This morning I drove down to Brighton to do an extended BBC radio interview. I was in a good mood – despite the very early start – because Liverpool had beaten Portsmouth yesterday with a last-gasp goal from Torres (again) and when I got to the studio they played the great Bruce Cockburn song, Lord of the Starfields.
The main thrust of the conversation was about the meeting of the General Synod which convenes in London this week. Apparently, the radio station has had a lot of people calling in and claiming that the Church of England has lost the plot – unlike other churches (the URC was mentioned) that have embraced women’s ministry and same-sex relationships. Oh dear.
A second point was that the Church is divided and split into parties who don’t want to stay together. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I offered a different opinion.
Firstly, the Church of England is perhaps the only church witnessing to the pain of holding together instead of taking the easy option and simply splitting and going where your mates are. It costs nothing to form yourself into a community of like-minded people among whom you won’t have to struggle with challenge or difference. But that is not the Church. Just like the first disciples of Jesus, our vocation is to follow Jesus together. Jesus did not give any of his disciples a veto over who else should or should not be called into the company of disciples.
Secondly, instead of doing it the way the world does it (that is, running away from the tensions into safe groups of the like-minded), perhaps the Church of England has no option but to wrestle openly with its tensions in a way that refuses to pretend to the watching world that every issue is easily resolved or reality ignored. I get as impatient as everyone else at some of the things I hear, but they don’t give me permission to walk away.
One of our problems (as I have said and written many times before) is that people get their impressions of the Church and its preoccupations from the media. But the media is only interested in certain elements of that agenda: notably, sex and conflict. So, when I was challenged in a live television discussion last year about the poor image of the Church, I interrupted the journalist concerned and asked why the media only portrays some elements of the Church (the negative ones) and ignores all the other stuff? He agreed I had a good point. We can’t blame people for having a bad image of the Church if all the stuff they imbibe is bad. But perhaps people could be a bit more savvy and recognise that they are being fed a selective diet that suits the tastes of the people with editorial control – people who bring their own agendas to the table.
Now, I don’t blame the media for this. In one sense, it is inevitable. Journalists have a seriously difficult job in trying to present a picture of reality in media that thrives on excitment, the dramatic, the unusual and the negative. I know journalists who are heroes for the way they keep plugging away creatively in the face of a massive pressure to ‘produce a story’ rather than ‘give an accurate picture’. And the Church cannot and should not be exempt from the nasties that the media want to throw at us. But, neither should we stop challenging the image that is presented to the wider world when it is partial, biased or ideologically prejudiced.
(I might also want to caution those who make generalised judgements from afar about the Church here simply from reading blogs and online reports…)
The Incarnation was about God opting into the world, not exempting himself from it. And once you are in it, you are subject to all the complexity and contradictory stuff that can be thrown at you. But the Church is committed to getting stuck in to the stuff of life: to our communities, to our national life, to the tough debates about difficult ethical and philosophical issues, to the messy lives of people and to engaging at every level in the rough and tumble of life as we know it (and not as we might like it to be).
The General Synod next week will debate some tough issues and try to do it in a godly way. Some brilliant people will bring their expertise and experience, their passion and fears into debates that have great significance for many people – not just in England, but around the world. Wherever one stands on the gay debates, we cannot ignore the fact that in some parts of the world Christians suffer because of decisions we make here (and the ways the media report them). We have a responsibility to different people of different views and experiences who find themselves in vastly different contexts; and addressing this in a godly way is costly, complicated and never clear-cut.
I will be popping in to the Synod on Wednesday afternoon, mainly for the debate on the uniqueness of Christ. Having read the preparatory papers, I know I will be at times encouraged, stimulated and challenged, but also frustrated, cross and despairing. That’s how it is. And it is a good discipline for me to sit in the gallery and not be allowed to intervene!
Nick Baines's Blog 
February 8, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Nick said: “Jesus did not give any of his disciples a veto over who else should or should not be called into the company of disciples.”
Actually, that’s EXACTLY what the apostle John does say in 1 John 2:19, and the apostle Peter does say in Acts 8:21.
The “difficulties” (to quote Edward Norman) you have in the Church of England come precisely from the refusal of the hierarchy to practice its own code of discipline in the matter of partnered homosexual clergy (or to turn a blind eye to what bishops know is going on).
