Author Archives: theohobson

Thoughts after Synod

My prediction of paralysis was wrong – but the fundamental decision is still being postponed. Here’s what I wrote for the Spectator after a visit to Synod.

I went along to the Church of England’s General Synod on Wednesday morning. I had a good view of the sign-language person, and in a bored moment (sorry for the puerility) tried to see what the sign for ‘sex’ was. I failed to discover this, but happened to be watching him while an evangelical spoke of progressive teaching leading people to hell. He made a pleasing little one-handed goat-horn sign.

The whole debate could have been summed up in a couple of gestures. Maybe a sad face and heart sign, for the progressives’ tireless emphasis on the pain and exclusion of homosexuals, and the need for loving acceptance. For the evangelicals, maybe a clenched-fist hold-fast sign, plus a Bible, followed by the old goat-horns.

I’m a liberal, but the rhetoric of my fellow liberals did not often fill me with theological delight. Speaker after speaker, some of whom sported brightly dyed hair, expressed indignation that reform was taking so long, that gay people were still disadvantaged. Allowing blessings for same-sex couples is a matter of simple decency, they implied, and an obvious expression of Christian love.

I don’t think this is quite the right approach. In reality they are seeking a major change in the Church’s teaching – a move away from its doctrine of marriage. The argument for such a change should be made clearly and honestly, and expressions of hurt should be kept to a minimum. On one level I found myself sympathising with the conservatives, who kept pointing out that this supposedly minor innovation would weaken the old doctrine of marriage and so should be subjected to fuller scrutiny.

Rather surprisingly, synod voted to press ahead with its original plan of allowing same-sex blessings, for an experimental period.

The Church’s teaching is now inconsistent. Sex outside of straight marriage is still officially condemned, and gay clergy are still told to be celibate. But blessings for gay couples will soon be officially approved, and in a few months new ‘pastoral guidance’ is expected to say that gay clergy can get married (outside of churches), and to imply, through tactful silence, that their sex-life is their own business.

For years the Church has been in unofficial limbo. It has condoned a subculture in which homosexuality is affirmed, even celebrated, in defiance of the rules. For some years, liberal clergy have already been blessing gay unions, and none has ever been sanctioned. This explains the impatience of the liberal campaigners: we just want acknowledgement of the actual reality on the ground, they are saying.

Now it is in official limbo. It is presumably inching towards full acceptance of homosexuality, but its leaders are determined to deny this: the doctrine of marriage is entirely safe, they say, straight-faced. Of course they are kicking the can down the road. Sooner or later Synod will have to have a more honest debate, in which a new teaching on sex and marriage is forged.

Liberals must up their theological game, and start explaining why the conservative case is deficient. It’s not enough to say that love and acceptance trumps bigotry – that sounds too secular. The way forward is to rediscover a Protestant theme: the freedom that the Gospel brings, meaning the freedom from specific moral rules. It’s an unfashionable emphasis, because it has links with anti-Catholic and indeed anti-Jewish attitudes, but it’s a crucial resource in the challenging of the Puritan mindset. It is the only way that liberals can get theologically serious. They must start accusing the conservative evangelicals of legalism.

Thoughts ahead of Synod

A version of this was on the Spectator site last week.

The Church of England has realised that its decades of dithering over homosexuality must end. It must finally bite the bullet, and introduce liberal reforms.

To be more precise, most of the bishops have realised that reform is necessary, and that delay is disastrous. Most of the clergy and most of the laity share this view. But the opposition of a determined minority renders this clear majority position impotent.

This week’s Synod was meant to be the breakthrough. Back in February, Synod voted in favour of blessings for gay couples, as a provisional ‘experiment’. In addition, the bishops promised that new ‘pastoral guidance’ would soon be issued, which is expected to allow clergy to be married in civil ceremonies, and to drop the old requirement for gay clergy to be celibate. So the plan was to unveil the ‘experimental’ blessings this week, and issue this new guidance.

Instead, the bishops are announcing a further consultation, taking at least another year. What went wrong?

Evangelical conservatives complained that the reform lacked legitimacy, though it was passed with majorities in each of Synod’s three houses (bishops, clergy, laity). A two-thirds majority is needed in each house for a change of this doctrinal magnitude, they said – and it only secured such a majority in the house of bishops. Last month the House of Bishops met and decided that the conservative critics were right.

