? In a word, hospitality. What Lot says immediately after the offer of his daughters is “Don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.” Ancient near-Eastern culture was not obsessed with sex, as we are, but they were obsessed with the importance of hospitality, and the rights and obligations associated with it. It is this social regulation that the Sodomites were transgressing, and it was for their overthrowing of the norms of hospitality that God destroyed them. How can I be so certain that this is the right interpretation of the story? Simply because it is how Jesus himself understood it – see Matthew 10.14-15, when Jesus invokes Sodom in the context of talking about hospitality.

The next significant texts to ponder are from the book of Leviticus, which are very similar so I'll treat them together. Leviticus 18.22 says “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable ('abomination')”; Leviticus 20.13 says “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable ('have committed abomination'). They must be put to death.” The book of Leviticus is essentially a book describing how the Levites – that is, the priests – are to carry out the worship of God in the Temple, and how the Jews more generally are to achieve holiness. In other words, Leviticus cannot be understood separately from the context of ritual worship. For Christians, all of the theology in this text is subsumed into the 'New Temple' worship of Holy Communion, and so the specific legalities associated with the ritual worship in the Temple have been superseded by what Jesus developed. This is why Christians have no problem with carrying out many things also considered abominations by the book of Leviticus, such as eating oysters, or cutting men's hair. That is not to say that the book of Leviticus has no use for Christians today – on the contrary, I believe that a proper understanding of Leviticus would be the best safeguard for keeping contemporary Christian worship meaningful – but it is to say that these specific commands have no particular weight. A homosexual act is as intrinsically 'wrong' as eating shellfish or wearing clothes made of different fibres (like a polycotton shirt), no more, no less.

So what of the New Testament? It's fairly straightforward for a Christian to argue that we don't have to submit to Old Testament laws because we follow a God of grace and freedom, but what of particular relevant passages in the New Testament? The key passage to ponder is this one, from Paul's letter to the Romans. To put the passage in context, Paul is speaking to a Jewish audience in Rome, and he is listing all the ways in which the surrounding culture is decadent – in order to then make the point that his listeners don't have a leg to stand on, for whilst his audience has avoided some obvious and external immoralities, their hearts are full of judgement and condemnation of others, and that “There is no-one righteous, no not one” - which is why we have to rely upon a God of mercy and grace, and not on our own merits or achievements in avoiding obvious sins. However, that does not mean that what Paul describes as sinful aren't actually sinful! Having talked about the origin of bad behaviour in bad worship (ie idolatry – bad worship leading to bad behaviour is an axiomatic truth in the Bible) this is what he says: “... God gave them over to sinful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”

So what is it that Paul is denouncing? Remember the context – Rome, the centre of Empire – where there was a highly developed culture of temple prostitution. It is this bad worship which is Paul's target. For example, in Cybele's Temple there were male transvestite priests who had cut off their own genitals and offered themselves to men as part of the temple rituals. These rituals were essentially about fertility – using expressions of human fertility (ie what we might think of as 'exuberant' sexuality, orgies) to honour the gods of fertility in order to ensure a good crop and stave off hunger. The bad worship leading to bad behaviour – it is the entire package that Paul is objecting to. The question is: what does this have to do with homosexuality today? The short answer is – not a lot. I don't know many gay men who want to chop off bits of themselves in order to generate a more bountiful crop of wheat.

Now, to broaden out the discussion a little, I think it would be fair to say that the Bible does take sexual misconduct seriously – that is, there is such a thing as sinful sexual behaviour, and indulging in it threatens our relationship with God; the most obvious example is adultery, which it would be fair to say that God absolutely detests. Yet there seems to me to be a logical leap between saying 'certain acts are sinful' to saying, more broadly, 'homosexuality is wrong'. That is, there seems to be a confusion between what it means to do something wrong, and what it means to be someone. Which brings me back to where I began, which is that the Bible says nothing about homosexuality – which, I now confess, is ever so slightly misleading. For there are several instances when it talks about relationships between people of the same sex – not in the context of obsessing about sexual behaviour (remember, that is the hang up of our culture, not the Bible) – but simply in terms of celebrating what it might mean to honour a loving relationship.

The most prominent example of this is that of David and Jonathan. Some texts to ponder: “Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself... and Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself” (1 Samuel 18); “David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, 'Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, "The LORD shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, for ever"” (1 Samuel 20); “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women” (2 Samuel 1). Clearly with David and Jonathan we have an important relationship between two people of the same sex which was dedicated before God in the form of a covenant. There is no hint of disapproval in this story for the relationship between the two (except from Saul, but he's the 'bad guy').

The response to mentioning David and Jonathan in this context is often 'but their relationship wasn't sexual!' which simply reveals our own obsessions. Clearly it is possible to have a loving and affectionate same-sex relationship that is honoured by God, and that is fully Biblical. Is that compatible with a prohibition on particular sexual acts? Of course. Are those relationships which seek a blessing in church more like Jonathan and David, or more like the cult prostitutes in Rome? Perhaps readers can use their own judgement on that; I trust my own view is clear.

One last point, which is strictly for Christians. To my mind the biggest problem that compromises conversations on the topic is that we don't take baptism seriously. That is, for Christians, baptism is when we are set free from the law of sin and death (things like Leviticus) and enabled to live by grace alone. In other words we become members of a group of people who acknowledge a common lack of righteousness before God, a bunch of people who get things wrong and need forgiveness, mercy and grace from each other in order to progress. If we took our baptism seriously then, firstly, we wouldn't obsess about the sins that our fellow Christians may or may not be carrying out, and, secondly, we might take seriously the intention of those same fellow Christians to live out a life of holiness before God, doing their best to know him and to walk more closely with Jesus day by day. It is because we don't respect our fellow Christians' integrity that the wider culture no longer respects us, and sees us as obsessed with rules about what we can or cannot do with our genitals (or whether you need certain genital equipment to exercise leadership in a church). Obviously we need to obsess about these things because our Lord spent so long teaching about them. Jesus wept - at the graveside of a man he loved.

A few pointless thoughts about Hodgson's squad

2012-05-17T09:48:00.000+01:00

- I'm glad he's not taking Ferdinand; and I'm sure Sir Alex is too.
- I wouldn't have taken Terry either; it's been a long time building but this Chelsea fan would actually be quite happy for the club to sell him off to the Middle East in the summer. I deeply hope that CFC will win on Saturday night, but if that happens, the sight of him lifting the cup...
- I would have made Lampard captain - experience and form, proven performer when it counts.
- Not sure about Gerrard being captain - look at stats for his performances for Liverpool, he seems to intimidate the others - but that might not be a factor for England. Depends entirely on what Hodgson's plan is (see below).
- Downing? I'd rather have taken Joe Cole, who has had a good season playing on the left in France and has tournament experience (or Adam Johnson - presumably this isn't a first choice pick so we're looking at an impact player?)
- Forwards, hmm. I was minded not to take Rooney at all, but the reduction of the ban to 2 matches did change that calculation. Yes to Carroll, but Defoe? - the thing is, Hodgson clearly has a plan - and we don't yet know what that is. For what it's worth (not much) I'm glad Hodgson is the manager and most of the criticism of him is unmerited. Let's see where we are after Brazil 2014; he'll have my backing until then. Unless he sets us out in a 4-4-2.
- Given the squad, my choice for a starting XI in the first match (4-2-3-1): Hart; Cole, Cahill, Lescott, Johnson; Parker, Lampard; Young, Gerrard, Walcott; Carroll. That would be quite a decent side - but if we get to the quarter finals, I think it'll count as a successful start for the manager.

Two stories

2012-05-15T10:03:00.000+01:00

We all have voices in our heads. I think, though, that all the different voices resolve down to two - and they each have a story to tell.

The first story is 'you are not good enough' - you are a failure, an impostor, you do not belong here, go away, destroy yourself, cease to be a burden to the world.

