The end of Marriage?

I love the story of the emperor who had no clothes. Whist his courtiers discussed his apparel and complimented him on what he was wearing, it took a child to point out that in fact he was naked. So much debate seems to be based on striving to establish what we want the truth to be. Both in debates about Brexit, and the endless tweets from the White House, it seems that truth is often trampled underfoot as the pictures of the reality we want are created. My sympathies lie with the child who had the courage to say that the emperor was naked, which is why I have a certain love of people who can incisively cut through the cant of debate and state what ought to have been obvious from the start. Without agreeing with his conclusions, I have enjoyed hearing Don Cupitt speaking. In similar vein, without ever wanting him to be running our country, I often thought that the late Tony Benn had some valuable things to say. I also like listening to Will Self and enjoy his contributions to BBC Question Time. It was on one such occasion, in a debate about civil partnerships, that Will Self cut through all the tangle of views and said that civil partnerships had been invented for the sake of the Church of England. 

I think that is perceptive and also very true. Historically speaking, the Church of England had always been involved in changes to legislation on marriage. Going back to the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, the Church of England was involved in the change in legislation that, for the first time, allowed divorce through the civil courts. The change was limited to fall in line with the Matthean exception (Matthew 5.32) and allowed a man to divorce his wife on the grounds of her adultery. Since those days the Church of England has been involved in gradual changes to the law, but in introducing civil partnerships (2004) the new arrangements were designed to work around the views of the Church of England in a way that avoided conflict with the church's views, rather than win the support of the church over the proposed new arrangements. Relationships between two people of the same gender would be given a legal status similar to marriage, but they would be called ‘civil’ (and therefore not ‘religious’) and ‘partnerships’ (and therefore not ‘marriage’), which allowed the church to pretend that that such relationships had nothing to do with marriage and certainly would not involve any sexual content. Will Self was right. Civil partnerships took the form they did so that they would not involve a show-down with the Church of England.

I wonder whether the Church of England will look back, in years to come, and think that perhaps this whole issue was not handled very well. There was opposition to civil partnerships, back in 2002, when bishops in the House of Lords backed what was seen to be a wrecking amendment to stop the proposed legislation. Thereafter the bishops were keen to promote the idea that there can be no possible connection between civil partnerships and marriage. In 2013 the bishops turned up in force to try and prevent the Same Sex Couples bill go through, the bill which introduced same-sex marriage. The Archbishop of Canterbury warned that the bill would see marriage “abolished, redefined and recreated”. In 2018 the Church of England has spoken out in favour of retaining civil partnerships, within the context of a debate as to whether such partnerships should be abolished, in view of the fact that everyone now has access to marriage, regardless of gender. The Church of England takes this view, because civil partnerships allow gay relationships to be recognised in law in a way that does not offend the church’s defence of its particular doctrine of marriage. Remove civil partnerships and all that will be left is universal marriage. That will leave the Church of England in an impossible position, which is very much of its own making. 

The Prime Minister has just announced the solution to a recent legal judgment, in which an opposite-sex couple demanded the right to a civil partnership. That solution will be to make civil partnerships available to everyone, regardless of gender. Perhaps that will be the end of the matter, but suppose the wave of public fashion were to flow against marriage? Civil partnerships could become the norm and marriage itself could become as old fashioned as it is to use the old vows in which a bride promised to obey her husband. We cannot predict where this will go, but might it be the case that the sensitivities of the Church of England will in fact have led, not to the protection of marriage as a central institution of society, but to a somewhat side-lined, olde-worlde expression of commitment for those who want to celebrate old-fashioned ways? Might universal civil partnerships lead to the complete opposite to what the Church of England was wanting to achieve?

Bread of Life

I love to make bread. I must confess that I cheat and use a bread-making machine, but the end product is wonderful. At first I was rather scientific in my production methods, carefully measuring out each ingredient. Now I feel more artistic, throwing in this, that and the other with a confidence which comes from experience. You set the machine to turn itself on during the night and then wake up to find the house infused with the smell of freshly baked bread.

Bread is powerful stuff. It represents the most basic of all food. Yet to break and share bread also has connotations of sharing, friendship, fellowship and communion. To break bread with others is to build relationships with them in a special way. When I was a curate, my Vicar used to hold an ecumenical breakfast once a month for the leaders of all the denominations in town. The town was designated as a Local Ecumenical Partnership, but somehow relationships had not really taken off as they might have done. The introduction of the breakfast changed all that and, as people broke bread together (and ate freshly laid eggs from the vicarage hens) friendships were born and the LEP took on energy and life.

It is no wonder that Jesus shared meals with others, often with his disciples, yet also often with people that otherwise respectable people would not be seen dead sharing food. On the night he was betrayed he shared in new last supper with his friends and he infused the breaking and sharing of bread with a profoundly deep meaning. When all this is over, he told them, meet together and do this in remembrance of me. Even then, his disciples cannot have comprehended what was to come. Jesus would die the shameful death of crucifixion, yet on the third day he rose from the grave to the new life of the resurrection. What had seemed a defeat was now a glorious victory and those disciples remembered the words of Jesus and began to meet as a new community, empowered by the Spirit, as they broke bread together.

Do this in remembrance of me. Today we still take bread and wine, give thanks over them, break the bread and share them. It brings the reality of a real body broken, and real blood out poured, into the present moment of our lives. It does so in a way that binds us together into a community, whose sense of identity is forged by the shared experience of being sinners for whom Christ has died, yet also inheritors of the new world of the resurrection life. The risen Christ is profoundly and vividly present in our midst as we share this sense of deep communion with him, and so also with one another. And if we cannot share such communion, because we no longer agree on whatever the contentious issue of the moment might be, then that only goes to show that we have forgotten our Lord’s command. It no longer is the shared experience of being drawn to the cross that defines us, for we have become as Pharisees, defining ourselves (and indeed others) by earthly values and perceptions, rather than seeing in one another fellow sinners for whom Christ’s body’s was broken.

