Madeleine Davies The New Statesman The rise of cultural Christianity
George Pitcher A Word to the Wise Justin Welby: A case for his defence
‘Graham’ ViaMedia.News Safeguarding: Who is in Charge?
Lucy Winkett Church Times Inclusive Christians must not be silent
[This is a long extract from the sermon that I linked to two weeks ago.]
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Turning conservative evangelical dogma and doctrine in today’s C of E upside down
Gerry Lynch Church Times Star-gazing brings a new perspective
Well, 24 hours later, not a squeak from anyone in the CofE to my piece on Who is in Charge. Presumably means that everyone thought someone else was replying ( not my job); or was not their responsibility to reply ( not my job); or safeguarding is not in my brief ( not my job); or “this is not aimed at me” (not my job). Knowing the CofE it will be listed for navel gazing ( er, surely discussion, Ed) at their next meeting.
Anyhow, silence from everyone.
Which rather proves my point !
Graham if you read many of the posts in the topic below I hope you will realise that many of us who are rabble from the pews totally understand what you are saying…but the powers that be have no appetite for changing their behaviour or sorting anything out
A new strap line for them-
‘Obfuscation is All’
It is the August bank holiday weekend. Half of my inbox is automated replies from people in the CofE who are away on leave.
I think the hierarchy have a policy of not replying to our stories. They didn’t reply to mine either, even though it was in the Church Times. They could hardly have missed it. They don’t do empathy and they don’t do action.
Nor mine! It is inconvenient to the current Archbishops’ Secretary for Appointments that I know rather more about the current CNC than I should. Apparently they are reflecting on the situation – Carlisle and Ely being the presenting issues – and how to prevent a repeat for Coventry, Truro, St Eds & Ips, Durham, and Worcester.
I know a number of survivors who have gone public with their stories. Not one has since had a response from anyone in the hierarchy. The same is true of whistleblowers like yourself.They’re like rabbits in the headlights. But that isn’t leadership.
To clarify – It’s the hierarchy, not the whistleblowers, who are like rabbits in the headlights!
Reply to Graham- the note below is what I posted on Helen King’s web-page I am more than happy for you to connect {you will have to suggest how you could do that?} with me and if at all possible Helen King. In my experience {not in ‘safeguarding’ issues} requires connecting with people of influence outside these Institutions who from a well written paper appreciate grave injustices etc. The House of Commons Ecclesiastical Committee members are a ‘starting point’. You would be writing to them as Members of Parliament and specifically as members of this committee. Another way to connect… Read more »
Bravo Lucy, Bravo!
All Christians should be inclusive – all are sinners. Affirming of every life style? No.
And there is the problem writ large in one short, dismissive response. I have heard this ‘lifestyle’ argument so many times, it’s actually quite wearying. We know nothing of people’s lives, let alone their lifestyles. I can only guess at what assumptions lay behind your comment, but it doesn’t seem to accord with the one who judges no-one.
Colin’s remembering that ‘all the world belongs to you’ (a line in ‘Turning the World Upside Down’) is pertinent here, Brenda. Another verse runs something like “The world lives divided and apart…Forgot the next line…. but if we live like you, loving enemies too, we’ll be turning the world upside down.’ It was a good song, with a message that we need reminding of. Part of the original thrust of renewal was precisely this – that we accepted one another, with our differences of tradition, doctrine and belief on the basis that God accepted us, as individuals, as we were… Read more »
The good news is that in Christ mercy triumphs over judgement, but first the bad news, without Christ all are condemned (you can read all about in Genesis 3). The only coherent argument you have is no one is condemned so there is no good news. Putting a bushel over a lamp, salt so contaminated that it is only fit for throwing out and being trampled on. Dismissive, most certainly.
Strange, I don’t recall Jesus of Nazareth appearing anywhere in Genesis 3.
I just did a quick review. There’s a talking serpent, an independent-acting Eve, an Adam who, when confronted with his misdeeds, blames Eve rather than take responsibility, and guardians with flaming swords. But no Jesus of Nazareth.
Here’s a crazy thought: How about reading, marking, and inwardly digesting the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament, if you prefer) without inserting Jesus into every sentence.