It’s an odd mess. The bishops tried to force the reform through, in a slightly underhand way. And then, when called out on this approach, they backtracked. The Church’s leaders look domineering and arrogant – and also indecisive.

Why all this muddle and dishonesty? The Church’s leadership wants to introduce reforms on this huge contentious issue, without admitting that this is happening. The bishops have repeated the dishonesty, claiming last month that the proposed reform ‘does not change doctrine in any essential matter but changes our practical pastoral response and the way we relate within the church.’ Technically it is true that the introduction of experimental gay blessings does not mean the changing of the doctrine of marriage. But the old teaching would be hugely weakened, especially if this is accompanied by new guidance tacitly allowing gay clergy to be sexually active.

Why can’t the Church’s leadership be honest, that it seeks a major change in the Church’s teaching on sex and marriage?

Because it is still unsure whether it really seeks this. Of course the unsurety goes right to the top, to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Justin Welby seems to back the limited proposed reform, despite his conservative evangelical background. But he is hardly likely to argue for the wider change.

What about the other bishops? It’s a fast-moving picture. Just a month ago, only a few stated a clear reformist position. But the recent U-turn led 44 bishops to protest, insisting that the experimental blessings should not be delayed. But how bold are these liberal bishops willing to be? To advocate major reform is to lose the backing of the (often rather rich) evangelical parishes within one’s diocese.

But surely it all comes down to whether the Church really wants to reform its teaching sex and marriage. If a clear majority wants such a change, then Synod will vote it through, with two-thirds majorities in each house. This is what happened with the ordination of women (just).

This is what Welby said, in a rather bad-tempered meeting with progressive campaigners earlier this month. Instead of complaining about the slowness of the process, he told them, you should get on with trying to win the argument. This annoyed the progressives, for they feel that they have won the argument in the Church as a whole, but Synod is packed with well-organised conservatives who keep obscuring this. Then be better organised, he said, annoying them further

But Welby is right. Advocates of reform must up their game. Yes, a majority of Anglicans back reform, but it is as yet a soft majority. Of course the Church must move away from its old homophobia, says the person in the pew, and re-connect with the new liberal consensus in the wider culture. But does he mean it? Does he really want to get off the fence? Does he really affirm the equal validity of gay sex?

Liberal Anglicans, and I include myself here, are only now waking up to the fact that full clarity is needed on homosexuality. There is a deep desire to sit on the fence, and hope that a sort of semi-liberalism somehow prevails. If I’m honest, I’d quite like straight marriage to retain its traditional primacy, and for homosexuals to be tolerated rather than fully affirmed. But it doesn’t add up. Such semi-liberalism is not enough; it enables homophobia to linger on. One really does have to get off the fence.

For a church to change its position on homosexuality is a very big deal. It means confronting all the age-old assumptions about religion and sexual morality, rethinking them from scratch almost. Of course this has been half-happening for about sixty years: Anglican thinkers have tried to rethink Christian teaching in relation to cultural change, and new understandings of scripture. Well, the effort continues – and must even be stepped up, now that the crisis has intensified. Quite apart from homosexuality, there is need for honest reflection on sex in general. Does it make sense to hedge it round with religious rules? Can we move away from legalistic moralism without becoming complicit in our culture’s blasé attitude?

We can, I believe, but only through difficult honesty. At July’s Synod, for example, the Reverend Miranda Threlfall-Holmes challenged the notion that sex is only holy within a straight marriage. She did so by telling us about her pre-marital sex-life. She had one, and enjoyed it, and did not see it as ungodly, then or now. When she married her boyfriend she did not feel that sinful carnality was suddenly transformed into something godly, and she refused to pretend otherwise. Such iconoclastic honesty can get Anglicanism through this crisis, and maybe even contribute to its renewal.

In practical terms, the stalemate will only be broken if bishops dare to lead. Up to now, almost all bishops have seen their role as embodying the Church’s ambivalence, and so retaining the confidence of both sides. This has been even truer of archbishops. But this model of leadership is not adequate to the situation. A difficult change must be made, and the Church needs leaders who dare to advocate it, come what may.

Church of England United

The Church of England is disintegrating. It was ever thus, you might say. But no, it wasn’t quite. The famous broadness of the Church used to be balanced by formal structural unity. The bishops had their differences but they formed a single hierarchy.

