Articles in the Guardian often inspire trains of thought in me that open channels of wisdom, both secular and spiritual. Brian Cox the actor was interviewed last Friday. He said:
“I feel we don’t acknowledge our own humanity nearly enough, because we’re so busy surrounding ourselves with belief systems, when none of them – Islam, Catholicism, Judaism or any other religion – clarify anything. They just make things more complicated.”
“Really, the belief is in who we are, what our possibility is. That’s what takes place in the church – and in the theatre – when people come together. There’s something that happens to them as a community. It is what Hamlet says: holding a mirror up to nature, showing people what our life is.”
Brian nails something I have come to believe more and more strongly – that we don’t acknowledge our humanity nearly enough, are not sufficiently conscious of who we are or what our possibility is. He says this takes place in the church and the theatre. The truth for me is that it takes place in the theatre much more frequently and powerfully than it does in the church – the consciousness of who we are and what our possibility is – a physical, emotional, visceral consciousness. Worship has become programmatic, formulaic, focused too much on what it thinks God is and what God wants and what we need and nowhere near enough on our humanity and consciousness of who we are. I could write a whole blog, a whole chapter, abut this – and I am.
Also in Friday’s Guardian, in her regular column Gaby Hinsliff wrote:
“The true richness of diversity is its capacity to build a new depth of understanding, a sensitivity to our neighbours, and an ability to hold sometimes painfully conflicting thoughts and feelings simultaneously in mind which helps us navigate a complex world. A politics that fuels division and hate leads ultimately only to fragmentation but in our flexibility, our fluidity, lies our strength.”
Later in the day on Friday the Church of England published GS 2328, a 110 page paper giving an overview of the progress made in implementing what was agreed at the February 2023 group of sessions of General Synod and outlining the work still to do in relation to Living in Love and Faith (LLF). For over six years LLF has been trying to hold the C of E together in diversity when conflicting thoughts and feelings are fuelling division and hate leading to a solution proposed by CEEC that creates further fragmentation in the church. The Church of England is at the moment incapable of finding the flexibility and fluidity that would enable us to create a stronger church, sensitive to neighbours and rich in diversity.
There are members of the Church of England who want to create an enclave in which they can be protected from what they perceive to be the contamination of gay people who love each other, have sex and get married. This would be a second enclave. One in addition to the enclave already achieved by those who fear contamination by women priests and those male bishops who dare to believe that women can be ordained to ministry in the church God (a God who turns out, as a result, to be both homophobic and misogynistic).
The church of my youth in the diocese of Southwark created an awareness of God in me, God as humanistic, unconditionally loving, generous, creative, somehow woven into the whole fabric of creation – together with a whole range of ideas that have evolved from the Hebrew Scriptures, the wisdom of Judaism and Greek philosophy, the experience of a group of men and women, Jews, Samaritans, Ethiopians, Romans, Greeks, some of whom met and followed a man called Jesus and others who met the followers. These men and women experienced a presence, a person who transformed life’s experiences, a person who wasn’t prejudiced, a person who communicated compassion, truth and love. The people I met in earlier decades of my life had the same effect. They didn’t need to explain or justify things and they certainly didn’t need to question me as to whether I believed in God, in the creeds or in the other historic formulations of the church.
The church of my youth with its rich, trusting, sensitive, fluid, compassionate, Godly presence has slowly but steadily diminished over the past three decades. The same kind of diminishment has taken place in other dimensions of society – politics, education, universities, the broadcast media, economics, government. The mature, grounded, wisdom people of earlier years are a rarity today, rare in the Houses of Parliament, rare in the College and House of Bishops, rare internationally. Most people don’t notice. You have to be a certain age.
The diminishment in the number of wisdom people in human society explains in part why the Church of England Evangelical Council so desperately wants the introduction of robust provision relating to alternative episcopal oversight, new financial systems, and new fellowship arrangements in order that orthodox bible witness might flourish in the C of E to secure a place for those who hold to a biblical view. The CEEC is scared that something they rely on will disappear. What they rely on is a very unhealthy idea of God, an idea that is deeply damaging to the health and well-being of individuals and of human society in general.
This local problem in the Church of England is a manifestation of a global, systemic human problem. We didn’t anticipate, after the defeat of Nazism and the collapse of the Berlin wall that our human capacity to grow in confidence and through science and therapy increase knowledge and wisdom would fail to protect us from our insecurities and multiple anxieties. To put it very simplistically, the level of anxiety and insecurity has increased as a result of growing awareness of the potentially catastrophic effects of the climate crisis and the rapid development of communication networks and social media. We are overwhelmed emotionally; no wonder people cling to politicians who promise them the earth – Boris, Truss, Trump, Netanyahu and Bolsanaro among them. And we who cling to the House of Bishops in the Church of England, only to discover that they, too, publish 110 page documents that fail to satisfy anyone. It is impossible to satisfy the conflicting expectations we have.
Religious communities ought to be resources of wisdom, truth and hope in these and any circumstances. That is why we have religions. But the resources aren’t there at the moment. Human society is deficient in wisdom, deficient in consciousness, awareness, the capacity to process problems and ideas and emotions and communicate vision and hope.
I talk with friends about my experience and none of us has an answer. Why would we? We are as immersed in this state of crisis as everyone else. The best we can do is talk about our experience openly, name what we see happening, encourage people to network, to involve themselves, as many do, with activities and organisations that respond creatively to the multiple crises we face.
Those of us involved in working for a healthier church, a church that is seeking to be more fully loving and inclusive, open and generous, wise and prophetic, just and truthful – in a word, Christ-like – according to our vision of God – we need to work together far more actively and intentionally. It can be hard to find the courage and energy to confront abuse and prejudice and, in contrast, live with vision and passion for the unconditionality of God’s love – life in all its fullness, as I repeat frequently.