Do this is remembrance of me. Did we understand Christ right? Did he just mean that we should gather in churches and engage in rituals with bread and wine? As I have already indicated, I think there is a real power in doing just that, particularly if we allow Christ to use that action to draw us into what we dare to call ‘The Body of Christ’, a body defined not by agreement with one another, but by a shared experience of being drawn into the saving action of God in Christ. Yet surely Jesus meant more than that. ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ also means that we are invited to take up our cross and follow Jesus in self-giving love for a broken world. To be the Body of Christ is to accept a vocation to be as bread, broken to feed a hungry world. At the Last Supper, Jesus also stooped to wash his disciples’ feet. What it means to give ourselves in service for a broken world must be reflected in how we represent Christ, as broken bread, as we too stoop in service and engage in the real lives of all to whom we are a neighbour.

Bread smells delicious and appetising. That might lead us to ask how we smell as a church. Does our common life have the enticing smell of something that is delicious, satisfying and life-giving? Recently I was talking in these terms to one person and he replied that what he smelled in the church today is decay. For many, in our present age, what is smelled in the church is corruption and moral decadence, as more and more examples of abuse surface. Many churches seem to define themselves in terms of what others deem to be misogyny or homophobia, which produces a smell that is more than unpleasant. It is deeply revolting. Whenever a church splits off by defining itself in terms of this belief or that, it no longer lives as a Church in which its members are defined by a shared vocation, to lose one’s life in self-giving service of others - in remembrance of Christ - for the sake of Christ - with the face of Christ - as the very bread of Christ, broken open to feed a hungry world. So the Church festers and decays, as we ignore the invitation to be the very bread of life that he came to give to the world. Yet there is hope. All over the world, in so many places and situation, whenever anyone gives of themselves, for the sake of Christ, and with the costliness of that same Divine love, then something of the Kingdom of God is revealed at that moment and smell of the Living Bread of Life fills the air.

Why do Christians Hate Homosexuals?

I was standing by the font, engaging in one of my favourite activities. We had 150 children in from the local school and we had constructed a whole morning for them to explore our vast church. As well as a number of interactive activities, each child would also get a tour of the church with one of us. We knew what we wanted to say, but we needed to be flexible enough to answer the many questions they would have. So my next tour was starting. Here, at the font, surrounded by fifteen eager young people, I would begin by asking what this thing was and why we used it. But already a hand was up. A nine year old girl really wanted to ask her question. Why, she asked, do Christians hate homosexuals? Those were her exact words and the question will forever be etched on my heart. I was shocked by it. This question expressed how this girl, and no doubt many young people, saw our message. I hope I answered the question well. I said that, when I was her age, people could be locked up for being gay, so some older people still had problems with homosexuality, yet here, in this church, we did not hate people and everyone was welcome.

That was in 2010. Two years later I found myself encouraged by my bishop to take a mini-sabbatical between jobs. I did not have much time to arrange it, so I took the opportunity to follow some contacts my brother (Archdeacon of Northern Europe) gave me, both to meet Porvoo church leaders and to travel around Denmark, Sweden and Latvia. It so happened that the decision to allow couples of the same gender to marry in church had recently been taken in both the Church of Sweden and the Church of Denmark, so that was a particular topic of our conversation. I remember having coffee and cake with Peter, Bishop of Copenhagen. He, and indeed others, were insistent that, in the Lutheran Church, marriage is not seen as a sacrament. It is a gift of God in creation, but a practical matter, not encased in doctrine. It was, therefore, a relatively simple matter to move, with their society, to accept same-sex marriage in church. What was the reaction in Denmark? One of relief, he replied. People were so pleased that their church had not abandoned them.

Later on, I was visiting Lund (Sweden) having travelled along the famous 19k Øresund bridge. The bishop was not free to see me, but I spent a very enjoyable morning with her chaplain. A decision had had to be faced as to how the Church of Sweden would respond to the new legislation that allowed same-sex couples to marry in Sweden. Per shared with me the speech made by Bishop Antje Jackelén at that time. It was in Swedish, but he translated it for me. Marriage is a matter of protection against destructive expressions of sexuality; as such it can be just as important for gay couples to marry. Marriage is a God-given part of creation, but not a sacrament. The life of Christ is the key to unlocking scripture and interpreting it; we do not see scripture as declaring gay marriage to be impossible. We can live with difference over this issue; we must not elevate it to having significance greater than it deserves. Change can and does happen, such as in the case of circumcision or slavery. Perceptions change, as does our knowledge; the way we look at homosexuality today is very different from (say) 50 years ago. Should the Church be following society in this matter? Antje challenged her synod to have greater confidence in the message of the Gospel and to see that centuries of preaching about the value of individuals and our oneness in Christ has helped to shape society. In Christ there is no slave or free, no Greek or Gentile. We are one in Christ. A more compassionate, understanding and accepting attitude towards gay people might well be seen as the fruit of Christian teaching and not a departure from it.

I shared with Per my view that you can find many examples of people, who have been legally married, yet whose relationships are pitted by abuse and display no evidence of being sacramental. Yet deeply committed relationships can become sacramental. He accepted that idea. He also like my suggestion that the issue of same-sex relationships has become demonic in the Anglican Church. That is to say, it has been elevated to a position in which it becomes what defines us, rather than our communion being defined by our shared new life in Christ.

