According to Associated Press Religion Writer Richard Ostling in Canadian Church Nixes Gay Marriage Issue the Canadian General Synod will consider an alternative proposal to the one originally scheduled for a vote tonight.
A proposal authorizing Anglican Church of Canada dioceses to provide blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples was pulled Wednesday, just hours before a scheduled vote on the matter at a national church meeting.
The move reflected caution and confusion among church delegates over the impact the go-ahead would have on the Canadian church – and internationally in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion of which it’s a part.
It remained possible that liberals would try to restore the original proposal to allow “local option” on gay policies, meaning each diocese gets to decide for itself whether to allow the blessing ceremonies.
A revised proposal calls for a two-year study of whether same-sex rituals are “a matter of doctrine,” delaying action till the next national meeting in 2007. That measure appeared to be gaining momentum on Wednesday afternoon.
If the 2007 meeting decides doctrine is involved but wants to allow same-sex unions, that would require amendment of church law at two consecutive meetings – further delaying any approval until at least 2010.
But according to Oliver Moore in the Toronto Globe and Mail in Anglican activists water down same-sex motion the original proposal has not been withdrawn, but draft amendments have been submitted.
0 Comments“It was actually the same people who moved the original motion,” Anglican spokeswoman Lorrie Chortyk told globeandmail.com. “A layperson from the diocese of Toronto and it was seconded by the Bishop of the diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.”
Ms. Chortyk denied reports that the original motion had been discarded because of its divisiveness.
“They haven’t discussed it all. It’s happening tonight from seven to nine,” she explained in a telephone interview from St. Catherines, Ont. “The original motion hasn’t even been presented yet. So nothing’s been tossed out or decided.”
Ms. Chortyk said that the 300 delegates at the meeting will have the chance Wednesday evening to vote first on whether to accept the motion as amended. If they do, it will be discussed and then voted upon.
If not, the original motion called that the issue be left to the discretion of the individual bishops.
In comments earlier Wednesday, the new head of the Canadian church had predicted that the original motion wouldn’t survive the day.
“There is a motion before the synod and discussion goes on through the day,” Primate Andrew Hutchison told CBC Newsworld early in the morning.
“But I think it’s quite unlikely that the motion will survive in its present form. It’s been subject to a number of amendments and I think, in the final analysis, we may end up voting on quite a different motion.”
Updated 6 pm London time
Later today the Canadian General Synod will decide what to do about same-sex blessings. (Internet live coverage here.) Official synod background paper here.
News Release: Anglican debate on same-sex blessings opens with a plea to delay decision
This event is discussed in British newspapers, two of whom have correspondents on the scene:
Telegraph Jonathan Petre New liberal primate as gay vote approaches
Guardian Stephen Bates Church faces split on gay blessings
Canadian reports:
Toronto Globe and Mail Debate shows Anglicans split on gay unions
CBC News Decision day for Anglican same-sex unions
Reuters:
Canadian Anglicans to vote on same-sex blessings
Associated Press:
Canadian Anglicans’ new leader notes complexities on eve of gay showdown
The Canadian General Synod has elected Andrew Hutchison as the new Primate of Canada.
Official press release: Archbishop Andrew Hutchison of Montreal elected 12th Primate of Anglican Church of Canada
Anglican Journal:
Synod elects Montreal archbishop as primate
Reaction to the election of Archbishop Andrew Hutchison as primate
New primate’s interest in peacemaking runs deep
Associated Press via the Guardian: Canada’s Anglicans Pick Liberal Leader
Toronto Globe and Mail: Anglicans pick trailblazer to lead flock
Toronto Star: Anglicans pick liberal as leader
CBC News: Anglicans choose leader who supports same-sex unions
1 CommentThe 2004 General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is meeting now. Their convention website gives detailed coverage including webcasts, and the Anglican Journal reports from the convention are posted here. The webcasts all are in .wmv format (Microsoft Media Player).
There are news reports today in two British newspapers:
In the Guardian Stephen Bates reports Canada’s Anglicans debate blessing of gay unions.
