New Hearts of Darkness

Terrible happenings in Jos, Central Nigeria, reported by of Ruth Gledhill, and the NY Times Lede Blog. It’s plain from this Channel 4 News interview that the Archbishop of Jos is a courageous man of faith, struggling to understand, source and respond to barbarity, corruption and chaos:

The problem isn’t an excess of his religion, but the relative helplessness of good and decent men like him, and communities he represents, to restrain what is obviously, as he points out, organised violence. The evil that Genesis warns us lies crouching at the door will out — Europe has its own stories of Bosnian mineshafts full of bodies. However the agony of Africa over the past forty years (Darfur, Burundi, DRC, etc.) and the comparative incomprehension of us all, goes marching on. How long?

Preventing Clergy Bullying (of and by)

Ruth Gledhill’s Times article on the Mark Sharpe case in Worcester has raised fresh allegations about bullying behavour in the Church. I know absolutely nothing except what’s in the papers about its particular details, which need to be worked out and made public by the tribunal. Bullying behaviour goes on, of course, in all working contexts, including the Church — in my experience less so in the Church than in other contexts in which I’ve worked, education and prisons, but any incidence is shameful and wrong.

As a jobbing bishop I've taken a particular interest in the problem, and blogged about it more than once over the past two years. It’s very good to have full and open public discussion. Some of the things that will be said may be offbeam, but many won’t, and the general effect is to raise awarenss of the possibllity of bullying. This, in itself is the best preventative against it.

Whether it’s laypeople bullying clergy or clergy bullying clergy or clergy bullying laypeople, any whiff of bullying needs to be explored and discussed, preferably with area dean or bishop's staff, or someone, fully and accurately as early as possible.

Whoever is allegedly bullying whom, the best response is early awareness. The most problematic cases (of which there is only a very tiny number) are usually situations that have stewed for ages. early investigation shows up anomalies for what they are, and protects everyone. If bullying is not happening, it can be excluded, and if it is, it can be exposed for what it is. Like domestic violence, the key thing is to break the cycle producing it as soon as possible.

The involvement of Rachael Maskell’s union, Unite, has always, in my limited experience of it, been extremely helpful. A good union rep can normalise the whole situation by setting the various anecdotes around it in a broader context, whilst ensuring that their member is well protected. Even more than unions, one organisation has worked long and hard to help in practical as well as awareness-raising ways — the Society of Martha and Mary. Their report Affirmation and Accountability has, since 2002, defined the gold standard to which I have aimed to work on clergy HR. Rachael is absolutely right about the key role of law in protecting laypeople and clergy — sometimes people speak of ecclesiastical law as an anomalous by-product of establishment designed to annoy free spirits. It is actually their baseline protection, and everyone else’s — a key part of the infrastructure.

The successful extension of section 23 rights to all C of E clergy by Common Tenure, a legislative job that began almost 10 years ago and goes live at the beginning of 2011, is absolutely necessary. I have a particular interest, formally, in the implementation group for this change in this diocese, and we all have a part to play. Stories like this demonstrate to any who might have wondered about it, why this piece of work, which has been going on over almost 10 years, is so important to complete effectively. I strongly recommend all clergy to take up the option of common tenure when they’re offered it later this year. Even if they don’t think they need it, the universal takeup of the protection it offers is good for the culture of the whole Church.

When Common Tenure is implemented, this time next year, more legislation could be desirable. I don't think anyone will actually know until the new system has been operating for long enough to assess its impact. In the meanwhile, unions (who have had a battering themselves in the past thirty years) need to work hard to recruit in all sectors, and I support them in doing this.

