I have come to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is failing to update the software and hardware operating systems of faith within the various Christian denominations. This is a thought that might have come from my friend Clive who liked to use contemporary metaphors when describing what’s going on in the church and the world. From my seventy-nine years of experience think the Hoy Spirit’s updating mechanism was working reasonably well in the early years of my life (from the 1950’s to the 1970s). But since then, since the Thatcher decade, living into the eighties and nineties and noughties the operating systems have become more and more dysfunctional, lacking, it would seem, a number of essential updates. The result is that a Christian network like the Church of England is now manifesting serious systemic operational and organisational chaos and system malfunction.
Bishops
To take one example: in earlier decades the Holy Spirit updating mechanism ensured that the Church of England appointed bishops with a range of gifts, some of who would have the vision to foresee where the Spirit is leading and opening humankind to new awareness of God, the holy, sacred, spiritual essence of creation. Some bishops had the courage to speak openly about their evolving awareness of God, writing and publishing books and preaching and teaching in the public realm building on theological movements being described by Paul Tillich and others. Today I am unable to name a single bishop, suffragan or diocesan, male or female, who has received an operating system update that takes their theological awareness beyond a very tentative 1950s level. Any prospective bishop showing signs of a more recent update is rejected by the dysfunctional selection system. Such prospective bishops may seek an alternative network more hospitable to some of the Holy Spirit’s more recent updates, including the Church in Wales, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Church of the USA.
Safeguarding and Abuse
To take a second example: the performance of the Archbishops and Archbishops’ Council in the complex attempts to control and deal with multiple matters relating to safeguarding and abuse. This has become a long-running and apparently never-ending saga verging on crisis. I read reports, reactions, comments and updates on Thinking Anglicans. Reading the carefully can occupy significant time and attention. What is obvious is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Church’s operating system, a lack of processing awareness and understanding giving the impression of a hierarchy in Lambeth Palace and Church House that is seriously out of touch with the reality that despite a huge investment in safeguarding policy and resources, the system is unable to unravel the mess.
Crown Nominations Commission
A third example – the appointment of diocesan bishops – ‘Should the Crown Nominations System be changed?’ asks a headline on Thinking Anglicans following deadlock in a recent attempts to appoint new bishops. From the outside, it looks as if a group that is repeatedly block voting against women is managing to sabotage the ability of the Church to make ANY appointments. This is happening despite what I assume are deeply prayerful gathers which begin and end in prayer and held in prayer by friends of the candidates and the people of the diocese anticipating the appointment.
Living in Love and Faith
A fourth example (I’ll stop giving examples after this): The Living in Love and Faith process. What happened to the Archbishops’ primary commitment at the beginning of the process when Synod (thanks, House of Clergy) had voted down the House of Bishops’ proposals? The Archbishops were committing the Church of England to a radical new Christian inclusion. As women priests are pointing out now, this would require innovations that would ensure a dramatically different out from the proposals that secured the ordination of women, as well as a radical overhaul of the systems put in place to enable women first to be ordained as priests and then as bishops, but the divisive, dysfunctional compromise agreement remains. Women have yet to achieve the radical new inclusion falsely promised to LGBTQIA+ people.
My personal operating system
On the other hand (and I hope I’m not claiming too much for myself here) my personal operating system has been subjected to repeated updates in the course of the last seven decades. The process was contiguous with my first four decades but was subjected to significant upgrades during my time as an ordinand at Westcott House Theological College and subsequently as Vicar of St Faith’s Wandsworth and a founder member of the Southwark Diocese Lesbian and Gay Support Group and, four years later, Changing Attitude.
As a result of this failure to update the system I have felt more and more abandoned by a Church that, in failing to be open to the Spirit’s attempts to update the software and hardware elements of its operating system has become more and more dysfunctional, abusive and remote from the God I already knew and the God I experience in a deeply contemplative, prayerful life. And I am far from being alone in this.