In the Telegraph Jonathan Petre says Williams envoy hopes to turn gay marriage vote.
Both these stories report the speech made to the synod by Gregory Cameron, who is secretary to the Lambeth Commission.
This speech can be seen and heard on a recorded webcast downloadable here, but as this is a 7.5M download, a full transcript also appears below.
Also below that is a copy of the relevant portion of the Presidential Address (full webcast is 13.7 Mb, downloadable here) to which reference is made several times in Gregory Cameron’s remarks.
Update 11 June Official version of this speech is now on ACO website here.
Some Canadian news reports:
Toronto Star
Anglican schism feared over same-sex blessings
Anglicans clear way for vote on leader
Montreal Gazette
Gay Anglican priest elected to high post at synod
Vancouver Sun
Anglicans elect gay B.C. priest to Synod
And an internet naming angle reported in the Anglican Journal:
Who owns the name ‘Anglican’?
The photographs of American soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq gave me pause for all sorts of reasons, not least because some of the soldiers are Christians.
It has been an interesting turn of events that, while I was growing up, my teachers were predicting the end of religion. Belief in God was a throwback to magical thinking and feudal society, so I was taught. Yet, it turns out these days, religion is as much of a force in world events as it has ever been.
I think that blaming soldiers for abuses is to treat the symptom but not the cause. Soldiers are everything and nothing; we have no idea how they are prepared, if at all, for the complexities of the roles they are expected to fulfil.
What I have found deeply troubling is reading how fundamentalist Christianity has permeated the centres of power in the United States.
The absence of any US commitment to environmental politics, for example, can be traced to a deeply held belief in the current administration that, if Jesus is coming back to judge the world and reduce it to a cinder, why bother saving the rain forest? The same idea of judgement encourages a sense of the world being divided into the saved and the damned, the good and the bad: we are good, and all the evil in the world is out there somewhere.
Once you take on this mindset, then the abuse of prisoners follows from this. The only circumstance in which abuse can be justified is that they are the enemy and they represent all that we consider to be evil. Once you’ve made that decision, the rest is easy, they have no rights, they can be treated however we feel like, they deserve whatever they get, we are the righteous, we are the chosen. It doesn’t matter if you lock suspects up in Guantanamo Bay for two years with no basic human rights.
Keeping all the evil in the world Out There somewhere is very comforting. People have grown huge church congregations by gathering those huddled together, set apart from the evils of the world. I want to take a different Christian view.
Deep at the heart of Christian faith is a view of life from the perspective of the victim. Imagine how Christian faith looks to the prisoner on the receiving end of a GI boot. Maybe two years ago he was on the receiving end of one of Saddam’s boots, now it’s a Christian one. How do we look to them, what must they make of the wonderful new world and values that liberation has brought.
Christianity says that it is possible to do something about the evil in the world. You don’t stop evil by deciding it is only to be found somewhere else, and that its source is somebody else. When Christians gather to worship, we routinely make the space to consider how we look to others, and to allow God to show us the evil within ourselves.
I can say, and I believe, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man, and I don’t expect anyone to disagree with me. But I can keep saying that, and the world doesn’t change, we just feel cosy that the evil is being committed by someone else.
What happens if I ask what an Iraqi prisoner sees when he looks at me, or looks at people who act on my government’s behalf? What does he think of the values of my world, as he sees them acted out on him? What happens if I ask whether there is any truth in what he describes when he looks at my world? And what can I do about it?
5 CommentsUniversity Sermon 2nd May 2004 preached by Revd Dr Giles Fraser
University Church, Oxford
In the years leading up to 1519, Martin Luther experienced what might be described as both mental breakdown and theological breakthrough:
“I did not love God” he said “I hated the just God” and was indignant towards Him, if not in wicked revolt, at least in silent blasphemy.”