So you have gay clergy – including cathedral deans and canons – in ‘civil partnerships’, as if such a thing was a godly example. And (as I have read on the web), in your own dioceses in London you have numerous partnered gay clergy (even a gay suffragan bishop) that Fr Frazer of ‘Inclusive Church’ says ‘Everyone knows about’, but they are never disciplined by their bishops – while an evangelical clergyman who arranges for an ordination by the Church of England in South Africa loses his licence (a decision that was overthrown on appeal, IIRC). You even had a hideous mock ‘gay wedding’ a la BCP of two erstwhile clerics in a fashionable London church, with scores of priests in attendance. So what happened to Fr Dudley for that? WW John of Peter D?
You know what the gay agenda has done to Tec and to the Canadian Church – I think it is doing the same to the C of E, through stealth and the tacit approval of liberal bishops.
But what have you to say about this, Nick? Do you understand where Anglican evangelicals are coming from, even if you don’t share their theology and spirituality? We are seeking to be faithful to the Bible and the classical Anglican faith. Leftish social commentary with a pinch of religious angst and anger is not the same thing.
February 8, 2009 at 7:07 pm
.. That should be W(hat) W(ould) John or Peter D(o)?, as apostles over the church of Christ.
February 9, 2009 at 8:55 am
Mark says: ‘Do you understand where Anglican evangelicals are coming from, even if you don’t share their theology and spirituality? We are seeking to be faithful to the Bible and the classical Anglican faith.’ I am an Evangelical! I start with the Scriptures. But I also believe we have to address what the Bible does say, not just what we want it to say in defence of positions we have already adopted on other grounds.
Mark, I promised myself I wouldn’t respond to any more of your comments on the grounds that you don’t say who you are and where you are coming from. But it is clear that you read what you want to read – very selectively – about the UK and the Church here. From immediate involvement (as an Evangelical bishop) in one of the cases you cite, you have no idea about the reality. As I asked (on biblical grounds) at the time of the ‘evangelical clergyman’ case, where did he find the biblical sanction for lying, manipulation, subterfuge and misrepresentation? I was there and I saw what went on. I won’t respond in future as it would take too long, but perhaps others would like to do so.
February 9, 2009 at 11:56 am
Mark B. Have you ever thought that God is actually bigger than you, bigger than your worldview and bigger than today’s version of Christianity?
We are all merely trying to do what followers of Christ have been doing for thousands of years. Looking to the way He lived as a vision of God’s grace and mercy and as ‘the way’. How many people have looked at you and the way you speak and think ‘I don’t want to know that Jesus’?
I am not trying to have a go, I have merely been reading all your comments and some of the things you say just make me sad, make me think that your relationship with God needs some refreshing, that maybe you need to experience that mystery that is God all over again.
God bless.
February 11, 2009 at 10:42 am
here’s my ‘two-pennorth’: I describe myself as a non-conforming anglican, which, in a sense, is a tautology, (which bit of the the Anglican community do I/we conform to), and I struggle with these issues. I believe homosexual practice is wrong but, like many, I have homosexual friends and I’m sure that God loves them.
I get very frustrated with the apparent obsession with the subject but my observation is that it is the media and one or two narrow interest groups that are so obsessed. I meet a fair number of clergy across the spectrum and we almost never talk about the gay debate except to enquire why people are so obsessed with it.
I get equally frustrated when Christians start chucking scripture at each other, (even when one of them is me!). I think Mark is ‘off the mark’ with his 2 references. It seems to me that, whilst Peter identifies the problem & challenges the behaviour, he leaves the ultimate decision in Gods hand, which is probably safest. As for John, doesn’t he rather makes Nick’s point.
Surely the best way for us to show the truth about Jesus is to live graciously, being prepared to challenge untruth where we see it, but with humility and gentleness.
February 15, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I know we shouldn’t feed the troll, but still…
I am always interested by how little Jesus has to say about sex in the gospels. Paul has rather more to say about it, and there is plenty of sex in the Old Testament, but in Jesus’ Ministry – ‘does nobody condemn you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.’
It has seemed to me for a while now that the current obsession with who puts what where and under what circumstances is seriously missing the point of much of the Biblical teaching, which seems to me to have much more to do with fidelity and respect than anything else. Committed and faithful relationships are a good thing. Promiscuity is not. The trouble is, until we can all stop being hysterical and start thinking seriously about a theology of relationships and sexuality which takes account of the society in which we actually live – where changing gender roles, serial monogamy and the rights agenda are realities, whether we like it or not – then we will get nowhere.