New things

I am writing this while waiting for the flight back from Bermuda to the UK. I came on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury to ordain the new Bishop of Bermuda, Nick Dill. The collective of 'Bishop Nicks' became confusing once or twice.

What have I learned this week?

1. The new Bishop of Bermuda is excellent, popular and clearly the right man at the right time in the right place.

2. The new Bishop of Bermuda faces challenges and opportunities that are unique to this small island in the Atlantic and very different from those I face in Bradford and England.

3. The clergy of Bermuda remind me of how it must have been being an original disciple of Jesus: thrown together in a small place with a mandate to love each other and serve together for the sake of the kingdom of God – with nowhere to hide when problems arise.

4. Bermudians are remarkably hospitable and welcoming to strangers like us. It has been a gift of a week for us, and we return to England refreshed, rested and ready for the challenges that await me even this week (and there are many).

5. When sailing with the excellent Governor of Bermuda and his wife and the wheel becomes disconnected from the rudder, the police are funny, professional and considerate in rafting us into port and getting us home on their high-speed launch. (A fantastic day out with wonderful hosts and, I hope, new friends.)

6. The UK government seems (from a distance) to be reacting to media agendas rather than setting a proactive and principled course in policy terms. 'Tax haven' headlines grab attention, but the implications are clearly more complex than they at first appear.

7. Bermuda is beautiful, the sea unbelievably lovely, the wildlife spectacular, the warmth lovely and the views unremittingly gorgeous.

8. The same social problems found in England are to be found in different form even on small Atlantic islands: gangs, murder and other stuff. This is because they are human issues and not everything is context-specific.

9. Sailing can be enjoyable.

10. God calls us to be faithful in and to the place where we are and not to romanticise the 'other'.

So, there we are. Now for the flight back, the Sandford St Martin Awards on Monday evening at Lambeth Palace, lots of meetings in Bradford, a whole-day deanery visit up north on Wednesday, and so on. And I am ready for it.

 

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Signals timing changed

I didn’t want to see news pictures of a soldier being murdered in Woolwich this week. I didn’t want to see film of violent brutality and, whilst being aware of the dilemma for news organisations and the moral questions about ‘facing reality’, was not sure that the coverage should have been so graphic. Try seeing it through the eyes of his family. It feels voyeuristic.

That said, however, while trying to flip over one photo in a newspaper, I noticed the road sign close to where the soldier’s body lay. It said: ‘signals timing changed’. Despite it referring to the traffic lights, it seemed perversely apposite.

Much of the reporting of this appalling crime rests on iconic images and language. This is what makes it so powerful: it creates associations in the mind of the viewer, not all of which might be healthy. Debate continues to rage over the radicalisation of young Muslim men in England – and a study of media articles between 2000-08 found only 2% framed Muslims positively. Just as newspapers’ use of ‘invasion’ to describe the arrival of around 150,000 Germans in London for last night’s Champions League Final between Germany and Bayern Munich (that’s a little joke for the Germans), so do images of and language about Muslims shape the way we see them.

Yes, the Muslim communities in England face some challenges – including addressing the poisonous rhetoric of some powerful preachers. But, they will not be helped by the perpetuation of purely negative associations.

I was at the Meissen Delegation Visit in Leicester this last few days. This brought a group of German bishops and church leaders to engage with us on how we do interfaith work in a multicultural city like Leicester. (Curiously, the English delegation, which I did not choose, served up three bishops – Bradford, Woolwich and Pontefract – who all served their time in the Diocese of Leicester.) Events in Woolwich, coupled with the long-planned visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Meissen group, brought a brutal relevance to our discussions and debates. In our discussions with Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, we found no ducking the hard questions, no hiding behind a victim mentality, and only a little hiding the particular behind the general. We met openness and generosity.