This first story is the one that leads to depression and despair, to hatred and vengeance, to strife and division. The story teller is the enemy, the accuser, the voice of despite.

The second story is 'you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased' - I made you and I love you and behold it is good - come and enter into your inheritance as my child.

This second story leads to the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, gentleness, self-control and all the rest. The story teller is the maker of heaven and earth.

When we hear our voices, we need to decide who it is that is speaking, and which story they are telling. Most of all, when we realise that it is the first voice, we need to rebuke it and say 'Get behind me Satan, you do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men'. Actually, the best way to get rid of the first voice isn't the formal and stern rebuke, it's ridicule - the enemy really can't stand being made fun of, because it is the one thing that brings home to him just how ridiculously powerless he is. It is by continuously refreshing our memory and consciousness of the second story - and the second story teller - that we become infected with laughter and joy, and the enemy is sent scurrying back beneath his rock. We need to have the attitude 'was that your auntie?'

This is for someone particular in the parish, for other friends, for Dave Walker who did the wonderful cartoon at the top, and, of course, it's for me too.

Reviews of 'Let us be Human'

2012-05-12T16:16:00.000+01:00

Hopefully this list will continue to get longer. I'll update it as necessary.

At the Energy Bulletin review by Roy Smith"I would highly recommend this book to anybody seeking to explore the spiritual ramifications of the crises our industrial civilization faces. It is concise and well-written, and possesses the unique strength of being written by one of the few people I am aware of who has an equally solid grounding in Christianity and theology on the one hand and in the issues of resource depletion and the limits to growth on the other."

Jeremy Williams at Make Wealth History"If you move in mainstream Christian circles at all, you’ll know that Norton is swimming against the current here. In my experience at least, the church is no more aware of the growth dilemma than the general culture is. That’s a shame, because churches should be natural hubs for imagining an alternative lifestyle together – that’s pretty much what they’re for. Churches don’t build community, they are community. There’s a vital opportunity there if we can learn to see it, and Let us be Human deserves a bigger audience."

At Amazon.co.uk"In this brilliantly insighful book Sam takes us on a broad brush journey. He highlights the failings of our current culture and the failings of the Church to really engage with it... A definite 'Must Read' for anyone who wishes to be part of the emerging discussion surrounding what it means to be human and Christian in our time."

A comparison between my book and Tarkovsky's 'Sculpting Time' by Jonathan Evens at Between "both have been addressing the same issue; that only by becoming more distinctively Christian can we engage constructively with the crises of our times."

Mad Priest is nice to me"THE BOOK on the Peak Oil crisis and what Christianity's response to it should be. It's a serious book but it is perfectly intelligible to non-experts like me. In fact, that is the point of the book. It is designed to get us all up to speed on this major issue of our times."

It's available here, and it's very cheap on Kindle.

Population or congregation - where the ghost of establishment resides

2012-05-12T01:16:00.001+01:00

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.

What does the Bible say about...?

2012-05-09T12:51:00.000+01:00

After my article about gay marriage a number of people asked me to explain my understanding of certain biblical texts that applied to that topic. This I am happy to do, but I felt it would also be helpful if before doing so I took a step back and explained how to understand 'what the Bible says about' anything, as it is often the case that a disagreement about what the Bible says about a particular topic actually stems from a difference in how to understand the Bible as such.

The first thing that I would point out is that the question seems to assume that there is one single answer to the enquiry 'what does the Bible say about...?' This is a mistake, and it is a mistake with very particular Modern origins, which I'll explain below. One of the most important things to understand about the Bible is that it is a library of Holy Scripture – that is, there are many different voices within the Bible (even within particular books of the Bible) – and this is of God. That is, it is in recognising both what different books have in common, and where they disagree, that an individual Christian is enabled to come to a mature understanding of the text.

Let me give an example, which will hopefully not be too controversial. In the Old Testament there is a long-running tension between the priests and the prophets. The priests are those responsible for the correct administration of the cult (ie the sacrifices in the Temple) which were ordained by God in great detail in books like Exodus and Leviticus. The prophets are those who speak the word of God against the priests and people, and who criticise the administration of the cult in great depth. This is the tradition that has striking texts like this from Amos chapter 5: “I can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want.”

The art of understanding the Bible properly is to realise that in the interplay between different points of view lies the truth. Imagine that you come across a group of people having an intense conversation about a subject you know very little about – let's say it's about football tactics and whether the new England manager should use a 4-4-2 or a 4-2-3-1 in the forthcoming European championships (I favour the latter – but you don't need to understand why in order to get my point!). As you listen to the different voices you start to get a sense of what the different viewpoints are and then, as time goes on and you learn more and more, you start to develop your own perspective. However, unless through this conversation you also realise that there is a game called 'football', and that the purpose of the game is to win football matches (either through playing or coaching) then the point of the discussion is being missed. Someone might become a wonderful expert in the language of tactics, and be able to hold forth with great knowledge about the importance of the 'false nine' to modern football (eg Lionel Messi of Barcelona) – but this is just abstract unless there is a link to an actual game being played.

In other words, the Bible points beyond itself. The point of the Bible is not that we become experts about what the Bible says, but rather that we recognise what it is that is being talked about – and then get on with pursuing that (which is, for a Christian, all about getting to know Jesus and becoming more like Him). Buddhists would call this distinguishing between the pointing finger and the moon which is being pointed to, but the Christian tradition has its own way of describing the difference. In one of his many angry confrontations with the Pharisees, Jesus says “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!” - in other words, the Pharisees, despite their very great knowledge of Scripture, didn't realise what the ultimate point was. They were like football fans whose only knowledge of the game came from reading reports in the newspapers, and who had never actually seen a match played, let alone kicked a football for themselves.

This is why the Bible can't be assumed to have one single unequivocal thing to say about a topic. Sometimes God actually wants us to use our own judgement about a question – and a good example of that comes with the Council of Jerusalem, described in the Acts of the Apostles, which shows the early church deciding to dispense with some clear Scriptural commands about circumcision, because 'it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to them'. Do we take this as simply an amending of an existing legal process – which can then not be amended again – or do we take this as a worked example of the authority that Jesus has given to the church, and which therefore allows the church to amend what is acceptable over time? The answer given to that question will, of course, largely shape the answers to many other questions that arise in our common life.

I said earlier on that the idea that the Bible does have a single and unequivocal meaning is a particular Modern idea. Whilst it has some earlier roots, it really came to a head with the influence of something called 'Scottish Common Sense Philosophy', which was a philosophical school that initially flourished in the eighteenth century, and which had a major impact especially in the United States. This philosophical perspective taught that, with respect to the Bible, there was a clear and simple meaning associated with a particular passage that was open to any reader. There was therefore no need for a community to have any specified authority to determine the sense of any particular passage, all that was needed was the reader and their own Bible.

Now there are lots of things wrong with this perspective philosophically, which I won't go into, but there are also problems with it from a Christian perspective. The major problem is that it privileges a particular technology, in that it is only possible within a society that has invented printing. For the first 1500 years or so of Christian thinking, the Bible was something that was primarily read and interpreted by a community, not by individuals (indeed, the 'individual' is itself a post-Biblical concept!). The Bible was read out loud when the community gathered together (out loud because 'faith comes by hearing') and it was the community as a whole which then interpreted the meaning of what has been read. Furthermore, it is the community which decides what books (ie what Holy Scriptures) are included within the Bible in the first place. In other words, the long history of understanding the Bible in Christian practice has been primarily communal. The idea that it can be done on an individualistic basis is simply part and parcel of post-Enlightenment thought in Western society (which is why Fundamentalism – which is what Scottish Common Sense philosophy leads to – is also, rather ironically, entirely a product of the Enlightenment).