Martin Luther’s admission that he had come to hate the God in whom he believed sparked a theological revolution that was to transform the political geography of Europe. What was it that he hated? For Luther, service to a God who demanded human beings earn His love had become service to a heartless despot, impossible to please. Consequently, the confessional had become a private hell of never being good enough, of never earning enough merit to satisfy the unattainable demands required for salvation. This was the shadow-side of the Pelagian’s breezy moral optimism. Luther’s deep sense of the extent of human inadequacy made him appreciate that a God who dealt with human beings strictly on the basis of merit, strictly on the basis of what they deserved, was always going to be a God of punishment. Rowan Williams writes: “this experience was an experience of hell, a condition of moral and spiritual hopelessness. The God who presides over this appalling world is a God who asks the impossible and punishes savagely if it is not realised”. In the years leading up to 1519, Luther came to see his former understanding of Christianity as inherently abusive, and the psychology of the confessional as a destructive cycle whereby the abused child constantly returns to the abusive heavenly father for comfort.
In exposing this cycle of abuse Luther blew apart the theological establishment. Parallels with arguments that are now transforming the political geography of Anglicanism are remarkable. For the debate about homosexuality is a great deal more than a debate about sex. It’s a debate about the nature of God’s love for human beings that has much in common with debates that drove the Reformation. For the message the Church has given to gay Christians is the message Luther came to see as inherently abusive: God does not love you as you are – you need to be completely and fundamentally – and perhaps even impossibly – different before He will love you.
Consider the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster’s advice to gay Christians that they should find a way of being cured of their homosexuality. Having investigated allegations, the Crown Prosecution Service decided his comments did not amount to a prosecutable offensive – the Public Order Act of 1986 only applies to the incitement to racial hatred. Nonetheless, his remarks deserve the deepest theological censure. For gay Christians who have tried to become acceptable to God by subjecting themselves to electric shock therapy, or by being bombarded with pornography – thus to “cure” themselves of homosexuality – have been forced into precisely the sort of private hell Luther experienced in the confessional. The Bishop of Chester’s theology serves only to describe a cruel and abusive God who cares little for the emotional or spiritual welfare of His children.
18 CommentsWhilst on holiday in Spain I had the opportunity to see what local papers were saying about the recent ban in Barcelona on bullfighting. The very idea that Spain might be banning what the world had thought of as its national sport seemed almost impossible — that is, until you remember what they paid for David Beckham. Maybe bullfighting isn’t the draw it was, either for tourists or locals.
The press began by noting that cock fighting, bear baiting, bull baiting and dog fighting were, like bullfighting, once far more widespread, but across Europe a growing horror of such cruelty to animals had gradually reached everywhere.
The bull doesn’t naturally fight. It’s a gentle herbivore, and, as a domesticated animal, has been bred over hundreds of generations for its gentleness. All idea of fighting is foreign to it. The cows allow us to milk them, and cattle have been our best friends for thousands of years. It doesn’t ‘fight’ at all until lances have been hurled into its back. There is no contest in taking a sword to such a creature. It’s like taking a machine gun to a boy who throws stones.
In Spain, bullfighting had become identified with extreme right wing, oppressive government. It had come to symbolise the oppression of ordinary people, of minorities, of those who were different. So, it was unsurprising that the Catalans, whose language and whose culture had been suppressed in Franco’s time should see themselves as such an minority, and side with the noble, suffering bull, rather than with the murderous weapons of the bullfighter in his suit of lights.
Oppressive regimes glory in portraying punishment and killing as a sign of their power. This is what was at the heart of the circuses of ancient Rome. Ritualised execution in such a state could be the fate of anyone who was different, as Christian martyrs of the first, third or 20th century have testified.
Sports which involve killing brutalise those who take part, and all those who watch.
Now, the Catalans appear to have had enough. In a secret ballot which probably surprised everyone, they outlawed the old national sport. I expect they will be followed by similar votes from people in the other marginalized areas of Spain, and eventually the whole nation will turn against the blood lust of this barbaric sport.
And when they do, we shall need to ask ourselves whether, in order to demonstrate that ours, too, is a civilised society, and part of a modern Europe with decent values, we should ban the sport of hunting wild creatures with dogs.
8 Commentsinclusivechurch.net has announced plans to observe 20 June 2004 as Inclusive Church Sunday. Details of the plans can be found here.