To find out more, visit a brand new site, churchofenglandunited.com

Fanatical Liberal Anglican Diary #2

I want to follow up my review of Martin Poole’s book – see below – with some reflections on my own more haphazard attempts in this direction.

To put it bluntly I have tried doing similar things, on and off, for about twenty years. It’s hard to name the thing. ‘Religious art with a ritual dimension’ is near enough.

Mostly this has meant that I’ve had bold ideas for impressive public rituals, or performance-art events. Sometimes I’ve managed to rope in a few other people, and see if we can make it happen. The bigger plans have never quite got off the ground – so far. But plenty of smaller projects have happened, and the impulse overlaps with my creation of more conventional art.

It started, this impulse, as I was finishing my doctorate. In reaction to all the book-learning, I needed a totally different approach to religion, and creativity. I needed to feel that religion was culturally dynamic, and I needed to feel part of it.

I started getting excited by the rituals in James Fraser’s book The Golden Bough, and wanting to do new versions, Christian versions. Why didn’t I just get stuck into church ritual? It didn’t feel alive enough, it didn’t feel free of the old institutional baggage. New forms were needed that could interest non-churchgoers, I felt.

My first impulse was inspired by a version of the Mystery plays that I saw, and also by those tribal rituals in Fraser. I imagined little bits of street theatre, with audience participation, telling the basic Christian story, centred on the theme of the exorcism of demonic forces, Christ’s defeat of Satan.

Soon I had another idea: instead of going to church, people could meet in a park, form a circle, and perform some basic ritual actions, including marking each other with the sign of the cross. All wordless. Then they would raise their joined hands, making a crown shape. A bit like a dance.

Then I decided that there should be a huge Christian festival on Easter day, a bit like the Notting Hill carnival. Oh dear, I was becoming a fantasist, dreaming of impossibly big schemes. But I also had some smaller-scale plans, some of which came off: a couple of performances at a Christian arts festival, some art for local churches, a couple of theatre events for kids, that sort of thing. And a performance art piece for Holy Week, inspired by Catholic penitential rites, that I talked about on the radio once.

The most persistent plan was a Good Friday project: people would bring crosses to a site, and make a huge crown of thorns sculpture. It nearly happened at a cathedral, then nearly at a London church. It’ll happen one day, if it kills me.

Despite twenty years of embarrassing failures and frustrations, I haven’t given up! I have a small-ish-scale project brewing at my local church, and a bigger scale project too. I intend to report on my progress in future blogs.

I find it hard to sum up this whole side of my work. It’s been very frustrating. It has often felt like an absurd encumbrance, a curse. Why can’t I get stuck in to a more normal form of creativity? And a more normal form of church?

But it’s a central part of what excites me about religion, and ultimately you can’t really argue with what calls you, you just have to try to get on with it.

How does it relate to the wider theme of this blog, the need for a more robust liberal Anglican identity? Well, as I see it, liberal Anglicanism entails a desire to seek new forms – of worship, of ritual, of church. Why? Because it is sacramental, but a bit detached from high church tradition. It values the use of icons and theatricality, but is uneasy about the traditions that have used these most fully, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It is a form of religion in search of new cultic possibilities; it is dissatisfied with the subculture known as religion. On one hand this might make it seem ‘trendy’ and ‘secular’, but this enthusiasm can also be seen as a form of ‘otherness’, a way in which liberal Christianity can show its distinctiveness and strangeness. Also, it shows a bold confidence in the gospel: it always calls for bold new cultural expression; it ought to inhabit culture in general, not be a neatly cordoned-off subculture.

I’m not saying that every liberal Anglican ought to be into arty experimentation – instead, it’s probably good thing that most are broadly happy with the established ritual forms. But some of us have to keep trying strange things – one of which one day might enable some sort of breakthrough.

A ritual-art pioneer

I have just done a review of Martin Poole’s book, Church Beyond Walls: Creative Church in Public Spaces, for the Tablet. Here it is – and soon I’ll offer some further, more personal thoughts.

Alongside being an Anglican priest in Brighton, Martin Poole runs a group called Beyond; since 2008, it has produced ‘creative events with a core of Christian spirituality.’ Its best known project is the Beach Hut Advent Calendar. He found 24 volunteers, who not only lent their sea-front huts but created their own displays, with some reference to the nativity story (sometimes rather tenuous). Every evening in December, a little crowd gathered round the opening of each new hut, and the event was repeated for several years.

