Hilary bombs .....

In fact Hilary didn't bomb, in fact his speech has been well received as an outstanding example of parliamentary oratory, indeed the Telegraph, house journal of the Tory Party, described it as 'prime ministerial'.

In the first part of the speech Benn defended Jeremy Corbyn seeking an apology from the Prime Minister for his reference to 'terrorist sympathisers' in conclusion he described the Labour movement's historically deep seated opposition to fascism and likened Daesh to fascists opposed to western values, western democracy, to tolerance and decency.

The middle section of his speech iterated the arguments for extending air strikes to Syria, of course Benn supported the invasion of Iraq and the the commitment to regime change which rather than introducing western values and democracy created a tragedy which is still unfolding in that troubled country and region.

As we prepare to extend our air strikes with the associated risk of civilian casualties British Newspapers are reporting that Daesh is regrouping in Libya' another casualty of a western bombing campaign to oust a despotic leader, where the task of rebuilding civil society was left to chance and has resulted in a deeply divided and conflicted country.

The Sykes-Picot agreement effectively divided the middle east between France, Britain and Russia in the aftermath of the first world war and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Not surprisingly it is these self same nations who are being drawn into a deepening regional conflict. Emphasised in Benn's speech by his reference  to the fact that the border between Syria and Iraq, itself a legacy of Sykes-Picot, has to all intents and purposes been swept away as Daesh has sought to establish it's Caliphate.

What was missing from the speech however, indeed what was missing from the debate as a whole, was any understanding of the theological motivation underlying the growth of Daesh.

The post invasion period in Iraq led to an increase in the violence between Sunni and Shia within Islam so  much so that American Intelligence described the conflict as a 'Civil War', although as we have seen again and again this war is far from civil.

The split between Shia and Sunni within Islam is essentially a split over inheritance.

And like any family quarrel it is capable of engendering extremes of violence and lasting for lifetimes. This particular quarrel goes back to the days after the death of the Prophet.

The Shia belief is that the Prophet Muhammad divinely chose and 'ordained' his cousin and son in law, Ali Ibn Abi Talib, in accordance with the command of God to be the next Caliph in succession to himself.

For Sunni's Muhammad's rightful successor was Abu Bakr the father of Muhammad's wife Aisha and who was chosen by the Muslim community by consensus, a method that Sunni's believe is endorsed by the Quran.

The dispute over who was and is the true successor, Caliph or Imam, was first fought over in Basra, in modern Iraq, in the 7th Century, the battle continues.

For the Shia Muslim their faith is set out in a series of beliefs: That God is one and unique, that justice must be ethical, fair and equal, that God guides humankind through his prophets, that leadership rests with divinely appointed Imams and that there will be a time of final judgement.

For the Sunni Muslim again God is one and unique, and that His purposes are revealed through his angels, through the authority of scripture, primarily the final revelation, the Quran but also the scrolls, the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Prophets. Sunni also believe in a day of judgement alongside a belief in predestination as the supremacy of God's will.

What can, I think, be seen in all this is what Hilary Been described as a 'very, very complex conflict' sadly it is not equally at its heart that 'simple'.

There is almost a hint, which Benn might have been tempted to refer to, in the Labour Parties frustration with 'theology'. As when Harold Wilson dismissed the dispute over Clause 4 as 'mere theology' or as Alan Watkin's, writing in the Spectator, described 'the Labour Party as rich in procedural theology' causing David Stevenson to write proposing a 'rescue operation for the word.

I realise that as I write I am getting rather too close to the  moment in the Da Vinci Code when Robert Langdon exclaims 'I need to get to a library fast', but if we are to begin to address the deep conflict within Islam and the even deeper conflict between Islam and the west what is needed is an attempt to lay the foundations for what has been called an 'Abrahamic Ecumenism'.

This is not just a family quarrel internal to Islam it is also a family quarrel between all the people's of the book and all the bombing in the world will not heal it or help it to be resolved.

Can we afford bishop's any longer?

I think I insulted one of our  bishop's recently.

I'd never met him before so I asked him who he was.

I was genuinely surprised when he told me that he was the new suffragen bishop. Oh, I replied I'd heard that the last one wasn't being replaced because we couldn't afford it. In fact I had heard that someone who had been a bishop elsewhere had recently been made a vicar in the diocese and was to act as an assistant bishop as well.

There was a fair amount of harrumphing at my apparent discourtesy, which I found somewhat amusing, and which gave me a good reason for pointing out that parishes now need to produce £65K if they want a vicar, there are I believe almost as many if not more house for duty appointments as full stipendiary appointments in the diocese and numbers are not just declining, they are collapsing.

So, in the light of this it seems reasonable to ask, can we afford bishops any longer? And yes it is a rhetorical question and yes the answer is no.

Googling the costs of bishops tends to result in out of date figures so things don't always look as bad as they really are, but with 113 bishops paid in 2011, between £30k and £40k with additional expenses for travel, housing, chauffeurs and staff the costs amount to something in excess of £22M four years ago, good job inflation is low.

Some years ago a minister with a non episcopal church went out to the Indian sub-continent, he was successful and well liked and the ecumenical church body for whom he worked chose him to become a bishop. On his return to the UK his own denomination offered a post as a minister, the Church of England however upped the ante and offered him an assistant bishopric which he accepted, I guess in the end you get used to being called my Lord?

Having defended the rural churches against Giles Fraser's attack in my last blog I am not aiming to defend bishops in this one.

The hierarchical nature of the Church of England, which has patronage running through its spine like a stick of seaside rock, really does need to ask itself some existential questions in the light of the crisis that it is facing. Given the costs incurred by Bishops attending the House of Lords recently quoted as £27k per annum per bishop, and the need to review that legislative body, it may be that Parliament will intervene in order to force the church to review its attachment to prelatical overlordship by bishops who it seems according to a report by the Church Commissioners in 2012:

'......have more flexibility to determine the most appropriate level of staffing and other expenditure and set their own budgets'.

So what should happen?

Well certainly a bonfire of the vanities, the vain, pompous and prelatical should be removed, any who find the loss of status unacceptable should leave too, we need to rethink episcope, and rethink it radically.

To exercise Episcope, is to offer oversight, by some definitions bishops are centres of unity, certainly the Church Commissioners report quoted earlier sets out a series of functions, most of which rely on the authority and social position enjoyed by bishops (as reflected by their housing) but thee functions are merely an aspect of the oversight offered and the unity that bishops represent in the communities where they work.

The existential crisis facing the church is reflected in a number of ways, senior members of the hierarchy taking on functions that at  one time were exercised by local clergy, but as the number of clergy reduces and as the number of churches that they must service increases, so the clergy simply become plate spinners, rushing from one challenge to the next challenging project and occasionally pausing to conduct worship in one or other local church in their charge, which of course the bishop at their installation claimed as both his or hers and theirs.

So  my radical solution is not for less bishops but more.

But the price for the those appointed and the parishes they serve is that they become themselves parish priests first exercising their 'episcope' in a smaller geographical area and without any enhancement, the stipend for every priest should be the same, difference no longer has any place in the 21st Century church, as Pope Francis is urging his own communion.

Some years ago I was invited to offer some thoughts on the future of ministry in the area where I now live in retirement.

One member of the clergy was invited to offer a realistic view I was asked to take a radical line.

The realistic view was that by reducing the number of clergy to thirteen by losing the supernumerary, which was me, then the future could be looked at through a positive lens, interesting that when you google episcope one definition is given as 'an optical projector which gives images of opaque objects!'

Today the number of full time clergy has fallen from thirteen to eight.

My radical proposal was that there should be a full-time rural dean with a secretary, three clergy with geographical focus and three clergy with sector focus, health, education, youth, community involvement etc as deemed appropriate.

I was shouted down and one clergyman trembling with anger told me that I was unfit to be a priest and he would never accept my thinking as belonging to the same church he was part of.

