How papers feed bigotry about Islam

At the last census, High Wycombe’s population was 92,300, of whom 10,838 were Muslim (11·7 %). If you prick them, do they not bleed? Like the rest of us, Muslims die. Therefore it can come as no surprise that there is a demand for Muslim burials in High Wycombe. The Local Authority has to meet this. Population is growing, and room running out. It would suit Hysterical Islamophobics to be able to say space had been clawed back from consecrated ground in the local graveyard; but that would be barmy because the other 88% of the population also continue to die, so there's absolutely no sense in not extending the graveyard, and land is available.

Enter the Bucks Free Press with a story called “High Wycombe Cemetery Extension agreed for Muslim Burials.” This downpedals the fact that a cemetery extension was needed anyway, and points out Muslims like be buried facing Mecca whilst omitting, curiously, to point out

1. It doesn't cost any more to bury people in new ground facing any particular direction
   
   
2. The site in question snakes round a hillside in all directions, and where the majority orientation has been East, Mecca is basically East of High Wycombe anyway
   
   
3. Since 11·3% of the town’s ratepayers are Muslim, they surely have the same right to be buried according to their wishes, if possible, as everybody else.
   

Next, as is the way with Flat Earth News, this scoop (that Muslims in High Wycombe die like everybody else — Shock! Horror!) is routed, via This is Local London, to the Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph spins the story, by adding an anonymous local resident saying “Yet again many thousands of pounds [are] being spent pandering to the local Muslim community.” Apparently burying the dead is pandering to them.
I disagree. I don’t think High Wycombe is ready for Sky Burials quite yet.

The Telegraph also carries, final killer element, a quotation from the Bishop of Buckingham — oh, that’s me! — pointing out that people of all faiths and none are regularly buried in consecrated ground. This is hardly news, since it’s an obligation laid on the Church since time immemorial and legislated in the Burials Act 1880. The established church is delighted, of course, to fufil this basic civic obligation.

But, final link in the chain, the Telegraph story fulfils its purpose. On Saturday evening I receive a furious email from a gentleman in the North West. He had the character and decency to give his name, but can’t have expected me to use it publicly, so I won’t. I believe my correspondent is a good and decent man. This is his reding of the Telegraph:

Having just read an article where it states you are delighted to serve the Muslim community in allowing an extension of Muslim graves facing Mecca into the main graveyard in High Wycombe, Bucks. I would like to express my disgust at your support of such an action given how Christians throughout the world have and are still being persecuted by Muslims on the instruction of Islam.

I would ask you Sir, where was your support for Christians when Muslims desecrated the graveyard in St. Johns Church, Longsight, Manchester by destroying all the gravestones to make way for a mosque car park. The silence of the media and the Church on this issue, has been absolutely deafening.

By your appeasement and support for Islam you are feeding a hungry lion and when there is no more food to give it, it will turn on you, as can be seen in how Coptics are treated in their own cities in Egypt, a once Christian country. Not only are Muslims taken over our Churches they now want to invade our graveyards and the Church is sitting back and not only saying nothing but encouraging such actions.

It is an absolute disgrace and a very sad day for Christians in this once Christian country

I have to point out to him that I didn’t actually say what he thinks I did. This isn’t a churchyard so it’s none of my business who is buried there. But then my eye is caught by his tale of St John’s Longsight, which I had never heard of before, not being a recipient of Manchester BNP publicity. A video has been posted on the Internet of what I believe is called hard nogging being used as substrate for a carpark, with the strong implication that it is made up of Christian gravestones. This is the message my friend in the north West received, that Muslims have been “destroying all the gravestones to make way for a Mosque car park.”

Trouble is, the gravestones are still there. Indeed, you can see them here. The basic answer to my friend’s question (“where was my support for Christians...?) is that the whole story was a canard, a fiction designed to whip up inter-religious hatred. My correspondent, good and decent man that he is, bought the lie. The Daily Telegraph story in its sexed up form catalysed a response in him, and so the panjandrum of fear, suspicion and hatred gathers momentum.

I had to remind him, as the Christian he professes to be, that the Ninth Commandment is a Christian value. He does not care to admit that he bore false witness, although he patently did, and he goes on to suggest “the bottom line is not about this or any other story put out by the British press.” Really?

Revealed — the Facebook Disease!