“The only coherent argument you have…” Wrong. There are alternatives. If Alexei Navalny had risen from the dead it would have been good news. Someone willing to die for the sake of those who come after him. The interpretation could be something like “A life of love and service always leads to life, even if it kills you” or “He who loses his life for my sake will find it.” He didn’t but some of us believe that Jesus did. The dominant narrative arc starting with Genesis 3 (a Hebrew myth shoehorned into a Christian worldview) is not the only… Read more »
Wonder what on earth you have in mind? Cannibals?That’s not legal. Priests who abuse children/ vulnerable adults? Nor is that and we don’t quite affirm it…. Most perplexing……
My sexuality is not a lifestyle!
Jesus was a friend of corrupt tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners. He hung out with them. Why do we have to approve of everyone’s ‘lifestyle choices’ (some are not choices) before accepting them as they are?
Sexuality is not a “lifetyle”. I have known gays who ran the gamut from die-hard football fans to the most stereotypical musical theater aficionado and everything in between–Star Trek fans, computer scientists, gardeners, construction workers.
And, as I’ve said somewhere else, I have three friends within the model railway hobby who are transitioning. So?
Being trans isn’t a ‘lifestyle’ either. But some people like to describe as a ‘lifestyle’ something over which people have no choice, such as their sexual orientation. If they can frame it as a choice, they can also condemn that choice. Not at all Christlike.
The old rule applies, before engaging in debate make sure all parties attach the same meaning to the terms they are using. Something as intimately personal as sexual orientation, something built into you when you were created in the womb, cannot be described as a choice. I prefer to accept people as they are – the way Christ accepted me.
On the basis of the Bible you are right. Jesus spoke repeatedly about a rich lifestyle. What does rich mean? Anyone who spends money on a holiday for example? Who drives when they could walk, catch the bus or cycle? Who spends on clothes other than a couple of cheap outfits from a supermarket? Is that the sort of lifestyle you mean?
“Lifestyle” is perhaps not the right term But over the issue of sexual identity we all have choices to make about how that sexuality finds expression including someone like me who is heterosexual.
How can the essentially fragmentary nature of a church which has no legal personality be reconciled with local autonomy? The recognition of the contract of employment as the gold standard of personal employment relationships would resolve the question of who is in charge, by introducing formal line management at local or deanery level regulated by ACAS codes of practice. Clergy with office-holder status have generally had a hard time claiming employment rights in the courts. This is because the judges have tended to find that the ‘incidents’ of the relationship parish clergy have with their putative employer is non-contractual and… Read more »
Brilliant article from Madeleine Davies.
I sympathise with Madeleine Davies’ cultural Christians. I too am well aware of what our civilisation owes Christianity. I too fear what may happen when the Church disappears. But I have been an atheist for well over 60 years. I make a modest contribution to my local church, but I can’t believe in angels, however jolly that would be, and I don’t understand how the Tom Hollands can come to think differently. . There seems nothing I can do (other, of course, from trying to be a useful citizen).
I’m not sure I believe in angels either, Tim. Using simple logic, if God is omnipresent, omnipotent, seeing and knowing all, etc, why does he need angels? What many folks think of as angels, by that reasoning, is actually God acting in person. The word simply means ‘messenger’, and I knew a very learned minister who was adamant they looked like, and usually were, ordinary human beings.
God doesn’t need anything, never mind angels. He creates because that’s His nature, so it makes sense that if God creates physical beings, He would create spiritual ones as well.
Maybe God just likes angels? We see from our own world how much God evidently revels in diversity and an abundance of life forms. (Though, as one entomologist commented, what creation taught him abut the Creator was that ‘he has an inordinate fondness for beetles.’)
Sorry, I was using “angels” as a shorthand for the supernatural in all its panoply.
Thanks, all three of you for responding. Obviously none of us can know, but Janet’s comment, about the diversity of creation fits what we can observe. The more I think about eternity, the more certain I am that its beyond our capacity to begin to conceive it – Hubble and James Watt have been a massive help in grasping hold of that fact!
Faith requires us to go beyond the rational mind anyway – not always an easy thing to do, particularly for me.