I’ve worked on this problem with colleagues for years, both as a regular part of my job, and particularly learning about it with Anne Lee, a psychologist from Oxford University. Two particular issues strike me about addressing Bullying:

1. Definitions:
   The term “bullying” itself always needs careful definition according to the context. It's not a simple phenomenon, but there is a big difference between situations where one person perceives it to be going on, and the sort of situation where everybody is alleging it of everyone else.
2. Human nature:
   There is a tremendous variety of person in the Church (as everywhere else): everything from people with personality disorders to serial litigants, with the vast, vast majority well near the centre of the normal scale. Everyone, however, has their own personal needs, personal formation issues, and vulnerabilities. The doctrine of universal original sin is actually a sober fact of life which shows itself particularly in this area — that’s not a reason to ignore it, but to engage with it! A luta continua!
   

This subject does matter. In general, most of the time, the Church is a healing place, but this should be worked for not assumed. It is not always the case, and the best way to make it more so is constant vigilance and public awareness. The Church is a very open organisation — as it should be. Anglicans talk publicly about anything — and this helps with the problem. But the work goes on continuously!

Clergy numbers and deployment

I return from a period of monastic study and reflection, and meet with a group to discern a clergy apppointment. Meanwhile Doug Chaplin has been raising significant questions about local clergy deployment cuts under the challenging title “The Big question in an elderly and inward-looking Church”. This relects acute and timely ventilation of similar and significant issues by Ruth Gledhill and, especially, John Richardson. I don’t know details of the various anecdotes circling the ether, but it’s good these questions are being raised openly.

What I wonder about is the quality as well as quanitity of staff appointments and the criteria we put in parish profiles, and the way they relate to the rule.

Benedict’s criteria for job selection are clear. Relying on pragmatic knowledge of a person’s deeds revealing their character and intentions in community, people are given opportunities to prove themselves faithful, diligent and competent. They should work to the best of their ability, in an ordered way, within the fundamental balance of prayer, contemplation, work and rest, accepting radical mutual accountability to God through the community, incuding the disciplines of chapter and listening to the least voice. Discernment should be led by the abbot, shared with the community. High commitment to Conversion, stability and obedience, Gospel zeal, competence, openness to others score high. Ego, opinion, outside status and Politics score low.

Such appointments are difficult, if not impossible, if we...

• are not sufficently a community to know our people properly and what they bring to the party;
  
  
• pretend or waffle about our intentions for the job
  
  
• do not observe the highest standards of justice in our equality and diversity practices. There are indications in Jesus’ teaching we would aspire to even greater and more honest relationships with our people than, say, Marks & Spencer, but we have to treat our people at least as fairly as they would treat theirs.
  
  
• score results rather than motives, surrender awarenss of competence, balance and intentions for a vague concept like “performance.”
  
  
• allow dirty information or untested assumptions into the process, including politics in the mean sense and anecdotal based assumptions
  
  
• measure character mainly by checking for failings, rather than accounting it in positive descriptive terms as we weigh any offer to take on a job
  

News: the March of Time

I’m delighted to catch Ruth Gledhill’s characteristically clear, honest and illuminating talk from Religion and the News at Cumberland Lodge online — sadly I wasn’t able to join the consultation until the session after hers, and it’s good to catch up. Ruth observes, hitting a very important nail on the head, that the plane that crashes is inevitably a bigger news story than the thousands that land safely. Back in the sixties the BBC, beseiged by letters complaining that only bad news made the headlines, tried to run a programme called “The Positive World” that majored on good news stories. It lasted all of six weeks, if that, before bombing out, via the world service in the wee small hours. Sad, you may say, but this truth reflects human nature.

This ugly something about ourselves sometimes gets blamed on journalists, unfairly. You might as well blame criminal lawyers for crime. Without it they’d be out of a job, but that hardly makes them criminals. There is, however, a severe temptation for people selling stories — “you furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war” was Randolph Hearst’s legendary response to a correspondent’s report that Cubans were not, in fact, murdering and raping Americans left right and centre in 1898. The power Hurst weilded to shape the news was the direct result of the fact that in 1898 only press barons like him had the resources to get someone out to Cuba with a camera, and inflamatory pix back onto the streets of New York in hours. He had the steam press — the only technology to deliver news to ordinary people affordably.