Since its first diagnosis in 1530, fear has fuelled all kinds of theories about Syphilis. Italians and Germans called it the “French disease.” The French called it the “Italian disease.” The Dutch called it the “Spanish disease,” the Russians called it the “Polish disease,” the Turks called it the “Christian disease” and Tahitians the “British disease.”

Fleet Street can now reveal (h/t Ben Goldacre) that Syphilis is, in fact, the “Facebook Disease.” This hypothesis also accounts for the failure of our Tudor ancestors to be able to place it accurately. Stories in the Daily Telegraph, Mail, and Star all proclaim the great discovery. A public health scientist in Teeside warned of the rise of incidence in his region. This was stuck up against another survey suggesting use of social networking sites is high in the North East and, hey presto!

Those who find this suggestion risible may care to try another from this February, also in the Mail — that Facebook causes Cancer.

How does this tosh make the printed page, and why should anyone pay for it? Now there’s a real mystery. Others will remember from Monty Python that sheeps’ bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes. This new learning amazes me...

Life, Jim, but not as we know it...

The Telegraph carries an interview with Archbishop Vincent Nicholls in which he is represented as suggesting Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide. I am not sure whether this was the main point, or indeed any point he was trying to make, but we can only go on what we’ve got. My first reaction is that this piece belongs in the noble company of newspaper pieces since John Robinson’s “Our Image of God must go” (1963), where the subeditor’s racy headline stood out clearer than the author’s deeper intention.

What is there to say? Well, for a start, if the Archbishop had his own blog of course, we could see what he had to say, without having to try and figure it out through the refracting lens of the Telegraph, with its own agenda. We could dialogue with him directly and come to a clearer understanding of his perception and discuss it until we had teased out its most constructive use. As it is, all we’ve got is the Telegraph.

As to the moral, human and social values underlying Archbishop Nicholls’ reported words, I am completely in agreement. A clear sense comes over that the Archbishop, like any instructed Christian, believes people should be decent, respectful, nurturing and constructive in their dealings with one another. Christianity teaches love, strong as death, as self-giving — our highest human purpose is to love God and love our neighbour as ourself. This applies to all ages, but as every pastor knows, each of the seven ages of humanity has its own particular challenges and stumbling blocks, from the innocence of childhood to the gnarled cynicism of old age.

Where do social media fit into this landscape? One might be tempted to cross out “Facebook and MySpace” and substitute “letters and telephone” or even “communication and miscommunication.” I don’t know how many young people have been driven to despair by either a love letter, or lack of it, or as a result of a telephone conversation, but I’d guess there have been a few down the years. I agree strongly with the Archbishop, too, when he implies that the family provides a holding framework within which people can most easily live together and grow up safely and fruitfully. Playing fast and loose with that personal and social capital, however fashionable among the chattering classes, does nobody any favours.

The problem, like the joy, isn’t the media, but the human beings. Bullying is bullying, whatever the medium. There are people whose would say their quality of life has been spoiled, with zero accountability, by, say, the activities of Daily Mail reporters. Do teenagers pile up superficial relationships only to become devastated when they let them down? I’m not so sure this problem is getting worse. My children are considerably better socialised than I was, as a middle class boy the same age. They generally care far more about relationships and humanity, and the time they spend MSN-ing or whatever is time I would have spent with my nose in a book — not exactly the best way to build nourishing relationships, either.

I don’t believe our young peoples’ interest in people is waning. It seems unstoppable. What I fear for is their understanding of the concept of privacy, and, like any parent, their ability to protect themselves. I wonder if people of my generation sometimes remember what our parents said to us when they rationed our TV, and somehow transfer the warning to any screen based media? This ignores the fact that today’s screens offer interactive, rather than entirely predigested experience. TV is wallpaper not the Boob tube and Oracle it used to be.

Young people I meet around have often developed a very sharp critical nose about the information they see around them. That’s why they don’t usually go anywhere near newspapers — partly because the print comes off, but mainly because they reject the tyranny of relying on one, once-a-day, source. They are often fascinated by the concept of Truth, but for them it is emergent, rather than inductive. That raises serious difficulties for anyone with a message to sell, whether Church or Media Mogul.

What do Churches have to offer?

1. interactive localised community, rooted in a place and tradition which is not, at its best, synthetic, but organic, growing naturally from experience of God and people.
   