This has been playing on my mind while waiting for flights today. I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the SPD (German Socialist opposition party) celebrating its 150th anniversary in Leipzig last Thursday in the surprising presence of Angela Merkel. The party is struggling ahead of the forthcoming general election in September this year and the commentators suggest that the problem lies in the lack of a clear alternative narrative for Germany’s future in the light of the current economic and fiscal challenges across Europe. So, they look to the past – and it’s reassuring glories – in the absence of a vision that might drive them into creating a different future.

The SPD is not alone in this. It sometimes feels as if Europe is paralysed. The sterile and increasingly febrile debate about Europe in the UK offers no escape. If Europe needs a new narrative – one that relies less on the dynamics derived from twentieth century wars and seeks to create a new narrative that will fire up a new generation of people who see something worth building – then so does England. Muddling through crisis after crisis, reacting to the stimulus provided by a cacophony of voices, lurching between ideological intuitions, making statements about terrorism and ‘our way of life’ – none of this can replace the need for leadership that knows who we are, what we are about and where we are going. As Jeremy Paxman once pointed out in his book The English, we don’t know who we are and, so, cannot know who we want to become.

Reactions to Lee Rigby’s murder have demonstrated again that we have no guiding narrative any longer. As Philip Blond argued on BBC Radio 4 this morning, a culture that obsesses about rights without a fundamental (I use the word advisedly) or radical (again, I use the word advisedly) anthropology that knows why it thinks people matter will simply end up as a victim to the loudest or most powerful ideological competitor. It is the lack of such an anthropology that is the problem.

To cut a long argument short, England’s Christian amnesia has left us with just this problem. The church has not helped promote the memory (partly by complaining about all the wrong things), but it will not have to go far to recover its basic driving narrative and hold it out as one worth recovering for the future. Why? Because at least we know why people matter, why morality matters, why loving your neighbour is not a mere option for the romantic, why losing your life is the only way to gain it, why the common good is worth serving, why “no man is an island, entire of itself”, and why failure is not the end.

The signals timing keeps changing. I think we need to pay attention to how it is changing and what it is saying.

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Mixing it

I am in Leicester from yesterday until Saturday night leading a Meissen Delegation Visit. The EKD is focusing this year on 'tolerance' and interfaith issues, so we have a group of English and Germans learning about (and experiencing) interfaith co-existence in an English city.

Very pertinent that we arrived here as the murder of a soldier in Woolwich continues to shock. Yesterday we introduced the Germans to the 'Leicester story' – with quite a lot about Richard III – and ended the day in a Sikh gurdwara.

Today we will be joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the EKD at the St Philip's Centre in Evington – a centre setting the pace for faiths working together (not just talking) in this complex city.

It is purely coincidental that we set the theme of the Meissen Delegation Visit a year or two back and we were only able to tie in the Archbishop of Canterbury once he had been appointed and agreed it. The murder in Woolwich changed the context in so far as the Christian response to it and to the fears of the Muslim community are concerned. Our primary concern has to be for the victim, his family and friends, those serving in our armed forces who do the will of our political leaders, and the community who witnessed these shocking events in Woolwich – the desecration of 'home space'.

But, Muslims have responded with unequivocal outrage to this murder. Yes, there is a fear of copy-cat behaviour on the part of other unhinged fanatics; and yes, there will be some who perversely see such brutality as justifiable in the name of some bizarre jihad. But, the response of Muslims has been immediate and straight – and this needs to be strongly encouraged.

Several newspapers this morning are urging Muslim leaders to be more proactive in addressing hate-preaching and the radicalisation of Muslim young people. They are being exhorted to take more responsibility for addressing some of the serious issues in their own communities. And that is OK. The question, however, is whether the rest of us will encourage them practically as they face this task, standing alongside them in these difficult and challenging circumstances.

The coincidence of the Woolwich murder with this Meissen Delegation Visit sadly adds an immediate emphasis to looking at what we are doing in the field of interfaith work in England – our response offering a cases study in how the English church responds to the immediate in the context of our long-term commitment to the common good.