Other events include a Stations of the Cross using shop windows, interactive sculptures in the street or on the sea-front, sometimes linked to secular events such as a surfing festival, an interactive labyrinth, and a Hallowe’en event mixing worship and performance art. Beyond has also held indoor events using theatrical rituals to reanimate familiar Christian themes. These often involve impressive light and sound effects. It has also held such events at the Greenbelt festival, and elsewhere. He relates the challenges of such creativity with good humour, often finding a silver lining in some setback. For example a vandalised installation sheds light on Christ’s vulnerability.

The theology involved is liberal, inclusive – even inclusive of people who feel detached from religion, but want some connection to its iconography. But there is also a sort of evangelical energy, a low-church desire to liberate the gospel from fusty old forms. This is clear in the Introduction: in writing about these events, his aim is ‘to help others experience something of the wonder I have felt when encountering God this way, and to help the church move away from its shuttered existence in creaky old buildings to find a new language without words and outside walls.’ The true meaning of liturgy, he argues (drawing the work of the Catholic theologian Ed Foley), is not ‘the work of the people’ but ‘the work FOR the people’, especially ‘the ones on the margins who are not part of our club. True liturgy is miles away from a set of sacred rituals and responses known only to the initiated few…True liturgy is something that stirs people outside the church through acts of public service in which we hope they will experience God.’

Some will dismiss all this as a marginal affair, that could only work in arty Brighton, or a few similar places, and some will find Poole’s impatience towards normal church unhelpful (and a bit odd in a vicar). But I think it’s crucial that the Church of England develops a sort of liberal-arty missionary wing, and maybe it needs to feel a bit separate from normal church, in order to try bold new things. Ideally, some of these new things will in time become integrated with normal church, and spark its renewal. It’s a difficult liminal space to occupy, but Martin Poole does so with impressive energy and joy.

Thoughts on Anglican History

I’ve just got round to reading Jeremy Morris’ history of the C of E, A People’s Church. It’s very useful – clear, thoughtful, well-written. But also a bit frustrating. But maybe that’s not the author’s fault.

Yes, historians are meant to be careful, wary of sweeping judgements, more focused on the trees than the wood. But I’d like to see an Anglican historian sticking his neck out a bit and putting his cards on the table. For we need a strong account (from a liberal perspective) of what makes this tradition distinctive. But, to be fair to Morris, it’s difficult for a historian to supply this, because the key story is so gradual and in a sense unstated.

What ‘key story’? What’s distinctive, to my mind, about the Church of England, is its relationship with political modernity. Its established status, though born in dubious circumstances, becomes instrumental to the first major liberal state. It becomes, over three or four centuries, the established Church of a liberal state – and this is no small thing. It signifies a uniquely strong relationship between Christianity and liberal politics. You could even say that a new version of Christianity emerges through this story. (Other churches may favour political liberalism, but what others are tied to it?)

But this is hard to narrate, for it happens semi-accidentally, or hiddenly, or driftingly. Take the crucial seventeenth century. The key proponents of radical toleration, and an end to theocracy, were liberal Puritans like Milton, who rejected the Church. But a few decades later this perspective became incorporated into the Church – in the Glorious Revolution’s rejection of monarchical absolutism. But only half-incorporated – things were still unclear for another century and a half! Dissenting Protestants were tolerated, but High Church Tory rhetoric dominated. In 1828 Dissenters gained fuller rights (they could hold public office) and in 1829 Catholics were legally protected. But reactionary Anglicans still dominated, rhetorically. The Oxford Movement was a protest against the Church’s control by a liberal-ish state.

Why were there no strong voices affirming the Church’s affinity with political liberalism? In a word, Dissent. The English mind had drifted into the assumption that the expansion of religious freedom was the cause of Dissenters (and agnostics and atheists). So liberal-ish Anglicans like Coleridge and Maurice still held to a sort of Burkean organicist model. Ideally some great Victorian would have redefined Anglicanism circa 1860 – by reuniting it with Dissent. (Maybe Gladstone, if he’d focused on religion – for he straddled high church Anglicanism and political liberalism.) Come to that, why did no twentieth century thinker take up the challenge? The Church became more clearly tied to a liberal state – and yet no theorist really knew how to celebrate this – instead the reactionaries still made the rhetorical running – and the liberals were distracted by socialism and demythologising. The oddity is that politically liberal Anglicanism triumphed – without ever really being proudly articulated.