   
2. a pooled range of ages, cultures and expectations which has always been genuinely globalised and transcultural. I am frequently moved, even in small congregations, by the wide variety of people present, one of everyone, from babes in arms to nonagenarians.
   
   
3. a shared framework of stories and narratives within which to set personal perceptions, connected to ancient wisdom and transcendent morality.
   
   
4. an open offer to participate in sacred liturgy, ritual, music, poetry and dance, whereby people enter into spiritual experience for themselves with increasing confidence, connecting with possibilities way beyond ego, individualism or mere ideas.
   
   
5. a connected spirituality, contemplation, silence and rest; call it “sanctuary.” The sabbath principle privileges offline downtime. It also sets a perspective around immediate experience, from which it can be critiqued.
   
   
6. the challenge to trascend ego and consumerism, and live for others, wrapped up in the teaching of Jesus.

Unfortunately, if local church communities themselves does not particularly enjoy, ceebrate and share these things, there’s a problem — the salt has lost its savour. The problem, however is not Facebook, but with the Church failing to be what it is called t be.

Dumb versus Intelligent Conservatism

I used to take the Daily Telegraph seriously. It was sometimes over to the right of the gentleman on the left, but it was good for sport and contained an extensive compendium of what was going on around the place. In a slightly contrarian way, I have always valued Conservative insights as food for thought, even, no especially, if I didn’t entirely agree with their starting points. Neil Davies’ Flat Earth News said significant things about the decline and fall of Fleet Street as a serious source of comment, and this week I noticed one story, nothing to do with religion, that really says a lot about the kinds of dogs to which the Telegraph is presently going.

Screamed the Telegraph story, and I smelt a rat. Is this our old friend “Rape is really the Victim’s fault?” I wondered. When I worked in a prison, I noticed it was the story rapists used to tell themselves, anyway. I never did believe it, myself.

Said the Leicester University press release. Notice, and ponder, the difference. Now you know how the subs at the Telegraph view this subject.

But what of the story itself? As explained by Dr Ben Goldacre, this is what happened. Sophia Shaw, MSc student, conducted some research for a dissertation. The point of making trainee scientists write such things is to learn how to turn tentative preliminary research into disciplined scientific conclusions. She hasn’t yet done this for her, as yet unfinished, dissertation. Turned into a press release, à la Flat Earth News, her work became the germ of the Telegraph story. Not surprisingly, she objects to her work being manipulated and turned into rubbish by the Telegraph for its own idiotic purposes.

Looking at hot button issues, let’s turn to the grand-daddy of them all, the gay issue in Church. I turned not to the Telegraph, but to Cranmer, for a genuinely perceptive, intelligent Conservative take:

...dear readers and communicants, homosexuality is not an issue worthy of schism: it is simply not of the order of the sort of debate that used to divide the Church: the divinity of Christ, for example, or the nature of his humanity – the great controversy at the Council of Nicea in AD325 – or even over liturgy or the transforming nature of infant baptism. The issue of homosexuality affects only a tiny minority of its adherents: it is of distinctly secondary, even peripheral, scriptural importance.

The role of the Bible in addressing the modern question of the place of the homosexual in the church is complex, not least because where it is mentioned in Scripture, the authors give little sustained consideration of the issue as it manifests in the modern world. The nature of a biblical perspective will invariably be affected by the questions posed of the Bible, by the particular hermeneutic employed, and by the unavoidable perspective which each scholar brings to his or her reading of the Bible. While some may have an instant negative reaction, others seek to understand the debate in the different and changing circumstances in which we now live. Still others, who may identify themselves as homosexual Christians, struggle to express either their feelings or their thoughts on the issue. They are themselves divided into those who acknowledge that homosexuality is a sin and therefore a call to celibacy, and those who assert that they also are made in God’s image and therefore seek to express their sexual desires in an intimate, monogamous relationship.