The rest of today will help us look at both English and German interfaith perspectives. No hard questions will be ducked and the talking will, as always, be generous and straight.

 

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Strange week

The last week has been a bit … er … busy. But, that didn't stop the questions flying around my head.

1. How does the press manage (a) to have the brass neck and (b) not to laugh when telling the rest of us that they alone should be accountable only to themselves? Everyone else must be regulated, reported on, “held to account”, but the press must be completely “free” – to shred people's lives with impunity. Leveson's recommendations on statutory underpinning were made precisely because no one trusts bodies that want to run their own regulation. The point of regulation is that it should be independent – and self-selecting bodies don't fit that bill.

2. Would Leveson create a Soviet scenario? Don't be ridiculous. Comparisons with Pravda are utter nonsense and the newspaper industry knows it. If any of these guys had ever read Pravda, they would know that like is not being compared with like.

3. Will the Archbishop of Canterbury ring the changes in and for the Church of England? Who knows? He needs the space to recover from the last couple of days and then get down to business. Tough call, but he will be backed by his bishops as the brown stuff is poured on him.

4. Whose agenda is running when the BBC report his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral yesterday and remark at the beginning that he didn't mention women bishops or gay marriage and conclude by saying that he won't be able to escape these issues for long? Remarkable! If he had referred to these issues, the church would have been accused of being obsessed with gender and sex; he didn't, so we are accused of running away from them for a day. It isn't the church that is obsessed with these issues to the exclusion of all else, is it?

5. Why did I sell my best fantasy league players and get stuck with the ones that get injured or earn me no points? Never, ever, take me on as a football manager.

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Child poverty and the voice of bishops

It’s a weird world. I posted on 21 February stuff related to the concerns that prompted 43 Church of England bishops, backed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to sign a letter to the press. Published today in the Sunday Telegraph, it has caused a bit of noise.

Clearly, the substance is not the issue, or it would have hit the headlines some time ago. It is the fact that a pile of bishops has signed it that makes it a story. And that’s good.

Let’s get one thing straight: this letter is not anti-government or anti-Cameron; it is pro-children.

And another thing: read some of the comment threads on this story on news websites and a repeated (outraged) question has to do with the competence of bishops to dare to voice concerns in this way. Who are they to speak? Well, (a) we are people who participate in civil society, (b) we also have a voice with others in the democratic process, (c) we have people in every community in the land and are probably closer to the ground than most politicians, (d) it is our responsibility to speak truth without fear or self-regard, (e) if we can make a voice heard, then we have a responsibility to do so, and (f) such questioning is just silly and simply distracts from the issue at hand.

Thirdly, the question of priorities remains unanswered: we can bail out banks to the tune of billions of pounds, but it’s the poor who have to pay? The government’s language has become increasingly and deliberately disingenuous, lumping people on welfare benefits into the category of ‘feckless scroungers’ who lie in bed watching other people go to work. Yet, they know that most people being hit by welfare cuts and the bedroom tax are low-paid working people. Why is this being done? (See the recent report The lies we tell ourselves – another intrusion by those pesky Christians who really should be silenced…)

Here’s the letter as published:

Dear editor,

Next week, Members of the House of Lords will debate the Welfare Benefit Up-rating Bill.

The Bill will mean that for each of the next three years, most financial support for families will increase by no more than 1%, regardless of how much prices rise.

This is a change that will have a deeply disproportionate impact on families with children, pushing 200,000 children into poverty. A third of all households will be affected by the Bill, but nearly nine out of ten families with children will be hit.

These are children and families from all walks of life. The Children’s Society calculates that a single parent with two children, working on an average wage as a nurse would lose £424 a year by 2015.

A couple with three children and one earner, on an average wage as a corporal in the British Army, would lose £552 a year by 2015.

However, the change will hit the poorest the hardest. About 60% of the savings from the uprating cap will come from the poorest third of households. Only 3% will come from the wealthiest third.

