Ministry Team Letters January – June 2008
Dear Friends,
Until two years ago, the mission agency USPG had a training establishment in Selly Oak, Birmingham, called the College of the Ascension. People went there not only to prepare for going overseas as mission partners (the current jargon for missionaries), but also came from overseas for courses of study, or to teach. It was a marvellous meeting place for the world church, representing every tradition and nationality. (Sadly, lack of funds meant the college had to close in 2006, a huge loss to the church in this country.) Fourteen years ago, I spent six months there before going out to Japan. I met many remarkable people there – and I must just name-drop that through the college I had a chance to sing for (not solo!) and shake the hand of Nelson Mandela, but that’s another story. I also met, and got to know rather better, Father Harcourt Blackett, a Catholic priest from Barbados, who was there as a visiting fellow. After our time at the college, our paths diverged – Fr. Blackett went to Zambia for several years before returning to his native Barbados to become administrator (equivalent to Dean) of St Patrick’s Cathedral, while I went via Japan to Godmanchester.
Last week at the Vicarage, we met again for the first time in fourteen years. We were re-united by Shirley Bowers, a member of Medway Christian Fellowship in Huntingdon, who is bringing to light a forgotten story involving Oliver Cromwell, Ireland, and Barbados. As part of his drive to subjugate Ireland, Cromwell authorised the transportation of a great number of Irish Catholics to Barbados either as indentured labourers or as slaves. No-one is sure of the exact number transported, but it was many tens of thousands from Ireland, as well as some from England, Scotland and Wales. These white Catholic transportees, who were given the nickname of ‘red legs’, formed a doubly oppressed community, both as slaves and as adherents of a persecuted faith. Their descendants have mostly mixed with the black population, but among Barbadian Catholics the memory of this double oppression remains. Shirley Bowers and a small group of supporters feel called by God to pray and work for the healing of these bitter memories, in England, Ireland and Barbados.
We like to think that the past is simply the past. But we are all inheritors, for good and ill, of what has gone before. If one group of people has been disadvantaged by history, that disadvantage can last for generations; and we know only too well that resentment of unresolved injustice is one of the most powerful motives of conflict. Conversely, bringing people together in the name of the God whose Spirit is the healing of the nations, can lead to remarkable friendships flowering across divisions. Sitting in my study during my unexpected re-union with Fr. Harcourt and hearing how he and Shirley Bowers are working for the healing of an historical hurt that connects Huntingdon with Ireland and Barbados, I had a sense of the working of that Spirit, who has also brought me back into touch with a friend. No other expression will do – God truly does move in mysterious (and wonderful) ways.
With Love,
David
Dear Friends,
I mentioned in my last letter that the churches of this diocese are beginning a process called Mission Action Planning, which simply means that through prayer and discussion we will be trying to get a sense of what God is calling us to do for Him, here and now. Now this might sound like yet another initiative being imposed on the church from above, more busyness for an already busy congregation, something else we have to do. In fact, I don’t think that it will be like that at all. Jean Morgan and I recently went to Ely Cathedral for a session introducing Mission Action Planning, or MAP for short. This was led by Revd Robert Warren, who was until recently the Church of England’s National Officer for Evangelism, and before that was Vicar of St Thomas’ Crookes in Sheffield, which under him became one of the largest congregations in the country. He knows a thing or two about helping churches grow, spiritually as well as in numbers.
What Robert Warren had to say was encouraging. MAP has been carried out by many dioceses before Ely, and almost all churches that have done it find that far from making them busier, the process has helped them reduce their workload and concentrate on doing a few things well, and this seems to be one of the secrets of growth. Robert Warren also said that churches that grow are often places that leave room for stillness and ‘not doing’, rather than ones that rush around trying to do everything. I like the sound of this.
Yesterday (April 22), more than 100 children from Godmanchester Primary School came into the church simply to look around and ask a few questions. At the end, one of their teachers asked them to sit as quietly as they could for a few minutes, and then to say what they felt about being there. One child said she felt as if she were alone. Another said she felt as if she were being watched. I would like to think that these responses have a positive meaning – that in our church, what the children sensed was that they were in the presence of God, who does not see people as a mass but gives each one the space to be at the centre of his attention, alone in that sense only, before Him. As we begin to plan for the development of the mission of our church, I very much hope that rather than asking more people to get involved with more activities, we can create a space where in stillness more people can sense that God gazes on them with His full attention, and can discover that His attention, which is another name for love, is life-giving.