I remain unapologetic because I believe that my radical view offered the church a way of planning strategically for a future which was heading towards us as rapidly and unremittingly as storms approach from the west.

All that I would change if asked to repeat the paper today for the beleaguered clergy who gathered for chapter last week is that the full time rural dean would him or herself have a parish base and s/he would be known as 'Bishop'.

Development site available ....Quiet neighbours.

So Giles Fraser wants a Dr Beeching to start the process of shutting down rural churches.

Inevitably his suggestion started a debate.

One correspondent questioned his basic assumptions about the liveliness of rural church life, another accused him of being urbanist and yet another proposed that rural churches should be centres for celebration without necessarily being open every Sunday for Mattins.

His article was pretty disappointing shooting off a few thoughts at random with some questionable facts and figures about attendance and rural versus urban populations.

Could a Beeching for churches work and what would the result look like?

First the scale, Beeching recommended the closure of 55% of stations (nearly 2500) and 30% of the route miles (effectively tearing up 5000 miles of railway track).

By comparison the Fraser proposals might see the closure of half the churches in rural areas (4500) and presumably most of those saved would be amongst the 6300 Grade 1 and 2 buildings, perhaps all the Grade 1 and half the Grade 2?

Beeching was asked to undertake his study because the Railways were not making headway against the increase in road haulage traffic.

So even though his name is associated with cuts in fact he also recommended that major routes should receive significant investment and promoted the introduction of containers for rail freight.

Frasers idea is similar in that he wants to cut costs and relieve the strain on the finances of the church by closing the less used and less lovely of our churches (57% of churches serving 17% of the population) but he then suggests somewhat limply that if we switch to Minsters then the country will be 'much more christian' in ten years time.

The Minster idea has been around a long time in fact it could be argued that is how evangelisation in England started.

Some Minsters remain but have lost their USP as centres of and for evangelisation. In the part of rural  Cumbria where I live there has been talk of recreating a minster to serve the outlying border area of the debatable lands which can be viewed from Hadrian's Wall looking North and South.

The clergy living in community travel to conduct worship in the churches within the minster area.

In St James', Biddenham the congregation are very proud of the parvise, a room over the church porch, which I was told confidently but sadly erroneously, was used for the visiting priest, before the church had its own vicar, who would travel from the Minster or Abbey to celebrate Mass.

Perhaps Fraser was thinking about the Parvise at St Paul's which was in fact used according to Geoffrey Chaucer as the place where the Sergeant of the Laws counselled their clients.

As with Beeching if Fraser has his way there will be protests.

Some stations and lines were reprieved and some churches will be too.

Some lines have reopened and presumably some churches will also reopen perhaps run by volunteers along the lines of heritage railways, some may stay open to fulfil a variety of uses from camping barns to climbing centres or as in the case of one church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust a Circus Skills Training Centre, jugglers clowns and acrobats.

My experience over 45 years of ministry tells me that Fraser is right, what was manageable and surviving 45 years ago is no longer manageable or surviving and yet, and yet.

Last Sunday I turned up at a church local to me to take a service so that the Vicar could have a day off, on my way there I passed a local garden centre which was about to open the car park was full and a queue had formed at the door.

When I got to the Church it was empty but by the time the service was due to start we struggled into  double figures, there was no organist but the previous organist's brother turned up to lead the hymns on his violin, the atmosphere was good as people greeted each other with expressions of concern and friendship and news was shared and the everyone who came made a contribution to the food box collected for the local food bank and after the service no-one seemed to want to leave.

They came to this isolated, out of the way Church because it was their church, the graveyard hosted generations of their families and weddings and funerals were still conducted.

If they had to travel to a centre in Frasers words 'worth travelling to' would they?

My best guess would be no they wouldn't.

The church is struggling with an existential question and there are no easy answers emerging as vocations seemingly decline, clergy leave or retire and the hierarchy feeds itself getting larger and more cumbersome and unaffordable but the idea of a Beeching of the church probably isn't an answer either.

Fraser, somewhat curiously, declares that underused rural churches are theologically little more than rain shelters.

And that made me reach for my Larkin.

Water

If I were called
To construct a religion
I should make use of water

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly

Somehow I cannot imagine those words being inspired by a visit to a garden centre.

Not waving but drowning .... a church lost at sea.

Ever since Matthew Arnold posted his poem Dover Beach on the Facebook of his day:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

The question of whether the Church can survive has been asked and asked by believers and non-believers alike.

That sound, the long, withdrawing roar, has been the soundtrack to my ministry over the long years since my ordination in 1969.

So many questions from friends and family and earnest and well meaning by-standers, Do you really believe all this stuff?

Now in retirement I sense that what I could see from the pulpit in 1969 to what I see now on the few occasions when I am asked to cover for a local incumbent taking a much needed break, is exactly the 'long withdrawing roar' described by Arnold.

A conversation in the street with a local clergy friend as he described the structures as 'crumbling' and complained that the senior staff don't have a clue.

Another conversation with another priest friend who asked when did the language change, when did we cease being pastors and become 'leaders'?

Leaders of what? Mission Communities apparently .....

My own observation suggests that the clergy no longer have the energy to elect a Rural Dean and so in our Deanery the Archdeacon has become the Rural Dean.

And every conversation carries the refrain 'Retirement', either I can't wait to retire, I envy that  you are retired, or the sooner I can retire, the sooner I can become a real priest again?

The Bishop Of London delivered the 2015 Lambeth Lecture, reading the text of the lecture, despite all the positive references to growth and change and ecumenism and finding new uses for old churches and how the least amongst us become bishops and the true saints are to be found in the parishes and how London leads the way in growth and seeks to serve the wider church (all laudable if questionable claims and ambitions) I found myself again and again hearing the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.

Yesterday I had occasion to telephone Church House.

Searching the internet it took twenty five minutes to find the telephone number.

The receptionist was delightful, charming, concerned and keen to help but she could neither answer my question or indeed find anyone else to take my call.

Apparently they were all in a meeting.

Then as she was talking she said: Oh the meeting has ended let me see if I can put you through.

No apparently no-one could speak to me as they were all heading home.

Someone would call me in the morning, but nobody did.

Apparently she told me there are real problems now as everywhere costs are being reduced due to budget constraints.

Each time she put me on hold the canned sounds of Graham Kendrick's greatest hits forced me to hold the 'phone away from my ear.

Truly, Truly, Truly ....

The melancholy, long, withdrawing whimper of faith.

An Alpha Oil Archbishop .....

Oil is of course essential in the economy we have built on the use of fossil fuels from the motor car, to heating to manufacture.

But is also important in the economy of the church.

Each year, usually on Maundy Thursday the Chrism oils are blessed in Cathedrals by the Bishop and distributed to those parishes who use or need them.

Oils are used at Baptism and Confirmation, but they are also used for the blessing of the sick and the dying and at other special times.

They represent a visible expression of the churches sacramental life and it is usual for the clergy to be invited to the Chrism Mass in order to renew and recommit to their Ordination vows.

Now we have a an Archbishop who perhaps in the light of this, was appropriately, an Oil Executive.

Not Chrism Oil however but initially Elf Aquitaine and then Enterprise Oil.

His vocation was nurtured at Holy (maybe more appropriately Oily) Trinity, Brompton which possibly makes him an Alpha Oil Executive.

His ministry is sometimes described as reconciling, after he spent time in West Africa and developing North Sea Oil exploration.

His career has been remarkable after being initially turned down for Ordination he has blazed a trail through the institution he now leads as pastor in chief.

But how do the skills of an Eton educated, former Oil executive, meet the challenges facing the Church he leads today?

It seems that the pattern is becoming clear.

The major achievement is the breakthrough that unjammed the blockage to the ordination of women to the Episcopate.