Look, it’s a complicated tradition. And Morris deserves credit for helping us to think it through. But I’d like to see him, and other Anglican thinkers, delve a bit deeper into this half-hidden miracle and paradox – that the C of E became the established church of a liberal state.

The C of E on the brink

This was on the Spectator site last month

A bishop said something significant at General Synod last week. I promise you. Something that might even herald a new era of straight-talking, from which revival might spring. We’ll get to this surprising utterance shortly.

First, less surprisingly, the archbishop of York opened proceedings with a predictable pudding of pious evasion. Unity is a sacred thing, and so the disunity of Christians is an unholy scandal, he said, quoting Pope Francis to this effect. This sounds like harmless ecumenical piety, but in the context it is pretty unhelpful. In fact it’s defeatist. In effect, he was saying that the Church of England is in the position of global Christianity. Its unity is not to be expected before Christ’s return.

The context is this. The Church of England has drifted into an Orwellian relationship with the concept of unity. Maybe next year the bishops will unveil the magic principle that can save the tradition: ‘Separation is Unity!’

To the outsider, the Church’s problem is that it’s divided over sexuality. But the problem goes deeper: it has lost the will to unity. Another institution such as a political party might split over an issue, but it will come to a decision, due to its will to remain a credible political force. It will do so by any means necessary – if its internal constitution is blocking reform, it must be changed. The Church has convinced itself that there is something nobly Christian about staying divided.

One problem is the Anglican Communion. The Church of England feels that it must remain in communion with all the different churches of the Communion – even at the cost of its own division. This smells like a suffering Messiah complex. Other churches might need to reach a decision on contentious issues, but we are different, special, we are willing to be crucified for the good of all.

An even bigger problem is that the Church has diluted the authority of its bishops. Thirty years ago it decided to ordain women as priests, then became worried that the robust implementation of this policy would be a nasty worldly thing to do. So it allowed the traditionalists to stay, with their own bishops. This was defended on the grounds of avoiding a split, of course, but also on the grounds of preserving unity with other churches, especially the Catholic Church. Ten years ago, when it voted for women bishops, it decided to renew the fix, set it in stone.

And so the Church is programmed to address the crisis over homosexuality in the same way: to reassure the evangelicals that their conservatism is fully accepted. If they say they need ‘differentiation’ in the form of their own bishops, precedent makes it hard to refuse.

Who needs a recap? In February, Synod approved blessings for gay couples, and the bishops suggested that the texts would be published in the summer, along with ‘pastoral guidance’ on homosexuality – which liberals hope will lift the ban on actively gay clergy. Now November is the due date for both.

The evangelicals are crying foul, with some reason. In effect the blessings open the door to an approval of gay marriage, and the pastoral guidance is likely to mark a major shift on sexuality. And yet the matter was not voted on as a matter of doctrine – which would have required two-thirds majorities in all three houses of Synod, rather than simple majorities. The bishops seem to be trying to introduce major change on the sly, amid a barrage of warm words about listening and walking together, most of them dispensed by the former chief nurse, Sarah Mulally, bishop of London.

And a third pronouncement is promised for November: on the extent to which dissenters will be allowed their own structures, an issue dubbed ‘pastoral reassurance’. Perhaps this is the most important issue. If the evangelicals are granted their own bishops, it is hard to see what is left of the Church’s unity or authority. The existing form of ‘alternative episcopal oversight’ is at least limited in size. A very small proportion of parishes is opposed to female clergy; the issue is semi-ignorable. Far more would join a dissenting network over homosexuality, including many of the largest and richest.

Might the bishops come up with a compromise that staves off such a crisis? It’s narrowly possible: the pastoral guidance might rule out gay marriage for clergy, and that might be enough of a sop, but it would surely be temporary. Alternatively, might they back down, agreeing that such reform is indeed a doctrinal matter that needs the full backing of Synod? The admission of impotence would be disastrous.

Some insiders feel that a drift to further episcopal disunity is highly likely. Welby is determined to get something through before he retires, says one, and anything that looks like progress will do, whatever complications it brings. But others feel that there’s real reluctance among the bishops to take this course. Especially among the female bishops, more aware of the downside of episcopal disunity.