Neighbours in the Global Village

Back in 2013 we went on a cruise top the Baltic, a surprise present from my father at the end of his life. The highlight of the cruise was a visit to St. Petersburg, but on the way we stopped off at Kühlungsborn in what had been East Germany. We saw the sights and went on the railway. During a period of free time, we stopped for a coffee and found ourselves sitting with our guide. We chatted with her about what life had been like in the old days of communism. She told us how the young would often have learnt to drive at the age of eighteen, but would then have to put their name down to actually own a car. After about twelve years, at the age of around thirty, they could hope for their name to reach the top of the waiting list so that they became the proud owner of a Trabant car. We talked with her about how life had changed with the coming down of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. What was the key element that brought about this change? Her answer was simple. Television! None was allowed to watch western TV stations, but they all did. What could not be hidden was the standard of living and the life expectancies of western society, even if some of what was portrayed was the idealised stuff of TV drama. With that knowledge, the division between East and West could not be sustained indefinably. In the end that division collapsed and the rest, as they say, is history.

In our own day we are subjected to the distressing and horrific sight of children being forcibly taken from their parents at the border between the USA and Mexico. Nearer to home, during this past month, we have seen yet another boat of people, seeking new life in Europe and being refused the right to land in Italy. Immigration is a challenge for us in Europe and concern over immigrants is a significant factor in our decision to embrace Brexit and leave the European community. How can we cope with more people coming in? How can our infrastructure cope? We cannot afford to provide the level of health care for ‘our own’ people, so how can we possibly afford to include all these new people? In an age of ‘austerity’ these protestations become all the more understandable. 

What changes the situation is the rise of social media and the almost universal access to mobile data. We can witness the plight of those perishing in the Mediterranean, or children incarcerated in camps in America, or the starving in the Sudan, or the violence of so many wars. The list goes on and on and on. We can see these things in real time and in the highest resolution and clarity. Yet the opposite is true. Those we view on our news broadcasts can often see us and the kind of lifestyle we enjoy as the fifth largest economy on the planet. Social media does indeed radically shift the move to our being a global village. It leads me to question, not whether we can possibly help all the many who are fleeing (often for their lives) and seeking new life in Europe, but how we can ever hope to maintain the stark divisions of our world. I can see that my brothers and sisters in the Sudan are dying for lack of food, but they can not only see that I have more than enough to eat, but that much of my food goes to waste. There is no instant solution to this, but I have no reason to feel comfortable that the situation can continue for ever. It has been said, with some justification, that the Third World War will be fought over water and all that symbolises in terms the right to life. As parts of the planet move to becoming uninhabitable, because of global warming, how we sustain the lives of the whole of humanity, on this small rock of a planet, has become the challenge for us all to face.

This leads me to reflect on the prophecies of the Old Testament and the cry of God, spoken through the prophets, to the effect that none of our religious structures is worth a penny, if not accompanied by a justice that includes the poor and those on the margins of society. Social media leads me to discover the truth that every person is my neighbour in a much more immediate and challenging way that could have been the case in days gone by. If we face challenges in how we cope with the number of those seeking asylum and new life in our society, then putting up increasingly high barriers will not, in the end, be a solution that can be sustained.

Called to be Lay

I remember well a gathering of Ecumenical Officers in which the bishop chairing the event announced that not only was it his birthday, but also the anniversary of his ordination as a bishop. He went on to say that it was not the most significant anniversary for him, for that was the anniversary of his baptism. It was obvious that, for some of those present, the thought that his baptism had a greater significance than his ordination seemed distinctly odd. However I appreciated his statement. It brought to mind a conversation I had had some fifteen years before. I was talking to Sir Tom Lees and I said how much I had appreciated reading about his speech, at a recent meeting of General Synod, in which he had said that we must remember that the clergy are part of the laity too. I said I thought the theology behind that sentiment was excellent. Sir Tom replied that Synod had laughed at him; none of them believe it.

In 2016 we had a Diocesan Clergy Day at which the speaker was Bishop Graham Tomlin, whose topic was priesthood. He urged us to rediscover what it means to be a priest. In the group I was in, later in the day, we had to say what term best described us in our ministry. I was the only one who chose the word ‘priest’. If someone asks me what I do, I am likely to reply that I am a priest. That term defines my sense of vocation and who I am. And yet, if we had been allowed to choose a second word, I would have said that I am a lay person. That does not mean I feel uncomfortable in my priesthood, or somehow lacking in confidence. Rather, it means I have an even deeper sense of vocation of being part of the layos, by which I mean the assembly of God’s people. Priesthood is certainly a calling I have to serve that assembly in a certain way, but I have no sense of priesthood that can somehow be lifted out of the context of a pilgrim people, defined by Jesus our High Priest, into which we have been incorporated by baptism.

Last summer I retired. Under the rules of our diocese I have had to wait six months before receiving Permission to Officiate. I have embraced the freedom of retirement, but the last six months have also been a period of bereavement. Letting go of so many things I did for over three decades has been important. It has been a very creative time and one of waiting in openness and prayer was to where God is leading me next. That has not been without a great sense of loss. Yet it has also been a time to reconnect with what it means to be a lay person - someone who has been enticed into the assembly of God’s people and into a ministry that belongs to all of God’s people. 