With Love,
David
Dear Friends,
Several people have asked me to give the gist of my sermon on Sunday February 17, when I spoke about the Archbishop of Canterbury and the storm surrounding his comments on Muslim sharia law, so here it is, not word for word, but the general idea of what I said.
I want to talk about the row the Archbishop of Canterbury has got himself into, because I feel the matters he raised are important ones for all of us in this country to think about, and especially for Christians. Let me begin by recapping what has happened. On February 7, the Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, was invited to give a lecture in the Temple Church in London, on Islam in English Law. The Temple Church is within the Inns of Court and functions in some ways as the chapel of the legal profession based there. The audience – it was a lecture, not a sermon to a congregation engaged in worship – consisted of lawyers and theologians, as well as members of the general public. It is worth pointing out that the Archbishop was invited to give the lecture, and to speak on that subject, as one of a series of talks held by the Temple Church; he did not decide off his own bat to get up one day and talk about English and Islamic law.
The same day the Archbishop gave an interview to BBC Radio 4. It was probably this interview, more than the lecture, that sparked the row. The Archbishop was asked by the interviewer whether he thought parts of sharia law should be adopted in order to promote social cohesion, and he replied that it was probably inevitable. This was reported as ‘Archbishop proposes adoption of sharia law.’
Now there are several points I would like to make about all this. The first is that it is always important, when people get into hot water because of something they said, to find out exactly what they said before reacting to it. That is why I have put copies of the Archbishop’s lecture and his interview by the entrance to the church. There are also copies of his address at the opening of the General Synod on 11 February. (There may still be some there – you can get copies from me at any time if you would like one, or for those on the internet you can go to www. archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575 for the lecture, www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1573 for the interview, and www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1583 for the address to General Synod.)
If you look at the lecture, you will find that it is quite hard to follow. It is written in academic language for an audience consisting mostly of academics, and to be honest I do not think it is as clear as it could be. The Archbishop’s style is sometimes rather opaque. But I would defend the Archbishop in his courageous attempt to address a matter that affects the whole of our society whether we like it or not, and for the fact that in the lecture he gives no black and white definitions to a complicated picture. And although I think he could sometimes express himself more simply, we cannot always demand that an address by one very learned person in public life to an undoubtedly learned audience, will be completely transparent in every phrase to the non-specialist. (I have been present when the Archbishop gave a short homily to a very mixed congregation, and it was beautifully clear and simple, though quite profound – and without notes.)
So I am glad the Archbishop did what he did, even if I am not always sure exactly what he meant. The main thrust of the lecture deals in general terms with how civic, secular law accommodates the religious sensibilities of various groups without violating the basic principles of justice and of equality before the law, principles that guarantee our freedom and that give a certain essential dignity to all. The Archbishop tries first of all to remove some misunderstandings about sharia. It is not a set of rules, of do’s and don’ts, but a way of trying to apply Islamic faith to every area of a Muslim’s life, and there are various traditions of sharia. (Rather curiously, the word sharia itself apparently means in Arabic, ‘the way to the watering hole’. I suppose it might have something to do with the idea, found also very strongly in Judaism, that the law of God is a source not of bondage but of refreshment and life.) The Archbishop goes on to point out that the law of the land, English civil law, already makes allowances for the religious beliefs of several faiths. Orthodox Jewish believers in England have had, for a couple of generations at least, their own tribunals, called Beth Din, which are used to settle certain disputes within their own community. No doctor is forced to perform an abortion if doing so would violate his or her conscience. Sikh men are permitted not to wear motorcycle helmets, as they would otherwise have to remove their turbans. And the Church of England conducts weddings in which all the legal requirements of a marriage are carried out in an entirely religious ceremony. Furthermore, as a matter of fact there are already ten sharia tribunals which operate in this country, and many Muslims turn to them to settle financial and marital disputes.