For myself, as an Anglican, I accept the Bible as having supreme authority, but the Anglican view is that such authority is necessarily mediated by a worshipping community (what we call tradition and reason). Whilst any individual thinker can have their own views and beliefs about what the Bible says, it takes the endorsement of the worshipping community to say whether those views and beliefs are correct or not. In what I write in further articles, I will be writing very consciously from an Anglican perspective – and next time, I'll talk about the texts which reference homosexuality in Scripture.

When will I ever learn?

2012-05-09T12:47:00.000+01:00

Whatever it takes to fulfil his mission
That is the way we must go
But you've got to do it in your own way
Tear down the old, bring up the new

And up on the hillside it's quiet
Where the shepherd is tending his sheep
And over the mountains and valleys
The countryside is so green
Standing on the highest hill with a sense of wonder
You can see everything is made in God
Head back down the roadside and give thanks for it all

When will I ever learn to live in God?
When will I ever learn?
He gives me everything I need and more.
When will I ever learn?

Faramir, Fraser and the folly of a fast church

2012-05-05T11:13:00.000+01:00

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.

Just a few songs

2012-04-30T15:00:00.000+01:00

This Cohen song is the one that I referred to obliquely yesterday:

One of the leading contenders for 'my favourite Show of Hands song':

The last song that I sang in church. Might sing another one yet.

And finally...

Address to West Mersea APCM 2012

2012-04-29T14:07:00.001+01:00

I hope you are sitting comfortably. On Easter Sunday this year I had the great privilege of presiding at a service of Holy Communion at the Methodist Church here on the Island. I came away with two somewhat contradictory feelings – the first was that our differences are really very trivial, the second was: I quite like our differences! And that's OK. Yes, it is a scandal that there are different churches and different denominations all proclaiming that they love the Lord in their own unique and special way – and yes this does very much cut across Jesus' own intentions I am sure – but actually, I'm not sure that this is a scandal that matters all that much in the end, not compared to so many other things that go wrong. What I mean is that – as I discovered through being chair of Churches Together In Mersea for four years – our capacity for working together and simply getting along does not depend upon the doctrinal discussions and debates that take place in the stratosphere – it simply means recognising our common faith in Christ alone, and then slowly, and patiently, working together wherever we can.

Another way of saying this is to say that our unity isn't something that we can achieve with our own efforts. Rather, our unity is already present – it is a unity which stems from our common baptism and our common confession in Christ alone – and our spiritual path is less to achieve unity than simply to recognise that it is already there – we don't have to try quite so hard; our strivings can cease.

I have become very fond of a cartoonist who calls himself the naked pastor, and some of his cartoons can be found in the Benefice Bulletin each month. One of his great passions is denouncing “vision”, and I am persuaded that, in the sense he criticises, vision is indeed a deeply damaging thing for a church to pursue. The naked pastor is drawing on some insights that were well articulated by one of my heroes, the German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book 'Life Together' – which does exactly what it says on the tin, in that it is all about what it means for Christians to live together. Listen to this:

“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own laws, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily.

And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day?

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together--the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship...”

I think that one of the reasons why this resonates so deeply with me is that I am a man prone to visions, of trying to fix things and put things right. What Bonhoeffer is articulating does not, I believe, preclude any attempt at seeking to reform or improve our common Christian life. Rather, what I believe is being described is the right spirit in which to proceed. That is, the right spirit for seeking to develop our common life has to begin by acknowledging the gift of God's grace in Christ alone – and that, as a result, we begin by responding and co-operating with what God is already doing. We do not have to work quite so hard; our strivings can cease.

I'd like to share another quotation with you that I have found valuable – this one much shorter! One of my favourite authors is the American writer Eugene Peterson – many of you will be familiar with 'The Message' which is his translation of the Bible, but most of his writings are about what it means to be a pastor, and I have found him tremendously insightful and helpful as I work out what it means to be a priest in the Church of England today. He is very fond of a quotation from the American novel Moby Dick. Now I should say that I have never read Moby Dick – it's been on my shelf asking to be read for many years – but I know it is about Captain Ahab chasing a great whale. The quotation which Peterson likes – and which he takes as teaching us something absolutely essential for what it means to be a Christian today – is this: “To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from toil.” In other words, if we are truly to carry out the will of God, we have to be rooted in quiet prayer and contemplation, in blessed assurance. We shall not find the will of God by striving through earthquake, wind and fire. Only when we hear the still small voice will we be able to know what it is that God is calling us to do. It is only then that we will be enabled to spend our labour on what actually does satisfy.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus tells us “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” I am starting to believe that when we find ourselves in a state of perpetual weariness, it is a sign that we may be trying too hard spiritually, and we need to remember to ourselves that we love a God of mercy and Sabbath; that there is nothing that we can do to make God love us any more than He already does – or, indeed, any less than He already does. One of the implications of what Bonhoeffer is describing – of accepting our fellow Christians as a gift to us, of realising that we don't need to achieve a unity but simply recognise the unity that already exists through our common baptism – is that it opens up a space for real and genuine love to emerge. That is, it helps us to love our neighbours as ourselves.

Over the last several years I have taken lots of weddings, and conducted lots of wedding preparation classes, and seen some marriages work, and some marriages fail. One thing that has really been brought home to me from seeing all this is that it is always a mistake to try and change your partner – that is, to try and force a different pattern of behaviour on them. The root problem, I believe, is one of a lack of respect. To seek to force a change in someone is no longer to treat them as a person; rather, they become a means to an end, whatever end that might be. I don't believe that it is wrong to seek change – but I believe that the way to see that change come about is first to pray, and second, to be the change that you wish to see – to model it, and show what it looks like.

I believe that the same thing applies in our common Christian life together. If we take our baptism seriously then we are yoked to each other in just the way that a married couple is yoked to each other – we are here for the duration. And no doubt it is true that just as within a married couple there are all sorts of ways in which the one spouse infuriates the other, so too there are ways in which we as Christians infuriate each other – and that has led over the centuries to the many different churches. Yet when our common baptism is respected – when the marriage vows are followed – then a wholly different quality of relationship becomes possible. Suddenly there is a safe place within which to grow as a human being – safe, because here there is at least the rumour of unconditional love. A love which isn't earned as a reward for good behaviour, but simply a gift, a grace. In other words, when we recognise our common baptism, and what it means, then we do not have to work quite so hard; our strivings can cease.

The implication of this, I believe, is that the fundamental Christian category is not whether you are a member of a church, good though that is; it is not whether you are a disciple of Jesus, good though that is; it is not even whether you are a believer, good though that is. I believe that the most fundamental category is the one set out by Jesus as recorded in John's gospel – which is that of being a friend. I believe that friendship is the most fundamental Christian understanding – a friendship which seeks what is best for the other simply because it is the best for the other. There is no ulterior motive. There is no working out of issues. There is simply a solidarity – a solidarity in suffering, a solidarity in celebration, a simple being alongside one another in sorrow and in joy.

In both our Ecclesiastes and Isaiah readings this morning there is mention of the joy that comes from simple fellowship: “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God.” We are greatly blessed in the provisioning of food and drink in this church community, and I do want to pay particular tribute to our social and catering committee, for all their hard work and the wonderful results – some of which we'll be sampling in a little while. One of my favourite moments in church life is the breakfast on the first Sunday of the month, when people from very diverse services sit down and eat together. That, I believe, is a great blessing, and I see it as having tremendous importance in our common life. Which is why it is so wonderful to be able to say that, very soon, the Lord being our helper, we will have a new kitchen in the church hall and so that element of our fellowship will be reinforced and strengthened. I should add – if we get permission to do the work this summer – I anticipate that the first time that it will be properly used is when Bishop Stephen comes to visit us in September for our Harvest festival. Which is somehow very appropriate, don't you think?