If prices rise faster than expected, children and families will no longer have any protection against this. This transfers the risk of high inflation rates from the Treasury to children and families.

This is simply unacceptable.

Children and families are already being hit hard by cuts to support including to Tax Credits, maternity benefits, and help with housing costs. They cannot afford this further hardship penalty.

We are calling on Members of the House of Lords to take action to protect children from the impact of this Bill.

 

Growing up

So, the Daily Telegraph has dug into the old writings of the new Archbishop of Canterbury and discovered something deeply shocking.

It would appear that he has said and written things in the past – in different contexts, for different audiences and free of archiespiscopal ambitions – that he might now either hold to, reject, nuance or express differently.

What this means is that – perish the thought – he might have grown up and learned and thought and developed as he has matured.

Now, I know anyone in public life is not allowed to have been a child or to have grown or changed. I realise that my own archive of parish magazine articles, etc. might be found to contain expressions that might embarrass me now. This is what happens to human beings as they grow up.

The bizarre thing is that anyone thinks this is anything other than story-creation. The Archbishop might or might not hold to views held or expressed in the past. I have no idea, and he can speak for himself. But, the notion that he should now be entirely consistent with what he said or thought or wrote twenty, ten or five years ago is utter nonsense. It simply suggests that he should never have grown up.

What matters is what he thinks now. The journey there might also be interesting. But, the fact that he might have said things or thought things in the past matters little… except, of course, to those looking for contradictions.

I remember a fellow curate in the late 1980s rejecting the idea that Jesus might have had to learn or change his mind (we were talking about the episode in Matthew 15 with the Syro-Phoenecian woman). In the end, I asked if he was suggesting that somehow ‘learning’ was sinful… and he said it was – the logic being that Jesus was perfect and didn’t need to learn. Er…

 

 

Change changeth not…

OK, the Church of England appoints a new Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope resigns. Coincidence? Of course! But that doesn't stop people speculating that the Pope's reasons for retiring must be anything other than those he has given. This is a conspiracy-theorist's dream.

Well, now the cacophony of advice aimed at the cardinals has already begun. What seems to be commonly agreed is that the Roman Catholic Church needs to change – although that's the easy bit: what that change looks like is the subject of bitter and contradictory disagreement. It was ever thus.

In a further coincidence I am en route to Hannover, Germany, to speak at an ecumenical conference on how the churches in Germany need to change to face a challenging new world. They – both Protestants and Roman Catholics – are keen to open up creativity in a culture that has assumed its place in German society for centuries, but now finds it harder. There are significant differences between the German churches and the English churches, but the Germans want to learn more from – and be inspired and encouraged by – initiatives such as Fresh Expressions, Liquid Church, and others. I am quite heavily involved in speaking and engaging in discussion at a pre-conference conference today, the main conference (with 1200 participants) tomorrow and Saturday, then preaching on Sunday morning before returning to Bradford.

(I am writing this at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, having had a dreadful journey! I was supposed to fly from Leeds-Bradford to Amsterdam and then on to Hannover last night. It took three hours to drive the eight miles from home to Leeds-Bradford; the flight was delayed by three hours; I was put in a hotel in Amsterdam – getting three hours sleep – and now am waiting to board the flight to Hannover. This morning's meetings have been mucked up accordingly…)

It is always interesting to look at how a different culture deals with change. I am a close observer of the German churches, but they start from a different point from those in England. There are now some really interesting ad creative initiatives emerging and the seriousness with which these are being addressed in Germany is impressive.

I bring the mixed experience of England. Some 'fresh expressions' have failed, sometimes the rhetoric outstrips the reality, and sometimes they are just a way of 'doing what we want without the hassle of the bits of church we don't want to other with'. But, all in all, they have sparked an explosion of adventurousness, creativity and imaginative courage. On the other side, look at attempts to change the Church of England more substantially – for example, the Dioceses Commission proposals to dissolve three dioceses in West Yorkshire and create a new single diocese with five episcopal areas – and it becomes clear how, in some quarters, resistance to change prevents any creative engagement with either reality (look at the numbers, both people and money) or potential (taking responsibility for creating something new).

