A sermon I preached on the 324th anniversary of the consecration of the London church I served for twenty-eight years (1992-2020) whilst concurrently following the model of the priest-workers by holding secular jobs. St James' has a remarkable history spanning class-ridden conformity and adventurous, on-the-margins, Christian life. Click the 'Read more' button.

Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish educator and philosopher (1864-1936):

It is apparent to me that many people who regard themselves as Christian, and many of whom attend churches, believe that Christianity = niceness, and that being nice is more important than being truthful. Similarly, that one's faith should be steady, inoffensive and always and only a comfort. These are odd readings of the Gospel, and  to varying degrees, a betrayal of it.

Maggie Ross from an interview in the Church Times: "Contemporary theological education prepares people either for the petty battlegrounds of academia or for the spiritual suicide of ordination. Evagrius's notion of the absolute relationship of theology and praxis has been lost. There are a few good people who are exceptional in this regard, but they wisely camouflage themselves. There is an absolute abyss between the clericus and ordinary people, who are implicitly denigrated by them, and most theological education just widens this abyss. Also, so-called spiritual direction as it is practised today is destructive. It is both para-clerical and counter-productive, because it makes people more self-conscious instead of more self-forgetful, which is an important sign of spiritual maturity. Helping another is a charism of the moment, usually inadvertent, and can't be taught."

Maggie Ross is the pen name of a vowed Anglican solitary under episcopal guardianship. I have enjoyed reading her various works, not least because in part they confirm some of my own conclusions, and because they can be a heck of a provocation. Not for her the equation between the Church of England and niceness.

If you find this quotation interesting, here are links to more about her:

• Silent Ways of Knowing
• Interview - Silent Witness
• Freefalling in the love of God

Graham Greene's book is the last of his religious novels. It concerns the priest of the the village El Toboso who claims to be a descendant of Don Quixote. An encounter with a mysterious bishop leads to Father Quixote being honoured by the rank of Monsignor - to the annoyance of his own bishop. This 1987 film stars Alec Guiness as Father Quixote and Leo McKern as village communist mayor Sancho Zancas. It presents various themes, but the key theme to my mind is that of friendship: Quixote's friendship with the (ex) Mayor, and his friendship with God. The character is gloriously imperfect yet embodies such a wonderful approach to the Christian adventure.

Have you noticed how, in recent years, an obsession with 'leadership' and 'leaders' has crept into much discourse (and fantasy) about business, the third sector, the public sector and even the churches? It's a great bore. Organisations need competent managers at every level, and those in such roles will, inevitably and necessarily, influence, shape and 'lead' developments in those organisations. But what seems to have happened is that this essential function and aspect has now become personalised into 'a leader'.  This is ego-talk. Many find it irresistible.

In the church (I am mostly familiar with the Church of England) the 'leadership' fetish has grown apace. A small example is the growing number of church websites that now list the clergy as 'the leadership team' - and I have seen some that locate them in 'the senior leadership team'. Frankly, it's all so desperate. What should be fellowship often seems now to be follower-ship.

To have leaders, you need the led. There is a place for this where it is operationally and functionally necessary for tightly defined outcomes (think uniformed services and organisations with precise functions and outcomes). But in Christian communities it can only produce drone-disciples who surrender responsibility for their own Christian life to the 'experts', the leaders. And don't think that the ghastly cliché about 'servant-leader' avoids the pitfalls and dangers.

I recently attended a mandatory safeguarding course, attended mostly by clergy and with some churchwardens. The (very competent) facilitator had, as part of her input, referred to the role that power and power-imbalances play in church abuse, and had illustrated this by some high-profile cases. As the event progressed, I was struck by how often 'leader' and 'leadership' were used by participants - in a sometimes slightly self-aggrandising way ("As the leader of my parish..."). I pointed this out, this link with what we had been told and how the conversation was going. There was some agreement, but others thought the two things were quite separate.

Mainline church denominations 'embody' power relations and differentials in various ways, some subtle. Priests and bishops over laity, for example. Church architecture is another (the sacred sanctuary and altar, with the laity in their theatre-like pews). And another is found in who may speak and who is required to 'reply' following a set script. These are aspects of liturgical exchanges and liturgical life.

I set these matters out bluntly to illustrate dimensions we often don't see clearly. There are many clergy who operate within these structures with attentiveness, humanity and sensitivity, and who mitigate the more dangerous aspects of the leadership fetish. They focus, first, on being disciples. But there are some clergy who don't. And there are laity who like to be 'led'. That does not make for mature Christian explorers.