Which brings us to that significant episcopal utterance that I promised you. It came from Rose Hudson-Wilkins, the bishop of Dover. She was responding to the bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson, who is in charge of the working group on ‘pastoral reassurance’. He indicated that a separate episcopal structure for evangelicals was very much on the table, and might be the only way forward. When she rose to speak, the bishop of Dover declared herself angry. ‘I find it difficult to hear my brothers and sisters speaking so glibly, as if it’s normal, that we’re going have to have differentiation again, as we did with women bishops. Actually, the women bishops thing ain’t working, and we’re paying the price for it.’ That blunt ‘ain’t’ changed the atmosphere in the chamber.

Anglican clergy are not meant to say this, let alone bishops. When women bishops were introduced, everyone had to promise not to speak against the awkward fix. There are explicit rules about it, called the Five Guiding Principles. Enough, the bishop of Dover was saying. Enough of this assumption that disunity is our destiny. There’s no point in having a church that drifts into new divisions, as if it’s noble, or at least inevitable. We must seek unity, not managed division. We must seek unity, come what may. Her angry speech could be a turning-point.

Fanatical Liberal Anglican Diary #1

I have decided to write a regular blog. The idea behind it is that a new sort of religious identity is needed. Maybe ‘fanatical’ is a bit strong, but liberal Anglicanism needs to toughen up, or it will be edged out of existence. It can’t fully reject its reputation for woolly wetness, but it can inject some steel (would ‘steel wool’ work instead as a title?).

I will partly write about church politics. But my theme is also more personal. I want to relate my attempt to be more committed to my Anglican allegiance. Even writing that I found a little bit difficult. You see, I am in some ways rather reserved and English and embarrassed about my religious faith.

But one has to go against this grain. One has to refuse to be sidelined by one’s liberalism. One has to reject this huge gravitation, that associates religious seriousness with reactionary forms.

So: it’s fight-back time – it’s time for the liberal mice to roar! No more Mr and Ms Nice Liberal Religious Guy and Female.

I’m going to relate a few things I’ve been up to over the last week – chats about religion, stuff I’ve read or written, attempts to get stuck in to my local church. This day-to-day side of things is crucial, for liberal Anglicans must develop a fuller religious culture – we must do more religious stuff.

First, should I introduce myself? I’m a fifty-year-old man who has been trying to write about religion for most of that time. I live in London. I’m a freelance writer I suppose, and a part-time teacher. I’m an Anglican, but for a long time I was very detached from church, and it sort of lingers, that long detachment. A few years back I tried getting ordained, but I guess it lingered too much, that aura of being a bit apart from things, and it didn’t work out.

That’ll do. Oh, I’m also married and have three half-grown-up kids. And a dog – but that sounds all cutsey to mention the dog. I hate the blokes who write about their home-life in the papers, in a faux-grumbling-but-really-boasting way. It’s hard to get the tone right, isn’t it? Now I want to say how deep and moody and depressive I am, but that gives the wrong impression too.

Last week I went for a drink with my friend C, a curate in a high-church parish. In fact the parish is Forward in Faith (non-accepting of women priests) but C tells me he is not of this view, and I mostly believe him. First I attended a quick evening eucharist – it was the first time I saw him in priestly action. It grated a bit when we prayed for the pope and the bishop of Fulham.

Later, over a drink, we discussed religious stuff. (What do other people talk about? Films?) At one point we got to the heart of the matter. Does religion need to have an anti-liberal element to it, to feel authentic, other? Or can it be compatible with liberal values, and still feel holy? Liberals should admit that it’s a real issue, that liberal Christianity often feels banal and secular, and that illiberalism has a sort of holy sex-appeal – it chimes with the otherness of religion. I raised this in a recent article about the ordination of women – I admitted that the church of a traditionalist (the aforementioned bishop of Fulham in fact) had an old-fashioned holy aura that half-attracted me. But one should resist that allure, I said. And more widely one should be aware that reactionary social politics is a sort of short cut to religious otherness and authenticity. We must seek a true version of such otherness – and as I see it, this can only come through a new sort of ritual intensity.

