The Wardman Wire

It’s fete season here in Yeovil, and somehow the local primary school talked me into manning the ‘More Tea, Vicar?’ stall yesterday. I’m not normally a great fan of clergy stereotypes, and found myself standing in front of a specially designed poster. It showed a balding vicar and a glamorous woman, with the vicar at eye-level with her cleavage. Thankfully the vicar looked nothing like me, otherwise there might have been a storm in a teacup.

The Church of England has done nothing this week, or indeed this year, to dispel the stereotypes. Indecisive, short on clear leadership, and weighed down with reactionaries and bigots. Or to look at it another way, taking its time to make big decisions, resisting the urge to railroad people into change, and making space to include a wide range of viewpoints. The C of E has spent the last 30 years, on and off, debating women bishops, and Monday’s vote was another agonising half-step in that direction. It could be 2014 at least before the first woman gets a mitre, which makes speculation about who it could be pretty daft.

With possibly another 6 years of agonising to go, it’s easy to wonder why the church puts itself through all this. Why not just appoint a Pope and have him tell you what’s what? It’s being suggested that Anglicans are only returning to what was normal practice centuries ago. Most modern people certainly can’t understand why the church excludes women from ‘high office’.

Decisions Decisions

The Church of England bases its theology on 3 sources, and this is what helps to give Anglicanism its particular flavour. Once you grasp this, it becomes a lot easier to understand what’s going on within the CofE. The 3 legs of the Anglican stool are Scripture, Tradition and Reason.

1. ‘Scripture’. The Bible. The Book of Common Prayer, the foundation document of the Anglican church, identifies the Bible as ‘containing all things necessary to salvation’. More widely, for Christians the Bible is our holy book, it contains the unique record of the life and teaching of Jesus, and of the story of God and his love for humanity. As I posted a few weeks ago, Christianity is based on a God who speaks, because without communication there can’t be a relationship. The Bible is that communication, which comes in a variety of forms - poetry, song, story, history, laws, lists, arguments and nightmare visions.

If the church left the Bible behind, it would cease to be Christian. Whatever you think about the Bible, this makes sense. A Marxist gets their ideas and vision from Marx, a Christian from Christ.

2. ‘Tradition’. This is a fancy church word for ‘how things have always been done’. Tradition at its best embodies the common sense and wisdom of previous generations, and saves us the grief of making the mistakes our ancestors already made, and learned from. Tradition at its worst is an irrelevant straitjacket, preserved by fear of change, but serving no true purpose. For most of the post-war period, we’ve been questioning, and throwing out, traditions we didn’t agree with. A ‘traditional family’ of married parents is now just one option of many. I hesistate to invoke the musical/film Mamma Mia as social commentary, but I lost count of the number of alternative sexual arrangements by the 5th song.

Christians hold their history dear: somewhere in that history is the people who first brought the message of Jesus to these islands, folk who died for their faith through vicious persecution, and a conviction that God works through the mess which is church history. Part of that tradition is the way the church has been organised and led, as well as its worship, buildings, prayers, ceremonies, and wisdom for living. It’s fascinating how many people fall back on ‘traditional’ things at times of great stress, or great significance.

3. Reason. The first and greatest command, according to Jesus, is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. So a Christian isn’t someone who leaves their brain at the door, but thinks things through, and engages with what’s going on in science, psychology, history, etc.

To see an example of the way these three relate, try page 2 of this link to a short report on women bishops.

Who’s Who

Within the CofE, you find people who each emphasise one of the 3. I’ll probably upset everyone by misrepresenting them, but here goes…

- Evangelicals see the Bible as the plumb-line by which everything else is measured, so the results of tradition and reason are both tested against the Bible. However it’s not just a 1-way street, most evangelicals follow a tradition of how the Bible is interpreted, and contrary to some media caricatures, do actually think a great deal about things.

- others place more emphasis on ‘Tradition’, especially those traditions which link us to the Roman Catholic church. Some traditionalists just like old songs and old buildings (little realising that the church organ was considered a scandalous innovation in the 19th century), others from the Catholic wing of the church are deeply worried by the CofE, seemingly, turning its back on centuries of tradition.

- the Liberal wing of the church puts reason and experience over tradition and scripture, and has often seemed most in tune with society at the time. However ‘he who marries the spirit of the age finds himself a widower in the next generation’. It is liberals within the CofE who are pushing for the recognition of same-sex relationships, to the dismay of Anglicans in countries where liberal Christianity is virtually unheard of.

In a post-Clause 4 age of political parties based on pragmatism, to find a national organisation so deeply rooted in principle is quite strange. The public disagreements of the church occur where these principles collide, and those have been the headline grabbers this summer, and will continue to be.

Broadband Speed Society

The church is nothing if it abandons its principles. What it has to do is to find a way of negotiating them. St. Paul once encouraged an impatient young church to ‘wait for one another’. In an instant age, this is maddeningly difficult. We don’t feel we have time to wait. As Marshall McLuhan observed, we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

We are being shaped to a broadband speed of thought and debate, and the tortoise-like church is a rock in the midst of a rushing stream, a sign that we could take our time if we chose to. The slow pace of decision gives time to listen, argued, debate, and get used to new ideas. Sure it has drawbacks too, but if we were more patient about getting what we wanted, we’d be much less violent and angry than we are. (Don’t believe me? Just monitor your soul next time you’re forced to wait in traffic)

It Took Labour 18 Years…..

I’m encouraged by the fact that, in recent times, both main political parties have taken a decade or more, and a series of defeats, to change. Change takes time. Don’t mistake the agonies of the Church of England for death throes. They might even be growing pains.