The thoughts that came to me this morning, Tuesday, as I reflected on Monday’s session of General Synod, which I watched in its entirety.
There was a noticeable difference in mood on the first day of the General Synod meeting in London. It was more sombre and serious, and words were being more carefully chosen. Fewer people spoke! Those who did were more thoughtful and reflective and aware of other people's feelings. Something has changed in the DNA of the Church of England, and it’s not a small thing. The Archbishop of York’s presidential address was almost grovellingly apologetic. It was received in silence. The was heartfelt, clearly, but failed to satisfy the expectations of Synod members.
However, other, larger things have yet to change. There has yet to be a change in attitude among sections of the Church, numerically well-represented on Synod, towards awareness that full and equal status for women, LGBTQIA+ people, people of colour and people with disabilities is a fundamental Christian imperative. We may (or may not) find out on Thursday when LLF has an hour on the agenda whether yesterday’s mood and changed awareness is also affecting the Living in Love and Faith process.
Questions were got through at a brisker pace thanks to Synod members observing the introductory expectations of the chair. Supplementary questions were brief and to the point. Answers were, as ever, sometimes opaque, occasionally instructive. What stuck me was the number of people called to the rostrum to respond to questions representing different bodies within the Church. They made plain to me just how many resources, financial, of time and of people, are involved in running the Church of England. It looked obscenely excessive in the context of people responding to my blog asking what their experience of parish and national church life was like. The repeated failure of the hierarchy and diocesan staff to respond to and engage with clergy in particular was shockingly evident.
Julie Conalty, the Bishop of Birkenhead and lead safeguarding bishop read out deeply moving statements from victims of abuse, some of whom were present as members of Synod or in the visitors’ gallery. For the first time, I felt the power of their trauma present in the chamber. It was a sobering witness. And this morning I found myself reflecting on Jesus the victim, hanging on the cross, Jesus the idealised victim, the voluntary victim, self-giving, Jesus the pioneer of our faith whose example we are to follow. Does the hierarchy, the House of Bishops, the National Safeguarding Group, and all of us in some way, find it difficult to respond to the victims of abuse in the Church because of our theology of the crucifixion and the sacrifice of Jesus that in some way sacralises all victims? Is this theology also responsible for forming the abusive behaviours of those being held to account at last, and to the failure of the Iwerne set to have dealt with Smyth’s abuse for decades? Does Jesus the victim theology encourage the Church to protect abusers?
In my time of meditation and reflection this morning I also became aware that the God in whom I don’t believe is also very present and dominant at General Synod, all too obvious in the opening prayers and the penitential liturgy. I found myself wondering what kind of God and what kind of world and cosmos the institution is imagining. It’s an institutional, systemic problem. We are invited to pray to a God who is still “othered” by the Church, a God whom we are responsible, a God who is external to ordinary life in some way, whose reality is “out there”, “up above”. This God is selective in “His” engagement with creation and the human beings he has created. I wonder what changes could be made to the debating chamber to create a less sterile, more humane environment; but they would require a dramatic cultural and spiritual change and there’s no sign of that happening.
I realised for the first time that the metaphors of the Lord’s prayer, of Jesus describing God as Father is a very unhelpful metaphor for me, and this also relates to the Church’s problems with abuse. The image of a father each of us develops is founded in our experience of our own father (or his absence). Fathers can be distant, abusive, emotionally cut-off, absent. And what about mothers? The Lord’s prayer prioritises masculinity, something the Church later tried to rectify with the development of Marian status and theologies. But the problem remains.
Today’s debate on safeguarding resulted, I think, in an unsatisfactory outcome for many. Neither option of the two preferred by Synod would have created a sufficiently independent system. The ability to do so seems to be beyond the ability of the Church to devise.
Eighteen months ago, five of us met in a London garden one afternoon to talk about our ideas about the nature of God. It was a deeply satisfying, open, honest conversation and after three hours I felt that we had achieved a deeper level of understanding. Two of the people who participated are also member of Synod. The kind of conversation we had in the garden would not be possible at Synod. It’s a conversation that I yearn for that is only possible with people open to explore themselves and the world they live in reasonably unencumbered by the restrictive expectations of Church dogma and doctrine. Until the Christian Church is melted enough by the Holy Spirit to loosen the bonds that bind us and inhibit our freedom to explore the unconditional love, goodness, energy and wisdom of the mystery revealed to every human being, the essence of life, decline into decadence and decay will continue.