Of course, the good news on the new kitchen is simply a part of the good news on the financial front generally. Last year, in January, I called together all the members of this church for a service wherein I explained our financial situation. We were running in the red, and had been for several years. The situation was not sustainable – and had become a cause of significant concern. So we did two things. We launched an internal appeal to try and raise our income, coupled with a real look at where we might save money. And we also launched an external appeal to the community to help raise funds towards help with the fabric, joined with the launch of the Friends. I am very happy to be able to tell you that those efforts have been blessed by God, blessed beyond our expectations. Last year – with a very slight rounding – we broke even on our household costs, thanks to the increase in giving from this congregation. We broke even not even including a significant legacy that we received, which has been parked in a separate fund for a rainy day. Thank you for your generosity in such trying economic circumstances – and please don't stop! I believe that we are now on a sustainable path and I would like especially to thank our financial committee led by Roland for all that they have done to sort out our situation.

More widely, as I am sure you are all fully aware, our appeal to the community has been moving forward – and we are roughly a third of the way towards our eventual target. I would like, in this context, to pay tribute to Kathy Bowman-Dines, who has worked so very hard to get the Friends up and running, with such success both in terms of the events themselves and, of course, in terms of raising money for our necessary fabric works. There are many people who have helped the Friends, with their time and money and effort, inside the church and outside, far too numerous to list, but you know who you are, and I hope you also know that you have done a great service to this church and helped move it towards a happier future.

To talk about moving towards a happier future is implicitly to acknowledge a less happy past. Our reading from Ecclesiastes, famously, says that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. I do believe that church life moves in seasons, and my impression is that in this church we have been through a season of winter, which is now passing. I am aware of so many people who have received serious knocks, often in terms of health but also psychologically and spiritually, and I see the financial problems of last year as simply one symptom of a common crisis which touched on all aspects of our life together. I know how much of a struggle it has been for so many people, but I do believe that, as with our finances, so too with our wider life, as a community we are moving into a new season – a season of Spring and new life. Perhaps it was divine promptings that shifted this Annual Meeting to the season of Spring and Easter, when we can shout Alleluia to each other as we share in celebrating the resurrection of Christ. I do think it would be good for us to keep meeting in this season each year. I believe it sends out a true message of where we are – united in our devotion to the risen Lord who has conquered death, and in whom we might rest and find peace; for whom we do not have to work quite so hard; our strivings can cease. At the risk of breaking my own advice against visions, I do believe that we have a very great deal to look forward to, and that this church community can move forward not just with hope but with confident expectation of all that God is doing on our behalf, to bless each of us and to bless our common life together as a church. Rather like Moses I believe that I can see the promised land, and it isn't very far away. Yet, also rather like Moses, I do not believe that I will be able to get there with you.

After a lot of soul-searching, and having pondered and prayed for some time, I do believe that my time as your Rector is drawing to a close, and that you need a new Rector, a Joshua perhaps, to take you forward into a new season of your life together. I don't have anything established as yet – and it may well be some time before God actually shows me the place where he wants this slave to go – but I believe that my sharing this understanding with you now will help our on-going conversations and our common life. The truth is that I too am very tired – and as I've been saying, I think that this tiredness is a sign that I need to go home to God and find my rest in Him. I, too, need to cease my strivings, and find my rest in Christ alone. To go back to the Moby Dick reference, I do not know what sort of great whale God wishes me to pursue – or, indeed, if, rather than pursuing the whale like Captain Ahab, he instead wants me to be swallowed up by one and thrown up onto a beach somewhere – but I feel as if, in sharing this with you, I am recovering my spiritual balance. There is a modern Christian aphorism which I quite like – if you are going to learn to walk on water you need to get out of the boat. Well, I feel like I'm getting out of the boat, and I'm very nervous, but also excited to see what's going to happen.

I would like to return to where I began this morning, in talking about taking a service on Easter Sunday at the Methodist church; where the differences were so trivial. Our unity is something that is given to us in Christ alone, not in any effort or achievement on our part. When we can recognise this – and when we can recognise what it means for us simply to be friends in Christ – then we do not have to work quite so hard; our strivings can cease. The ground of our unity is our baptism and so, in accordance with the most ancient church tradition, in this great season of Easter, I would like to invite you now, my friends, please to stand, and reaffirm our baptismal vows.

For you and for many (on "lay" presidency)

2012-04-21T22:37:00.000+01:00

As this is again being discussed, I thought I'd bring it back to the top of the blog.

First posted July 2007, with a more personal follow-up here.

In the 'I confess' post, I said:

"I confess: that the idea of lay presidency appals me. It's either a redundant aim (because communion is celebrated by everyone) or it's simply an expression of immature and astonishingly impoverished theology. Priesthood is a differentiation sideways, not vertically, so what precisely is being objected to? I can't see this as anything other than being haunted by a 16th century ghost."

This has caused a bit of comment (off-line as well as on!) and it's certainly something which is being discussed here in Mersea. So I thought I'd expand a little further. Click 'full post' for text.

This is still in the style of summary points:

- the role of the ordained minister is not 'above' the people, which would undermine the priesthood of all believers, but 'alongside' the people - separated out to perform a particular role on their behalf - if they were all one part where would the body be?;
- if a bunch of Christians were stuck on the proverbial desert island without an ordained minister, then clearly it would be good for them to celebrate together; it is the community gathered which does the celebrating (even when not on the desert island) - but I would lay odds that they would choose one person to do it, and not just take turns (unless they were already formed in that theology!) - NB there's a thread in Lost that explores this, but I haven't finished series 2 yet, so I don't know where it's going;
- a community celebrating because there cannot be an ordained minister present is very different from a community celebrating because they choose not to value what the ordained minister represents (ie unity with the wider church) - one is acquiescence to necessity, the other is an elevation of separation;
- it is precisely that elevation of separation which is the core problem with lay presidency, so far as I understand it, ie it is a mark of the local community gathering all authority to itself, saying to all outside their self-defined boundaries 'we don't need you', whereas I see one of the essential tasks of the ordained minister as being to represent the wider church to the local community, and call it to account, not least through being the sign of fidelity to apostolic teaching;
- accepting ordained ministers is therefore accepting a wider church and all that that entails - it's the definition of catholic, in its proper sense, and it's the opposite of sectarian. It's about being a part of something larger than the individual ego, or even a gathering of individual egoes;
- the task of the ordained minister is balanced - to represent the wider church to the local and vice versa - and the ordained minister is the one who has overall pastoral and teaching responsibility within a particular community - presiding at the eucharist is the function and sign of that authority, not the source of it;
- the ordained minister therefore also has important disciplinary functions - eg the excommunication of unrepentant sinners; the rooting out of bad theology - which cannot be delegated - or is this also included in 'lay presidency'?!? I have visions of a church version of the grand Mexican Stand Off: 'I excommunicate you!' 'No, I excommunicate YOU!' 'NO, I EXCOMMUNICATE YOU!';
- of those whom I have met who advocate lay celebration, none actually want _anyone_ to do it, that is, they wouldn't be happy if a stranger walked in from the street; nor even if some particular known members of the congregation performed the duty (for various reasons). Moreover, the idea that the person doing it should be trained up to do it is uncontentious - and this leaves open the real issue which is about the laying on of hands by the wider church, and the value of sacramental theology as such;
- in other words, what is being objected to isn't the idea of some members of the community being allowed to preside rather than others, it's the idea that being ordained by the wider church body represents something important - and so we are back to the idea of the local congregation being an authority unto itself, without any accountability to the wider church, either in space or time;
- at bottom, my strong reaction against this notion is a belief that it is yet another example of the idolatry of choice that has infected Western society, whereby each person is their own little God able to muster tributes according to their own taste (much the most insidious form of slavery) and where worship simply becomes an agglomeration of common preference, leading to the ten thousand things (denominations) rather than a unity with a Body much greater than oneself. I think this is one of the core things that identifies me as 'Anglo-Catholic' - though this is supposedly 'whole-Anglican' theology;
- I find great comfort in the idea that my ministry and authority does not rest upon meeting the particular standards of a local community but is bound up with the wider church as a whole (as signified by the laying on of hands). Without this form of acknowledged authority it seems that each congregation goes its own separate way, in smaller and smaller splinters, in more and more egotistical forms (even when the egotism isn't exercised in a personal way, it is still a function of a theologically elevated egotism as such). One tyranny has replaced another (and the New Testament is hardly silent on the idea of ministerial authority). There seems to be no distinction between the idolatry developed in Western theology in the late Middle Ages, which separated priests from people, and the theology developed by the church - the same church that was inspired enough to put the Bible together - which progressively delineated who had authority to preside. Hence my comment that I see advocacy of lay presidency as "an expression of immature and astonishingly impoverished theology... I can't see this as anything other than being haunted by a 16th century ghost."