Certainly this was a just, and if the Church was to remain relevant to a changing society, necessary change, but underlying the changes there seems to be a rather doubtful politics at work, it is hard to put your finger on it and I can only reference the semester that I spent in the USA at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass. where amongst other things two memories continue to resonate:

One: the class entitled The Common Genealogy of Racism, Sexism and Classicism taught by the Rev'd Katie Cannon ( I'm called Cannon because my Grandmother was born and raised on the Cannon plantation )which makes me again and again question the way in which the church qua church divides and rules by means of dividing and suppressing those who question.

The second, the Bishop of New Hampshire, who I went to see to talk about a possible job whose comment was straightforward, 'You have as much power as I do, the real power rests with the search committees'.

It is the issue of power and class that underpins my disquiet.

The report on future leadership in the church, the emphasis on management skills, the change in the language which redefines the clergy as leaders rather than pastors.

A few weeks ago I had to have a couple of documents signed, simply to confirm that the photocopies that I was attaching to an application were true copies of the original documents.

As I was in town I called at a Vicarage, the Vicar was parking her car and so I turned up at her door, as so many have turned up at  my door over the forty-five years or so that I have  been ordained, at an inconvenient time, so I apologised and asked if the documents could be signed.

I was told that no, that couldn't be done, and that I would have to make an appointment.

In the event the Vicar changed her mind and did in fact sign once the simple nature of the request was explained.

Power and Class.

The Eton educated Alpha Oil Archbishop, despite the challenges of negotiating in West Africa and the North Sea, always brought to the table Power and Class, just as he has brought the same disabilities to his role as Bishop and Archbishop.

Whether it was Bankers, who he refused to name and shame, or the embarrassing revelation that the Church had invested in a particular pay day loan company after the Archbishop had criticised their business style and interest rates, his comments on food banks or modern slavery, his attitudes to Gay Men and Women or his latest decision to loosen the the ties that bind Anglican Churches world wide into a communion.

As the Guardian has it: 'he is a figurehead of an established religion that has lost its grip on the imagination of a shrinking second rate power'.

So that is what is at stake: Power and Class is being challenged wherever it tries to impose its will on the emerging progressive consensus which is establishing a post colonial world view and which will challenge politics in the UK as much as its religious beliefs.

The whole apparatus of Church has become outmoded and there is a need for a new humility, a renunciation of the Power and Class which has characterised the church and was captured by Robert Roberts in his book The Classic Slum, when he described being sent by the schoolmaster to ask the Vicar if they could have an extra bucket of coal and the Vicar took the Headteacher's note and tossed it into the roaring fire in his study.

So what are the ingredients of the the oil of Chrism?

Balsam: represents the sweetness of virtue and symbolises healing

Myrrh represents the purification and the anointing to Jesus

Frankincense reminds us of Jesus the man for others who is our model of what it  means to be a Priest

Clove and Cinnamon remind us of our duty to be people of prayer

and Olive Oil, which reminds us that we stand under grace, powerless and classless.

Jungle Rock in the Calais Palais

We took a family holiday when we were living in Birmingham.

I had moved from the security of the Vicarage and had bought a house in Birmingham which was within walking distance of my office at Selly Oak.

From having little money for holidays a mortgage meant that we now had none.

So we took the family camping close to home near Ludlow in Shropshire and lived for two weeks on the family allowance.

It was during this holiday when the whole question of money or no money acquired a somewhat gnomic quality.

The reason was that whilst wandering the streets of Ludlow we came across an 'antique' or 'junk' shop which had a Juke Box in the doorway.

Was it for sale?

Does it work?

The owner of the shop walked across and pressed the buttons and we were downed in sound as the Juke Box, a Rock Ola, played Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell.

As the lyrics said:

I lost all volition and began to move my feet
It was a jungle drummer doin' a knock down beat

Although in my case, once I had established the asking price and checked that my maxed out credit cards would allow me to withdraw enough cash, I lost all volition and made an offer and became the proud owner of a Juke Box.

It was a struggle to get it home but a helpful if sceptical  brother in law came to my rescue with a van and a strong arm and no sooner was it installed in the front room and plugged in and switched on than Hank Mizell was heard again singing his Rockabilly hit from 1958.

Now we have another kind of Jungle Rock in the news.

Tragically the news from Calais and the intemperate reporting and appalling use of language emanating from our politicians and the media is nothing less than shameful.

Not only is it shameful but, like so much propaganda it is not factually correct.

So there are less migrants than is claimed, the costs are less than is claimed, it is more costly to repatriate than to support migrants in the UK, less migrants are from Africa than from war torn countries, where the UK and western powers have contributed to regime change and destabilisation, other countries in fact offer asylum to more people fleeing war and danger than the UK, most refugees in fact have a genuine reason for seeking asylum and few are economic migrants as is claimed.

So, dogs and fences and the the Gurkha's are the response from the UK Government to a humanitarian crisis in which less than 1% of those refugees who reach Europe are seeking entry into the UK.

Appalling language from David Cameron's 'Swarm' to Philip Hammond's 'marauding migrants' threatening our standard of living should have no place in the public debate when what is needed is a rational, calm, humanitarian response to the problems which are arising because for many thousands of people 'home' has become an unsafe and dangerous place to be and the stress of a long and dangerous journey to the discomfort and squalor of a refugee camp is to be preferred.

It would be heartening to hear a word of reason and compassion from the leaders of the Christian Churches in Britain but there are some positive messages from the Diocese of Europe, the Bishop of Dover has criticised David Cameron for his 'dehumanising language' and the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated that Britain should assist fleeing migrants because: 'their plight is so extreme, so appalling'

The Pope's message is both heartening and challenging and is addressed to both secular and ecclesial communities:

'large numbers of people are leaving their homelands, with a suitcase full of fears and desires .... in search of more humane living conditions. Often, however, such migration gives rise to suspicion and hostility ........ suspicion and prejudice conflict with the biblical commandment of welcoming with respect and solidarity the stranger in need'.

As St Paul, himself both a pilgrim, a refugee and an immigrant, in his letter to the Romans observed:

'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."

The situation which has been allowed to develop in Calais is unnecessary, the Anglo-French agreement allows British passport control to be based in France so it should be well within the bounds of possibility, as well as more humane, for those seeking Asylum, whose refugee status can be demonstrated, as much by their country of origin as by any other means, to be interviewed and assessed and then offered the support they might need to put the terror behind them and begin a new life in a welcoming and generous country, to which by their contribution, they will enrich.

Is this naive?

Well not if you pause to reflect on the rich cultural diversity that is the backcloth to so much of what we value today in our national life.

In sport we take pride in so many of our athletes who having come to the UK with their families have taken citizenship and gone on to achieve greatness.

In art, in education, in literature the voices of those from other cultures graces and transforms British life; the food we eat, the language we speak, the music we enjoy.

Writing in the Independent Sean O'Grady highlighted ten things that immigration has done for us, these included Marks and Spencer, the Mini, Cobra and Curry, the Royal Family and the possibly dubious addition of Rupert Murdoch The Sun and Sky TV.

We close our borders at our own risk and to our own detriment as a people who have always changed and developed and grown as a result of the many gifts that strangers have brought to our shores and our culture.

And no list would be complete without reference to the NHS which would simply cease to exist in its present form if the Doctors, the Nurses, those who perform so many valuable roles from porters to cleaners who come from across the Commonwealth and Europe, were unable to work here and fulfil their roles within the service.

Jungle Rock was an ephemeral pop music hit, it reached No 3 in the British Charts, but the idea of a rock in the refugee camp known as the jungle should not be thought of as ephemeral because in the Bible a rock is a symbol of strength and permanence, a place where people in danger can take refuge. God is the Rock of Israel because he is seen as the strength, security and deliverance of his people.

Does everyone count? Really?

The latest report from the Church of England Research and Statistics Department makes for interesting reading.

There has been a strong reaction to the report from the Gay and Lesbian Community because there is no attempt to understand or map the extent of those in the churches whose sexual orientation is gay or lesbian.