What the Archbishop seems to be proposing is simply that the law of the land could find a way of recognising these informal arrangements which are already taking place. He is very clear on two points that have been widely misunderstood or misrepresented: no accommodation that the state might make with the application of sharia in certain specific circumstances would remove the right of anyone to resort to English law, and no accommodation could be made with any application of sharia that directly infringed English law or violated any rights anyone might have under English law. sharia would not replace English law or run in parallel with it; rather, English law might recognise as valid some cases where all parties concerned had agreed to abide by the decision of a sharia tribunal. There would be no question of sharia ever being forced on anyone. In fact, bringing what is already taking place in sharia tribunals under the scrutiny of English law. might help to prevent extreme or unjust actions being taken.
This is rather different from much of the reporting on the Archbishop’s words. Some of the newspaper headlines have been simply abusive, and I’m afraid I’m one of those who have more or less given up hoping that our press and mass media might be able to deal with an argument that cannot be reduced to slogans and sound bites. More saddening has been the reaction of some of the Archbishop’s fellow Christians, and fellow members of the Church of England. Let me be clear that I believe we are all entirely free to disagree with every word the Archbishop has said – once we are quite sure we have understood him – just as you are free to disagree with me, and to do so forcefully. It is the spirit of the disagreement that matters. For those of us who are members of the Church of England, there is a question of loyalty here. Agree or disagree, he is our Archbishop, not some bloke who popped up and said something controversial. Some people have called the Archbishop a disgrace. He is not. You may think that what he said is wrong, but it is surely right for an Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the established church of England, with a duty of mission to the whole of the nation, to try to help us all think more deeply about how we live with our neighbours. I think he adorns our Anglican communion with his wisdom and leadership, doing a near-impossible job at great cost to himself, and I am proud to have Rowan Williams as my Archbishop.
The trouble is that, unwittingly or not, Archbishop Rowan pressed a few panic buttons both in our society as a whole and in the church. How many of us, if we have heard of sharia at all, think first in terms of its worst excesses? Do we see in our minds images of hands being chopped off for shoplifting and people being stoned for adultery or apostasy? These things have happened, and do still in a few places. But to judge the Islamic faith and the efforts of Muslims to be true to their faith solely by such horrors would be as false as forming a view of Christianity based on accounts of heretics being burned at the stake and the bombing of abortion clinics, both things that have been, or are still occasionally, carried out in the name of Jesus Christ. Sadly, I think, even the words ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ also awake many of our prejudices and fears. Some of the reaction to what the Archbishop is supposed to have said, much of it a distortion or even an outright contradiction of what he actually did say, reflects the panic-button mentality to which we are all prone when thinking about a way of life and a faith that may sometimes seem to us alien and hard to understand. Where fear and panic lead, reason, that great gift of God, is driven out. The Archbishop has led the way in encouraging us to listen better to the Muslims who share our land. They are not going either to go away or to abandon their faith. Can we learn not always to focus on the worst, but to seek after the best in Islam (as we would hope Muslims and others would do for us?) We are so much closer to the Muslim faith in many ways than we dare to imagine. In today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 12: 1-4a), God promises to Abraham that through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Along with the Jews, Christians and Muslims are all descended, in spiritual terms, from Abraham. Has the world not been mightily blessed by Judaism, by Christianity, and by Islam? I believe the Archbishop has given us an example of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, in action – Jesus always strives to include people, to widen the circle of God’s love. And isn’t that what we are supposed to be about?
With Love,
David
Dear Friends,
‘February fill-dyke’: an old nickname for the second month of the year. I’ve always assumed that the name was given more or less in gratitude, because of the blessing that full ditches and dykes and a wet end to winter would bring to the growing seasons of spring and summer. (If I’m wrong, I’d be glad if someone would set me straight.) However, as I write these words in the middle of January, the river is running high, muddy and fast, and the Rec and Port Holme are under water, with more rain threatened. In the west of England and elsewhere, people are once again facing an excess of water that might prove anything but a blessing.