Back in the days when I was an ecumenical officer the great point of celebration was the signing of the Porvoo agreement. Here, at last, we were finally going to formally move into communion with Christians of another denomination, in this case some of the Lutherans of Scandinavia. It would not only mean a mutual recognition of each other’s ministry, but also the possibility of a full interchange of ministry. Yet such an ecumenical achievement did not come without a long process of prayerful discussion. One sticking point had been our concern about the significance of an unbroken stream of Apostolic succession. We had seem this in terms of the unbroken line of bishops ordaining their successors down the ages. Yet not all of our potential partners could claim such an unbroken line. The answer, when it came, was a beautiful piece of theological thinking. Baptism is the primary rite, not ordination, and (we agreed) the passing on of faith down an unbroken line of succession from the Apostolic age is something that happens through the community of the baptised - the layos - whilst the line of the laying on of hands in the creation of bishops is an important symbol of that succession. A break in the succession of bishops does not necessarily invalidate the ongoing succession of a faith and a ministry that has been held and passed on by the People of God.

It seems to me that there is here a proper affirmation of the place of the layos as the very core of the Church. The ordained priest is not so much called out from the layos, as if somehow she is set apart as in some way separate from the community of the baptized. Rather, she is called into the centre of the layos so as to exercise a ministry of service that empowers the layos to be the very face of Christ for a broken world.  It seems to me that there is a huge power here, which should be the power of Christ made real in a Church broken in service for the world. Clericalism is the abuse of such power. It is the appropriation of power that sets a clergy class above and over the Church and in the process denigrates those who hold no such status into a subsidiary role as laity. Both sides can be complicit in such a situation. It is also a root to the kind of tribalism that seems to be rife in the Church, as groups find their sense of self identity in any issue other than what it means to be the Spirit-filled layos in which the presence of the risen Christ is made real in the communities that we serve.

The Colour of Austerity

Imagine 25 squares, all coloured blue. They are laid out on a sheet of paper in five rows, each with five squares. The question is asked as to which one of the boxes is a different shade of blue. So you gaze at them, wondering which one it is, but it is not at all obvious. This is a serious test and the point is that in one culture people find it hard to spot the different box, yet in another it is easy to do so. The difference is that in one culture they have a different word for each of the different shades of blue, whilst in the other they do not. The test has been used to prove that our perception is shaped by our language. What we see, and indeed how we perceive it, is limited or expanded by what language we have to understand and describe what we see. All this might seem improbable, but it became very obvious to me when we travelled deep inside the Arctic Circle last year. What was the weather like? It was gloriously sunny and there was ice and snow everywhere. But were you to ask a member of the Sami people the same question, you would get a very different answer. They have 180 different words for ice and snow. The landscape they look at the same as that at which I am looking. Yet most of what they see is beyond my perception. The same issue of perception struck me as I photographed the Northern Lights. Photography brings out much deeper and richer colours that we could see with the naked eye, yet locals can actually see those deep and rich colours. Their eyes are not better, but their culture has the language to describe this incredible display. Language affects perception and shapes the way we process what is going into and through our brains.

‘Austerity’ is a culture that shapes our perception of society. Within that culture there is a sharp logic, against which it is difficult to argue. We cannot spend more than we earn. We cannot live beyond our means. We cannot allow debt to be the legacy we leave for our children. So the supply of money needs to be controlled and budgets sliced to reduce spending. Success will be measured in terms of the balance sheets. Within the bubble of that perception all else ceases to be part of what we see as being the measure of reality. So austerity goes on. Yet from a different perspective the wellbeing of our society looks very different. A recent television program looked at the workings of a head and neck cancer unit in an NHS hospital. Underfunded and understaffed, the whole unit was at the point of collapse and one of the two consultants had announced he was leaving. His wife lived in America where he could earn more, treat fewer patients and treat them to a far higher standard of care. He loved his work, but the pressures of working in the NHS had left him utterly exhausted. It is one story, but the whole of the NHS is a breaking point, which means that a bad winter in eight months’ time may well prove to be the collapsing point. Cutting budgets, services and staff is leaving its toll. People are overworked, receiving wages which no longer keep up with inflation, and find themselves undervalued and demoralized in their work. I was in hospital over Christmas. I spoke to one nurse who, the previous day had started at 7.30am in a twelve hour shift. The first break she had had of any kind had been at 4.30pm. When I asked her how she coped, she said she had gone home and sat in a dark room for an hour before she could face anything else. The same crises can be seen in so many areas of our lives. Last week it was said that the legal system is on the point of collapse and we are reaching a point at which justice will no longer seed to be done. Cases are collapsing when not enough time is available to process evidence properly. In the field of education, it has been suggested that a staggering percentage of teachers want to leave the profession, but are trapped doing a job they no longer want to do. In the police it is now common to find all specialist units scrapped to focus resources on beat officers, yet those officers now have to work without the kind of specialist backup on which they once relied. The list could go on and on. The key narrative is that books must balance, money must be saved and productivity must be increased. Achieve that and the politicians can pat themselves on the back at their stunning success. But such a perception is blinkered. It fails to see the human cost, both in terms of individual lives and the sustainable structure and wellbeing of society as a whole.