That God established an objective, moral order in creation, and continues a work of re-creation through Jesus, is a source and standard of all that it beautiful, good and true. If such a moral order means anything, there may be no via media on the issue of homosexuality. Accepting theological diversity is not the same as tolerating all beliefs and practices, because ultimately the Church is called to be holy because God is holy (Lev. 19:2; Mt. 5:48). We cannot as Christians just give way to ‘you believe this, I believe that’ approach to being together, or moving apart, in the Church. Nor even can we be content with the rather cheap model of ‘reconciled diversity’, meaning benign tolerance, which many Christians find an easier option to the costlier pursuit of real, ‘visible’ unity. We need to continue to struggle together for the truth, to find the right and godly balance between the call to solidarity and the recognition of difference. Presently, nowhere is this more important – especially in the Anglican Communion – than in the area of sexuality.

But Cranmer is persuaded that the whole issue may really be a non-issue because the wrong question is being asked. His Grace posited a few days ago that the modern era is sex-obsessed: we live in a consumer society, and there is little that is marketed without a glance, a wink, a flirt, a breast, or allusions to sexual intercourse, because ‘sex sells’. If one were to judge by the media (which is more frequently a mirror to society than a catalyst for change), the fascination with people’s sex lives is now more important than politics, religion, philosophy or even Mammon. Jesus may have had to address the latter as the dominating idol of his era; his judgement was that one may not serve both God and Mammon (Mt. 6:24). But he did not enter into discussion on the fiscal minutiae of cash, credit, bonds, shares, loans or interest; a macro-warning not to be obsessed with Mammon was sufficient. If one were to apply the same principle to the modern idol – ‘Eros’ – it is doubtful that Jesus would address its sub-divisions (gay, bi, straight, oral, anal, tantric); he would most likely directly challenge society’s obsessive fixation with Eros, and by so doing confront both those who prioritise issues of sexuality and those in the church who presume to judge them.

By devoting so much time and effort to the ‘gay issue’, instead of challenging society by deconstructing the question or focusing on poverty and wealth (for example), the church is simply showing itself to share the same obsessions as the world. Paul allowed no compromise on the restriction of sexual activity to heterosexual, monogamous marriage. But such an ethic seems almost utopian to our sex-besotted age, in which it appears at times that one’s identity is made to reside in one’s sexual organs and their untrammeled exercise. The issue for the Church of England is that this debate has been blown out of all proportion; it is neither a battle for the soul of the church, nor an issue worthy of schism. It is a question utterly peculiar to this era, and those on both sides of the divide – both politicians and theologians – might consider toning down the rhetoric and the apologetics, and instead preaching a message that, contrary to society’s thinking, sexual expression is neither a necessary line of inquiry in every human interaction, nor an essential component in human fulfilment.

If, as is suggested here, we do indeed live in a society which has a basically gormless, obsessional, and corrupt over-sexualised self-image, playing along with its assumptions about how these things work is less than the best we can do. Church has to position itself somewhere other than as the thrower of custard pies from the midst of the fray, whether from right to left or left to right. Rather it exists to bear witness to the Scriptures and our tradition — a deeper, richer, more ancient and meaningful wisdom. We offer it as a resource to our society, which it may care to take more seriously when it has had enough of its current obsessions and becomes seriously interested in human beings — a truer, more humane vision of what we could be than simply whizzing down the slide, as Philip Larkin used to say “like free bloody birds.”

I have also been chortling over the Archbishop’s recent run in with Facebook, who took a dim view of His Grace’s ecclesiastical title, whilst simultaneously allowing that old scoundrel Cardinal Wolsey to keep his. After a surreal correspondence with various cheery FB Sockpuppets, in the best traditions of cussed Englishness, His Grace refused to take the sleight lying down and set himself up with a new account in the magnificent name of “Ayatollah Cranmer.” Right wing, but fun. Inexplicably, he was allowed his new moniker. Draw your own concusions...

None righteous, no not one...

New Horizons in Infamy, as the Telegraph reveals that one Labour MP tried to claim £5 to put in the plate in Church. The whole country is now one seething cauldron of self-righteous rage and scorn, aimed at MP’s. Now we know all about their garden gnomes, tennis courts, staplers, dictation machines, chocolate santas, envelopes, and dogfood. Hang on, staplers dictaphones and envelopes, are legitimate office expenses. But what the hell, they’re MP’s and they should pay it all back anyway.

MP’s allowance fraud is a really significant story, and it was very important to draw it to public attention, and all dishonest politicians everywhere should be held to account, espeically the ones who have been playing hooky with houses. That said, Some of our boldest crusaders for righteousness have their own dirty underwear, and I don’t just mean their lunch expenses.