Through writing that article, I became more interested in WATCH, Women and the Church, the group that highlights injustices that result from the schism over women’s ministry. Of course they dislike the Church’s policy of allowing opponents of women clergy to have their own bishops. But the Church has decreed that this is a valid minority within the Church, that there should be ‘mutual flourishing’ on both sides, and WATCH do not quite dissent from this. They do not quite come out and say that they want the arrangement to end, and the traditionalists to be booted out.

Of course I’ve been vaguely aware of all this for decades, but it never quite grabbed me. Partly I suppose I saw it as a matter for women clergy, not my concern.

Well, I have come to feel that this acceptance of disunity is a bad thing. It was bad theology, to allow this separate structure back in 1993, and to renew the fix when women bishops were voted in, in 2013. It’s Orwellian, to say that this is now what ‘unity’ means. How on earth did this doublethink emerge? Why did good Anglo-Catholics like Rowan Williams agree that the authority of the episcopate should be diluted in this way?

Also, the arrangement subtly harms liberal Anglicanism. It demoralises it. For it’s like a proof that liberals don’t have the guts to stand their ground, to demand that their view, having won the clear backing of the majority, is worth implementing.

My recent radicalism on this issue is partly influenced by the other division, over homosexuality. There is talk of the conservative evangelicals being allowed their own separate stricture too.

In fact I’ve just been to speak at a WATCH committee meeting, to share my thoughts. They should come out and demand the re-unification of the Church, I said. I wasn’t sure how they’d respond to my mansplaining. But they were receptive.

But is it the role of WATCH to make this bold demand, to rock the boat in this way? Yes and no. Yes – because otherwise they are implying that this disunity is tolerable – they are giving their blessing to it, and it’s a special blessing, because they are the ones most acutely disadvantaged by it. But also no – it shouldn’t only be their concern – it is for all Anglicans to say, we need to be a united Church, or we’ll wither away.

WATCH this space.

The King, the C of E and I

A version of this was published in the Tablet in coronation week

I have sometimes wondered whether the Church of England might drive me round the bend. Maybe it’s quite common to feel conflicted about one’s religious tradition, but this tradition, I submit, takes the maddening biscuit. For in this case one is also talking about other things: national allegiance, monarchy, a class-tinged style of culture…There’s a lot going on.

Let me offer, as a sort of coronation gift to my new king, a brief account of my experience of this tradition.

I was raised in the old Anglicanism of reserve, tradition, order, propriety. This form of religion was quietly aware of its centrality to the national character, of its establishment in a wide sense. Its style was high rather than low, but it was hardly conscious of the fact; it hardly needed to acknowledge the existence of evangelical enthusiasm, or trendy reform, or Roman Catholicism. For centuries, it had simply been religious normality – what kings and queens believed, what inspired the Empire, what the Bible was written for – well, the Bible in its Authorised Version. Other forms of Christianity were known to exist, but this was the authorised version. But this aura was fading as I grew up: being actively Anglican was becoming a bit unusual, at least in London (in small villages it can still feel culturally central). 

I was confirmed as an Anglican while at my public school, meaning my posh private school – class is part of this story, of course. Did I give any thought to the Church I was being confirmed into? No, the Church of England was just normality. I was vaguely proud of its national character, and the fact that it was Protestant. I learned in history that the nation had become Protestant under Henry VIII, that the English Reformation was a massive act of modernization, a clear-out of medieval superstition. Protestantism was therefore progressive, and it helped to make us the pioneer modern nation. On some level the Church, despite being ‘in decline’, still provided the nation with its official ideology. I felt vaguely proud to be part of this. As my Dad later quoted to me: there’s life in a ruin.

As a teenager I became sceptical of the authoritarian side of religion – this antiquated Church was under suspicion. On the other hand, it contained lots of good liberals who questioned everything. As a student I found I needed faith – but I wanted a version of Christianity that was fresh and relevant, that could appeal to my generation. I wanted a clear new form of religious socialism – and surely a radical commitment to building the kingdom of God on earth was at odds with the C of E, whose vicars pledged allegiance to the Queen. Some might denounce the Tories, but weren’t they all signed up to high Toryism, and monarchism? 

I kept my distance from organised religion, partly because of this ambivalence about my tradition. It was so full of nostalgia and muddle – and yet it felt like home, or more so than any other tradition. I was studying theology now, but avoided confronting the conundrum. 