The three cohorts measured by the survey which claims to be about mapping diversity in the churches are ethnicity, young people (children) and those with disabilities.

Apparently 35000 individual responses were returned, according to a report on the demography of the United Kingdom some 5 - 6% of the population is gay or lesbian which suggests that the Everyone Counts survey is under reporting some six to seven hundred people who if they had been asked, and if they were confident that their answers would be treated with respect might have answered yes to a question about sexual orientation.

One correspondent of mine described his being Gay as 'a gift'.

What is it about the Church of England?

When R S Thomas, the priest and poet retired he apparently took his cassock and surplice and burnt it on the beach.

I have been sorely tempted at times to follow his example.

Instead I have spent time as a Locum Chaplain in the Diocese of Europe and am now a member of the Guild of Priests at the Cathedral in Carlisle, but my disappointment in the Church remains.

Indeed as far as the local church is concerned I have become 'unchurched' and for the very good reason that the indoor critic, who is a wheelchair user, cannot physically enter any of our local church  buildings because of steps, unmade gravel paths and lack of disabled parking.

As Bill Clinton commented 'its the economy stupid' well in our case it's 'the practicalities stupid'.

I met the indoor critic in 1967 when I was a student at Salisbury Theological College and she was a student at Salisbury School of Art.

Whilst I wasn't the only heterosexual student at Salisbury in 1967 it was pretty obvious that the heterosexual population wasn't 95% either.

Which means of course that the Church of England has maintained a conspiracy of silence for the 45 years that I have been ordained and that conspiracy is reflected in the diversity research reported in Everyone Counts.

It makes it pretty clear that not everyone does count.

I was privileged to spend a semester in 1985 as a Proctor Fellow at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.

By 1985 in the States the heterosexual population in the school was indeed a minority.

I attended worship in a Church in New York where I was greeted by the woman Priest wearing a badge that announced my Church has got Aids.

But still the Church of England buried its tonsured head in the sand about issues of human sexuality and sexual orientation.

But if the Gay and Lesbian and Transgender community is excluded from the debate about diversity in the church some of the other statistics are also, in my view, questionable.

I cannot sensibly comment on the findings with regard to urban areas but the summary of findings with regard to rural areas is in my view questionable to say the least.

The report states:

35% of Churches are in rural hamlets and isolated areas.

1% of the population lives here and the average congregation includes 35 people with average age of 56 with 12% being young people and a 20% being over 75.

I have to say that I find these statistics, based on my own experience in the deanery where I live and the churches where I occasionally lead worship, to be largely unbelievable.

It could of course be that when the vicar is away and the congregation realises that I am coming to take the service that they stay home to make jam or bake cakes or go to the pub for  lunch?

But I tend to read the notices and check the service register and on the whole the two or three retirees that I meet are the same two or three who were there last week and will be there next week.

As you move from Town to Urban and Conurbation Churches so according to the report, the statistics improve and the congregations increase to an average of 100 plus.

Initially the Diversity Audit (2007) was carried out to map ethnic diversity in Diocese around the country.

When the survey was repeated last year questions were added with reference to disability and young people.

In a response to the reaction of lesbian, gay and transgender people to the omission in the survey the researcher commented:

'I am sorry for the hurt and disappointment raised by members of our congregations who feel that the lack of a question on sexual orientation meant they are not a valued part of our church'.

The offer of additional questions may not be sufficient to redress the balance or heal the hurt, I am not able to say.

Where I am personally affected however is with regard to disability which was another 'question' in the survey.

The commentary on the responses to the question identified the high proportion of 'other' as the selected response, which 'raises questions about what is missing from our understanding of the data'.

It is important to acknowledge that the congregation we tend to join when we worship (Carlisle Cathedral) makes us welcome, has ramps etc and is accessible.

It is also important to recognise that 12th Century buildings were not designed with access in mind.

But faced with a range of disabilities, many of which are exacerbated by age, it seems to me that if the church is to be inclusive then it needs to recognise what aspects of its attitudes and architecture effectively excludes people, it is not that something is missing from the churches understanding of the data, it is what is missing from its understanding of disability, especially now in the present political climate where disability hate crimes are on the increase and welfare support is being withdrawn.

I always expect better from the church and I am always disappointed.

multi congregation ministry

Seeing necessity as opportunity is in many ways a virtue.

In the recent edition of the Retired Clergy Association Newsletter there is an article about Multi Congregation Ministry.

It makes interesting reading for a church which is plunging ever deeper, much like the Labour Party,  into an existential crisis.

Like most crises it is both a crisis of the Churches own making and not.

I have to accept my portion of responsibility, after all I was ordained in 1969 I have served as a curate, a vicar, a canon, a diocesan officer, the parishes where I served as priest are all still in existence, but all reflect contemporary reality, with ageing congregations, little or no evident renewal and in the most part linked with other parishes in groups or teams as part of multi congregation ministries.

What I did, I did conscientiously and as far as I was able, sensitively.

I broke bread and word, I visited those who were sick, I ran youth clubs and elder groups, organised bible studies, took school assemblies, ran community initiatives and with my family tried to do justice and serve the Lord.

But all through I had a sense of swimming against the tide.

As with Matthew Arnold and Dover Beach the tide was constantly ebbing.

Numbers of communicants fell steadily.

Confirmations, the great passing out parade of the Church, continued to attract members both junior and adult, but once confirmed they were rarely seen again.

Baptisms continued, as did marriages and funerals, but the sense that alternative rituals were being demanded began to grow until now, as I understand it, marriages are 'civil' hopefully both when they are celebrated and as they are inhabited, funerals are now more commonly conducted by secular ministers, two of my neighbour's died last year and the funerals were conducted by secular ministers.

But the essence of ministry over 45+ Years was steady decline as families abandoned worship for shopping or social or recreational activity on Sunday.

In retirement I find that when I am asked to preside at a Eucharist in local churches in our part of North Cumbria numbers are small and congregations are elderly.

So the question arises what can be done?

Should we follow the advice offered by a character in Ron Ferguson's tale of a Glasgow Church trying to light the Easter Candle outside on a wet and windy morning when a local character came by from a long night out to observe 'Ye'd be better off in yer f***ing beds!"

Or do we try to restart mission in our urban and rural communities or do we start imagining failure as opportunity?

Writing in the RCA Newsletter Malcom Grundy chooses the latter option.

I have been ordained longer than Malcom, by about two minutes, as we knelt next to each other at the ordinations in Sheffield Cathedral in 1969 and we were contemporaries in the Diocese for two years or so.

In his article Malcolm summarises from his book on multi congregation ministry to describe seven ways that such congregations can celebrate as Faith hubs,  Community support networks, A barometer for local opinion, Workshops for liturgy, Shapers of community identity, Springboards for development, Landscapes of transcendence.

Reading the article I was reminded of the most recent service at which I presided.

The high flowing rhetoric of Landscapes of transcendence eluded me I have to say.

This was the base metal of a failed alchemical experiment I tried, lord knows I tried, but for the life of me I could not lift the liturgy or the congregation either with word broken, I watched the words of my sermon on the beheading of John Baptist and Jesus message to John's disciples, linked with the tragedy unfolding in Syria and God's purposes for our lives, float over the heads of the two or three gathered that morning in that place; the sacrament equally failed to captivate as people duly came forward to receive I wondered that Jesus who promised to be in the midst of us seemed so signally to fail to make his presence known amongst us.

My own experience of multi congregations is that they meet when they meet in the place they call their own and rarely meet when the meeting is called for another location or setting, the ubiquitous fifth Sunday when there is a 'parish' gathering rarely gathers more than those who still see the local church as theirs.

Over time there have been many initiatives decades of renewal, evangelism, and outreach now there is to be school of leadership, the leadership of the church will be enriched as women Bishops are ordained and prelatic pomposity is retired but I somehow sense that it is going to far more than the alpha course mindset of the present Archbishop to address the existential crisis facing the church.