The last owner of the Daily Telegraph, for example, has been inside for fraud, having charged such items as FDR memorabilia and Cardinal Richelieu costumes up to his expenses. The way in which various present Fleet Street owners flip their homes for tax purposes is not as well known as it could be. It takes one to know one, I suppose. Squirming under a shower of filth, England tried to cheer itself up by following the antics of breakdancing East End pensioner Fred Bowers:

But now we learn, allegedly, Fred has been claiming £70 a week Disability benefit. He says his left leg is in fact disabled, a kind of still point in a turning world thing. This is giving me some misgivings about flooding parliament with unknowns and retired celebs.
People who aren’t atually MP’s can apparently be as bent as people who are. The Fall turns out to be stone cold sober truth; to quote the late great Noel Coward “Everybody is bent, Camp Freddie.”

Here’s the heart of the matter. We could develop yet more labarynthine and draconian regulations, guidelines and allowances to stop this kind of behaviour, but I’ve another suggestion. Brits have gotten into the habit of treating the ten commandments as obsolescencies in our Secular Brave New World, but they do have a certain resonance just now. “Thou shalt not steal.” “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” “Thou shalt not covet.”

Not exactly rocket science, are they?

But they do seem to reach some of the parts that regulations, guidelines and codes of practice don’t.

Blowing bubbles in Hard Times?

Are we Bishops out to get Gordon Brown? Heck no. All my Lords of Canterbury, York, Winchester, Durham and London meant in what they said at Christmas was exactly what they said. Desperate attempts by the Daily Telegraph to turn their sermons into a party personal campaign are ridiculous. No wonder DT’s readership has dwindled to under half what it used to be.

But what about Gordon Brown and the economy? Like most colleagues in funny hats, I have a great personal respect for the Prime Minister. His words at the Lambeth Conference were brilliant and impassioned, showing deep personal understanding of, familiarity with and commitment to the millennium development goals. They were entirely ignored by the UK flock of Salaried Hacks, who were trying to portray him at the time as all washed up and about to resign. In the flesh, he seemed nothing of the sort, and so it has proved. He wasn’t and he didn’t.

In bigger terms, Labour government since 1997 deserves credit for at least trying to adress many significant issues, often long term problems and trends around which predecessors failed. It’s striven nobly to use the fiscal system and other means to tackle Child Poverty and help pensioners. Having gotten us into the hole in Iraq, it’s trying to dig us out. It’s talked the talk on development, globalization and the environment, and sometimes even walked the walk.

At home, HMG has tried to address questions of social cohesion, although some of its initiatives here smack of boy scouts helping old ladies across a road they don’t need or want to cross. Education and, even more, healthcare are areas where it’s poured money in, although there’s still chronic doubt about bangs per buck. On Civil Liberties, the record is dubious, but, in fairness, this area of governance has been a chronic tidal race between ideals and pragmatism for all our rulers these past 500 years. Let’s be kind and draw a tactful veil over transportation and penal policy, both disaster areas. Since the days UK penal policy was transportation, all governments have been clueless about both.

On the Economy? By the wisdom of the world and curent economics Labour has played up, played up and played the game — and reaped many benefits for us all. It was a bit hilarious to see politicians on all sides clambering over each other as they turned on a sixpence last autumn about the need for tough regulation of financial institutions, after years of loud boasting about the virtues of low to zero regulation. However, it would be unfair to suggest our politicians were greedier or naughtier at the party trough than anybody else’s.

Fact is, We’re all in this mess together — The Church of England, the Bank of England, the Labour Party, the Conservative party, the owners of newspapers, and indeed everybody else in Britain with a house, or a pension, or money in a bank, is implicated up to the eyeballs. To look ahead in hard times, we need to address the “meta” level. As we all stand around the bonfire of the Vanties, trying to warm our hands, some “meta” questions strike me:

1. We need a reboot not a bailout, as the man said. It’s time to think different. The fantasy that the answer to one housing Ponzi is another is profoundly barmy. Debt fuelled growth is problematic. It makes everybody feel good for all the wrong reasons. The wealth is like fairies in Peter Pan — fine as long as you believe it really is wealth, but every time a house is undersold, a fairy dies. It’s certainly no substitute for hard work, added value, goods and services. Borrowing to bailout has to be paid for by future taxation. If we must borrow heavily off our children, perhaps even our grandchildren, as the UK did to defeat fascism in the 1940’s, at least let it be for a rational and worthy cause, not just more of the same.
2. Rich and Poor — the gap has widened, though the government has sincerely tried to reduce child poverty. This is exactly the global problem highlighted by the Pope at New Year. It’s right on the button and nothing like unique to the UK. But what do we do about it? What about the losers? What about savers? What about pensioners struggling with bills and taxes, often on fixed savings-based incomes for which they’ve worked damned hard, and which now seem so inadequate? MP’s read their post and know exactly who I mean — it matters that the poor are not forgotten.
   
3. Has our economic effort gotten out of balance? Not enough manufacturing, design and R&D — too many bubbles blown. Ingenuity that has been applied to repackaging debt as profit could now be applied to, er, what — the real world?
4. Was “more” in itself a sufficient object? — yes and no? It would have been, if we had a greater vision of how to invest it, perhaps. But then our greater vision would have been the sufficient object. So, logically, no. Sure we all need to feed outselves. There’s nothing wrong with growth, and lots that’s right with it, but it is not big enough to be the purpose of our civilisation in itself.

These concerns touch core traditional theology as well as secular economics. Christian theologians talk about social as well as personal regeneration. In the Christian Scriptures, Poverty and Justice are issues that will not go away, from the prophet Amos to the Letter of James or the beatitudes in Luke. The Old Testament principle of Jubilee, and its radical questioning of debt as an instrument of power speaks into this mess. It deserves serious contemplation, after years of being sidelined and thought unthinkable.

How Unprincipled is God?

In yesterday’s Telegraph, Rowan Williams asked the question, quoting a Christmas sermon of 1931 by Karl Barth, a deeply principled man, who said we must “live with principles, but we must also be able to live without them.” One obvious parallel might be Edith Cavell, profoundly a patriot, famously saying she had learnt that “patriotism is not enough.”

Vituperative Telegraph Hacks, who seemingly don’t understand the stuff in their own paper, slapped on a provocative cliché from the Beatles for a headline, then twisted the whole piece, bizarrely, to suggest Rowan was recommending Nazi Germany as a role model for the credit crunch, in order to annoy Gordon Brown. Spiteful Contortion, or what?

For those of us back on Planet Earth, along with Rowan Williams and Karl Barth, God takes the initiative by taking flesh at Bethlehem — a personal risk, not an abstract proposition. God is not entirely uprincipled, with his ten (or 631) commandments. Neither is Jesus with his Golden Rule. However, both God and Jesus know that principles, as Nurse Cavell discovered, are not enough. The world by principles knew not God. St Paul, a Man of the Law to his fingertips, discovered on the Damascus Road that the law could be no more than the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. That’s why Pelagianism, for all its good intentions and common sense logic, is not enough. We need Grace.

Jesus comes at Christmas, says St John, full of Grace and Truth. By comparison any set of principles can only reflect the light that shone in the stable, as the moon (indeed the whole earth) can only reflect the light of its Sun. The Sun of Righteousness rises, for our healing. In Karl Barth’s immortal phrase, the Eternal Light needs neither fuel nor candlestick. (Nor even Mangers Boiled Linseed Oil, seen in the Vestry at Little Kemble last Sunday)

So goodbye to the Pelagian duty to condemn everything that seemingly fails to meet my standards. I’m not God. I’m just the Vicar. Goodbye to the great abstract fears and fantasies that fuelled and licensed the holocausts of the last century. Goodbye to the silly notion that I can somehow make or unmake the Church, or the world, by politics or manipulation — even, perhaps especially, if I am right. Not by might, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. This is why we can hope. This is the Gospel of Christmas.

Just Fancy That...

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph fulminates:

internal Church documents – leaked to The Sunday Telegraph – show that even if churchwardens, who are lay officials, are found to have previous allegations against them, the Church has no power to suspend them.

Perhaps the secret document is the Daily Telegraph of 25 May 1999, which vigorously led the charge, successfully, against proposed legislation which would have given bishops powers to suspend churchwardens:

John Gummer, the former Tory minister and a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee, said: "The Church of England has not needed provision to suspend churchwardens for 700 years and it does not need it now. They have come up with a solution for a problem that does not exist."