For twenty years I was Rector of the Parish in Poole where
Robert Baden-Powell was married. Scouts and Guides from all over the world
would come and want to see the register entry of that event. My parish also
included Brownsea Island where the very first Scout camp was held in 1907.
During my time in the parish we held a memorial service on the island for the
last members of that first camp, who had just died. To celebrate the centenary
of the Scout movement, a life size statue of Baden-Powell was placed on Poole
Quay, the seated figure, in scout uniform, looking out across the water towards
Brownsea Island. At the time, it seemed to me to be an excellent memorial to a
man, whose greatest achievement began a hundred years before, here in Poole.
It came as a bit of a shock to find that the Bournemouth,
Poole and Christchurch Council had plans to remove the statue to a safe place,
before it could be unceremoniously pushed into the sea. Apparently,
Baden-Powell was a homophobic racist, who enthusiastically supported Adolf
Hitler. This threat to the statue came in the wake of a wave of statues being toppled, following the
horrendous killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25th May 2020.
If the legacy of that killing is that we all look afresh at our racist bias,
then something positive might yet come out of that sad event. I have little
doubt that the Church of England is institutionally both homophobic and racist.
We not only need to examine our own, often unconscious, bias, but also ask
questions about some of the statues and memorials that were once erected to
honour great men (it was usually men), but whose lives are now seen in a much
more negative way, when held up in the light of modern perceptions and values.
Questions should be asked as whose images adorn our public
spaces. Yet it is possible to agree with the criticism of past opinion, whilst
having a certain degree of ill-ease about drumming people out of history. In
saying this, I strongly believe that we must listen to the cry of those who have
been, or are being, abused, dehumanized or marginalized. I simply have a
question as to where the current inquisition will end.
I had a dream. One by one, every statue was being taken down
and destroyed. Nelson was toppled from his column. Churchill disappeared from
Parliament Square. In our churches, at the command of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, each and every memorial was taken away and pulverized. Soon there
was none held up for us to look at, for no one had passed scrutiny. Each hero from
the past had feet of clay and no one could pass the test of perfection. Then I
saw one last figure, still lifted high and looking down on a world gone mad. It
was the figure of the Christ, hanging on a cross and still speaking the words
of forgiveness. He was already condemned, for we, the human race, had put him
there. As he looks down on our world, he does not condemn. Yet we condemn
ourselves as we consider the brokenness of our actions in crying out for this
killing. Now, transformation and restoration flow from that cross. None of us
is perfect. Each of us has feet of clay. Yet each of us is so precious to God
that we are worth dying for. To understand that is to look into the very heart
of God. It is to see a love which is coloured by a deep compassion for our
broken condition and, despite our sinfulness, stoops to lift us up to an
honoured place in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is right that we challenge the assumptions of the past.
Hopefully it might also help us to face up to the bias and prejudice of our own
lives in this present age and to ask what it is about our lives that might set
the crowds on smashing our own memorials, in years to come. Yet the idea that
saints don’t have clay feet seems unchristian to me. The strident demand that
our heroes are icons of perfection does not sit well with the Christian idea of
what it means to be a saint. I well remember the reply David Hope gave when, as
Bishop of London, he was asked how he would epitomize the clergy of his
diocese. He said, “they are all broken people, exercising heroic ministries.” I
thought that was a realistic and indeed compassionate point of view. We are the
earthly saints of our time, broken people with feet of clay, who know our need
of forgiveness and have found grace and mercy, in the person of Christ, that
brings us new life and hope for the future. Far from being models of
perfection, we are people who seek to be faithful to the one who gave his life
for us and, sometimes in the smallest of ways, something of the face of Christ
can be seen in our lives. Despite our failings, something of the
transforming love of God radiates from our lives to touch and heal the lives of
those around us.