Woodbrooke closed at the end of October 2023. All down to cost, apparently. This residential Quaker centre was established by - and in the former home of - George Cadbury, in 1903.  I see that an invitation had been made for those who knew the place to send in memories, though I saw this only after the closing date.

In 1979 I spent almost one term at Woodbrooke. I was a member of Sheffield (Hartshead) Meeting and 23 years old. I'd had a miserable (and unsuccessful) time at Worksop's Valley Comprehensive School, followed by six years writing benefit Giro cheques (anyone remember those?) in the DHSS. Then an unexpected possibility opened up, to read for a social science degree and a social work qualification at university. Sheffield Friends (in particular Irene Gay and Maud Bruce) realised that I could do with some help in making the transition: they asked the meeting to fund me to spend time at Woodbrooke. I can never thank them enough.

Woodbrooke then operated a term-time community. I attended lectures and tutorials, and met people like tutors John Punshon and Parker Palmer (the latter a visiting tutor from the USA). The Priestman's were the wardens. All told, it was a wonderful place and atmosphere, and without the heavier self-consciousness of being Quaker that seems to have overtaken British Quakers in the decades since.

Alcohol was banned: a requirement imposed by George Cadbury. But that did not stop students slinking off in groups to bedrooms after supper to open a few bottles. And it was at Woodbrooke that I was introduced by a member of The Wee Frees - a distinct Presbyterian denomination in Scotland - to a Rusty Nail. It comprises equal measures of Scotch and Drambuie. I have occasionally drunk it ever since.

At that time, Woodbrooke (and the wider Society of Friends) would reference some of the then recent shapers of Quaker thought, including Maurice Creasey and Hugh Doncaster, names now largely forgotten.

In that glorious short but rich time for me, the days were full of thinking, discussion and conversation; trips out with other students, the odd crush, consumption of Quaker and Christian history and a profound sense of having been given a second chance.

I was ordained 34 years ago today. A clichéd observation, I know, but it seems like only yesterday. It also seems a very long time ago. The newly ordained tend to be overwhelmed by the experience; indeed, it is a wildly significant moment and transition, usually the fulfilment of several years hard work and preparation, spiritual and intellectual. For all but the die-hard evangelical ‘minister’ type, it marks a transition of an ontological kind: something that fundamentally alters one. It is not a job taken on; it is a new life embarked upon.
 
I am very far from being a die-hard evangelical. Nor am I a high Anglo-Catholic.  I did reckon the moment of ordination to be of significance, and to represent a radical (i.e. far-reaching and irrevocable) handing-over of who and what I was – and who I might become - in the service of the Nazarene and His church. That has not changed, though time, observation and experience have changed my view of the church and its professional class. Interestingly, it has deepened and simplified my following of the Nazarene.
 
Inevitably, the years have shown me the unattractive (but not surprising) aspects of the church-as-institution: egoism, careerism, corruption, mediocrity. They have also acquainted me with the contrary: humility and loving kindness, modesty, faithfulness and superiority of character and conduct. I am grateful I actively served the institution for more than three decades whilst concurrently working in so-called secular jobs. Hugely grateful. This ‘dual’ aspect rooted me.

Who says the Church has no sense of humour? This, from General Synod Written Questions and Answers

The Revd Barney de Berry (Canterbury) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops:

• Q104 Does the church have a settled and agreed theological definition of lust, where is that stated, and what is it?
  
• The Bishop of Lichfield to reply on behalf of the Chair of the House of Bishops:
  A There is no official definition of lust agreed formally by the Church of England.

The tendencies and inclinations of organizations have always interested me. Not from some academic angle — far more pressing than that — but because they are such powerful shapers of human experience. I have sold my labour to them, volunteered for them, encountered them as customer, client, patient, penitent, complainant, consumer — beggar, even. The lives (open and hidden) of organizations provide fodder for the social sciences and for journalism, and for popular over-the-fence expressions of discontent and resentment. How could we survive without them? They can provide purpose (good ones, bad ones), meaning (of various shades), and wages (sometimes high, often cruelly low).  They can drive innovation and bring things 'to market'.  They can enhance (or deplete) our cultural capital, achieve a redistribution of wealth (in different directions) and get things done.

For the purposes of my point, they have their dark side. They can reduce people to robots and objects, they can crush and consume lives, they can come adrift from their original purpose, they can become a means to an end.

As we can't live without them, we best learn to be alert to their dangers and committed to making them human, as far as that is within our power.