It was interesting to read Madeleine Davies and Lucy Winkett in juxtaposition. I read Davies first .(Something on that below). Then I read Winkett and thought, now this is the kind of voice that we need right here right now.” I WANT to be part of a Church that is the gathering of the shaken-to-our-core at the harm that we have caused, and continue to cause, people and the planet … With the gut-wrenching compassion of Christ, at the heart of our faith is a pattern for our living and dying that is shot through with a conviction that our… Read more »
Thanks, Colin, for jogging my memory. “Oh, Lord, all the world belongs to you, etc”, which I still sing to myself from time to time, is a reflection of the 1960s and 70s, when a new generation of radical young Christians (and others) really believed that we could indeed be ‘turning the world upside down. Anyone else remember Canon John Gummer’s little book, “Springtime in the Church”, which had very much the same message? I’m not sure where that vision went – it seems to have been channelled into one particular, rather prescribed leat which Madelaine and Lucy both refer… Read more »
As it happens, we’ll quite possibly be singing that hymn in our ecumenical church on Sunday week! That vision is still alive, though sadly weakened, in the United Reformed Church and possibly the Methodists.
I’m glad to hear it. Sadly my wife only knows the song from my attempted renditions – which guaranteed not to endear it to her.
It was very popular in our nineteen-seventies charismatic church in Essex, but I think I actually learned it when I was part of a Diocese of Chelmsford youth initiative called ‘Seventy for the Seventies’. Still brings back warm memories for me.
I often find Colin Coward’s articles mystical and prophetic. I found this insightful, “Conservatives are unafraid of posting totally dogmatic comments without concern for the effect this has on more vulnerable souls like me. ” I would add that synods and comment boards, under cover of ‘theology’ , routinely engage in othering minorities in a way that would be considered unacceptable in other contexts. When local synods here, for example, debated policy like SSM, our bishops constantly reminded us to be aware that members of sexual minorities are ” in the room, and are your brothers and sisters in Christ”.
Colin’s parade of “orthodoxies” at the beginning of his article is a reminder of Harry Williams’ observation that religion is just something that people do with their lunacy.
If so he is in good company. Eye of the beholder in any religious case, no? Here is an interesting take on religion by the late Dan Dennett given at University of Edinburgh.
https://youtu.be/5WhQ8bSvcHQ
A word to the wise George Pitcher- sadly the current ABC may not be required to retire on his 70th birthday, as may those under him. The late Queen Elizabeth, of fond remembrance, graciously granted an extension of a year to the previous ABY, John Sentamu, when it must have been known for a long time when he would become 70 y.o. One may wonder why? ++Justin may be pleased to retire, or not; those responsible for identifying his successor, including in relation to the so-called Anglican Communion, have a thankless task, infinitely more challenging than the organisation of an… Read more »
Regarding Madeleine Davies’ excellent commentary: Elon Musk and “Christian” don’t belong in the same sentence. He is an amoral thug who is obsessed with turning women into baby-making machines.
I found George Pitcher’s article interesting. I wonder if he thought whilst writing it, as I do whilst reading it, that the defence of ++Cantuar is stretched pretty thin. Why should he not be held accountable for the failure of his Lambeth appointments? Why has he not acted to bring about reform of the system as George suggests?
I agree, the job is almost impossible, but you can still be bad at it. Welby is unfortunately the wrong man at the wrong time.
The Archbishop has spoken of his mental health problems and we’ve all seen him close to tears in interviews. So why does he limp on regardless? Private Eye’s hypothesis is that he wants to delay the publication of the Makin review into John Smyth’s abuse of young men here and in Africa. If that is the case then no wonder it’s taking its toll on his mental health. The pain or humiliation of any adverse conclusions is not going to go away or even be diluted by the delay. Any spiritual director could tell him that. If there are to… Read more »
It’s a tough job, not his fault he was not up to it but is clinging on to the last possible moment. Nothing to see here, move along.