Malcom Grundy's seven reasons to be cheerful sound OK in principle, maybe Malcolm wants to be seen as the Ian Dury of the Church?

To paraphrase Ian Dury's great anthem to cheerfulness:

Yes, yes, yes dear

perhaps next year

the pews will fill

and just in case

William Temple, Right Reverend Shirley

Amen, Amen, Amen and Praise

Let's have a bible study, why not bring a buddy

Baptisms in the nuddy

Let's do the Hokey Cokey, fire up the incense smokie

Let's play croquet

The new vicar's a soprano, swap the organ for piano

Drum machino

Reasons to be cheerful, part un

Reasons to be cheerful, part deux

Reasons to be cheerful, part trois

Reasons to be cheerful, Trinity

O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing .......

Gathering?

Gathering used to be what happened on a Sunday morning when the Church gathered for worship.

It happened on other days too, Saint's Days, Festivals, sometimes Confirmations and certainly, Ordinations.

There is something uplifting and enriching about being part of a large gathering sharing in Liturgy, hearing the great words of Scripture read and joining with others in singing the words of the Hymns.

To be a part of a congregation of hundreds, or as on one Easter Day I particularly remember, thousands is an uplifting, fulfilling and spiritually nurturing experience.

The Easter Day in particular was in 1985 at Holy Trinity Church in Boston, Mass. I was visiting Harvard on a Fellowship Programme and had been hired by Holy Trinity as an assistant priest to administer the Eucharist, on that Easter Sunday there were two Masses and at each Mass a congregation of a thousand people, after the first Mass, Brinks the bullion couriers arrived in the vestry to receive the collection which was taken directly to the Bank.

But as I have remarked in previous blogs the experience of being part of a huge congregation, being uplifted by the emotional and creative energy of other worshippers is less and less available.

I was Ordained Deacon forty six years ago in Sheffield Cathedral, the congregation filled the space and amongst the worshippers were members of my  own family who even now forty five years later comment on the experience, the emotional power, of simply of being a part of that congregation made up of the friends and families of the ordinands and the new congregations which they would join, the service they recall had drama in spades, emotional highs and what is especially remembered joining with others in singing the hymns as Charles Wesley captured it: 'O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.

I guess that Ordinations still have that power although I haven't attended one in since leaving the Staff of Bradford Cathedral in 2000.

As congregations decline and the church deals in the 'two or three' gathered together, the experience of worship becomes thinner and less satisfying and so the two or three find it harder and harder to turn up and, if a new book on multi-congregation ministry is right, the 'ministry' they exercise will be lost.

One response to my previous blog was a comment that what I was describing was particularly true in the countryside but was beginning to be seen in urban areas as well.

It is of course true. Having served as a Parish Priest in both urban and rural settings I can see that what I describe is possibly more true of the rural church.

After a time spent in Birmingham working for the Home Office in a Drugs Project I moved to  small village in Rural Cumbria where the congregation was normally counted in single figures, the largest congregation attended a Midnight Mass one Christmas Eve when the village was snow bound and the Methodist's could not attend Chapel so we had both an Organist and a Choir and a congregation in double figures and suddenly we heard echoes of how it used to be and, because the pub stayed open and the police were literally 'snowed out' the Parish 'Breakfast' consisted of mince pies and brandy coffee at 2 00 am!

I always sensed that the village had the possibility of doing something special, it was a special kind of place and now it has and what it has done I somehow sense might be an indicator of where the Church should be looking or maybe it will simply become the substitute with which people find what they are seeking.

The Village has a Festival, Music on the Marr, (Marr I understand being old Cumbrian for  a village green or open space) sitting in a Marquee with hundreds of others listening to music becomes a communal and community experience, it offers much the same as might have been experienced when the church was the Church, it is a secular celebration, but it celebrates poetry, and in the power of the words and the music and the experience, the pub on the village green and the hog roast, it becomes a spiritual experience too and the Church is part of that experience in so far as it is both a venue and a quiet space for reflection.

This idea of where the modern 'Gathering' is to be found has been at the heart of a number of reflections on the 'Glastonbury' experience, commenting in The Guardian (29th June 2015) both John Harris reflecting on the political debates and Micheal Hann and Harriet Gibsone on the music each reflected that an essential element of the power of Glastonbury was the sense of 'Gathering' of being part of a larger whole whether debating the political issues of the day or a thousand tongues singing along with Lionel Richie.

Communality morphed into community morphed into a kind of secular spirituality morphed into a shared humanity.

A fragmented church, now broken and scattered into two or three, here and there, whilst aping the worship offered in a Cathedral a hundred years ago, (or Holy Trinity Boston 30 years ago) cannot compete nor should it.

It is time for a radical re-imaging of what the Church is and who it seeks to serve.

Another post from the post ecclesial front line .......

A new burger bar in our nearest town is offering a brunch burger, beef, bacon, egg, tomato for a tenner on a Sunday Morning between 11 and 1.

For an extra pound instead of the set drink you can upgrade to a Bloody Mary!

Hail Mary full of Vodka!

Well, that should give the churches a run for their monies, it should have the same impact on morning attendance as The Forsyte Saga had on Evensong!

Directly opposite the bar, (situated in the Old Post Office, the new post office is in W H Smiths if you need a stamp, but not on Sunday),  is a redundant church which is now an antiques emporium with a cafe and jazz on Fridays.

Further along the street another redundant church has been converted into flats.

It is a depressing litany of closure, failure, redundancy and decline.

A few nights ago I had a dream, in the dream I was revisiting a parish I knew, somehow in the dream I was aware that the parish was in Bolton where I served my second curacy, as I was preparing to join the procession from the vestry, (in the dream I had been  invited to preach at the special service), I was told by the vicar that there was a good crowd, at least thirty people in Church, my response was to express the opinion that thirty was not a good crowd or even a good congregation, the last time I had attended worship in that church there had been three hundred in the congregation.

So far this year, apart from the mid-week services at the Cathedral, I have been asked to lead worship in three different churches, two in Scotland and one in Cumbria, it is the same story over and over, as a seventy year old retired clergyman it often feels as though I am the youngest person in attendance and average congregations are struggling to make it into double figures.

And yet the hierarchy insist on business as usual.

I like to read the notices, it helps me form a picture of what is happening, the last church, with a congregation of nine, had, according to the notice board paid over £10, 000 to the diocesan central fund and, next to the egregious notice from the Bishop (by Divine Permission etc) suspending the benefice yet again, was a notice advising that a faculty was required to undertake various maintenance works to the church exterior which were urgently required following the quinquennial survey.

Even though the decline of the church is rapidly approaching the precipitous and possibly irreversible the church in Cumbria is developing a concept of ecumenical mission communities under the title 'God for All' and has recently advertised two jobs at £38k per job: God For All Fresh Expressions Enabler and God For All Evangelism Enabler.

In the supporting blurb that accompanies the advertisement for these posts a support group will share a responsibility for ensuring that within five years everyone in Cumbria will have an opportunity to discover more about God's purposes for their lives.

This group will apparently be characterised by being: dynamic, light touch, risk taking, discerning, strategic, enabling, hard working, playful, creative, serious, prayerful and pragmatic.

Clearly the genius at work here had not only a Bible but a Thesaurus on his or her desk.

But what happens next? if it works then presumably all the redundant churches and suspended benefices will be reinstated? If it doesn't work what will the next desperate throw of the dice look like?

It feels to me that the hierarchy of the church need to be invited to join their own twelve step programme, get themselves a reality check or check themselves in for counselling. It all feels just too desperate that somehow you can gamble yourselves out of trouble with one more throw of the dice or spin of the wheel.

