St Paul’s: Writing on the subway wall?

What can leaders in the Church of England, like me, learn about our operation from last year’s experience outside St Pauls? I wanted to capture three bits of feedback about the Church of England from sympathetic voices. Their words are not comfortable, but we have to pinch ourselves and remember the Facts are our Friends. They can be changed, but doing so will require change in us.

Voice 1:
The chair of our local council, a member of the Conservative party, wrote to the Archbishop to

jolt the leadership of the Church of England to become more vocal and effective in offering moral guidance based on the Gospel to a society where the vast majority are fumbling to find their way to a place where the world’s resources are more evenly shared and where the poor and weak are both supported and respected.  ....It is absolutely appropriate for you to comment on the ethics of particular financial structures, taxation and economic policy. However, in arguing for three specific financial solutions in your first public response to the concerns highlighted by the protesters you sounded like yet another economist or politician rather than an Archbishop. Even if each of the suggestions proved to be a brilliant idea would they solve the fundamental problem? No! 

You state that the demands of the protesters have been vague. 

That, I suggest, is a symptom of their inability to collectively articulate their desire for a fairer world. 

Had your response been to answer simply and directly the question on the banner most frequently featured in the media coverage outside St Paul’s “What would Jesus do?”  you  may have been able to help them. 

Present concerns about the future of life, work and money transcend political stereotypes. Mammon is the god that failed, but remains enticing. Right now he has us by the short and curlies. People are desperate to go beyond the assumptions and processes that got us into this mess. They want spiritual guides to engage with the real big issue not tinker with silver bullets and quick fixes. What would Jesus do? Over to us...

Voice 2:
I was lucky enough to have a conversation in the week of all the resignations with a French Monastic friend I much admire. 


With the bodies piling up on the bed like the final act of a Jacobean tragedy, he told me:

 

There was no need to resign
— only to repent!

Our faith is one of repentance, renewal and hope. This isn’t always well understood in England, natural home of Pelagianism — the religion of dyb-dyb-dyb/dob-dob-dob and pulling your socks up. The world we are entering is an ever more risky place. To make fools of ourselves may be embarrassing, but if it’s only our pride on the line, that shouldn’t be the end of the world. A faith in grace breeds courage, including the courage to risk failure. Every day, we can start again. We become what we could be by the grace of God, not corporate planning.

Voice 3: 
Last word goes a US banker working in London. I wish I knew his name. He came up to me on the street outside the Cathedral that first weekend. With the press asking me what bishops think of bankers, I found it especially valuable to hear what bankers think of bishops. He saw my collar and asked if St Paul's was “my Church.” “Yes, and no,” I said. But I am a Church of England bishop. And he said...

Ah! Church of England! — a lot of what you do in your churches is beautiful. Your downside is your top people. Their heads are stuck so far up their own asses they can't see the light any more!

Excuse my friend’s American. They talk like that, especially the bankers. I hate to think our good and decent College of Bishops comes over like this. But it does.

The facts are our friends. And the fact is there is a world out there rocking on its bearings, looking to Jesus Christ, among others, for wisdom and hope.

An institution that’s absorbed in anxiety about itself, and gets hung up on, for example, arcana like “the gay issue” as currently framed, or discriminatory behaviour towards women, doesn’t inspire wisdom or hope in anyone outside itself.

This is painful to admit, but it’s the truth on the street. Most local parishes are far more recognisable as the Body of Christ than the anxious fading institution wringing its hands at the centre.

The time has come, not to resign but to re-engage — and to repent on the way. Change is possible, but we need to want to get real. That’s what metanoia is. How can we expect the bankers to do something we find so damned difficult ourselves? By grace, through faith. Same as everyone else. Who knows? our struggles to get real may resource them on their parallel journey.

But only if we do it.

How about the particular role of leaders in institutions? Can they do more than whistle for the wind, telling everybody how magnificent the Emperor’s new clothes are, pour encourager les autres? Let me throw in a final soundbite. I’m currently reading a wonderful book by Euan Semple about the realities of communication. I hope to review it when I’ve finished reading it. Reflecting on his hands-on experience of many corporate entities including the BBC, he says

We are used to thinking of the world in terms of mass. Big things like nation states, religions, society, the media. We are used to expecting those big things to look after us and protect us. But the internet splits those up and breaks them apart. It is made up of networks of individuals, each with their own voice. If we are going to survive the changes we need to see in our institutions we need to help them find that voice. We need to help them grow up.

Showing off? shutting shop? showing up?

Even amid a forest of high towers, St Paul’s Cathedral remains, architecturally, the heart of the City of London.

It could be a key place for people to confront anxiety and seek a new vision for the future of humanity, money, and power. This process, that is goinog on around the world, has to take in all interested parties — Limiting it to the elite who got us into this mess is insane.

After visiting the OLSX camp yesterday, I have no idea why St Paul's shut up shop last week. The appearance of a large handful, but still only a handful, of cheap tents fifty yards from the front door would be possible to manage, one would think. If, as Woody Allen suggests, 80% of success is showing up, at least now St Paul’s has reopened it is back in the game.

But what game?

Once upon a time an Urban PCC in theSouth of England was interviewing candidates for the post of Vicar. One willowy Anglo-Catholic youth made a big pitch for a shift up the candle — recalling the grand tradition of Anglo-Catholic slum clergy he said “what this place needs isn’t a leader, but a Priest!” Stirring stuff... until, quarter of an hour later a local bag lady with a skinful of cider but a heart of gold, crashed through the doors crowing, as was her wont, her signature line - “Help! I need a Priest!” Willowy Anglo-Catholic youth disappeared to the Toilet. He did not get the job.

And, as St Paul’s reopens its doors, this tale raises a question for its managers. Can they redeem their initial hysterical over-reaction? Do they want to draw all voices into a vital public debate, or will they clear the site as tactfully and soon as possible, probably in the middle of the night — when Caiaphas and chums used to do their business?

In other words do they have the stomach to engage in the real world at the crest of a tidal race between people, money and power, or are they just overgrown public schoolboys playing indoor games in their own self-important Tourist Disneyland?

Over to them...

Sons of the Clergy strike again

I don’t do a lot of this sort of thing, but the 354th Festival of the Sons of the clergy in Saint Paul’s Cathedral yesterday was a blast. This charity started in 1655 as a testimonial and fundraiser for poor clergy who had lost everything by staying loyal and losing their jobs whilst the monarchy was abolished during the Commonwealth period.

The original Sons of the Clergy festival is a collaborative venture by the Church and the City of London. No fewer than three Cathedral choirs blast away in St Paul’s, then there’s a slap-up dinner in the Merchant Taylors Hall, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London. Rowan did a brilliantly clear, simple and funny speech to say thank you, among others. These days the charity spends over £1m a year helping clergy and their family members in all kinds of hard places, often caused by illness, marriage breakdown, or debt.

It’s very good to be with the network of people who make all this happen, having often seen the practical value of the things they do to help clergy and their families behind the scenes. There is a great variety of needs and predicaments among working clergy, and I’ve been trying to sharpen up the focus of our own Bucks Clergy charity, so that it can help more effectively. I’m very keen to collect creative ideas, as well reacting to the obvious things. Need and debt, like death and taxes, don’t go away... How can others help?