Change is always difficult, but difficulty is never an excuse for not changing. While looking though the German lens in the next few days I will also be reflecting from a distance on how change is faced in my part of England. Or not.

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The art of romance

I'm writing this before the QPR-Liverpool. Just in case all motivation has evaporated by the end of the game. I need Raheem Sterling to score a hatrick today, if my fantasy league team is to recover from its current despair.

Last night we watched the Julia Roberts film Eat, Pray, Love. Only because the film club thing sent it. Having watched over two hours of selfish psychobabble (how to find yourself by using other people), the DVD got stuck in the final scene – so, we still have no idea what great wisdom she articulated at the end of her search for herself. But, there were two good lines in it and I'll stick with them.

An at-the-end-of-her-tether Roberts decides to pray. Not being sure where or how to start, she suggests she might go with “I am a big fan of your work.” She could have chosen a worse opening line! She's actually summarised half the Psalmists with that line.

The second – and funnier – was when a bloke says to her: “When I look into your eyes I hear dolphins clapping…” Er… was that supposed to be romantic? I don't even know what it means. If you were a girl and a bloke said that to you, would you be flattered, swoony, seduced or what?

Mind you, I'm not sure what might be funnier. “When I look into your eyes I hear the Kop laughing at Everton…”? Or, “When I look into your eyes I hear cows fertilising the field…”? Or, “When I look into your eyes I hear Iron Maiden singing 'Only the good die young'…”? The mind boggles. However, I am open to alternatives.

I really should take lessons from the excellent blog of Stephen Cherry – this year's best find – and do something serious about looking ahead to the new year. Sitting here in the pub watching Liverpool beating QPR 2-0 (so far), my imagination isn't proving very fertile, but I'll venture the following quickies:

• Liverpool to finish in the top six of the Premier League
• Rowan Williams to enjoy his new post as Master of Magdalene, Cambridge, after a decade of ABC
• Justin Welby to get a good start as ABC despite those who will either (a) chop his legs off while pleading 'mission', or (b) look for any weakness to exploit
• West Yorkshire dioceses to have vision, courage and creativity when we vote for a creative and different future organisation in March
• The safe arrival of a granddaughter in March
• A useful visit to Sudan in January
• Growing confidence in the churches
• World peace and economic justice…

Oh, and Liverpool are now three up. I'm going while we're winning…

 

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A shame to England

I am reading Bring up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel's sequel to the brilliant Wolf Hall and was struck by two lines back in the first chapter:

We think time cannot touch the dead, but it touches their monuments, leaving them snub-nosed and stub-fingered from the accidents and attrition of time. (p.10)

But what has been done can never be undone and the passing of time puts everyone and everything into a more realistic perspective. Even the most glorious monuments crumble as the glories and catastrophes of the past are reappraised in the light of subsequent events – the future being contingent on what has brought us to that particular place. Time never stands still and even death doesn't spare us from judgement.

Later Thomas Cromwell is reading his papers and is cross to see that manipulation of the grain market is allowing 'some little lordling' to promote 'famine for fat profit':

Two years ago, at Southwark, seven Londoners were crushed to death in fighting for a dole of bread. It is a shame to England that the king's subjects should starve. (p.28)

Plus ca change, we might say. Yet the same mechanisms that operated in the 1530s can still be seen today. People – and what motivates them for power, greed or mere survival – remain the same as time marches on and human ingenuity progresses.

So, this last week we were confronted by (a) a government that can find billions of pounds for banks and Olympics, but employs a firm to find sick people fit for work in order to bring down the welfare costs, and (b) a debate going on in some UK cities and towns about whether or not to accept local authority grants to help provide basic food for poor and vulnerable people though charitable food banks. (Does accepting the money make such banks an institutional feature for the future and compromise the charities or churches involved?)