The image of the church is increasingly of a corporation or business which has retained its head office, the car park is still populated with late registration, top of the range cars, each senior executive has his or her own office, board meetings are held regularly and bonuses agreed. But out in the real world the factories are empty or idle, the warehouses full of old products gathering dust or have been turned into starter units for the new generation of the self employed, the transport fleet has been outsourced and the workforce largely laid off.

What in essence has happened and what shows no signs of letting up is the erosion of the broad basis of the ecclesia.

As a friend of mine and I once commented, the whole edifice is an inverted pyramid balancing ever  more precariously on one hour on a Sunday Morning.

And as those who meet on that one hour spend more time in maintenance, rushing as it were from the CD player because there is no organist or the organ is no longer playable, to take up the collection, serve the bread and wine to the retired clergyman to bless and break because the living has been suspended and you share a priest with five or six other parishes, so the mission of the church becomes survival hoping against hope that nothing more gives way, that no one else dies and that the supply of retired clergy continues.

It used to be that the thought was 'As for  me and my and my family we will seek justice and walk humbly with our God' sad to say that today it is far more likely that we will order the burger and upgrade our drinks.

Hail Mary full of Vodka ......

She who must be obeyed ......

She who must be obeyed was a rag doll which was used by the Nurse to the family of Rider Haggard. 

The Doll was 'brought out of some dark recess in order to terrify' the young Haggard and his siblings into behaving.

The name suggested itself to Haggard when he sat down to write the novel 'She': subtitled 'a history of adventure' which had at its heart the character of a woman Ayesha, or She (aka She who must be obeyed).

In the novel 'She' was born over 2000 years earlier amongst the Arabs and had become a great sorceress, granted immortality she 'bathed' in the fire from the 'Pillar of Life'.

Writing in his autobiography Haggard commented that when he sat down to write his ideas were of the vaguest kind, the only notion was of an 'immortal woman inspired by immortal love'.

Suddenly it seems she is at it again.

God it appears should be encouraged to be herself or is that, as one respondent has commented in the debate, heretical?

I must admit that I find the whole issue of God's gender something that I cannot bring myself to get terribly worked up about, although I can see that for some people constantly having God referred to as Male and therefore by implication, expressing largely Male values, might in some circumstances somehow undervalue female values.

But of God is S/he does that somehow undervalue, underplay or make particularly less of the essential God-ness of God?

If God is a community of persons as expressed in the idea of a trinity, expressing fatherhood, son-ship, kinship and the nurturing of the spirit then why shouldn't that community of persons reflect not only colour but gender alongside sexual difference and preference?

Somehow, I cannot imagine Mary and Joseph, with all that had been given to them and expected of them and surrounded by animals, shepherds, Kings and the glory of Angels really being very bothered about whether God was He or She as long as S/he was God and continued to be faithful.

Apparently Swordfish are having a crisis at the moment, overfishing, global warming, poisoned seas I imagine there could be a number of reasons why Swordfish are struggling, but they have responded, they are fighting back and in doing so it seems they are using a strategy known as parthenogenesis.

Apparently female sharks have also managed to achieve the miracle of virgin birth whilst in captivity and with no male sharks nearby relaxing in a post coital triste.


So it seems the birds and the bees (although no examples of avian parthenogenesis have been recorded) are doing it so its possible to imagine Adam and Eve, Adam arrived fully formed first and when offered a magnificent, beautiful, loyal, faithful partner to undertake all his shopping, cooking and keeping Eden swept he asked how much?

An arm and a leg came the reply from the Deity.

What could I get for a rib? Asked Adam!

The fact is that as society develops and advances so human beings are shaped and reshaped in the imagine of the divine, just like Swordfish or caged Sharks.

St Paul captured the theological irrationality of our claims about the nature of the undefinable and the deep mystery at the heart of the revelation that is Christ in his letter to the Christians in Galatia.

If he commented you are baptised, if you have 'clothed' yourselves with Christ then there is no Jew nor Greek, there is no slave or freeman, their is neither male nor female because you are one in Christ.

Well of course there is still Jew and Greek, there are slaves and there are freemen, there are both male and female and why is that and the answer seems to be, in another phrase of Paul the Apostle, because the whole of creation is groaning and travailing ..... the future is not here yet, the kingdom has been implemented but not realised, we are at the same time forgiven and still living under the cloud of human sinfulness and kneeling at the mercy seat, which is where we are sustained by immortal womanhood inspired by immortal love, S/he is both our father and our mother.

The Triumphant Entry .....

The Escort was called Dave.

He had an enormous Triumph Motorcycle and he was parked at the gate of the cottage where I was staying.

He had been delegated to escort me the against the flow of traffic, which was exclusively cyclists engaged in a fund raising cycle race in Scotland, to the Church where I was Locum Minister for the week.

Dave was from South Shields and as the cyclists raced past we had an interesting conversation, 'good crack' as they say, about religion.

Dave thought, having started out as a Methodist, that, having he said studied a number of religions, that in the end it all comes down to Loving Your Neighbour.

I had to agree. 

There is of course the bit about loving God which assumes that whatever religion or faith or nationality or cultural imperative formed you, and assuming that you weren't part of an atheistic society, that  you can agree that God is God and that Hinduism. Islam and Judaism point us towards the same God, whom we worship in common, without ever trespassing onto the heretical possibility that in a hierarchy of Gods your God occupies a lesser place than mine.

So Dave and I agreed.

It's all about loving your neighbour and in his case he chose to express that by being involved in acting as a mentor to young motorcyclists, carrying urgently needed blood products to Great Ormond Street Hospital and escorting vicars to their Churches, not for their safety but for the safety of the cyclists travelling in the other direction.

He had never escorted a Vicar to Church before and I had never been escorted in such Triumph by Motorcycle, but it was great fun as with flashing lights, off we set in a glorious procession behind his motorcycle bearing as it did the legend:

Triumph!

A glorious procession of, as Richard Thompson has it in his song about a Vincent Black Lightening:

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

Except I was being escorted to the Church Door.

Processions are of course the meat and drink of Cathedrals and I have walked in procession and been told my place in procession before the one and ahead of the other and the Vergers with solemn tread have led me from Altar to Pulpit and solemnly bowed as I ascended the steps to break word or bread.

After the service, Dave having departed not only in Triumph at a job well done but on his Triumph I had to drive myself back to the cottage where I was staying.

Nevertheless despite the glitziness and the power and the triumph the service was an oddly deflated affair.

The Church in the Scottish Highlands maintains its weekly communion by means of offering clergy, both currently serving and retired, the opportunity for a Holiday at a reduced rate in exchange for taking the service.

Having arrived with flashers flashing escorted by Dave the Motorcycle Verger on his Triumph I discovered that the the congregation at that point consisted of one person with another expected, so I found myself wondering aloud whether, as Tubby Clayton the founder of Toc H and Vicar of All Hallows, Tower Hill, apparently asked a soldier about the go up into battle and who had asked for communion from the Chaplain, 'Do you want the full service or the short'?

Apparently the full service was requested and rehearsed.

But as I gently suggested, its no use pretending that we're a Cathedral if there are only three of us, why don't we sit around the coffee table and break bread as though we were holding a family meal or a Seder?

Just then the door opened and two people arrived who were visiting locally so I donned my Alb and approached the Altar and the full service it was.

The sermon was a gentle business, I sense that didactic no longer does and so in the week after an election in which England had chosen to elect a Conservative Administration and Scotland had disagreed I chose to reflect on 'the common good' linking it with VE Day and the post war settlement and wondering whether the post election settlement of 2015 would have any element of the common good? Linking as it does to Dave the escorts view that Love of Neighbour lies at the heart of it.

So the six of us managed to break bread without breaking into a fight.

Then we sat round the coffee table and discussed the state of the Church, the visitors had no priest in their church, I was sounded out as to whether I was free next week, the conversation focused on the concern that not only were there no congregations but there were no clergy to serve them.