Now turn the clock forward. Pretty much everybody now has the technology to read or tell their own story; and there is no longer any need, or increasingly desire, to pay money for newsprint. I wonder what the new found ability of news targets to answer back does to the exclusivity of any story in conventional media, and what kind of accountability it will require of them.

Looking at online newspaper sites, I wonder how they can raise the quality of outside comment on religious stories, rather than the rubbishy weary procession of same-ish comments from, e.g., about a dozen snarky atheists going on about sky fairies, with equally silly rejoinders. Many newspaper comments seem to come from small coteries of fans and people with axes to grind. Are the crown jewels of journalism changing — no longer the Hearst style news stories of the past century, but what conventionally would have been labeled op-ed?

The journalist whose work people may increasingly be bothered to pay to read will be anyone who manages to draw interesting comment out of ordinary life, rather than the person who zeroes in on potential conflict and drums up a war to go with it. Plane crashes will continue to make the news, but sexing up flights that land safely and pretending they were plane crashes just looks silly. Don’t sex up the material — go for depth, colour and connections. Don’t be anonymous, be yourself and own up to your biases. Above all slow down and reflect.

I was at a London mainline station at 2220 recently, surrounded by piles of newsprint waiting for the pulper. Someone offered me an Evening Standard, now a freesheet. Was I bovvered? The Daily Telegraph (£1) was giving away a bottle of mineral water free with each copy. This was a not inconsiderable offer, as the bottle itself cost £1·55 without a Telegraph. Reading the morning’s news fourteen hours on, noticing the only story I know anything about, the RC ordinariates one, the line between news and comment was so confused, the content so thin, slanted and childishly inflamatory, I thought “If this is supposed to be quality, why would I pay for these people’s take on stuff I don’t know anything about? I’d rather read people who do understand what they’re talking about...”

Human beings are insatiably interested in information. It’s perfectly possible to sell something people actually want or need on its own merits. You can, for example, buy a packet of Nurofen without having to give away a free DVD with it. But the fact people can only shift conventional newsprint with prodigous freebies says everything. If media barons had invested as much in quality journalism, as marketing ploys and production economies, they might now have rather more to offer. But good correspondent journalism takes time and immersion. It costs.

As it was, I had a very good book to read, and bought a hot drink instead, before getting onto a crowded night train home. 4 out of 65 people in the carriage were reading papers, all freesheets.

The delivery of information and news is pretty much down to search engines and the like, spiced by social media and with hundreds of channels of conventional radio and TV, led in the UK by the BBC.

So what business should newspapers actually consider themselves to be in today? Comment and Review, à la Huffington Post? If so they’d need to invest substantially more in journalists and quality. If it’s publishing, iTunes and Amazon are becoming lead repositories of all kinds of media, with increasingly blurry lines between them. Could newspaper groups invent new website activities to add as yet undreamt of value to our lives, within their clouds? Trouble is, Facebook and MySpace are leading the way on that one... Time for newspaper editors to get thinking caps on and start justifying their up to 1·6 million pound salaries, I would think...

So farewell, then: Jade Goody RIP

Some may scoff at the considerable outpouring of warm feeling for Jade Goody, but her story has touched and inspired millions of people at a gut level. Why not respect love, courage and passion for life in someone else, just because they came to public attention as loud, brash and crude? The doctrines of the Incarnation and Grace, rightly understood, make it obvious that it is possible to be both.