The arrangements include an order of service for a liturgy are built into Common Worship Order One, with Eucharistic Prayer G.
There are also sermon notes prepared for inclusivechurch by Canon Jeffrey John.
0 CommentsOnly the Telegraph could sustain the St Albans story into another Sunday.
Evangelicals threaten to ‘ruin’ C of E over gay canon which begins:
Evangelical Anglican churches are threatening the Church of England with financial ruin in protest at the appointment of Canon Jeffrey John, a homosexual, as the Dean of St Albans Cathedral.
The BBC’s Sunday radio programme took a broader view, with:
Deans
Several cathedral Deans have been lively characters with a national profile. And colourful deans aren’t just the stuff of church history: as Christopher Landau has been finding out, even in Anthony Trollope’s fictional town of Barchester, controversy surrounded a dean’s appointment.
Listen (5m 31s – Real Audio)
Anglican Mainstream the conservative evangelical campaign organisation has changed its mind about the acceptability of Jeffrey John’s appointment as a cathedral dean. (Earlier it had issued this statement.)
Yesterday, it issued a Press Release and a Full Text of Response.
Other extreme evangelical groups have also issued statements:
Church of England Evangelical Council
Reform
Church Society (Note: this is a pdf file; an html copy for TA readers is here.
Church Society has also issued a more detailed document, also as a pdf file, but similarly archived here.
As this campaign appears to be based on what was said in St Albans on Monday, here are the detailed links to transcripts of the event:
Statements made at press conference, Monday April 19th
Extracts from press conference: ‘gay marriages’
And for completeness, here is the letter sent by the Bishop of St Albans to all his clergy (including David Phillips) and the diocesan announcement of responses to the appointment from diocesan officials and others.
0 CommentsSince last Tuesday there have been further reports in the local St Albans papers, and in the church press, all listed below. Coverage of the story outside the UK has been very limited, consisting mainly of copies of the AP story linked earlier.
Also, we failed to list the Guardian’s leader comment from Tuesday, Evangelical veto which concludes with this:
The subdued reaction to Dr John’s appointment suggests that a sobering shame has descended on his opponents after the excitements of last year. That is welcome, if surprising: they had seemed shameless in the heat of the campaign against him. But it does not undo the damage done last year, when it was established that the Church of England is in the last analysis controlled by the large evangelical churches which consider themselves its paymasters.
No one can now be appointed a bishop against their veto, backed up by the threat of financial sanctions. Deans are immune to this kind of pressure. Their salaries are centrally paid and their appointment is made directly from arcane committees. Curiously, this is an argument in favour of the Church’s establishment, which is a mechanism for preserving diversity. The more democratic and congregational the Church becomes, the less tolerant it is likely to be. American churches, operating in a free religious market, tend to hold narrow and exclusive views, whether liberal or conservative. It is the civil war over homosexuality in the US church which is driving the break-up of Anglicanism. In the end, it may be the absurdity of a church which can take so seriously a job like bishop of Reading or dean of St Albans, which preserves it as an oasis of tolerance in a world where religion is increasingly important, and dangerous.
However, yesterday, “Anglican Mainstream” launched a new campaign against Jeffrey John’s appointment (see later report for details) which was reflected in two newspapers today:
Guardian Campaign begins against gay dean
Telegraph Evangelical backlash over gay dean
Today is St George’s Day. Articles about St George frequently begin with words such as ‘Little is known about St George’, and it is true. Probably he was a soldier living in Palestine at the beginning of the fourth century. He may have been a Palestinian or a Syrian, and he was martyred in about the year 304, during the persecution of Diocletian. If this is true, it means that this is the seventeen hundredth anniversary of his martyrdom — an anniversary which seems to have passed unnoticed, as did that of Agnes, martyred in Rome in January of about the same year. Agnes, though, has a shrine and feast day in Rome to keep her cult alive, but George seems to have gone somewhat out of favour. Even this morning’s Church Times carried an article suggesting he be replaced as England’s patron.