The practicalities of making it work, booking the retirees week by week, the economy of the bread and wine, choosing the music and playing the accompanying CD fell to one individual who had enough to do in a pretty full life anyway.

So can the Church survive without a miracle? 

The Church as we know it? If it can it will be a triumph of a different kind!

I found over my two weeks, during which I celebrated three Eucharists including Ascension Day that simply rehearsing the words reinforces the belief, the Liturgy has some great words that sum up the theology, that human love of God is a simple response to God's Love expressed toward us in Christ, but fewer and fewer people hear those words rehearsed regularly.

The Church has no mechanism for enabling the folk who are holding things together against the centrifugal forces of the times we live in to understand that the economy of bread and wine is in its essence what the ministry of the people of God comes down to and hiring someone to come in and read those words, whether escorted Triumphantly or not is no longer feasible or sensible.

The times are clearly changing but if the answer is blowing in the wind the Church is finding it hard to hear it.

My finger tips are raw and my nails are bleeding ......

This has been the bleakest Easter I can remember.

There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs but the single most compelling reason is that I find that having the church as the interlocutor between me and whatever is meant by God is proving more and more unsatisfactory.

This dis-ease arises partly from the fact of being retired: I'd rather do it myself than watch someone else do it badly.

Partly from being fed a poor diet when I do attend worship. The warmth, drama, music, colour of the Liturgy has been reduced to a 'going through the motions' on the part of the overworked and overstretched clergy.

Partly from my being an island of catholicity in a sea of evangelicalism.

Partly from seeing the church which I had served as well as I was able, 'burning myself out in the service of the Lord' as I was instructed by my theological college principal, being reduced to a faded facsimile of itself, reproduced on a Cannon photocopier?

Partly seeing and hearing the 'leadership' of the church twisting themselves inside out in order to pretend that business can carry on as usual when it clearly cannot.

Partly because the social gospel that I believed was the only valid Kingdom expression arising from the Lord's Prayer and my reading the Bible, has been forgotten.

These are the 'six impossible things' that have happened since my Priesting 45 years ago this year and they have left me clinging onto the church by my finger tips, occasionally conducting worship, usually for congregations of five or six people, in cold churches, with no music, moth or rodent eaten vestments and the drama provided by wondering whether, as happened recently at a funeral I attended recently,  a member of the congregation might collapse and need an ambulance.

I overheard the person who called the ambulance answer the question about where they were, when the finally managed to find a signal by standing on a gravestone, by saying 'in the middle of nowhere'.

Which was both literally and metaphorically the case.

I gather from other clergy that whilst some would disagree with me about all this, many would agree.

These six impossible things lead to other dissatisfactions.

It seems to me from my observation that nobody has a Vicar anymore and that the Church of England is becoming markedly congregational in its practises.

When I was living in a previous parish where I was basically a house for duty assistant curate (which interestingly offered me the opportunity for the happiest and most rewarding five years of ministry) I had an accident.

As a result of my accident, which left me hospitalised with a punctured lung and cracked ribs, I wrote in the parish magazine a piece in which I was able to say just what it meant to me to have a Vicar rather then being a Vicar for my six weeks of convalescence.

But now as a retiree in a Diocese I am pretty clear that not only am I not a Vicar but I don't have a Vicar either.

The congregationalism however is qualified by a leadership which consistently requires that those seeking office in the Church become more and more academically qualified. Surely a 'reader' needs to be able to read? And if they are called to preach then they should call on the example of Jesus and take as their subject matter, simple ideas drawn from scripture and illustrated from the stuff of the world around them? You don't need a degree or New Testament Greek for that?

This blog on 'Me and the Church' was preceded by two blogs which I began but didn't take very far, one was called Voice Crying in the Wilderness and the other Prophet Without Honour.

Most of what passes for social commentary emanating from the leadership of the church is woefully under researched and under stated.

Nevertheless it has caused the Government to complain and demand that the church stays out of politics.

The two Archbishops in their public statements seem to approximate to a political broadcast for the Liberal Party when compared with other preachers and church leaders.

Compare the recent essays Rock and Sand, 'fixing the economy is not enough we are told, the market has limits we are advised, solidarity is important, the social compact represented by the welfare state is under threat, the church needs to have a vision'.

I much prefer my reading from Bishop Helder Camara:

'The capitalist empires, with their affirmations of sacrifice for the free world, of defence of private enterprise, of safeguarding order from subversion and chaos, are in fact defending their political prestige and the economic interests arising from it; they are indeed at the service of economic power and the international trusts. The socialist empires for their part are hard and intransigent they do not allow pluralism, they impose dialectical materialism, demand blind obedience to the party, set up a regime of total and permanent insecurity and fear, just like the fascist dictatorships of the extreme right'.

Or:

'When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist'.

When I was a curate in Bolton I once asked the Vicar of Bolton what were his views on the ordination of women. He told me that he didn't have view because it wouldn't happen until after had retired and so didn't concern him.

I always felt that there was an issue of simple justice at the heart of the debate and that the Church should reflect its commitment to that justice being realised for its own sake and for the world.

Now we are seeing something, at least in the English Church, America is different, that somehow fails to reflect or respect that justice and offers a poor example to the world.

As a conspiracy theorist it seems to me that what we are witnessing is not positive discrimination but the failure of due process and cabalistic scheming behind closed doors which honours neither the principles that underpin and argue for the ordination of women and the natural way in which women duly ordained should when it is appropriate be elevated to the episcopate.

What I hope is that the women duly elevated will have the courage and confidence to challenge the Bishop's to behave more appropriately as leaders of a church that is rapidly losing its place in world, losing its influence and hemorrhaging its membership and failing to attract young people into membership. 

I'm still clinging on but my finger tips are raw and my nails are bleeding.

Good Friday 2015

I read Bultmann on the recommendation of our Curate as a relative youngster, certainly before I went to theological college, I was probably about 19 years of age.

It wasn't the easiest of reads for someone who had left school at 15 with 'O' Levels in Woodwork and Geography!

But somewhere or other I gained an impression that whilst de-mythologising the scriptures as an academic, Bultmann was still able to preach the Gospel as 'Kerygma' from his pulpit on a Sunday.

That early exposure to the idea that it is possible to have an emotional commitment to the essential claims of the Gospel whilst retaining an honest and open critique of the gospels themselves has remained with me throughout my ministry and now into my post ministerial retirement.

As a student at Salisbury in the mid sixties I found that I was required to read the same books as everyone else and then attempt to write an original essay on whatever the subject at  hand was. In those days, before Google, it was necessary to go to a Library and find a book, hopefully one that no-one else had found including the Tutor and then write something original.

During a tutorial on The Resurrection we were set a task of writing about what happened during Jesus Passion and the days following.

The book I found, was dusty, dirty and hidden on a shelf in the  local bookshop it was the work of Bishop Barnes.

Barnes was unknown to me but he was a liberal Bishop and in his book The Rise of Christianity he attacked, coherently and cogently, it seemed to  me, many christian claims including the Virgin Birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

So I wrote my essay, echoing much of what Barnes had said, that the body after it was taken down from the cross was tossed into the rubbish pit and lost. That the disciples were scattered, broken hearted and leaderless. And that the real miracle of the 'psychological' resurrection was that the story was first told, then re-told and then gossipped, that Jesus was alive and myth became, what Norman Mailer characterised as a 'factoid'.

I submitted my essay and after a while it was returned. I looked to see whether I had achieved an Alpha or Beta plus or minus but no I laughed out loud when I saw that at the end of my essay he had written one word, 'Balls'!

Clearly Bishop Barnes, liberal Bishop and courter of controversy, was still at it, provoking the tutor from beyond the grave through the medium of my essay, was I 'channelling' the Bishop's spirit? Was he still alive? Had I 'resurrected' him?