The old Prayer Book Litany had us praying to be delivered from dying unprepared. As we have become increasingly insulated from death it has become the great taboo, something to pretend about, rather than inescapable reality. Surely anyone fair-minded will agree with Archbishop Cranmer, who usually pitches around the phlegmatic or even sour end of the Conservative blogosphere,in his conclusion that “in her living she was vibrant and in her dying she was authentic.” Mark Russell writes:

Like the late Pope, John Paul II, Jade Goody has lived and indeed lived out her death live before the world. In doing so, she has shown courage, fortitude, guts and sheer peace. As she stared death in the face, the world watched as she got her affairs in order, and put the financial arrangements in place for her little boys. I watched her wedding on tv, and found myself deeply moved by her sheer gutsy determination. She was a remarkable person, and I have prayed for her these past weeks. I was struck by her desire to be married, and to have both herself and her little boys baptised. Today, on Mothers Day, Jade has passed away. My thoughts and prayers are with Jack her husband, and her boys Bobby (5) and Freddie (4). I am sure they had their mothers cards ready for her. I hope today those little boys know how proud their mum was of them... and they should be very very proud of her.

I was struck by Ruth Gledhill’s thoughtful, humane and compassionate response, quoting a song by Anselm of Canterbury:

Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us;
in your love and tenderness remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

This morning’s C of E gospel from John 20 pictures Mary standing by Jesus’ cross, wanting it to stop, but unable to do anything for her son, then being given away, as it were, into the care of Saint John. Cecil Day-Lewis descrbied such love like this:

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show --
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

So, a funny old Mothering Sunday, as we celebrate the love that over and around us lies. Life is, in fact, a precious gift, and the measure of it is the quality of our living, not external judgments or length of days.

Millions will also pray for Jade Goody, that she may rest in peace and rise in glory, and that God will give to those she leaves behind courage, hope and the precious gift of love strong as death.

Gang of 4 Bankers Group self-criticism

Today Four Big Bankers were wheeled into the Treasury Select Committee for Ritual Humiliation and Group Self-Criticism. There they confessed publicly to various errors of judgment, crimes against the workers, and sundry false consciousness. I hope we all feel better. I’m slightly surprised these Titans had no idea anything like this might happen. People reading, for example Kevin Phillips’ Bad Money, appear to have been better informed about these comrades’ businesses than they were themseles. Cost? £17·39 for awareness these comrades couldn't manage on £4·4m a year. Why, Jon Molton warned them a year ago on national TV. Heigh-ho.

Simple minds thought the Gang of Four got paid telephone number sums of money every year because they took big risks. But apparently they didn’t. We did. They just got the money anyway. Big sorry. Surprisingly, I’m told none of the four had done any banking exams. Really? So they were only amateurs anyway. Big Multimillion pound Banking, like flower arranging, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Morris Dancing, turns out to have been a mainly amateur activity in the UK. Perhaps we should all have a go. Mary Poppins will be revolving in her grave.

I don’t think they will need to be beheaded. Instead someone like Mr Darling should be very cross with them. Furthermore he should write them a letter telling them he is very cross. Then, when we have all stumped up a few more billion pounds, it can start up all over again, and the good times will roll? or maybe not. Perhaps we will not be returning to 2007 again, any of us. Make no mistake. We have all been collectively foolish, fuelling what Andreas Whittam-Smith calls our banking “Doomsday Machine.” (h/t Ruth Gledhill, for a really helpful link) We’re all in this thing, like it or not. These were just ordinary people, doing their jobs as best they could; we mustn’t let their extraordinary wages blind us to that disturbing fact...

One (Traditionalist) Road to Ruin

“Catholic?” Part of the mystical body of Christ. You become one by baptism. That’s Christian tradition. Since the 1860’s, however, some extreme Anglo-Catholics have gotten into the questionable habit of using the word “Catholic” almost exclusively as a kind of style descriptor or brand name. The “Catholic Church” in this exclusive sense = “no prots, just me and my chums, the Romans and most of the Orthodox”. And, like the Urban Spaceman, the best thing about this idealized narrowband “Church” is that it doesn’t actually exist; so holding it to be the supreme authority can be a neat way out of accountability to anyone real.

Taken to extremes, this ecclesiology comes over as snotty, gusting towards dotty and even potty. But what lies beyond?