Malmesbury Abbey, Tetbury Parish Church, and after
I visited Malmesbury and Tetbury churches with a friend in the middle of August and found in the first a church building alive with the quality of sacred energy and spiritual presence and in the second a church TV monitor and website communicating open, generous, unconditional love signifying radical new Christian inclusion, qualities I have been yearning for and failing to discover. Since then I have been researching church websites, initially to see whether there were any other exemplary congregations. I found a few, all of them obvious places to look. The majority of websites, middle of the road, progressive, inclusive, reflected the same characteristics; information heavy, worthy, and dull. I then had to overcome a prejudice. I realised that I needed to research evangelical church websites to see how they were presenting themselves. My prejudice was that the content of their worship and teaching is superficial and manipulative, requiring me to be more emotionally and physically liberated in public than I am comfortable with, waving my arms around, singing trite, repetitive choruses, forced to shed my protective introvert layers.
Websites, Evangelical
I’m going to write a more detailed account of what I discovered in a subsequent blog, but for the moment, here’s a brief, simplified account. Evangelical websites communicate what I’m longing for in the Church. I can see why they are so successful in growing congregations. They are better designed (the majority of central financial resources are dedicated to them). Images are key, high quality, skilfully chosen, showing people, mainly young adults, multi-racial groups, in animated conversation in varied locations, the majority not in a church building but out and about in playgrounds, on the street, in cafes. The worship and music is clearly lively and every website I looked at communicated energy, buzz and fun and mentioned love as a key to Christian life. There are groups to join and a social network that is going to provide you with a readymade group of friends providing instant fellowship in both large, popular worship gatherings and small, safe house groups and social events. There’s a lot about Jesus but not much about God. Above all these websites are clearly communicating success. I can see why this contemporary primary model of Church of England life and worship is being pursued by the hierarchy. It is proven to work. It generates large numbers of worshippers and energy – and money. People become deeply committed.
Websites, Progressive
Evangelical websites are better designed and better at communicating their ‘product’ than progressive, inclusive, middle of the road, catholic websites. For them (for my tribe) communicating information is the most important purpose – times of services, clergy and key position holders, safeguarding, being inclusive, coming events and various organisations. The quality of pictures is not so good, they are often of the clergy, churchwardens, etc., and they lack the range of beautiful images used by evangelical churches that communicate a buzzing life in the church – mostly because there isn’t one. Life is worthy and dull. There’s likely to be something about God but not much about Jesus and rarely a mention of love.
My Reflection
This is a highly personal reflection from a prejudiced position. I’m looking for depth, reflection, contemporary awareness of theology, justice, intelligence, awareness, stillness, contemplation, beauty, goodness, love and wisdom.
Evangelicalism of the charismatic, Pentecostal, HTB variety really turns me off! These churches are incredibly well resourced. Which congregation wouldn’t dream of having the resources to create inspirational worship, to renovate and extend their buildings to a high standard and increase their congregation to a size and level of resources that groups can go off and plant new churches – with exactly the same ethos – elsewhere? Neither do I want bland and boring, familiar old hymns and passive engagement of congregations. I’m looking, as I’ve said in previous blogs, for something I know from experience is possible but that seems to have gone missing in today’s Church. The updating of the software and hardware systems of faith has become less and less active and has now effectively ground to a halt.
Theologians
I went to Church House Bookshop, a fantastic resource, the last time I was in London, to buy a book for a friend. On the spot bought a copy for myself: Spirituality and Christian Belief; Life-Affirming Christianity for Inquiring People. It’s an excellent, brief reprise of “modern” theology. The Bible is not inerrant, hell is not eternal, the ultimate reality is cosmic mind, it’s ultimate reality to unite all beings to itself. Half way through it goes a bit off-piste for me, in chapters about the Trinity, the atonement, and the return of Christ. The excellent manager of the excellent Church House bookshop recommended a number of other recently published books. I bought What to Believe? Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology by John D. Caputo. This is a much more exciting read, more contemporary theologically (and therefore unlikely to be bought and read by Bishops of the Church of England). Caputo writes about the unconditional and a theology of events. The name of God is the name of a call for the coming of the impossible, for the possibility of the impossible, to which we should be the response. The agency is our responsibility. Caputo inspires me and resonates with my experience.
And at this point, this blog ends. There is much more I want to blog about, and will. For the moment, make what you will of my very personal view of “What’s going on in the Church of England today” that indicates a major fault in the updating of the software and hardware systems of faith, which I take to be the work of the Holy Spirit.