Then came 9/11. I needed to know what I thought about religion and politics. As a liberal, I couldn’t accept the defining feature of my tradition, its established national role. For the key task of theology was to show that Christianity was compatible with liberal values, opposed to theocracy. It had to cut its ties to the Crown: I had nothing against the Queen, rather I had a vague sense of loyalty, but clarity about one’s religious allegiance had to come first. I wrote a little book arguing for disestablishment (I was encouraged by a publisher who later became a big-shot editor of a certain Catholic weekly). It felt like a cause that might re-invigorate the Church of England, by sort of turning it inside-out. I know, a long shot – and a slightly crazy one. 

I began exploring the history of the issue. I was drawn to the English civil war period, to thinkers like John Milton, who announced a new era of political freedom. It was not a secular vision but a Christian one – he said that true reform meant the rejection of theocracy, which meant monarchy and establishment. I wanted to echo this, but I gradually admitted that it felt a bit unreal. For the established Church had, since Milton’s time, gradually become pretty liberal. And yet it also outwardly retained its reactionary side – what a muddle! Other Anglicans seemed happy to muddle along with the muddle – but I seemed to need clarity. How does this Church relate to politics? My misgivings put me at odds with church, and I only attended worship occasionally. I suppose I feared getting comfy with the nostalgic and class-bound aura of the Church, the more-tea-vicar thing.

It was while living abroad, in New York, that I felt able to reconnect with Anglicanism. I needed the whole national established thing to be out of the picture for a bit, so that I could get back in the habit of church. The Episcopal Church (US Anglicanism) was just what I needed. Back in Britain, glad to be home, I found that I was moving to a new understanding of the establishment question. 

For me, liberal Christianity is defined by its attitude to modern politics: it is wary of a powerful Church, and has a positive view of the liberal state. An established Church, tied to a monarchy, seems directly at odds with this: it preserves some key features of Tudor-era theocracy, for goodness sake. But here’s the strange thing: Britain became a liberal state – arguably the pioneer liberal state – by preserving these antiquated structures, using them as a sort of exoskeleton. I hesitate to say it in these pages, but uniting around Protestantism was part of this. The exclusion of Catholicism from the monarchy in the Glorious Revolution sounds like indefensible bigotry, but it was part of how the nation found a common ideology, in which liberal politics could grow. And as it grew, the meaning of establishment gradually changed. The Church of England emerged as a Church that was married to political liberalism, in a way that other churches are not. For some, including almost all of the blowhard religious thinkers of our day, that is a dubious thing. For me it is a major plus.

And the monarchy has been part of this odd process, of a theoretically theocratic structure becoming a bastion of liberalism. Monarchs have tended to be figures of unity, fostering good relations between different creeds. Despite the official Protestantism, Catholics have tended to approve of the high ritual aura, the para-papal pomp. A monarch can be a more ecumenical and inter-faith figure than an archbishop, who has to promote his own creed. We saw the with the late Queen: she presented the Church of England’s role as helping other faiths to have a public voice. This would be theologically dubious coming from a bishop, but it was the right thing for her to say. And Charles has gone further. He has dared to present himself as a sort of high-priest of traditional spirituality, confident that this chimes with his official Anglican role. It does: a liberal established Church needs a figurehead who is Christian in a loose, eccentric way.

Can the strange dance continue long? I don’t know, probably not. With fewer people exposed to Anglican culture, the rational modern case against monarchy and establishment strengthens. It all just looks like empty traditionalism, an old-guard clinging on to power. My argument, that these antiquated forms have actually nurtured our liberal culture, probably makes little sense to most people not raised within this tradition. For the average person assumes that religion is opposed to liberal values, and the media reinforces this: only actual exposure to religious culture can challenge this. And even then, as in my case, it’s hard to get one’s head round the paradoxes of our history.

Instead of the normal flow of pious royalist treacle, I’d like to see some honesty from Anglicans in the wake of the coronation. In recent decades we have failed to develop a clear account of our tradition, especially its relationship to politics. We have failed to make a virtue of our dramatic history, allowing a vague post-imperial embarrassment to dominate. Charles himself has made some efforts in this direction: he dared to start a discussion about his inter-faith role. Anglican leaders, and thinkers, should echo that boldness, and explain to the British people that there is more to our constitution than all this exotic gilded pomp, and that there are good liberal grounds for saying: God save the king!