George is mostly remembered for the legends that came to be told about him, most famously his slaying of a dragon, and the consequent rescue of a virgin princess. George is said to have been martyred at Lydda, in Palestine, the place at which Perseus, in Greek mythology, defeated a sea-monster, and it seems likely that the legend has been transferred from the pagan hero to the Christian martyr.
This legend, however, serves us well as an allegory of aspects of the Christian faith. George, a soldier for Christ, puts on the whole armour of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, as Paul writes in Ephesians. Thus armed, he is ready to take action against the dragon, the representative of evil, a deed reminiscent of that of Michael, the archangel, in the great vision in the Book of Revelation. And he does this, not for great glory and honour, but to save the life of an innocent girl threatened by this evil, a girl who has no one else to protect her.
Modernists may mock, or may consider the legends to be sexist or sexual, but here is a parable, an allegory, of our Christian life — whatever our politics or churchmanship: to defend the weak against the onslaught of evil, and to help bring each person that we meet closer to the kingdom of God.
1 CommentI wasn’t going to see it. It wasn’t that I felt strongly about the movie, one way or the other, it was just not top of my list of must-do’s. It was only when I was alerted to the fact that The Passion of the Christ might be a subject at a dinner party that I thought I might give it a go.
I kept waiting for something to happen. That’s not to say that there was not plenty of action, far from it. I patiently sat and noted the various bits of the gospel stories which Gibson had pressed into service. I flinched a little at the initial bloodletting. Patiently I watched for the androgynous Devil character to develop into significance, but it never quite got there. By the time Caviezel’s Jesus fell a second time, I realised we were doing the stations of the cross, and I wearily ticked them off in my head as they passed across the screen.
At the end I was left with a big ‘so what?’ I didn’t know what Gibson wanted me to do with his tale; I was left with a surfeit of blood and carnage with nowhere to put it. It was beyond me why some of my colleagues had block-booked theatres, to use the movie to encourage people to faith.
The point about telling a Jesus story is that you do so to answer a question, or to raise one. Each of the gospel writers was telling their version of the Jesus story in such a way as to address a particular need of the community to whom they were writing. The question might be about who belongs in the Christian community? or who is my neighbour? Why should we take Jesus seriously? Either way the stories are written in such a way that invites a response. Gospel writers are not simply spinning a tale for the sake of it, they want you to take what they’ve written and do something with it.
The Gospel according to St Mel does none of this, unless having your nose rubbed in the brutality of first century Roman justice somehow makes you want to say your prayers. If the film was created to answer a question it was certainly lost on me.
Gospel writers and preachers know that there is no such thing as a plain vanilla Jesus story. That’s why the four gospels differ in the way that they do. Why they write and preach is because they recognise that people start with real-life questions, and so the story has to be told in such a way that speaks to the real-life situations of their hearers, and all of these are different. They shaped their material in the belief that God meets us where we are. So, don’t send me to a movie, tell me in your own words how you, a person like me, with problems and concerns like mine, has been changed by Jesus. If I can see that it is possible for me as well, then it’s news I can use, good news.
3 CommentsThere are a few more articles in this morning’s newspapers, and the St Albans diocesan website has added a few extracts from yesterday’s press conference.
0 CommentsFollowing this morning’s official announcement from Downing Street of Dr John’s appointment the St Albans diocesan website carries statements made at the press conference in St Albans, a number of responses to the appointment and a letter that the diocesan bishop has sent to the clergy.
Several online newspapers are already carrying articles written since the announcement, although, since the story was accurately leaked several days ago, they have little new to say.
1 CommentLast week’s ‘rumours’ about the appointment of a new Dean of St Albans have been confirmed this morning.
The press release from the Diocese of St Albans reads
It has been announced from 10 Downing Street today (Monday, April 19th) that the Queen has approved the nomination of The Revd Canon Dr Jeffrey John as the next Dean of St Albans.
Canon Jeffery John, who is also to be Rector of the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Albans, is currently Chancellor and Canon Theologian of Southwark Cathedral. He succeeds the Very Revd Christopher Lewis, who became Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, last October, after nine years as Dean of St Albans.
The Bishop of St Albans will be writing to all clergy in the diocese today. The text of the letter will be placed on the diocesan website later today.