In the book of Genesis, water is the primordial chaos over which the Spirit of God broods, and out of which God brings the order of creation. We can see in this story how something of the ambivalent power of water was recognised by the ancient Jews in the very first words of the Bible. In order to create the earth, God separates this water into two – one part becomes a kind of reservoir in the heavens, held up by the vault of the sky, through which some falls as rain, and the other part becomes the oceans and also forms a subterranean sea underlying the whole of the earth. In the story of Noah and the ark, it is often overlooked that the floods that covered the earth came not only from rain – ‘the windows of the sky were opened,’ thus letting through all that water above the heavens – but also arose because ‘all the springs of the great abyss broke through’ (the waters under the earth). Thus the world had the potential to collapse back into a watery ruin at any time, and was only kept from destruction by the active power of God.
For the Jews, and for several other cultures of the ancient Near East, floods were symbols of the forces of chaos. For the ancient Egyptians, however, the annual flooding of the Nile was the source of all their prosperity as it fertilised the rich agricultural plains. The floods were the very basis of their civilization. Water is mysteriously the source of all life and of the depths that can drown empires. But in any case, a flood is by definition something entirely beyond human control. Watching the waters of the Ouse rising gradually over the meadows these past few days – and as they do so ensuring that the unique environment of Port Holme is preserved – I have felt strangely grateful to be reminded that in our settled existence we still remain subject to the forces of nature. Some peoples need no reminding – the Dutch have won their land from the sea at great cost and never let up their guard against it, and the Japanese always face the awesome power of typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes and occasionally tsunami. For many of us in the west, much of the time, the stability of our habitat seems something we can take for granted. But it is an illusion, as people in Tewkesbury and elsewhere know very well, and as many more may if sea-levels really do rise greatly. No-one who has experienced a really harmful flood, or any other natural disaster, is likely to give thanks for the suffering it brings, but if we learn from such events to think of our lives as transient, and to live in thankfulness for each moment of well-being, we shall have taken from them perhaps the only benefit we can. As we pray for those who suffer from an excess – or lack – of water, we can thank God for all the times and places where people have enough but not too much.
We come from water. All land creatures are descended from some unimaginable ancestors aeons ago who first left the oceans to try their luck on terra firma. The human embryo as it grows floats in the amniotic fluid of its mother’s womb, and the developing lungs breathe no air but practise on the waters of this miniature ocean. Christians pass through the waters of baptism in a symbolic death and resurrection, and so receive the promise of God that life is not, ultimately, something that awaits the whim of arbitrary and uncontrollable forces but is drawn back to Him who first brought life out of the depths. ‘Never again shall the waters become a flood to destroy all living creatures,’ God said to Noah. Floods do still claim lives and always will, but the voice of God to all ages declares that His purposes for us and for the whole of creation are indeed, as He said at the beginning, very good.
With Love,
David
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year! By the grace of God, may 2008 be a truly happy year for many, and may God sustain those whom happiness eludes.
As you may know, St Mary’s is starting a new kind of service, Parish Praise, on Sunday 27 January. (See the separate box in this magazine.) The service is something of a departure for St Mary’s from our traditional patterns of worship. The two most significant changes are that it will not be a communion service, and that it will be held in St Anne’s School rather than the church itself. The start of the service, at 11.00 am, is also much later than our other main Sunday services. The music will be generally more contemporary than many of the hymns we use at other times. On the Sundays that Parish Praise takes place, it will be the main service offered by St Mary’s, replacing the 9.45 Eucharist in church. There will still be the 8.00 am Holy Communion and 6.30 Evensong every Sunday. I am well aware that these changes are not comfortable for some, and that the service is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.
The reason for this new service is that we want to encourage people, who may never have thought of going to church before, to experience worship in a relatively informal setting, and to provide a relaxed welcome to all, including families with children. As a help to one section of the community, there will be sign language throughout the service, and there will also be a light meal after the service so we have the opportunity to get to know each other. I am a great believer in the value of sitting down to eat together in building friendships and a sense of belonging.
This is an experiment. What will make it come alive is your participation. Please consider coming, even if you have never been to church before. I hope it will be enjoyable, fun even, but also a time when we can add a new depth to our lives by taking a step towards God, who is always taking steps towards us. Bring a friend (or several), come alone or with family, and discover that the worship of God can be a source of great happiness. If we make that discovery, we shall have gone a long way to ensuring that 2008 really is a Happy New Year.
With Love,
David