Christianity does not provide neat and easy answers to these different bubbles of perception. Yet it does provide a different narrative which results in a radically different perspective. Imagine a world in which it was not the richest or most successful who called the shots, but rather a world in which everything is seen as falling under the sovereignty of the Divine. Imagine a world in which every person becomes the neighbour whose needs we must meet, a world in which a radical inclusion has replaced the naked tribalism that so typifies almost every aspect of existence, including the life of the Church. Imagine a world in which each of us sees, in every person we meet, a person of such value that Christ gave his life for them. This world is our perception. It is what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven and each and every day we pray that this kingdom, already established, may dawn on earth as it is in heaven. The Church’s task is to so live that dream that it becomes a reality in every corner of life. Rather than fighting over matters of doctrine (which is so beloved by the Church and which always ends up in a dysfunctional tribalism), living with the exuberant joy of the kingdom, in a way that celebrates the sublime depths of what it means to be a human being, is how we will both share the richness of our experience and present to the world a different perception of what is reality. We have a narrative which can radically alter the perception of how life is, of how relationships matter and of how transfigured living can be experienced through those relationships. It is a narrative which is not so much to be defended in the arena of public debate as to be lived out with a passion that wells up from ourhearts and finds practical expression in the rich kaleidoscope of renewed lives. It is not an answer to austerity, as if we were engaging in that particular language game, but the living out of a language so different that it utterly shifts the way we look at our world. To live like that is to become the herald of a new age that is already staring us in the face, if only we had the eyes to see it. To live like that, with boldness and conviction, is to become a community that is being shaped into something new, that was always there, but which is coming to birth in our world as something that is pure gift.

Cambridge Analytica - Living in the Matrix

I well remember the sense of anticipation in seeing in the New Year at the end of 1983. As I had grown up, the year 1984 had stood as a symbol of a feared future in which, as the author of that book puts it, ‘Big Brother is Watching You’. The book also contains the lines: ‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.’ George Orwell wrote his book in 1949, when the year 1984 seemed a long way off. It was a work of fiction, yet a serious comment on the way society was going and a warning about a future in which our society could be under constant surveillance and public manipulation. Lots of interesting things happened in 1984, but in other ways life in 1984 was not unlike 1983. At the time, there was much commentary as to whether anything Orwell had predicted has actually come true.  Fifteen years later, in 1999, the Wachowski Brothers released the highly original film The Matrix. It won four Academy Awards and the story was continued by two further films, which completed the planned trilogy. The story line is confusing at first, which puts us in the same place as the hero, Thomas Anderson, who operates as a computer hacker under the name Neo. What Neo comes to realise (and too so we, the audience) is that the life people are experiencing is a computer generated fantasy. In reality, the biological human life forms are each contained in a water filled pod with their actual bodies plumbed into life support tubes. This is the Matrix, a fantasy world controlled by others, which isolates them from the realities of life. Neo is hailed as ‘The One’ who will lead the way out of this vision of hell. But the system fights back to protect itself, in the form of the many agents called ‘Smith’. The story is the battle for freedom from the Matrix.

Of course (as far as we know), the Matrix is a fantasy, yet it too comments on the society in which we live. It uses a vivid story to question just how real are the things that seem to make up the stuff of our lives and to what extent we are under the control of unseen powers and forces. I have found myself reflecting on these things in the light of the revelations about Cambridge Analytica and their use of some 50 million profiles harvested from Facebook. The interviews with senior executives, secretly filmed by Chanel 4 News, certainly suggest that some deeply worrying things have been going on and that the company (or associated companies) was deeply involved in Trump’s election success in America and (almost certainly) in the UK referendum vote on Brexit. There is a lot of political posturing going on at the moment. For those who dislike Brexit, here is evidence that there was cheating involved and the vote cannot be seen to be valid. For those on the other side, this is all a complete nonsense and the use of such data cannot possibly have had anything to do with the result. I am somewhat bemused by those who think the analysis of data and the resulting custom-building of advertising has no effect. Such companies would not attract such high fees if this were the case. It is estimated that at least 40% of the Leave Campaign’s was spent with these companies. It was the way to win the vote.

It has been suggested that you cannot win elections by putting adverts on Facebook. Yet this is not the point. We are not consumers of Facebook, we are the product, and how the operation worked was not to send us information through Facebook, but to harvest our profiles. This allowed the kind of advertising (immigration, NHS, etc) that would play to our deepest hopes and fears. It was not about winning arguments, but playing emotions. It was also about identifying the half-million or so people, who could swing the vote one way or the other, and feeding them what it would take to vote in the right way. We were certainly played and manipulated. Yet I wonder whether this is really any different to the kind of data-analysis that has been practiced for a long time and by both side in any given contest. Perhaps we are shocked by the scale of the operation and brought to the realisation that we all live out our lives with our hearts on our electronic sleeves. The personal information we put online is wide open to manipulation by individuals and groups. who have the money, power and expertise to do so. My concern is not to suggest that the Brexit vote was a fix, nor to point a finger of blame at one side or the other, but to suggest that something is deeply wrong here. I wanted to remain in Europe, but I came to accept that there could be an argument for reclaiming our sovereignty and our sense of democracy by withdrawing from an increasingly controlling bureaucracy, led by unelected officials at the heart of the EU. Yet I am left with a question. To what extent are we taking back control of our country, if major decisions about our future can be controlled by shadowy figures of power who, it seems, can determine the course of democracy? Maybe what Cambridge Analytica did was not against the law, but after a year-on-year pushing of boundaries of what is possible we are waking up to a chilling world in which others, not we ourselves, seem to be making the decisions that will affect our lives and our future. There are huge questions here as to how we might better build human communities and societies. We might start by asking again what it might mean for the Kingdom of Heaven to be established here on earth, as it is in heaven.

Transfigured in Joy

Like so many of us in the Salisbury Diocese, I have a heart for the people of Sudan. We have collected money for the church in Sudan, enjoyed two-way exchanges, been challenged by their faith and fortitude and engaged in supporting both the diocesan medical link and the specific local link between Poole hospital and the hospital in Wau. So I rejoice that the Spirit has moved Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul to ordain Elizabeth Awut Ngor as a bishop in the diocese of Rumbek. This move has not gone without some adverse comment. Peter Jensen has commented on behalf of GAFCON. He speaks of this consecration as an anomaly and he manages to avoid any mention of her name. She is just ‘a female bishop’. He states that this issue poses a threat to ‘the unity we prize’ and he concludes that further discussions are needed ‘as we seek to find a common mind, looking to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’.