0 CommentsMore information on the diocesan website.
The text of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter Sermon is below.
Canterbury Cathedral 11 April 2004
A good few years ago, I heard a distinguished American scholar of ancient history commenting on the proclamation of the resurrection as it would have been heard in the classical world. ‘If an educated Greek or Roman had been told that someone had been raised from the dead’, he said, ‘his first question would have been “How do you get him back into his grave again?”’. The point was that most of those who first heard the Easter gospel would have found it grotesque or even frightening. Resurrection was not a joyful sign of hope but an alarming oddity, something potentially very dangerous. The dead, if they survived at all, lived in their own world – a shadowy place, where they were condemned to a sort of half-life of yearning and sadness. So Vergil at least represents it in his great epic, unforgettably portraying the dead as ‘stretching out their hands in longing for the other side of the river’. But for them to return would have been terrifying and unnatural; the boundaries between worlds had to be preserved and protected.
1 CommentWhat follows is a portion of the 8th Adullam Homes Housing Association Annual Lecture, given to an invited audience at Keele University. Adullam was established in 1972. It offers accommodation and support to some of the most marginalised, vulnerable and at risk people in our society.
This was reported briefly in the Guardian as Bishop gives warning on equality law.
I hear rumours that as faith based bodies revisit their employment and recruitment policies, partly in the light of the recent implementation of directives outlawing discrimination on grounds of religion or sexual orientation, a number are coming up with a maximalist position. The claim is that every board member, and in some cases every employee, must be firstly an adherent of the particular faith and secondly satisfy additional requirements regarding sexuality.
I want to stick my neck out and say that I find this trend quite alarming. I urge those who are giving consideration to this specific point to be aware of a number of risks in that approach:
i. Confusing the faith with the values.
When we substitute adherence to the tenets of a particular faith group for commitment to a set of values or ethos we risk losing the latter. Despite all the evidence from the fall out over homosexuality and bishops last summer many religious people retain a touching and naïve belief that the person next to them holds the same values as they do themselves. In some cases it may be fear of discovering otherwise rather than simple naivety.
ii. Excluding valuable contributions.
Some years ago I heard of the formation of a new body to support Christians engaged in the Housing world. When I approached it I found that I was only eligible for membership if I could subscribe to a particular understanding of the doctrine of salvation. I still fail to see the connection. Narrow religious requirements inevitably limit the range of views and perspectives that an organisation can bring to the task of working out its values. Some of the best board and senior staff members of Christian organisations I know are those who stand sympathetically but outside the church structures and can ask the rest of us the sharp questions.
iii. Avoiding or abusing the law undermines the policy of exemptions. Government rightly continues to give faith based organisations scope to claim exemption from aspects of equalities legislation. But when I hear rumours of substantial organisations claiming that every staff member has a “Genuine Occupational Requirement” to be an adherent of a specific faith I fear we are stretching the law to breaking point. If we are seen to be exploiting loopholes in order to operate policies that discriminate widely on grounds of religion or sexuality then we are likely to find the law tightened up so that we lose the exemptions that are justifiable.
iv. Discrimination contravenes our values.
Most faith based agencies have somewhere in their list of core values that they take equalities issues seriously. To suddenly resort to special pleading diminishes that commitment.
v. Inconsistent application of exemptions is illegal.
This is particularly relevant to the exemptions organisations make claim on grounds of sexual orientation. The legal advice published on the Church of England website makes it clear to me that the Christian ethic here is about the restriction of sexual activity to marriage. Any organisation that seeks to exclude gay employees whilst condoning or ignoring extra-marital heterosexual activity could find itself on very shaky ground.
vi. It isn’t necessary.
There is nothing that we want to achieve that cannot be achieved through having a clear core of faith adherents who take responsibility for the carrying forward of the vision both at board and senior management level. Moreover it is in the very nature of faith based organisations that they will tend to attract at all levels of staff those who are adherents of the faith in question. To revert to biblical imagery, there is plenty of leaven in the lump.