I was reading Ruth Gledhill’s blog yesterday, and came across a clip from Swedish TV of Bishop Richard Williamson. I am grateful to her for carrying this stuff, because however distasteful it is, we mustn’t forget it is out there, and utterly pernicious.

Richard Williamson started out as an ultra traditonalist Anglo-Catholic which he seems to have taken for a flamboyant mix of fantasy, reactionary whining, sarcasm, misogyny, and trivial Father Teddery. This led him into the Roman Catholic Church, but that wasn’t really him, and he ended up in the Lefebvrist schism. Now he’s arrived at... Holocaust denial. No gas chambers, no nothing. Well, 300K dead all right, but... but what?

In the mid-nineties a friend, a canny old cradle Catholic Irish priest, told me over a whiskey he thought one or two of the Anglo-Catholics joining his denomination were “the most dangerous form of convert.” “Dangerous?” I said. “Surely not.” “Oh yes,” he said. “Dangerous. They’ve made a complete Horlicks of living within their own tradition, no obedience, and now they think they’re bl**dy experts and entitled to come and play merry hell in the Church. Kids taking over the school. Dangerous.”

With all forms of crazy fundamentalism, if people choose to apply their often considerable intelligence to going round and round the circle line, they end up in la-la land. They need to get off the train, consider the possibility that they might not have everything sewn up, grow up and join the rest of the human race up on the surface.

But my Irish friend was correct. This stuff is Dangerous. Beyond all the Restricted Views, Snotty, Dotty and Potty, the outlook is Obscene.

Great analysus of this interview’s rather steamy origins and political context, from Andrew Brown here.

One (Traditionalist) Road to Recovery is not about this particular narrow issue, but may be of interest.

Curse you, Ruth Gledhill... ?!

...as a direct result of your journalism, within hours of arriving back from France, where, among other excitements, the Boulogne harbour authorities arrested the cheapo ferry on which we were booked for allegedly not paying port dues, I feel I have to get straight back out to the pas de Calais to see the Anthony Caro Chapel of Light in Bourbourg.

... when you see what the 84-year-old former pupil of Henry Moore has done with light, water, steel and wood you appreciate the logic of the commission, for this is not so much a repair job as a work of art. The church was a victim of friendly fire: according to local legend, during the Second World War, a British pilot on his way home suddenly came to the awful realisation that his plane was going to crash. Rather than land on the houses, he steered his aircraft at the church, crashing into the choir end of the nave. The main body of the church was restored but the choir was left in ruins.

Ruth’s blog & video, references a fabulous Times article, interviewing Caro about the piece, his life and work. Rolls Royce journalists ask the questions you would want to, and open things out in a way which leaves you longing to know more.

I first encountered Anthony Caro’s work when preaching at Christ’s College Cambridge, where he studied engineering. I stumbled on a piece of his in a corridor; at the same time Tate Britain were running his Last Judgment, and I got hooked.

“We are living in an extremely materialistic world,” says Caro. “I think it is very important to help the spiritual side of our lives. So for this reason it is good to have a place where one can go and allow that side of one’s life to flourish. I hope people of all religions will use it to allow themselves to think and be tranquil and find that side of themselves.”

This wonderful commission was initiated (according to the French law of laicité) by Françoise Dubois of the Ministry of Culture. France has long had a very much more secular society than England, and, considered as a congregational entity, the Church there has terrible struggles and challenges compared to the C of E in the South of England. There are some very courageous and resilient Christians keeping faith alive in a secular cold climate. One local lay person described the comparative postion with England where she was as “half the numbers, and no fringe; most see the Church as little more than a eucharistic sect.” There is also a crisis about ordination numbers. It’s great to see some really creative work going on in this hard context; another green shoot from which God can renew his people.

Nothing for it, but a trip back to France on a day off sometime soon...