None of this is to say that an 'agape' isn't something wonderful, and to be encouraged, eg in small group ministry, only to differentiate it from 'Holy Communion' - that foretaste of heaven which is the celebration of the catholic church, local and universal. The ordained minister is the sign of that wider unity. 'Just' a sign? Only in the sense that the bread is 'just' a sign of the Body of Christ! It's not an accident that the idea of lay presidency is most closely associated with the least sacramental understandings of the Eucharist. If what happens in communion isn't ultimately that important, then it's not that important who presides - but if what happens in communion is a means of grace and essential medicine for the soul - then it's much more important that it is done rightly. "For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself" - and 'the body' here isn't simply the bread, it's also the communion of saints, in heaven and on earth.

Efficiency and resilience in the Church of England

2012-04-14T11:21:00.001+01:00

This is a line of thought prompted by the conversation about the structure of the Church of England (see Andrew Brown's article here). One of the key concepts in ecological thinking is the contrast between efficiency and resilience. An efficient system (or ecology) is one in which each resource is being utilised to the greatest possible extent. In contrast, a resilient system is one in which there are areas of under-utilised resource which stand the system in good stead when there is a particular crisis leading to a lack of availability of resources more generally. In other words, when a crisis comes, a resilient system is one that is able to bounce back from a shock, drawing on previously unexploited resources. An efficient system is more vulnerable to such shocks because it lacks those unexploited resources - it is like glass, robust in normal use but likely to shatter if those normal conditions depart.

The free market, of course, worships efficiency - that is, efficiency, obtaining the most value from a particular resource, is the structuring value around which economic activity orients itself. This can be seen quite explicitly in economic and business text books which use concepts like 'return on investment' to guide choices. If a company is able to become more efficient then that means it is able to generate a higher financial return for its shareholders (or more profit for the owners). Now there are questions here about different national cultures - for example, my understanding of the zaibatsu model in Japan (and the equivalents elsewhere) are that other values than simple efficiency can be employed by a company to guide their choices, eg long term growth of market share.

Be that as it may, the quest for efficiency is a hallmark of the particularly Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism, and it is this which governs the business culture in our own country. It is also this which guides the culture of managerialism, which brings me to the point I want to make about the Church of England. I hope that it is clear that structuring our activities in order to make them more efficient is not necessarily of God. After all, one way of understanding efficiency is to see it as claiming that nothing must be gratuitous, all must 'earn their way' - and of course, that is in profound contrast to an understanding of the nature of God which sees God as overflowing in abundance and generosity towards the creation. Historically, the Church of England has been a very inefficient but very resilient system, reflecting the diverse historical origins of the different elements within it - parish churches, cathedrals, university foundations, and so on. One might say that the inheritance of the Church of England is one that has emphasised the importance of the local and the different, the queer and the inefficient. This, I feel, is part of the glory of the CofE - that it is capacious and tolerant; one might say, all manner of folk can find a fold of her skirts in which to hide and thrive.

It is this that was understood to be at stake with the Covenant process - a fruit of a search for efficiency if ever there was one. After all, one of the concomitant passions of the drive for efficiency is the drive for clarity (the distinguishing of the brand over and against other brands) and the drive for effective managerial control (in order that the activities are congruent with the values of the people in charge). I am delighted that the Covenant process has been checked, at least for now, but the underlying pursuit of efficiency is still present, and that entails that other bitter fruits will be forthcoming. (A small example is the fuss about fees - see Justin Lewis-Anthony's article here; it cannot be separated from the George Herbert process either.) Digging down into the spirituality of this approach we have a desire to control the outcome, which is based upon a fear that all that seems to be going wrong will continue to go wrong, which is based in turn upon a loss of trust that God is the one in charge and able to redeem whatever we do in order that his purposes are accomplished. In other words, what we see in the Church's pursuit of efficiency is evidence that we have forgotten what it means to believe in God, and so we grab at the latest glittering fix on offer from the world - at just the time when the world is changing in the opposite direction! After all, belief in God is something that is worked out in practice, not simply in the privacy of one's own opinions and thoughts - a bad tree will bear bad fruit, and this is what we are seeing. None of this is to say that efficiency, on its own, is a bad thing - it is to insist that any efficiencies sought have to be placed into the context of the other values held by the organisation. We are to be more like the zaibatsu than Goldman Sachs.

The Church of England will only be saved by those who are not consumed with conviction about how to save it, and who sit lightly at the prospect of the Church of England not being saved - simply because they are utterly committed to the sovereignty of the living God, and they trust in His provision, rather than our own choices. Our future is going to be one that is local and catholic, not corporate and monotone. It is the desire that is wrong here, not any particular outcome, and we won't get anywhere until we give that desire a proper theological interrogation. Whether the theological resources of the Church are actually up to that task is, sadly, an open question at this present time.

Why is it a 'Good' Friday?

2012-04-10T09:50:00.004+01:00

Courier article

Why 'Good'? The simple answer is that the crucifixion of Jesus reveals the truth about the world – and the truth sets us free. I believe that what is Good about Good Friday is that on this day above all God is revealed as a God of love, that with this God there is no place for fear of punishment. There are lots of theories that Christians debate about how we are to understand this (it's technically called 'the Atonement') but I think CS Lewis put it best when he said: "We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself... "

Good Friday is really the culmination of something that I have been trying to describe through my last half-dozen articles – it is the climax and inevitable conclusion of living in a Fallen world. That is, it is because of our sin and brokenness that someone who was innocent ends up getting lynched. What makes Jesus remarkable is that he recognises what is going on and doesn't fight back. He recognises that what keeps the fallen system ticking over is the process of praise and blame, judgement and condemnation. As an innocent man Jesus had every right to retaliate against those who were accusing him, those who were beating him and flogging him. But he didn't. Instead he forgave them. In other words, what Jesus was doing was breaking the cycle of violence and pointing out that we didn't have to keep trudging around that path.

Righteous violence, after all, is what put him on the cross. It was the certainty of being righteous that gave each group of accusers their justification for putting Jesus to death. Whether that be the Romans, the religious authorities, the crowd or even the friend who betrayed him, there was always some more or less expedient rationale that could be deployed to make sense of doing something wrong. That is still the world that we live in. In effect, what happens on the cross is that judgement itself is judged, condemnation itself is condemned. The cross is the declaration that God is not on the side of those doing the denouncing, rather God is the one who is being denounced, the one who has offended the political authorities and the religious authorities and disappointed the expectations of the crowd and his friends.

When Christians talk about the cross – which is so central to our faith – this is what we are conscious of. Our own failures and brokenness, all the ways in which we have fallen short of God's intentions for us. Yet the thing is – it is level ground at the foot of cross. That is, we are all in the same boat; as St Paul puts it, 'We are none of us righteous, no, not one'. To come to the foot of the cross is, for the Christian, simply to recognise our own fallen nature, to see the consequences of that fallen nature, but also to recognise that God has taken those consequences onto himself, and that if we acknowledge this truth and let go of the compulsions and fears that lead us to judge and condemn each other – then we need have no fear of condemnation and judgement ourselves. This is the secret at the heart of the Lord's Prayer: 'forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us'. We just stand at the foot of the cross, not asserting our own goodness, but recognising the fate of goodness in our Fallen world.