The Church of England recently announced the appointment of a new Director of Communications for the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod. The Church Times duly interviewed Peter Crumpler:
…Mr Crumpler described himself as “passionate” about the Church, which he described as “a superb institution that is not given the value it should be in society”. He will take up the post in May. The post was vacated by the Revd Dr Bill Beaver in 2002, and was frozen while a review of the national communications strategy was conducted on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council. Mr Crumpler… said he had studied the Phillis report into government communication strategies, which stressed the need for positive presentation, openness, and no “spin”.
Some information about these two reports may be useful.
First, the Independent Review of Government Communications, a 40-page report which can be downloaded from here, deals with UK government communications strategy. It was originally set up in the wake of the Jo Moore/Stephen Byers fiasco but later it also responded to the departure of Alistair Campbell.
Bob Phillis, who is the chief executive of the Guardian Media Trust and a former TV executive (with both the BBC and commercial TV companies) chaired a group of media professionals, many of whose recommendations for restoring public confidence in the government are in my view equally applicable to the Church of England. Just try substituting “church” for “government” etc. For example:
R.10 A new approach to briefing the media – We found that the lobby system is no longer working effectively for either the government or the media. We recommend that all major government media briefings should be on the record, live on television and radio and with full transcripts available promptly online. Ministers should deliver announcements and briefings relevant to their department at the daily lobby briefings, which should also be televised, and respond to questions of the day on behalf of the government.
or this
Greater emphasis on regional communication – Research told us the public want information that is more relevant to them and where they live. We recommend that more investment should be made in communicating at a local and regional level and more communication activity should be devolved into relevant regional government or public service units…
and on websites:
R.10.3 Government websites should make all relevant background material available to anyone who wants it.
R.11 Customer-driven online communication
… We recommend that the central government website should be redesigned to meet the needs and perceptions of users, with individual departments only becoming “visible” when this makes sense to the users. Information on local public services should be prominent and easily found. There should be increased investment in websites to reflect the increasing importance of this method of communication.
Turning now to the Review of the National Communications of the Church of England which was undertaken by Mr David Kenning of Bell Pottinger Ltd, this has not been published, but a 35 page summary was posted on the CofE website in Microsoft Word format. That can be downloaded from here. A more concise 8 page version was issued last November to all General Synod members, diocesan secretaries and others, and is reproduced as a web page here. This is worth reading in full. Synod members were told that:
The Council has accepted the general analysis and overall prescription in Mr Kenning’s report.
…The Council agreed that the new Director would need some flexibility over the detailed recommendations in the report. They noted that decisions about the resources devoted to the Communications Unit would need to be considered in the budget round next spring in the usual way.
Translating into plain English, the specific recommendations of Kenning would require a huge increase in the staff and budget of the department. So that’s not going to happen any time soon. The new Director will have to fight for his slice of the cake like everyone else. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Kenning’s emphasis on traditional media seems rather odd anyway. Kenning said:
The Communications Unit should invest in two additional professional journalists – one from the national press (preferably with tabloid experience) and one from national broadcasting (preferably also with national journalistic experience). This would increase the number of press officers from two to four…… revitalising Church relationships with key national journalists, columnists and journalists on a one-to-one basis. These (personal) relationships can only be improved where they are manifestly based on trust and openness. This should be done in the form of a weekly lobby – preferably held away from Church premises. … Hold a separate Thursday lobby for the Sunday press.
Whereas concerning the CofE website, Kenning said:
The Official Website requires full-time dedicated professional support with a recruited or outsourced full-time professional webmaster. Much more use could be made of an improved website (establishing an intranet) for more direct communications between the Unit and the dioceses and parishes…
A careful balance needs to be maintained between the effort devoted respectively to the press and electronic media. The recommendations for the staffing requirements above reflect the optimum balance for each. The Internet has made enormous strides into the national consciousness over the past five years and the next decade could well see it overtaking the established media as a source of information. However, the conventional press and media must remain a priority for the foreseeable future. There is no reason, however, why Church Advocates should not be able to post their views on the internet via webcams [sic] and, on occasions, invite an interactive communication with the nation such as is often conducted by television networks.