It is a shame to England – and notions of civilisation – that our national priorities look like this. We are used to sending money to help poor people in developing world countries. Now we have (as, in fact, we always did have) very poor people in our own communities dependent for food on local charitable donations. Those running the food banks deserve enormous credit, as do the shops and food outlets that are letting surplus goods be offered to them. But, we have to ask what sort of a society this is and how we would answer to the cry of the Old Testament prophets about such priorities.

But, if shame is being doled out, the Church of England must hang its head once again. I know from experience in my last diocese and my current diocese that the safeguarding of young and vulnerable people is taken with great seriousness, that the disasters of the past should not and could not happen again. (Since coming to Bradford I have given considerable attention to these matters and had already arranged – as just one part of our strategy – for my senior team to spend a day in September working through a range of scenarios in order to check our systems and responses. This will be led by a retired detective and a lawyer. The focus is not on protecting the diocese, but on ensuring the best process and outcome for potential survivors/victims.)

However, the report on the disaster that is Chichester rightly makes recommendations for the whole Church of England. One or two of them raise questions that are not covered by the report and might have implications not yet considered, but that is for further appraisal in the coming weeks. The significant point about the Chichester report is the recognition that the safeguarding failures are largely the result of institutional incoherence, a failure of leadership and structural fragmentation.

One thing this suggests is that any diocese needs clear authority structures, clear processes and communications, clear structural consistency and coherence, and clear integrity of purpose. If this is not so, matters such as safeguarding will never be considered or administered consistently across the piece. This is what Monty Python called 'the bleeding obvious'. But, the church is dogged by people who bemoan talk about structures, infrastructure and policies as if administration was somehow 'unspiritual'. The Chichester business brings it starkly home that where the structures are not well-oiled everything else becomes vulnerable.

Yesterday I was writing a piece about 'renouncing evil' for publication later. The Chichester report – and the responses by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Southwell & Nottingham – names the behaviour of abusive people – particularly clergy – for what it is.

The new Bishop of Chichester is a good man and he hasn't even started yet. My prayers are for him as he starts to sort out the mess he has inherited – a mess that has caused suffering to abused people and rightly put the spotlight back onto how the Church of England fulfils its vocation: to speak for the voiceless, to bring the Jesus of the Gospels to people, to facilitate reconciliation and healing, to demonstrate the power of realism, repentance and forgiveness.

But, first, the shame has to be experienced and named.

 

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Oh for a memory!

Oh no! The Archbishop of Canterbury has lost his inhibitions, thrown caution to the wind, and – in a massive scoop for the media – has slagged off the government in a book to come out after he has left office in 2013. It must be his considered revenge, mustn’t it?

Even the BBC website has him “dismiss[ing] David Cameron’s ‘big society’ initiative as ‘aspirational waffle’”.

The story broke with the Observer claiming to “have obtained” the book. Just how clever is that?

Has it occurred to any of these guys that the book is a collection of speeches and writings already given over the last few years? In other words, the scripts are all public anyway and have been for some time. The headline story about Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ was, I think, delivered before the last election.

So, why is this now puffed up into a sensation story? Why is it presented as if it was anything new? Why did any editor think this could possibly be a ‘story’ unless it was misleadingly represented as ‘new’?

Or, just like (a) when the riots hit England last year and we were constantly asked why the Archbishop of Canterbury was making no comments, and (b) when St Paul’s Cathedral steps were Occupied and we were constantly aksed why the Archbishop of Canterbury was making no comments, why did no journalist go back to their previous ‘scandal’ story and recall that the Archbishop of Canterbury had actually spoken very loudly about all these matters in articles and speeches – not least the New Statesman editorial that politicians and journalists castigated him for?

Is such amnesia deliberate? Or is there some other explanation?

[Note on 25 June: I notice that John Bingham got the story right in the Telegraph.]