These observations apply to the churches as to other organizations, and they present some unusual aspects to consider. One is the tendency to 'spiritualize' power (to suggest that its hierarchy is divinely licensed, for example, or possessed of spiritual gifts others don't have). It can embody attitudes that cause harm (examples include traditional attitudes to women and their roles and to gay people and their place in the life of the church, indeed, the world). Churches have tended in some matters to be socially conservative, when you might expect them to be leading change. They have taught (implicitly for the most part) that their followers should be pure and free of any chaotic, troubling thoughts or desires. It is not impossible that this kind of institutional repression creates the ground for abusive practices now uncovered in many of the denominations.

As noted, all organizations have a dark, or shadow, side. The question is, how are these managed, how are the risks mitigated, how can organizations be vehicles of value for the common good? Part of the answer is in checks and balances. Another is a true egalitarianism in the spiritual adventure that is following Christ — an end to clericalism's traits (I've written about this elsewhere). Jung wrote of the unintegrated shadow side and its potential for harm: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it…. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.” (Psychology and Religion, 1938, Collected Works 11).

This line of thought does not write off the achievements of the churches, and it certainly does not deny the countless men and women, lay and ordained, who have brought light, love and multitudinous good things to others.  It is a call to be alert.

Open Air pulpits can seem to me melancholy and dispiriting...

Not many churches have them. There was one at the church I worked at in London's West End, reportedly paid for by friends of The Revd McCormick in 1904 in the hope that, with his strong Irish voice, he would attract the crowds that passed along Piccadilly. But the sound of horses' hooves on the cobbled stones of Piccadilly drowned him out.

It is possible that my dislike of outdoor pulpits derives from my feelings about indoor ones. There was a time (before microphones and when larger numbers attended church) when sticking the preacher on a platform to be more clearly heard made sense ('pulpit' comes from the Latin pulpitum, meaning platform or staging). That no longer applies, and placing the speaker 'six feet above contradiction' seems inegalitarian these days.

I attended an All Souls Eucharist, but did not stay the full course. It was the sermon what done it. A collection of unexamined clichés delivered in a sing-songy voice. I was not surprised. And the accompanying Faure Requiem I also tend to regard as clichéd these days, a victim of its cosy popularity and Classic FM promotion. But the sermon. It was not good. Laced with a liberal cleric’s references to the bereaved’s pain (grief no longer serving as a description, all inner distress is these days ‘pain’) and references to ‘those on the other side’. The delivery was sugary, the cadences of the sentimentalist, the preacher giving hints that they had never really experienced the horror of bereavement, or of the attachments and intimacies that give rise to it.

Should we be worried when risky behaviour seems cosy? My friend Fr John Rowe felt that church life - unintentionally - ran the risk of 'trivialisation by repetition' in making the Eucharist (Holy Communion, the Mass) so common a feature of its liturgical life.

Repetition can be a good thing, or at least carry good effect, and my own regular celebration of the Eucharist, and participation in it, has had many good, habit-forming effects (I believe). But I see his point, and it is one I share and like occasionally to highlight, by commenting, when asked, that I celebrated the Eucharist and 'no-one was hurt'.

I don't want anyone to be hurt. Of course not. But I want us to be changed by it; even shocked and shaken (or if not shaken, stirred). And that's, surely, the danger of too much repetition of this central liturgical happening of Christian life: the weight-carrying, meaning-carrying message and narrative which the Eucharist embodies and asserts ought not become 'just a thing'.

I have sometimes heard other clergy speak in emotive and disturbingly cosy terms of celebrating the Eucharist "and encountering Jesus there" and of finding such daily liturgical adventures to be essential to life.  I am uneasy with this kind of perspective. Encounters with the Risen Christ are not confined to liturgy (there's surely a case for saying the Risen Christ might be far more interested in speaking to us in the ordinary business of living). And liturgy should shake us up from time to time. Hard hats on.

For some years I have played with the idea of SSM (unpaid/volunteer) clergy and their stipendiary (paid clergy) friends meeting from time-to-time in the upper room of a pub where we might experiment with – learn to hold – conversations.  The working title for this gathering was to be ‘Chapter & Verse’.  It would be an Undergroud Seminary of sorts.  There’d be none of the popular ‘theological expert’ speaker stuff followed by questions; instead we’d seek new ways of sharing knowledge, learning from one another, caring for one another, seeking God and reading the signs of the times.  We’d aim to retake theology back from the academy and the ‘experts’ (or at least from its specialised annexation from our lived lives) and seek to learn afresh what it means to be stewards of the mysteries of God as Paul rather invitingly puts it [1 Cor 4:1].

Come, ye thankful people, come, / Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in, / Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker, doth provide / For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God's own temple, come; / Raise the song of harvest home!