Later in a tutorial the tutor asked if I actually believed what I had written and I had to admit that it made more sense to me than the stories in the gospels, and that in some ways the real miracle was that here we were 2000 years later still telling the story of a man who had lived and died and that his story enabled people to live better lives loving, as he commanded, God, whatever that concept means in practise and their neighbours as themselves.

(Interestingly Don Cupitt quotes the Jewish literary critic, Howard Bloom who comments on the J narrative, the founding epic of God written by an unknown author who presents us with a demanding, persecuting, jealous, capricious, enthralling super male ego. Bloom suggests that the author of the J narrative may have been female! Certainly the most difficult aspect of the God we describe today is that S/he should allow evil to persist in the human condition, the most anaemic is the image of gentle Jesus meek and mild).

Later I preached a sermon as part of a college mission and later rehearsed the sermon in a preaching class in the college chapel, the response from the visiting lecturer was: 'that, gentlemen, was the Kerygma'.

I had to go away and look the word up to realise that the lecturer was complimenting me, it was the opposite of 'balls' and means to cry or proclaim as a herald.

Looking back over the forty six years since I my ordination in 1969 I realise that this has always been the tension between my private thoughts and my public ministry.

In my view the commitment to  living a social ecumenism which allows the rich tapestry of the stories from the Bible to mix and mingle, enrich and enliven the equally rich tapestry of human existence to embed the claims of faith in the context of secular reality allows the christian story to have a real and meaningful effect.

I once rehearsed my secular view of the real miracle of the feeding of the five thousand from the pulpit. I suggested that Jesus' breaking and sharing the bread and fish caused a ripple effect of generosity so that those with packed lunches began to share after the manner of a pot luck supper, this caused one indignant worshipper to walk out and then write to say that he could no longer worship with someone who denied 'God's Word'.

Aah well I reflected, we'll just have to manage without you!

This Easter, without an Altar or a Pulpit, there will be no opportunity to preach the Gospel as Kerygma.

But what is more important is to continue to reinforce the power of the Easter story through the secular interpretation of the gospel.

I started with Bultmann and end with Don Cupitt:

'Traditional ecclesiastical Christianity has now completed its historical task, which was always in the end to go beyond itself, exceed itself and become something greater than itself'.

This is still the challenge facing the church to accept and understand that without intellectual honesty and rigour the old myths will continue to fade and without some form of secular interpretation will be rendered meaningless by those who have forgotten them or increasingly never learnt them.

But if the church retreats into its comfort zone, with clergy brandishing irrelevant texts to answer questions that are troubling people or suggesting prayer or attendance at an Alpha Course as the answer, then the church will remain trapped in time, never exceeding itself or becoming something greater.

It is sometimes too easy to wonder whether the Church does actually believe in death and resurrection?

An exciting political journey?

Hermeneutics is the interpretation of texts. Usually these are biblical texts but all textual material can be subjected to a hermeneutic.

Yesterday I received my first election text. It arrived hot from the UKIP presses and the front cover stated boldly that it contained information about what a UKIP Government would do and positioned beneath a Union Flag and above an acclamatory image of raised hands it declared that it offered: Policies for People.

But which policies for which people?

Inside the leaflet a series of very specific paragraph headings declare in bold exactly what policies are proposed. For example, who would not wish to see jobs protected and prosperity increased? However as you read the the paragraph in detail what is being promised is a renegotiation of our relationship with the European Economic Community. Reviewing legislation and removing laws which 'hamper British prosperity'. A particular issue for UKIP is the free movement of labour which 'prevents the UK managing its own borders.

This protectionist attitude challenges the views of many British Employers that isolating ourselves from Europe will not lead to prosperity but will adversely affect trade and profitability.

But as you read the leaflet this pattern of positive statements which in one context might be viewed as progressive are interpreted in ways that are simply regressive.

Along with the Con-Dem Coalition, UKIP aims to repair the UK economy, they don't use the word broken, but it is implicit if the economy needs to be repaired, but this does not mean, setting people back to work or introducing a living wage or a basic citizens income.

The mechanism that UKIP propose is simply amending the tax burden for individuals, increasing allowances, abolishing inheritance tax, lowering the higher rate of tax and introducing a turnover tax on businesses.

It is hard to know how these proposals can be represented as policies for people? The old socialist campaigner Tony Benn always had a line in his speeches when he visited or revisited a town, 'I arrived earlier today' he would say 'and had a chance to look around, you know, there's so much which needs doing to improve the environment, so many people needing support, yet we have thousands out of work, why not set them to work to improve the environment or care for others'?

The fact is that the tragic loss of public sector jobs has not been compensated by new jobs being created, so much of what has been lost has been replaced by minimum wage, part-time, zero hours contracts or 'self-employment'.

If UKIP were serious about repairing the economy it is this level of damage that needs to be addressed ensuring that the divisions and disparities that have been introduced and encouraged are closed and society is restored.

At first the section entitle prioritising Education and Skills is encouraging but as you read on it becomes clear that UKIP's real emphasis is the promotion of nostalgia without recognising that nostalgia is not what it used to be. So the detail of its policies with regard to education is essentially a return to the 1950's (of course for many potential UKIP supporters there's nothing wrong with that), but as we welcome back Grammar Schools under a UKIP Government at what point will we recall the many and compelling reasons why Comprehensive Education was introduced?

In each section of the leaflet, which presumably echoes the manifesto to a greater or lesser degree, UKIP's policies are seen as a fuzzy mixture of the desirable, the undesirable and the populist.

Seeking to reduce the debts we leave our grandchildren UKIP proposes to leave the EU, cut foreign aid, scrap HS2, scrap green subsidies and abolish the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. If any of these proposals do in fact reduce the tax burden and leave a surplus for our grandchildren imagine for a minute what a grey, fragile, isolated country we will bequeath them instead.

Who wouldn't wish to honour our military assets and personnel but does the guarantee of a job for those who have served in the armed forces for a minimum of twelve years, in either the police, prison service or border force equal honouring that service?

It is good to note that the media description of UKIP introducing an insurance based health service is wrong, they will ensure, we are assured that the NHS will continue to be free at the point of delivery and time of need. But it would be wrong to imagine that the Kingdom of Bevan will continue to be nigh! Visitors and Migrants have to pay NI for 5 years and until then they will require approved private health insurance.

The twin themes of the leaflet are clear, leaving the EU, abandoning Green Policies, controls and taxes, an appeal to nostalgia and a return to the Britain of the 1950's. Tucked into each section under its straightforward heading can be found a number of interesting twists and turns. Anyone positively attracted by an offer such as 'more free parking in the High Street' or in Hospitals or 'properly ventilated smoking rooms in pubs' needs to remind themselves about how the limitations and charges were introduced in the first place.

UKIP is not proposing the end of the requirement to wear a seat belt in a car. It demonstrably saves lives and has cut down on emergency admissions to hospital. It is generally accepted as sensible legislation and even a populist Government wouldn't now change the law. So under Transport it is not mentioned. Instead populist policies regarding Toll Roads, Free Bus Passes for pensioners, HS2 and the use of speed cameras as revenue raisers are all targeted. But the anti EU little englander attitude is reflected in the requirement that visitors to the UK will have to buy a Britdisc before they can drive on our roads?

I am not an economist but I do find myself thinking that the proposals and policies contained in the leaflet have neither been properly costed or subject to stress testing. New layers of administration are proposed, County Health boards for example, new Quangos will be required, the savings do not seem to equal the cost increases implied in the rafts of new legislation and it is hard to see how savings made from leaving the EU are balanced by the loss of jobs and income derived from continued membership.

I nearly binned the leaflet without reading it. I'm glad that I didn't but I find it scary. The only saving grace is that whatever happens on May 7th the likelihood of a UKIP Government being elected is pretty remote and so, viewing the document as a gadfly and a call for change in the way our national affairs are run, some of the proposals certainly stimulate radical thoughts.

Takes me back to the heady days when politics were conducted in smoke filled rooms where real ale was served in pewter tankards.