Of course, if this was the end of the story, it would mean that the fallen world was all that there is – and that really wouldn't be Good. But I don't want to spoil the end of the story for those who don't know it... I'll say something about that in my next article.

How shall we clothe the naked CofE?

2012-04-07T10:56:00.000+01:00

Is Christianity in Crisis? No, not at all, but particular expressions of the faith might be - and the CofE is one such.

The analysis is so well-worn now as to have become banal - and I've indulged in it myself - but the more that time goes on the more I wonder whether the root problem is the loss of real faith in God. That is, we have bought into a sense that the numbers are the key thing that matter, and we then panic or plan on the basis of responding to those numbers, in line with our general characters and dispositions. Now, I'm not at all wanting to say that the numbers don't matter, what I am wanting to say is that numbers are not the one thing needful. Giving God all that we have to give, in heart and mind, soul and strength - this is the one thing needful.

In other words, if we start from a trust in a providential God, might not the utter disaster that has been the Church of England over the last forty years - utter disaster seen in terms of numbers, failure to evangelise and so on - actually be evidence of God accomplishing his purposes? That is, might it not be *God's* will that the Church of England has been brought low?

What, after all, might be accomplished by such a process? To lose all the trappings of power and respect - to be the object of repeated scorn and ridicule - to be reduced to begging for the means to keep our buildings open - to watch as successive generations turn away from an inherited faith - might this not simply serve to clarify our sense of priorities and enable us to return to the living God? Might it not simply be that the Church of England had become, by the beginning of the twentieth century, so enmeshed with blessing the business of the British Empire that God decided to withdraw his blessing from it? That the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar was the inevitable consequence of placing our faith in that which was not God - and then being disappointed when we noticed that He wasn't there?

In other words, might not the way forward be to remember that God is in charge all the time, not just when we are blessed by the obvious signs of His presence, and that the process that the Church of England has undergone - having her splendid garments stripped from her until she shivers naked in a cold wind - is precisely what we needed in order to be recalled to ourselves, and recalled to God? In other words, might it not be that we need to find more suitable attire for the Bride of Christ in this land - and might it not be that a simple linen shift is more suitable than royal robes?

So, enough with the metaphor already, what might this mean in practice? I think it means to return to trusting God - to rediscover what a living faith actually looks and feels like. To remember that worship is devotion and not entertainment, to remember that loving the neighbour means active service and not pious speech, to remember that the Church was built by Jesus for a reason and is not an optional extra that is acceptable so long as it can fit in comfortably with all the other priorities in our lives. To do this necessitates a theological renewal - for it is in our theology, and therefore in our preaching and teaching and (lack of) formation of our clergy that we have lost our way.

John Milbank's criticisms bear on this; I would very much agree that we need to renew the life of the mind, but I believe that this should not be in a Platonic academy but in the cloister, in and of the Eucharistic community (I have expanded on this at much greater length in my book). The church must stop sub-contracting loving God with our minds to secular institutions, and it will not find peace until it does. Until we are reclothed in the divine light, we shall continue to stumble, naked and ashamed, crying out to the secular scornful for pity, for we no longer even know who it is that loves us. We are like the disciples on Holy Saturday, confused and lost, not knowing where to turn, when in truth we already know what is coming. I have no doubt that the future for Christianity in England is a bright one - for us to share in it, we need to fall in with God's intentions not ours. So, come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us, and will heal us.

The stupid and ungodly culture of the Church of England

2012-03-31T12:16:00.002+01:00

I've been pondering two things - the failure of the Anglican Covenant process in the Church of England, and the fate of Rowan Williams. It seems to me that both are evidence that the culture of the Church of England is incredibly stupid and ungodly. As that will doubtless come across as needlessly confrontational, I had better explain what I mean.

Take the Covenant process first. Why were the Bishops so out of touch? Why was so much effort invested - in a frankly morally dubious fashion - by the institutional establishment in pushing through a measure where there was clearly no consensus? The disconnect between the hierarchy and the rank and file - and especially, the disconnect between the episcopacy and the clergy - should really be a wake-up call to the hierarchy to carry out a fundamental review of how Bishops work. As Bishop Alan has put it, the failure is at least an "opportunity to grow up, to take stock, and to get real. It’s very sad that a large number of bishops were out of touch on this one".

With Rowan the situation is rather different. My question here is - how can someone so widely acknowledged to have remarkable intellectual gifts and personal holiness be so distorted by the pressures of the office that his ministry is considered to be a failure? (I don't believe that it has been - I'm not even competent to begin the assessment - but it is the fact that it seems to be regarded so that I find significant. That is, why is it that holiness is not valued and celebrated? It is a symptom of our profound spiritual sickness.) It seems to me that a significant part of this is the culture inhabited by the hierarchy which prevents a genuine and honest conversation from taking place - homosexuality is the presenting issue but the issues go much deeper than that. Put simply I don't believe that it is possible to be a Bishop and to tell the truth (with some honourable exceptions).

The roots of this are manifold, but I want to draw attention to one in particular - and that is the cult of overwork that has taken hold in the Church, in mimicry of the surrounding culture. It is this cult of overwork and 'busyness' that I see as stupid and ungodly. It is this cult that has radically diminished the capacity of the bench of bishops to exercise holy discernment. After all, how many Bishops do you know that are not absurdly overworked? The research is pretty clear that overwork leads to a significant decrease in productivity and is self-destructive - but appreciating that requires the application of wisdom, and it is precisely that wisdom that flies out of the window when a person is exhausted. We cannot expect our Bishops to exercise holy discernment and godly leadership if at the same time we are also expecting them to work 70 and 80 hour weeks (the same thing applies to clergy of course).

Of course, as Christians we are more than usually vulnerable to this cult of overwork because it appeals to our co-dependent culture and masochistic minister syndrome - if we are not suffering then we are not being properly godly. This is pernicious nonsense, and rooted in some very bad theology (not least the doctrine of penal substitution). It is as if we equate the way of the cross with the decision to mimic the world's obsessions, when a proper understanding of the cross would lead to precisely the opposite conclusion. The development of the stipend was originally to allow at least one person in a parish to have time for prayer; it is a sad irony that, as with many salaried posts, it has become an excuse to extract the maximum amount of labour for the minimum amount of expenditure.

In Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant novels there is one character, a thaumaturge, who carries around a small child on his back, called a croyel. The child never grows up but does, periodically die - and is then replaced by another. As the story develops it becomes clear that the thaumaturge is simply siphoning off the life-force of each successive child in order to preserve his own immortality. It's a frightening image, but one that I feel captures the way that the church treats all those who work for it - full-timers, part-timers, volunteers. What we expect from our bishops and clergy is exactly what happened with Microsoft - use up the resource until it is a dry husk and then discard and replace with another. The needs of the institution - keeping the show on the road - is paramount, and the church continues to sacrifice its children on this idol's altar. It's long time past for us to stop.

What is your Church of England future?

2012-03-26T16:30:00.000+01:00

Originally posted April 6 2007. I thought I'd repost it following the rejection of the Anglican Covenant - this still represents my thinking.
I've been musing about Hampson's 'Last Rites' book, and in particular my development of his argument that the CofE will split into different factions (along the lines of the separate 'flying bishops' that we have already). A quiz below (hit 'full post').

Seems to me that three questions will reveal all:

1. Do you accept the notion of 'penal substitution' as an adequate account of salvation?

2. Would you receive communion from a female priest?

3. Would you receive communion from a gay priest?

If your answer is yes, no, no then you will be sympathetic to Reform, and join up with the 'Southern Anglican Communion'.