I was driving to the next village for the paper and some provisions when BBC R4 started its Harvest Festival Sunday Worship. I've always had a sense that the broadcasting of church services does not really work. To say its like overhearing other people having sex isn't quite the thing, but has a hint of it. In both cases, I'm happy for them, but don't wish to be an aural partner to the proceedings.  And whereas the latter don't (usually) want you to hear, and are not addressing you as an attendant third party, the church gig is addressed to you. They are polite and welcoming, as if you were visiting their house.

Church services are alien events to the majority.  The players in broadcast services tend to be keen to talk of welcome (fair enough of course) and also of the ever-present God with whom they are on intimate terms.  A common ploy, I've noticed, is to talk of their church buildings as where 'prayer is valid' (cf. T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding) and where the very walls are saturated with it.  The implied message is that God appears to be domiciled in churches, and one is left with the impression may not often venture out. But the Gospel is not concerned with what happens inside churches, but what one makes of life in light of the claims and accounts of the man Jesus.  And when did you last hear a church service broadcast that featured intelligent, sharp accounts from faithful lay Christians about being the church beyond the building?

I am nearly always inspired by Richard Holloway. I was struck by a particular recollection of his, found in this BBC Hardtalk interview at 4 minutes 22 seconds. He speaks of the shame he felt at having sent his hard-working labourer father a ‘pious’ letter urging him to embrace Jesus, RH remarks (with tears in his eyes) ‘religion gives you permission to perform these discourtesies’.  Indeed it can.  The whole interview is worth watching.

I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 Sunday service which came from an English Cathedral.  The Dean and the Precentor were the emcees, and it all seemed, well, a little too pleased with itself.  The worship got close to being worship of the cathedral.  It reminded me of hearing another dean from another cathedral say in some TV programme that 'people come to [our] cathedral to find God'.  This is not an uncommon line in the discourse of cathedral functionaries and indeed in the narratives a number of cathedrals develop about themselves in print and media. It seems unappealing as well as heretical.  Clergy often talk about churches in these terms - people coming 'to find God' there;  maybe cathedral clergy think churches only a second best location compared to their own.  But it is this notion that God (the God of the institution, clearly) is domiciled only - or particularly - in churches and cathedrals that seems misleading and fundamentally so anti-incarnational. It may be but another manifestation of the narcissism some institutions can - sometimes - develop.

I don’t recall when exactly I became alert to the easy and self-referential use of the possessive, but it was very many years ago. I am perfectly happy with it in some settings: my daughter/son; my partner, my home – though personally I’d use ‘our’ for two of those.  I have always disliked the use of ‘my’ when used by people to describe their colleagues - especially subordinate ones.  I was once in a lift at the headquarters of the social services department I had just joined, to be introduced as ‘one of my social workers’ by the Area Director. As a rooky I had no business taking offence, but I did.
 
Is the use of the ‘my’ possessive such a problem? I think so, for it defines the speaker as the reference point of all things. Me. Mine. The human ego is a slippery critter and does much harm.  Ownership is one of its favourite claims.  Do I have life or does life have me?  The latter I think.
 
I shiver very slightly when people speak of ‘my career’. For two reasons. One is the ‘my’ again; the other is the pretension of it.  I’d rather speak of the work I do.  I realise this line of thinking – and reacting – goes against the modern grain.  The modern grain is concerned with me and mine.  The egotistical self, again.
 
In church circles I flinch at the very common ‘my ministry’ as used by clergy.  I had always thought it was Christ’s ministry.  And what is wrong with work – the work I do (in the church)?  Language defines and too often divides what ought not to be divided.  Too many things – phrases, privileges – already separate the clergy from the laity in the life of the church. A trend so entrenched hardly anyone notices it.
 
But the church is small fry in the scheme of things.  The tendency to think and act in possessives – me, mine – harms us all and all human activity - indeed, it is harming our irreplaceable planet. Is it fanciful to think that violence in its many forms is often brought to birth by it?

I was grateful to be invited to address a conference of self supporting (unpaid) priests recently. It was a good day and I met many inspiring people. One of the things I found myself saying was that the church needs more feral clergy - this as an antidote to the dangerously inoffensive, ‘nice’ and only peripherally relevant tendencies of many a Church of England cleric. Feral can mean ‘having returned to an untamed state from domestication.....’.

In 2010 I wrote a short article on power and clericalism.  I went back to it today as part of a continuing interest in why the church-as-institution strikes many as unappealing as an avenue for the adventure of faith. My thoughts keep returning to the idea that our entrenched model of being the church tends (tends) towards the infantalisation of the enquirier. Its something I touched on in the article which you can find here (follow the 'read more' link).