This all brings us back to how bishops are appointed – and possibly of course how they should be. I seem to remember that when Rowan Williams left there was rather a groundswell of seeing him as a woolly mystic… but in Joni Mitchell terms ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ So at that point Justin Welby was seen very much as the right man at the right time- a muscular old Etonian Christian who arose from the camps of Iwerne Minster, understood money and could deal on managerial terms with David Cameron and George Osborne to… Read more »
Large organisations are uniformly terrible at learning lessons and succession planning. They do not want to invest the time and effort in doing either and there are too many people in the upper middle who have a significant vested interested in doing nothing about either. You need seriously excellent leadership at the top to puncture that and make proper change. Having been someone who has worked in corporate and public sector organisation for a good while now, it is clear to me that the people that thought Welby was indeed the right man for the job, don’t know enough about… Read more »
Further reflecting on George Pitcher’s interesting.piece, whilst it is good (and Christian) to look for redeeming features in anyone, I am afraid that, for me, the negatives overwhelmingly dominate any positives. Certainly the job of ABC is far too big but, right from the start, Welby, far from trying to cut it down to size, doubled down on it by overemphasising the role of the Anglican Communion. Did he not set himself the task of visiting all the primates in their provinces within 1 year (or was it two?) of his enthronement? This was a herculean task, which took him… Read more »
I enjoyed Madeleine Davies’ piece. I want to add to it a book recommended previously here by Nicholas Henshall. Proabably the most profound book about the state of the Church in the West I have ever read. It is Tomáš Halík: The afternoon of Christianity: the courage to change. Published March 2024 He is a RC Priest and Professor in Prague. Here is just one quotation: “People with extrinsic piety, for who religion is a tool to achieve some other goal, such as social approval or affirmation of group identity, or group membership, tend to be really rigid and authoritarian. People… Read more »
Thanks for the Halik quote Andrew, his explanation is really helpful to me. In my own work I am trying to find a way of saying that the church has done immense good in the world, but it has also, at times, done immense harm. Can we acknowledge that harm, and analyse the cause, and learn to do better in the future. It seems to me that an important part of rehabilitating and promoting Christianity is to understand that huge numbers of people across the world have seen our mistakes and regard the Christian brand as toxic. How do we… Read more »
Various contributors to this site have commented on the relevance of Halik and some weeks ago I hoped that we could get some exchanges going on where his work might take us. I’d enjoy that.
On the toxicity point, properly addressing current safeguarding messes might be a good starting point. That comes under the heading of ‘do justly’ and if we can’t sort that out we might as well stop pretending about everything else.
I too would strongly recommend Halik’s book, which I finished reading yesterday and I am still digesting. It’s very helpful to have such an analysis from someone who, while aware of Anglo-American discussions, is writing from the Czech Republic with very different experiences and who refers to Czech and German speaking writers. He offers a different perspective.
I think the problem is that the current safeguarding mess is not the starting point but the end point. It is simply the current manifestation of a recurring and constant pattern of bad church behaviour stretching back to before Constantine.
What are the institutional reasons which mean that such things keep recurring and never get addressed?
Halik’s extrinsic drive, where people prioritise institution and outcome over human compassion, is interesting in this context. What sort of people get selected as senior church leaders?
Interesting. The honest answer to who gets selected is both, but who predominates is another matter. And extrinsic matters are very comforting in that they are ways of indicating belonging, of being with the like minded. I am someone who has moved up the candle as I grew older because ritual was /is very helpful to my efforts to worship. But without a doubt ritual can be very exclusionary for those who are new to it, and for some appears more important than the substance of faith. I said we could start with safeguarding because it is such an obvious… Read more »
I think you are close to identifying a problem but, with respect, I think your aim is slightly off and it’s worth correcting it. We have had all sorts of acknowledgements and apologies that the Church has been toxic, whether that’s safeguarding in Blackburn or the treatment of LGBT Christians. They prove empty because: a) they typically use the past tense only, not the present tense and absolutely never a recognition that, unless something changes, that the toxicity will continue into the future; and b) the [grammatical] subject is always impersonal, “the Church”, “the diocese”, maybe even a very abstract… Read more »
Thanks for the response Kate, but what interests me is institutional failure not personal failure. It can be tempting to find someone to blame when things go wrong, from Lucy Letby to Justin Welby. It can be harder to face up to the idea that the institution itself is at fault, and there are things within its structure (like this extrinsic personality idea) which mean that the capacity for cruelty, and then denying cruelty, is baked into the system. In the Madelaine Davies’ article many people are quoted supporting Christianity’s “civilising” influence. But from Pagan Rome to the Canadian/US pre… Read more »