If your answer is yes, yes, no then you will be sympathetic to Fulcrum, and you will seek to keep the CofE on the road as far as possible.

If your answer is no, no, no then you will be sympathetic to Forward in Faith and you'll probably end up with Rome.

If your answer is no, yes, yes then you will be sympathetic to Affirming Catholicism and when the realignment comes you'll join in with TEC.

(There are, logically, other options, but not many people will buy into them!)

I think the issue is how long before TSHTF and the split becomes formalised. I wonder if there are plans already afoot?

Oh, and if it wasn't obvious already, I'm 'no, yes, yes'.

A few thoughts about gay parenting

2012-03-24T12:22:00.000Z

This is really by way of a supplement to my previous post about civil partnerships, and prostitutes getting to heaven before the priests.

My argument there is that we need to draw a distinction between sanctioning and blessing relationships which are purely about the relationship between the parties involved, and sanctioning and blessing relationships which involve the raising of children. I believe that the wider society has a much stronger interest in the latter than in the former. Whilst there is all sorts of Christian thinking that can be considered in such cases, my overwhelming feeling is that it is for the Christians concerned to establish what is right, between them and God (and if they explicitly seek God's blessing for their endeavours then the church should enable such blessings to take place). In other words, I think it is a matter of taking their baptism seriously, and trusting in the outworking of grace in the lives of brother and sister Christians.

The latter situation, involving the raising of children, involves more factors. Two things to say about this. First, I believe that - in so far as we can use such language - it is part of God's original intentions for humankind that each child is to be loved into being and raised by their mother and father, and that there is something inevitably biological and organic at the root of this. That is, any situation which results in a child not being raised in love by their biological mother and father is the result of sin somewhere along the line (not necessarily sin by the parents - it could simply mean that one parent has lost their life for any of a multitude of reasons). I think that it is important to hold on to this as the normative model for parenting.

My second point, however, is a recognition that, in our fallen world, we have to cope with many situations that fall short of the ideal. What then? Well, we make the best we can from what we've got. We patch up our families, putting together whatever pieces work in so far as we can do so. We recognise that things aren't ideal, and we rely on God's grace to plug the gaps. As I argued before, I suspect that it may be easier for God to do his work when people recognise their own brokenness rather than otherwise ("every heart to love will come... but like a refugee"). Given this, I don't have any problems with couples of all shapes and sizes and orientations adopting or fostering children. Seems to me that if there are loving homes available, and children in need of loving homes, then everybody wins.

However, I would add a caveat to this. If we accept God's intentions as normative - that a child is to be raised by their biological mother and father - then this places a question mark against all the ways in which there is a conscious choice to bring a child into the world without their biological mother or father being the ones to raise the child, eg through artificial insemination. That would seem to be to be actively choosing against what is normative, rather than simply coping with what is not normative and redeeming a broken situation.

So to sum up my present thinking:
- blessing of civil partnerships - big yes;
- adoptions by gay couples - yes (subject to same restrictions as heterosexual couples);
- actively choosing to bring children into world without mother and father - no.

Current ambiguity still to be explored - if a gay couple with children seek church blessing - does that mean 'gay marriage'?! I think not, but I still have further thinking to do on this...!

The prostitutes get to heaven before the priests

2012-03-24T11:44:00.000Z

Most people are familiar with the phrase 'the lesser of two evils'. What this means is that, in any particular situation, the choices available might all be objectionable in one way or another, and that includes the choice not to make any decisions at all and simply let events take their course. A classic example from the movies is 'Sophie's Choice' but they don't have to be that dramatic. It might simply be someone shopping at the supermarket and finding that there isn't enough money to get everything needed – so do we do without milk or eggs this week?

Christian thought describes this using the language of 'The Fall' – as I touched on in my article about assisted dying. As I said then, the importance of the story of Adam and Eve is not about particular historical events that may or may not have taken place several thousand years ago, but about the nature of the life that we are living today. As a result of living in a Fallen world, we are often in situations where there is no right answer and there is simply the choice between different evils.

There is a lot of ethical thought which the Christian tradition draws on when considering these questions (it's called 'casuistry'), but such thinking is not distinctive to Christianity. It is shared by lots of other ways of thinking, especially within governments, where it is occasionally admitted to (it's called 'utlitarianism' – the greatest good of the greatest number). What is distinctive to Christianity is an understanding that the lesser of two evils nevertheless remains just that: evil.

The way this works is to recognise the difference between the choice that is being made at any one point in time, and what is actually right and good from God's point of view. In other words, if someone is forced to go without either eggs or milk in the supermarket then their family is going to suffer from the evil of deprivation. This is not God's intention for that family. Therefore, even though a 'lesser of two evils' decision might be made between eggs or milk – and even though that decision could be readily defended by the casuists and the utilitarians – it is still a decision that is a 'wrong'. Why is this distinction important?

Well, the huge benefit that comes from treating such decisions as instances of continuing evil is that we do not lose our moral moorings completely. To recognise that having to choose between milk and eggs is an evil is a way of holding on to the notion of social justice, and therefore it provides fuel and energy to all those who seek to help build a society where families don't have to choose between milk or eggs. It allows us to hope and long for a better world.

To use a sailing analogy, it is the difference between working out the best immediate course to follow given local conditions of wind and tide, and knowing the eventual destination. Without having an eventual destination in mind, the sailor simply runs with what seems best at the time. With an eventual destination in mind, course corrections can occur over time, and tacking in the 'wrong direction' can be recognised as a necessary evil on the way to the eventual safe harbour.

Without the ability to retain a sense of lesser evils still, nonetheless, being evil, we soon lose our sense of any moral fabric at all. A good recent example is a philosophical paper arguing for the legitimacy of infanticide. When the laws around abortion were changed in the 1960s, the argument put forward was that it was a lesser evil to have safe and legal abortions than to have illegal, backstreet operations which put the lives of young mothers at serious risk. That makes sense – it probably is a lesser evil. Yet what has happened is that, without the acknowledgement that such abortions remain an evil, abortion has become just another lifestyle choice, and the logical consequences are now being seriously argued for – that where an infant is inconvenient, it is not wrong to kill them. Such are the depths to which our society has now sunk, simply because it has lost any sense of where it is going.

Which brings me to the nature of grace and redemption. As I said in my last article, I'm in favour of blessing civil partnerships in church, but I'm not in favour of 'gay marriage'. That is simply because I see the right way to bring up children as being by their natural parents. Call this the 'ideal'. What happens, however, when – as inevitably happens in our fallen world – such an ideal outcome is impossible, either through death, or divorce, or desertion? Well, then we are in the midst of our choosing whatever is the lesser evil, and those lesser evils can be seen all around us, functioning more or less well. I know of many cases where broken families are put back together with others, and where real security and love can become possible again. I've even been privileged enough to speak God's blessing in such situations, to allow a second chance and a remarriage in church. This is what Christians call redemption. Redemption is simply when God takes something which we have broken and builds something good out of the pieces. It is not an endorsement of what has gone wrong before; it is not saying 'you were right to choose the lesser evil'; it is simply God saying 'I am not going to let you go and I will work with you to bring something good out of this situation'.

Which is how we are to understand what Jesus did. If we look at Jesus' own ministry, he was normally to be found amongst those who don't fit, those who are broken and very aware that they don't meet the standards of what is socially acceptable. Why? My sense is that Jesus spent his time with those who have experienced pain and brokenness for the simple reason that they didn't indulge in the illusion that they were perfect; rather, they were the ones that were extremely conscious of their own failures, the ways in which they fell short of God's intentions for them. They knew that their choices of the lesser evil were still evil – and so they longed all the more for their eventual destination, when things would finally be put right. In contrast, the ones that Jesus criticised the most were the ones who believed that they had all the answers, and that they were 'right' – in other words, that their choices of lesser evils were not evil, and so they felt able to be self-righteous, and they used the 'ideal' as a club with which to beat all those who fell short. That is why Jesus is so astonishingly abusive to them – they had become vessels of merciless judgement rather than grace. There are, of course, those with the same attitudes today.