I have to say that all this is a far cry from my understanding of what unity in the Spirit means. Unity that comes by discussion, agreement and finding a common mind is the sort of unity that might be sort in a dysfunctional government, trade union or country club. People are arguing with one another, so a means must be found of reaching a settlement so that, even if some form of compromise is needed, an understanding is agreed, which holds people together, even if it is an uneasy peace that has been achieved. I wonder where the word ‘Spirit’ comes into all of this. The capital S indicates that what is in mind here is nothing less than the Holy Spirit. Does the Holy Spirit guide the process, or does she await the human activity of coming to a common mind before putting her stamp of approval on things?

My own adult faith dawned after a prolonged period of contemplative prayer, as I found myself transported to the foot of the cross and I saw the depth of love that had led Jesus to give his life for me. My heart has never been moved by doctrines of atonement. I can only say that at that moment my heart was melted and I found myself, not only blown off my feet by the experience, but my heart set on fire with a love that was all consuming and totally transforming. Nothing in life was ever the same again. It was a new birth. I was filled by the Spirit and brought into a new relationship both with God and with creation. It also totally altered my perception of what it meant to belong to the Church. No longer was it a dusty old institution to which I might belong. To be part of the Church was now to have been swept into a new family of people for whom standing at the foot of the cross and having been transfigured by the Spirit was the shared defining moment in our lives. It is this that is the ‘first order’ issue for me. It is not something to be defended, but rather an exuberant joy to be shared, not least when we are bound together in celebration at the Eucharistic feast.

It follows that everything else is a second order issue. We will profoundly disagree about what seem to be the big issues of our day, but such differences, however irreconcilable they might seem, are somehow diminished in the light of the exuberant joy of the life of the Spirit and the sense of unity that sharing in that life brings. In other words, it is the reality of sharing Spirit filled lives as children of God that we find the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. It is something given to us by God, which supersedes any earthly differences. That does not excuse us from seeking resolution to whatever issue might predominate in our present time, but we can live with difference and agree-to-disagree, for these issues are not what define us. What defines us is our shared joy that has transported us into the life of the Kingdom.

The Beast from the East - Living on the Edge

As we recover from the clash between the Beast from the East and Storm Emma, I recall what was being said some years ago, that a consequence of global warming could be that overheating at the North Pole would disrupt the Gulf Stream and plunge us into extremely cold weather. This is the basis of what happened this last week. I first heard the term ‘climate change’ in 1969. We had a supply teacher for a term, on our A-level Biology course, who came from a very different background to that of our normal teachers. He was a Marine Biologist, rather than a teacher, and he was in the process of writing up his PhD thesis. At a convenient gap between two parts of the syllabus, we spent a lesson listening to him explaining his research to us. I forget now what he had been studying, but it was some minuscule wee beastie that lived in the sea and he had been looking at the effects of climate change on it. Over time it had survived a steady increase in temperature, so a key question was whether there was any limit to what it could survive and what effect a further increase in temperature would have. How might it adapt? The answer was that it was doing fine at its current temperature, but at a further increase of only 0.5C it would become extinct. It had seemed that things were looking good for it. It was coping with climate change, but what had not been apparent was that it was at the very limit of survivability. We had never heard the term ‘climate change’ before, but he told us that this would become the biggest issue in our lives.

Recently a TV program on the demise of the dinosaurs suggested that most of them were killed off within 24 hours, with the remaining survivors perishing within two weeks of the meteorite strike.  The overall message was of the fragility of life and the fact that, for any species or ecosystem, extinction can arrive very suddenly and very brutally. It is an extraordinary statistic that over 99% of all species that have ever lived on this planet are now extinct. What of humanity? The warnings, so often given, yet ignored by many, are not simply that we are the major contributor to global warming, but that we are destroying the very environment in which we live and are the prime cause of what has been dubbed the ‘sixth extinction’, which is our present age. The history of our planet is often divided into epochs, such as the Jurassic, which ended some 145 million years ago. In our own time it has been suggested that we have brought about a new epoch, which has been called the Anthropocene, because of the significant impact that humanity has had on the planet’s ecosystems. It is not yet decided exactly when to date the start of this new epoch, but a significant number of people opt for 16^th July 1945, which is the date of the detonation of the very first atomic bomb in New Mexico, USA. In geological terms, that event has left its signature in our environment. Future intelligent beings, millions of years from now, will be doing geological digs and finding the tell-tale signature in the rocks which was laid down by the Trinity test on 16^th July 1945. The Anthropocene might well last for millions of years, an epoch shaped by the human race, but humanity itself might well be on the very edge of extinction.

Where is the theology in all of this? The bible is full of challenge and the prophets of old proclaimed doom to those who did not walk the way of the Lord. Yet there was also the looking forward in hope for the Day of the Lord. Jesus, as he started his public ministry, read from a scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and then told his listeners that, today, this prophecy had found its fulfillment. As Christians we believe that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself. We look forward to the fulfillment of the promised Kingdom, which even now is breaking into our lives. We live in the expectation that Christ will come again. I firmly believe in all these things, that our lives are in God’s hands and that we shall be caught up into the life of God and experience the joys of eternal life. To believe this is to live with hope for a future that we can now only glimpse at. Yet I also believe that we might yet destroy ourselves, as we continue to destroy the environment that sustains us. To think otherwise is highly dangerous, for it leaves us with the idea that our actions have no consequences and that somehow, however we abuse our planet, God will step in to negate what we are doing. The answer must be to hear again the message of scripture and to live with a joyful vibrancy the life of the Kingdom in ways that engage in and challenge the assumptions and vested interests of our world. It is to be the people through whom God is stepping in to point to a better way.  