Compare this with what Phillis said about the lobby system, emphasising regional media, and using websites. Try looking at the Bell Pottinger website 🙂
On the other hand, Kenning accurately portrays the magnitude of the task facing the new director when he lists as a major issue:
A culture of inclusivity and openness – The fortress mentality in the NCIs needs to be dismantled – An entire strategy and programme needs to be put in place to improve and monitor relationships with the national press and broadcast media.
The Church must set about dismantling (the perception of) the “fortress” mentality at Church House in particular, and to a lesser extent at Lambeth. The first and most important area to begin with is within the Communications Unit itself.
This will require a change of culture.
Yes, and this is not a task which a Communications Director can do alone. Kenning also said:
The configuration of the Communications Panel holds the key both to enabling the communications strategy to work and to empower national Church communications as a whole. To date this Panel has been too remote, underpowered and insufficiently representative to do the job properly. It must draw together representatives from the major institutions and key individuals involved in communications.
… I recommend a new, re-configured Panel should include the following:
– Chaired by a media-literate senior bishop representing the House of Bishops with experience of national Church communications and who has a direct link to the Archbishops
– A maximum of two lay members (communications experts) to be elected by Synod
– One person elected from Diocesan Communicators’ Panel
– Director of Communications
– Senior Lambeth communications advisor
– Senior Bishopthorpe communications advisor ??
But the Synod was told that the Archbishops’ Council in its wisdom had:
– created a small task force to support and oversee the work of the Director over the next two years as he or she draws up and delivers a detailed implementation plan for the Review. The need for a Communications Panel will be considered further towards the end of the period. The task force will be chaired by the Bishop of Manchester. The three other members are Andreas Whittam Smith, Jayne Ozanne and Anne Sloman.
So no elected representatives of any kind on that task force, then. And the Panel recommendation has been sidetracked for at least two years. I don’t find that at all encouraging, and don’t suppose many synod members will either.
But, like many others, I do look forward to Peter’s arrival at Church House in May with joyful anticipation.
0 CommentsMy current job requires me to take a managerial view of my university. I have been an academic for much (but not all) of my professional life, and this has allowed me to comment, and often comment critically, on how other organisations behave. I have often done so from a perspective of self-righteousness, in that the frame of reference for my criticism was informed by a belief that I was spreading the gospel of openness, transparency, accountability and equity. It’s a potent cocktail, because it numbs the capacity to see error in one’s own analysis.
Now I am in charge of a university, and I see at least some things differently. I recognise, for example, that universities are notoriously bad at modernising themselves, see tradition as noble, dismiss out of hand the possibility that they are bad employers — or worse still, that they might discriminate – and are suspicious of the desire on the part of public representatives to hold them accountable. They also have bits of mystical dogma — sometimes described as ‘academic freedom’ — which can be used to slap down argument when all else fails. And yet, beyond the slogans and the traditionalism, universities are stewards of a great public good: education and scholarship which maintains civilised, cultured and tolerant values. It is just when they become too self-important (which usually happens at times of great stress) that it becomes hard to see these values in action.
It’s probably similar with the church. We have all become a little fed up with the evident failings of the men and women (but usually men) who occupy the major ecclesial offices, and we are critical of the way in which both the mission of the church and its resources have been mismanaged. We become impatient when dogma which an educated person probably started to dismiss as absurd at the time of the Enlightenment still adorn a catechism or two, and we wonder whether this is an organism which can adapt sufficiently in order to survive.
But I am also aware that in the middle of all this mess is the Word, and however we have corrupted it, it is still there. So when I hear some daft new episcopal pronouncement and think I want to leave, I remind myself that the church is more than, and bigger than, what currently irritates me. And so I stay.
But staying should not be a comfortable irritation, in which I shrug off what annoys or offends me and get lost in other-worldly contemplation. Staying means accepting the mission to promote, and if necessary provoke, change — in a spirit of love, tolerance and (properly understood) obedience. It means recognising God in the church and striving to be true to God’s Gospel — an unchanging God who, for every generation, makes all things new.
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