There is a wonderful Leonard Cohen song called 'Anthem' which expresses this eloquently: “Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in”. The light gets in, because it is those who are broken who recognise the need for genuine non-judgemental love, love which gives without a thought of receiving, love which sees what is wrong but loves anyway, love which can redeem what has gone wrong and graciously build something new. This is what Jesus offered, and that's why I try and follow him. Then Jesus explained his meaning to the religious authorities: “I tell you the truth, corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom of God before you do.” (The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, verse 31)

Going to Eli - the tension between the institutional and the vocational

2012-03-17T10:17:00.000Z

The prophet Samuel is called at a time when 'the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions'. Yet clearly the institutional life of the religious establishment continues as before - Eli continues to minister at Shiloh. When Samuel hears the call from God, his instinct is to go to Eli, for this is the way in which his understanding of God has so far been formed. Eli's reaction is to tell Samuel to go back to sleep. It is only Samuel's persistent response to God's calling that breaks through Eli's habits and assumptions, and then Eli is able to genuinely minister to Samuel, giving him the correct guidance, and midwifing the birth of Samuel's own distinctive prophetic ministry - a ministry that begins with the pronouncement that Eli's sons, faithless priests at Shiloh, would soon be dead.

There is much that is worth pondering in this story; what I would like to tease out for now is the tension between the requirements of the sanctuary, and the requirements of responding to God's call - the tension between the institutional and the vocational.

The circle on the right represents all that it means to respond to God's call to minister in his name; to find life in serving him and become the person that God calls one to be. It is the path of life in all its fullness. The circle on the left represents all that it means to serve a particular religious institution, whether that be the sanctuary at Shiloh or the church today. Clearly it is God's intention for those circles to harmonise, so that those called by God to minister in his name are enabled to do so through the life of the institution.

Sometimes, however, God's intentions are not fulfilled. Sometimes the institution develops in such a way that the glory of the Lord departs from a place or institution. When this happens, continued service to the institution is not necessarily what is called for from the ministers. To do so is to become a Pharisee, one whom Jesus described as those that "nullify the word of God for the sake of [their] tradition." Clearly this was the situation with Samuel, when the word of the Lord was rare. In such a situation God calls forward the prophets - those whose awareness of vocation is so distinct that they are enabled to speak the word of God independently of the institution, and to criticise the institution from God's point of view. Put simply, when an institution falls away from true worship, it moves to the left of the picture; in response, God calls prophets to return the institution to the right of the picture. The role of the prophet, paradoxically, is to make it possible for the priest to do their job.

The place of the prophet is not a comfortable one. By definition, the prophet's role is to come into conflict with the institution, to repudiate its present practices and call those within the institution to repentance. The temptation for the prophet is to collapse into cynicism about the institution, to relish the pronouncements of doom against it, yet to do so is to fail in fulfilling God's purpose. The role of the prophet is to build up and edify the church, not to tear it down. It is to heal the church and bring it back to a living and active faith, not to arrogate to itself a role as judge and executioner. This is why Jeremiah is so archetypal - his love for the people of Israel abided throughout his ministry.

Where are we now in the Church of England? I am aware of far too many cases where the priorities of the institution have been catered for at the expense of individual vocations. When this happens, the minister either endures a life of quiet desperation or else falls out of ministry completely, normally through ill-health of one sort or another, or early retirement, or by seeking refuge in a non-parish role (the numbers of which multiply exceedingly). This is part of the inheritance of Anglican Christendom - Herbertism - and this is what has to be repudiated.

What, specifically, might this mean? I think, for me, it means questioning the perceived institutional needs, in the name of God. For example, the financial predicament of the Church of England, linked to the ongoing decline in numbers, provokes mortal terror in the heart of the existing establishment (apparently). There is then a subsequent push towards growth, using (often) business and management techniques - for they, obviously, are the very models of successful institutions. I see this as 'going to Eli', when what the church most needs is to say 'speak Lord, for your servant is listening'. That is, the very root of our problems is a turning away from God and a being captured by worldly agendas. More worldly concerns will not lead us out of our morass. More visions and agendas and bright ideas are not what we need. Our path is and can only be one of renewed faithfulness and humble waiting upon God. It may be that in his infinite wisdom God has decided that the particular institution called the Church of England has outlived its usefulness as a vessel for enabling the spread of the gospel. I hope not - but the only hope for the Church is if we return to our spiritual centre, and remember what it means to be human.

The fate of a holy man in the Church of England

2012-03-17T08:45:00.000Z

This is by way of some brief thoughts about Rowan's resignation:

- I think I'm as delighted by his resignation as I was by his original appointment; principally because I believe he has earned the right to some happiness (language that I'm sure he'd repudiate, but I think it's true nonetheless);
- for me, the high point of his ministry was the visit to Zimbabwe - some clear and courageous leadership, with an unambiguous meaning;
- whereas the low point, and the tragedy of his time, was his treatment of Jeffrey John. I think that the worst general consequence to this was that it obscured the truth about the power struggles going on, and enabled a continuing aversion to honesty by the house of bishops. We are way past the time when an honest and adult conversation should be had, and the continuing deceit on this issue repeatedly damages the church. Rowan, on principle, placed unity ahead of truth, and we are still dealing with the consequences of that decision (I think it is also the principal ground for why the Covenant will likely be rejected in England - Rowan's natural constituency doesn't trust him, and therefore it);
- Rowan has many immense gifts, gifts which are much more apparent on a personal level than when mediated by distance or writing. What he has not had is 'serpent wisdom', and I would associate this with his lack of parish experience. By his own life and witness he has called the church to be more faithful; by his unworldliness he has allowed the bullies to dominate. Pious language has its place but we also need to recognise our fallen context;
- in sum, what I see in Rowan's ministry is the fate of a holy man in the Church of England. Misused and abused - and bullied into collusion with the misuse and abuse - we didn't get the best of him, for the simple reason that as a whole church we have lost sight of the one thing needful. So alongside the delight for him personally is an immense sadness for what might have been.

Tell me again - Leonard Cohen and the problem of suffering

2012-03-09T13:58:00.000Z

Long time readers may recall a long and eventually fruitless argument I had with Stephen Law about the problem of evil. My concluding thoughts are here, and a link up is here.

Time and reflection haven't changed my thoughts much. I still think that the 'answer' to the problem of suffering is a life lived, and that the intellectual analyses rather miss the point. Most crucially, I believe that the essential path is to be like Job - to tell God that you have a bone to pick with Him - but to accept the answer that isn't given, and pray anyhow. Or, as Elie Wiesel describes, "It happened at night; there were just three people. At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than ‘guilty'. It means ‘He owes us something'. Then we went to pray."

I'm listening to Leonard Cohen a lot at the moment, and this theme runs through so many of the songs - I see Cohen as articulating the only faithful response that is possible. Consider this:

I don't smoke no cigarette
I don't drink no alcohol
I ain't had much loving yet
But that's always been your call

or

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can't move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began

The troubles came, I saved what I could save
A thread of light, a particle, a wave
But there were chains so I hastened to behave
There were chains so I loved you like a slave

And most clearly of all, this:

First official review of my book

2012-03-09T08:08:00.002Z

"I would highly recommend this book to anybody seeking to explore the spiritual ramifications of the crises our industrial civilization faces. It is concise and well-written, and possesses the unique strength of being written by one of the few people I am aware of who has an equally solid grounding in Christianity and theology on the one hand and in the issues of resource depletion and the limits to growth on the other."

I say: thank God the first one was so positive; it'll set me up for the later ones! Much gratitude to Roy Smith for his kind words. Full review here at Energy Bulletin.