Brexit - The Third Dimension

One word that can be used to describe different aspects of the same thing is ‘dimension’. Moving from a two dimensional view to a three dimensional one greatly increases our perception. A different word is ‘phase’, yet that separates the different aspects into a sequence in time. When we talk about Brexit, we are very much aware of the sequence of the two phases. First we must negotiate our divorce settlement with Europe, then we can move onto the second phase, which is the trade deal we aspire to achieve with the European Community. It was not the way we wanted to play things. At the outset we had hoped that these two dimensions to our negotiations would be part of the same negotiation, but the Europeans insisted that these two dimensions would in fact be phases. Phase two could only start when the first phase had either been completed, or at least had reached an acceptable stage of completion. I want to suggest that we should think three dimensionally, which is to say that there is a third dimension to this business, one which seems to have been largely ignored until now. I use the word ‘dimension’, because if the first two elements have been separated into phases, this third element is not a phase. It should have been apparent from that outset.

My third dimension is leadership. As someone who has been a parish priest for over three decades, I know something about leadership. To lead a church congregation is to draw together a varied group of people, who may well have deeply divergent views on different subjects. Both the ordination of women and society’s acceptance of same-sex relationships are issues which have divided opinion between Christians. Providing leadership in a church congregation involves listening to people, valuing people and drawing them into a shared future direction which has its basis, not these divisive issues, but the welcoming and proclaiming of the kingdom of God. A church which can be drawn into one (despite such differences) is a church which comes alive with creative possibilities and a buzz of excitement about the future. Seeking to provide such leadership as this has been my aspiration throughout my ministry.

I don’t know much about the political mechanics of leaving the EU or the intricacies of forging a new trade deal with the EU and the wider world. However I do know something about leadership and it is painfully obvious that such leadership is almost completely lacking in our present time. There is nothing controversial in saying this. Our Government seems to be deeply divided and our nation at odds with one another in a way that sharply contrasts with the exuberant days of pride in our country that was seen in the London Olympics of 2012. I do believe that Brexit is like driving off a tall cliff and there are some very sharp rocks below. To deny this is to live in a fantasy world. It is like a tight-rope walker setting off on a rope that is strung across a deep canyon. She achieves this, not by denying the dangers that lie beneath her, but in conquering that fear with a confidence that she has the skills to achieve this feat. Knowledge of what befalls her, if she slips, is a key element in focusing her mind on the task before her. Knowing that Brexit could cripple both our economy and our society is not ‘Project Fear’, but a realism that how we exit the EU and build a new future has to be got right. And it is here, I suggest, that leadership is so important. Driving off the cliff, in the belief that there will lots of wonderful opportunities before us, is utter foolishness. There is a difference between saying that there are opportunities and having the skill to grasp those opportunities. The leadership that we need is one which can enshrine those opportunities in a united vision for the future so that, as a nation, we are drawn together in our desire to drive off the cliff, recognizing the risks, but confident that we can indeed fly. Recently they were interviewing people about Brexit and one man said that he just wanted to get out of the EU so that our country can go back to what it once was. That will never happen. We cannot regain an imagined past. What we need is inspiring, visionary leadership that can draw us together in a journey towards what we can be. It needs to build community, heal division, reform society, bind us together in renewed engagement in the world and create a common sense of purpose. This is the third element in the Brexit process. It is something which seems sadly lacking, yet it is the key to creating a new future in which we will all flourish.

Spiritual Abuse

The woman came to my house, accompanied by her friend. I had first met her a couple of months earlier, when she turned up in my church. I spoke to her after the service and welcomed her. She turned up a couple more times after that and then she appeared with her friend. She must have been in early twenties and her friend was probably about ten years older. Again I spoke to them and they asked if they could come and see me. We fixed a date. Now they had arrived at my house and we sat together in my sitting room. It was obvious that they were a couple. The younger woman was clearly distressed, indeed she seemed bowed down in pain. Her friend was a deeply concerned about her. They began to tell their story. The younger woman was a Christian and, while her friend was not, she respected her partner’s faith and had come with her to see me about the issue that was causing such distress. The younger women had grown up as a Christian, indeed she was devout and committed in her faith. Now she had fallen in love and they were planning to enter a Civil Partnership. Yet, ever since she had become aware of her sexuality, she had been taught that she was evil and detested by God because of her sexual orientation. She was being torn apart by the pain of her situation, having found her life companion, yet at the cost of the condemnation that she had been taught was God’s judgement on her. I asked her what she thought the bible had to say about her situation and she launched into a detailed list of every biblical text that proved the condemnation that had been piled upon her. I listened to her and I empathised with the pain and wounding that had been imposed on her by the churches to which she had belonged. I marveled at her faith, a faith that had withstood such an onslaught, and the brokenness that that ‘Gospel message’ had imposed on her life. She talked herself out and looked at me in astonishment as I told her that not all Christians would interpret those texts in the way that she had been taught. I spoke to her about the God who had created her as the person she was and I told her that she was so loved and precious to God that Jesus had given his life for her. It was simply the Gospel that has transformed and healed my own life that I shared with her. As I spoke it seemed as if chains were falling off her and a crippling, so systematically imposed on her by the Church over the years, was being healed before my very eyes. It brought to mind the healing stories from the Gospels. Here was a miracle taking place before me. It was nothing I had brought about, except to speak of the Gospel message of God’s transforming love that had been revealed in Jesus. She left my house as a changed person and I said I would pray with them when their big day came. Would I have blessed them? It is God alone who blesses and indeed, for this couple, he had  blessed them by his grace and through my ministry.