Cardinal Newman’s Grave

There’s a veritable starburst of factual religious reporting going on in the Times, about the decomposition of Cardinal Newman’s body — many thanks to Ruth Gledhill and Libby Purves. Before Lord Northcliffe, Randolph Hearst, and “the yellow press,” newspaper reports were highly factual, like contemporary local coverage of village dog shows with all names — boring, perhaps, but a real record. As a research student, I found Victorian newspapers to be serious sources of fact as well as lurid opinion, very different from today’s press.

Julian Litten has done wonderful research on the English Funeral. The 1890’s marked the heyday of Victorian funerals, before the first world war cast the whole culture of the English funeral into a different, more modest, key. Middle class aspirations, reinforced perhaps by fear of premature burials had popularised embalming and show. Newman, like other personally devout believers, eschewed all this, reasserting the scriptural principle of “dust to dust.” The use of moss is well attested for funerals which involved transporting coffins by cart, as cushioning. It seems suitably pre-raphaelite — they lined the hearse with it for William Morris’ funeral in 1896.

I am not surprised to find Newman’s wishes for his own funeral reflect the images of Keble’s Christian Year. Moss, for Keble is the sign of verdant spring even in Autumn and thus the hope of resurrection. In one poem he describes the kind of place Tractarians would want to be seen dead:

Within some circling woodland wall,
Where bright leaves, reddening ere they fall,
Wave gaily o’er the waters brown.
And let some graceful arch be there
With wreathed mullions proud,
With burnished ivy for its screen,
and moss, that glows as fresh and green
As thought beneath an April cloud —

There is absolutely no significance in the use of the word “gaily” in line three, not even for Newman and Ambrose St John. Sorry, Peter...

Rowan: a word from the Sudan

I was immensely struck by Ruth Gledhill’s refreshingly self-aware account of a conversation today with a Sudanese Bishop here at Lambeth:

I met a bishop from Sudan. The Sudanese caught the attention of the world early on in the conference with their statement that Gene Robinson should resign.

“What are you planning to do now?” I asked the good bishop, meaning what cunning strategy did they have devised to make things go their way at Lambeth.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Now, we are planning to get on a train and go to London and go shopping with our eyes.”

I was not to be deterred.

“How has the Archbishop of Canterbury done here? What do you think of him?”

His eyes lit up.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury is like a saint. We are so impressed. We have never known anyone quite like him. He has had all these important people here, the Coptic archbishop, the Orthodox, the Chief Rabbi, all these Cardinals. Every time he puts them on the podium and lifts them up above himself. It is as if he is saying, listen to these people before you listen to me. Oh he is such a leader. He is a true Christian. He is so humble. His witness has been so powerful. That is the message we are taking back to Sudan.”

I have to say I have been moved, almost to tears at times, by stories from the Sudan in Indaba and elsewhere. Here are people whose faithfulness is tested every day by official and unofficial persecution, war, poverty, injustice and hardship. They have also been very clear that they value the Communion, and do not want to break it up. They have also absolutely clear in standing up for what they see as Biblical standards against Western interpretations. How those principles can be put together is something we have to work out; and how to offer the good bishop and his colleagues real solidarity.

I should also say that this bishop’s words about Rowan were echoed by a conversation I had last night with some of the stewards who have been looking after us, and had been similarly struck.

Fishing, guided by Narcissus...

...a fruitless activity, because all the lad can see down there is himself. I haven’t seen a paper all week, but finding myself in Darwin on Saturday, I thought I'd get a look at a Church of England Newspaper. I opened straight up to the middle. On the right, an intelligent article by Douglas Alexander, secretary of state for development, about reducing poverty. It told the government story, of course, but it was basically well informed and gave background to last Thursday.

The other side of the page was Ruth Gledhill’s, expressing frustration about the way the media are being handled. She couldn't get into an indaba group about the media. But hang on there aren’t any indaba groups about the media. And to think there could be reveals a complete misunderstanding of what an indaba group is. I tried the sweeping statement that “Indaba isn’t working” out on a table of people who have actually been in such groups for a week, and all 16 strongly disagreed, although they had differing views about how it was working. Groups that felt they wanted to press on were using the liberty in the process to do so. Some bishops, inevitably, are better listeners than others. We are all anxious to get a substantial result. The views of the senior bishop she quoted are very different from those of most younger bishops. Perhaps she hasn’t spoken to any of those.

