Meg Munn Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel Assessing and managing risk
Rachel Starr ViaMedia.News What is Marriage? Living in Love and Faith… and Denial
Margaret Wilkinson Church Times Loss of parish — and housing
“Marriage breakdown can leave spouses without a place to live”
The breakdown of any relationship is always desperately sad, and one would hope that bishops and archdeacons would respond sensitively to clerical spouses and civil partners. Close on 50% of all marriages end in divorce and so I don’t think that the church can cushion spouses and partners from the sad reality indefinitely. There comes a time when you have to dust yourself down and carry on with your life. A good family law solicitor should be able to ensure that the spouse/civil partner gets their share of the marital/partnership assets, including the cleric’s pension. Not all clergy spouses/civil partners… Read more »
Margaret Wilkinson doesn’t explain why she thinks clergy spouses should be treated better than everyone else in similar cirmstances. Does she think that the employers of bricklayers have a duty to look after their separated spouses? There is a growing narrative that the main purpose of the Church of England is to look after its clergy.
The claim will be that clergy spouses are fundamentally integrated into the life and work of the clergy in a way that is exceptional.
There is a more general belief at work which is that certain roles and jobs are “ministries” and some are not
When the current bishop of London was appointed there was much talk of her thirty year “ministry” conflating her job as a nurse and her work in the clergy.
If she had been a bricklayer rather than a nurse nobody would dream of characterising such a job as ministry
As the days of “company towns” are long past, secular employers no longer provide housing for their workers and therefore the spouse of an employee does not automatically lose his/her domicile (in fact, they often get to keep it, or at least receive a payment for their share). But the spouse of a vicar, living in the home provided and owned by the parish, has no such rights.
The CofE has a snooty view as to who counts and who doesn’t. My training incumbent tutted when I prayed for less glamorous occupations during the daily office. Teachers, doctors and nurses were acceptable – bricklayers, abattoir workers and cleaners were de trop.
The occupation which has made the greatest contribution to the public good is that of sewage worker. Without them normal life expectancy would fall by ten or more years.
Our bourgeois view of employment has few connections with reality
I’m a dreadful sinner: I tried reframing my intercessions for ordinary people as “those occupations that are unglamorous but are essential to the infrastructure and fabric of a civilised society”. Strangely enough this made my boss stomp off to his car even more vigorously after morning prayer. When I recounted this tale to my Dad who was a gardener with the local authority he gave me a look as if to say what did you expect. Wasn’t it Mrs Alexander who wrote ‘the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high or lowly,… Read more »
I think there are honourable exceptions amongst clergy who gave their lives in service to the poor but your general point is well made
Apropos the first article, as a fairly newly elected churchwarden can someone explain the roles and relationship between the following organisations?:
National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG)
The Independent Safeguarding Board, (ISB)
The National Safeguarding Panel (NSP)
The National Safeguarding Team (NST)
Thank you.
Alphabet Soup: A Glossary of Safeguarding – Surviving Church. This appeared on my blog at the end of 2020. You are right to feel confused. It seems that some of those who work for the various structures don’t understand how they fit into the wider picture.
I think the issue of pastoral care of clergy spouses is huge and often ignored. My wife has been married to a full time minister since October 1979. That was when she stopped having a pastor. I have never worked in a diocese that has a plan to address this issue. I’m somewhat disturbed by the nasty tone of many of the replies on this thread. It’s as if we think it’s a bad thing if the church aspires to better treatment for the spouses of its employees. I’ve been working evenings and weekends and been on call 24/7, 47… Read more »
People lead difficult lives. Almost everybody is overworked and struggles to cope.
Public leadership is about not complaining about how difficult your job is.
Clergy are human and if they want to stand with the rest of us and say how tough things are that is ok. However you cannot then claim to be our leaders.
Nobody is being nasty to you
You are correct, no one on this page is being nasty to me. They are, however, being nasty to my wife, and other clergy spouses. I am angry about that.
Excellent point. Appropriate. What’s more, some of the comment here reminds me of John Lennon’s tune, “Working Class Hero”. Lyrics available online.
Tim, I’m sure you are right when you say you’ve worked long and hard for many years, but can you recognize that not all clergy are the same. If a vicar decides that he’s not going to get out of bed Wednesday to Saturday, there’s not much anyone can do about it. To me clergy seem to be living very privileged and unaccountable lives, and every conversation about clergy seems to be about how to make life easier for them. And now their spouses too.
I’m not sure how a ‘vicar’ would get away with that. If a parish priest in my diocese decided not to get out of bed Wednesday to Saturday, his or her bishop would lay the law down pretty fast.
Tim and others, As with marital matters (indeed relationships generally) ‘the church’ and folk in it get tense when under financial and other stresses. We, and ‘it’, want to feel loved and appreciated. When I lived in a ‘clergy house’ (tied cottage?) it was of a good standard in terms of space and well looked after- repairs attended to promptly etc. I had ‘issues’ with fellow clergy- we ‘bumbled along’. I sense that clergy today are not feeling as secure as I did. Pastoral reorganisations. CDM. Lack of employment protection, being ‘officer holders’ and not ’employees’. Fewer posts to be… Read more »
I am also sad at the tone of some responses. I’m clergy. Like many clergy, I’ve held jobs in other organisations, across sectors. This has been both before ordination and since. What I’ve seen is that clergy don’t live the ‘privileged’ lives that are often imagined. I wish it were true! It’s actually a very stressful role. The expectations are high – often quite unreasonably so. You’re expected to work ‘over the shop’, always be available and never complain (as has been noted in some of the other comments) even if you’re treated awfully by the diocese or congregation. You… Read more »
Another interesting difference between the US and the UK. Under US labor law, the clergy are no different from any other class of employees. They are employed under a contract with their employer (for a TEC priest, the parish vestry; in other denominations, it may be a diocesan employer or similar regional arrangement). As such, all the usual guarantees are legally required–health insurance, paid sick leave, paid vacation, etc.
I’m so glad to see the honesty in Rachel Starr’s writing. So much of the equal marriage conversation is between “traditionalists” vs. “revisionists,” with absolutely no reflection on what “traditional” marriage looked like. It was an institution where women were treated as chattel, with little agency, and whose lives were defined by their husbands. This is only one step up from slavery. To this day, women’s caregiving is undervalued and in a divorce, the woman’s standard of living and financial security takes a nose dive. Domestic violence is still a thing, but it was even worse when women couldn’t safely… Read more »