In recent times the Evangelical Alliance has expressed concerns about the use of the term ‘spiritual abuse’. I would not want to suggest that their member churches are engaged in any such abuse, but they seem to display an instinct that some aspects of their teaching might somehow be labelled by others as abusive. Coming, as I do, from a culture (both church and education) in which safeguarding is now at a premium, I know that abuse comes in many forms and that spiritual abuse is one of the categories of abuse. The woman I have spoken of was, in my opinion, the victim of serious and systematic abuse over many years. What she had been taught had utterly crippled her and given her a sense of being beyond redemption. In saying this, I am not putting forward the argument that all those who disagree with me are abusive. What I am saying is that there can be a stark, hardline attitude to matters of belief that can cripple, rather than heal; destroy, rather than liberate. The biblical text which epitomizes this for me most clearly is the scene of angry men lined up to stone an adulterous woman. What drives such a passion to cripple and destroy? It has to be a deep desire to protect their position, culture, doctrine, beliefs or law. There is something deeply imprisoning in such a frantic urge to buttress and fortify one’s cherished and dug-in position. Jesus takes a different position and he sets the woman free. The experience of my own life leads me to interpret what happened, not as a letting-off by Jesus, on condition that the woman did not sin again, but a liberation of forgiveness which transformed her life so that she was now released from her tangled web of broken relationships and given the grace to live a renewed life. Spiritual abuse is real. It happens all around us. Far from distancing ourselves from this category of safeguarding, we need to be challenged to ask ourselves if what we practice and preach seeks to enslave the lives of others, or to set them free.

Retirement

I have not attended to this blog since last summer. A lot has been going on, both in terms of retirement from my parish and some bouts of sickness, from which I am emerging. I find that my blog is a good way to mull over life, in a way in which can be shared with a wider audience. I have no followers, but it is clear that one or two have logged in to read what I have said. I even met one free-church minister, who said that he pinched sermon ideas from what I have written! Well, publishing my thoughts does mean that they are available to be used as the reader sees fit.

At a previous church, in which I served, there were two internal porches, one for the South West door and the other for the North West one. The external porches are massive stone affairs, open to the surrounding churchyard and affording fairly substantial shelter, both for passers by and for homeless people seeking a place to sleep. They give access to the heavy double oak doors into the church, yet therein lies a problem. To leave them open would let all the heat out of the church, so on each side of the church a fairly substantial inner porch was constructed, which means that those entering the church have to go through two sets of doors. This provides a means of keeping the heat in. I had not been long at the church when I suggested adding lighting into each of these internal porches. As things stood, entering the church was a matter of walking into a dark box. Objections were raised. It was fairly easy to get through the double door system without the need for a light. No objections had been raised, so why spend money on this? My answer was that we needed to make our church a place of welcome and to create a sense of invitation for any visitor who might come into the building. Expecting people to walk into a dark box was not a clever way to entice the people of the parish to come into their building. So lighting was added and we also put in sensors and improved lighting in the outer porches to make the whole process of coming in easier and more user friendly.

I have found that the process of retirement has been like walking into one of those dark places. You know that there must be something beyond the second set of doors, but first you must leave a place of light and step into a room in which you will have little light and a good deal of uncertainly as to what to expect next. When I was a curate I was told that I was now the Chapter Clerk, with the responsibility of keeping minutes of the meetings of the deanery clergy, sending out reminders of meetings and so on. I asked for a list of the clergy, but no one seemed to know of one. So I set about doing a stock-take of clergy. There were six incumbents (three of whom never attended meetings), two curates and thirty eight retired clergy. As I got to know the retired ones, it became obvious to me that many of them found retirement difficult and they filled their time by taking as many services as possible around the thirty six churches of the deanery. It appeared that what they had done in their full-time ministry was all of life for them. I admired their faithful commitment to their vocation, but I wondered whether all of what it means to be a priest is so tied up in what we do. I once knew a priest who was an industrial chaplain. He was talking to us students about his ministry and he said that he had not presided at the Eucharist for some eighteen months. One of our number told him that he was not a real priest, which I think hurt him. Yet it seemed to me that his priestly ministry was self-evident. The way he was embedded in the life of the communities he served, in a very incarnational way, brought a very real sense of the presence of Christ into the situations he encountered and in a way which was often transformational. It struck me that being a priest needs to well up from being the person God has called me to be. That 'being' may well find expression in the 'doing' of priestly things, but just doing priestly things is not of the essence of what it mean to be a priest.

So stepping into the dark box of retirement has meant accepting the letting go of what I did as a priest. In my diocese you have to wait at least six months after retirement before you can apply for the Permission to Officate, which is needed to exercise a formal ministry within the Church of England. I have been grateful for the gift of these six months. It has meant that retirement is not just a continuation of what I did before, but rather a stepping out into something new. It has been a step into the dark, in the sense that I have no idea of what will come next, but it has been a bold step that I could take with confidence, because I carry the light of Christ in my heart. It has helped me to change gear, away from what could have been a longing to be useful in continuing my priestly craft, to a time of fresh surrender into the life of God and a waiting on Him for how, what and where my priestly calling will be in the journey ahead. And perhaps there is in this a realization that indeed all human living should find empowerment in such waiting on God, rather than the frantic endeavour of working to worldly agendas.