Perhaps the view from Fleet Street is rather self-absorbed. Riazat Butt had a forty year old scoop, that the architect who designed the University of Kent had also designed prisons. Her point being that if this were taking place in a campus designed by an architect who had never designed a prison, er, this would be taking place in a campus designed by an architect who had never designed a prison. And... ? The fact this hides, apart from the way university staff have gone out of their way to be welcoming, friendly and efficient, is that the campus is a public space — the whole thing is open anyway, apart from the Big Top with all the gizmos in that had to be fenced to be insurable.

I turned to the Guardian blog to see if I’d missed something, there to find a hilarious piece built around the fact that bishops were stuffing themselves at breakfast with £1·95 waffles (waffles, geddit?) in the canteen. Hang on, I thought. Bishops’ food is all free, and in the place we eat they don’t have any waffles. What on earth this is suposed to have to do with anything that matters beats me, but the premise of the whole story is simply wrong.

Back to the Church of England Newspaper where I learn on page 23 “blogging bishops are causing the organizers most nightmares.” Now that one’s easy to check out. I collar a few organizers and ask them whether any blogging bishop has caused any organizer they know any anxiety whatsoever. They can’t think of any. It’s flattering, though, to be told the Bishop who has taken best to blogging is the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Smith. Alan Smith?*

I don’t know if people are being paid to produce this stuff, but to someone who is part of this event, it all seems rather trivial and factually off piste. Many reported facts are misunderstood or less than half true. Some are just plain wrong. It’s a comlex and subtle event, and the journaists understanding of what is going on here is, to put it kindly, rather limited. The value of generalisations built on their limited grasp of what is going on is questionable. If anyone really wants to know what’s been going on in indaba groups, my advice is to click round a few blogs from people who have actually been to one, or at least know what they are.

Catching up this evening with some acidic press comment about bible study groups and their materials, I cannot echo them. I am in a fantastic group, largely African and African led. Compared to conventional Western studies, I’ve found ours direct and easy, with our different cultures, contexts and educational backgrounds, to be personal about. There’s not much opportunity to show off academic notions about the text, but that’s not what this is about anyway. My advice to anyone who doesn’t like the material is to go back to the text.

So my general impression from a trip to the media centre is that, sadly, you get more reliable information from people on the inside than from journos trying to be clever about information they don’t really understand, without the time, perhaps, to check their facts. Sadly, because I rather like the people concened and usually enjoy their stuff, this all rather bears out the Flat Earth News hypothesis.

Alan Smith is my highly esteemed colleague the Bishop of Shrewsbury. Me, I’m Alan Wilson (another bog standard name, I’m afraid). Time was, checking names was something journos learnt how to do on day 1 at the Snodsbury Chronicle, when they covered their first flower show. Flat earth hacks can’t be bothered, or aren’t up to it, apparently.

Indaba — a luta continua!

Checking back on Ruth Gledhill’s Times blog, and faced with a provincial meeting, and a self-select Canon Law meeting which I'm looking forward to as a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, I think Ruth’s put her finger on the real challenge just now:

So it appears, you can take indaba out of Africa, but you can't take good old democratic infighting out of the West. It's business as usual at Lambeth, and one way or another, these 650 bishops are determined to have a vote and make it count.

For those facilitating groups, the struggle is how to free up the process to be all it could be. I notice in some groups there’s a bubbling up feeling we can make more of the process if we trust its inherent wisdom, rather than micromanaging it. As well as Ruth’s challenging and perceptive comment from the outside, I overheard something else at coffee time today, that made me think the change in gear among us that’s happening and needs to bear fruit.

Indaba means setting your own agenda, but taking real responsibility for it as well.

A principle that deserves serious notice and development?