Rev: Faith, hope and charity

Adam Smallbone, the new BBC Rev., is engaging, with real spiritual depth. At last the BBC has moved beyond The Vicar of Dibley. She engaged millions with woolly jumpers and chocolate silliness, with a good humoured take on life, the Universe and everything. Rev. is engaging in a very different way, much closer to where many urban vicars are, in fact.
People talk of the Church of England as an institution, forgetting it isn’t anything of the sort — just a ragbag of around 20,000 trusts and bodies, loosely aligned, that has evolved over the past 1600 years. Its ties bind in all kinds of intriguing elasticated ways. Describing life in such a place is no light task.

It’s easy for any outsider to critique the detail of any TV depiction of anything. Years ago the BBC broadcast Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance. Next Day a retired military gentleman complained that “the Buffs in fact had seven buttons down their tunics not nine as portrayed by the BBC last night.” As any ful kno. This kind of complaint is rarely as clever as it seems to the person who makes it. We all know that few Archdeacons cruise round London in Taxis wearing Gestapo surplus leather gloves, but that’s not the point. The point is that’s how it feels.

On a personal and emotional level, Rev: is remarkably sure-footed. It brings back vividly for me memories of ten years’ urban ministry — trying to be a Christian and pray, feeling rather bemused often, filling the diary, trying to love people in the face of my own inadequacy, the size of the task, and the vagaries of human nature. Rev: has a clutch of improbable vicarage characters I could match almost name for name, as, I suspect, could anyone who’s ever been an urban vicar for any reasonable length of time.

For all its tendency to self-parody and caricature, I like Rev. It’s a noble enterprise. Those who wrote it know whereof they speak. Adam sits in his Church trying to pray the office, wishing God would bloody do something, but secretly suspecting he won’t until his unworthy servant has made it through the next funeral. It’s a ministry that resents all the distractions, until it realises that the ministry is the distractions.

There’s holiness in the unglamorous, haphazard, but profoundly kind and patient way C of E vicars do urban ministry, even in some of the crazier characters vicars encounter. It’s highly implicit, always understated, rarely obvious. Light very occasionally streams in serendipitously, but the grind is always there. You just have to pray for people, and try to help them make the best of themselves, and never give up.

There is, actually, courage, resilience, faith and even holiness wrapped up far more than thousands of urban vicars will ever know in their ministries. It deserves more understanding and respect than it sometimes gets, and this show does acknowledge its reality and worth. For all Rev:’s occasional TV simplification, full marks to writers, cast and crew for trying to capture it, and occasionally succeeding.

PS: I studied in Shoreditch thirty years ago. St Leonard’s was an amazing place, and it’s good of the telly people to give the old dump its own TV show.

The Ten Commandments Show

UK Channel 4’s original mission was be innovative, naughty, alternative and provocative. In a week General Synod probes the state of religious broadcasting in Britain, I was interested to catch the latest in C4’s new series on The Bible: A history — Conservative MP and RC convert Ann Widdecombe exploring the Ten Commandments. I speculate that this series was commissioned by Aaqil Ahmed before he left Channel 4 to become head of Religion and Ethics and TV Commissioning Editor at the BBC. My first impression, drawn from the figures for hours output was that the BBC had reduced the quanity of its output on the sly — oh dear — but what about the quality?

The series isn’t quite what it says on the tin, but it’s a worthy concept. It gives a 40 minute platform to various people left right and centre, to pick a Biblical theme and trace it from its origins to a question for contemporary society. Novelist Howard Jacobsen did Creation, seeking to find a way between reigious and secularist fundamentalism. War Correspondent Rageh Omar did Abraham as a source of division or peace in the Middle East. Still to come is writer Bettany Hughes on Women in the Bible.

It used to be said that a well known make of Italian automobile was built by robots and driven by morons. Is UK religious broadcasting built by Secularists, and driven by Dumb-down Celebs? I poured myself a Ricard, opened a bag of pistachios, and settled down on the couch to find out.

Within its chosen genre, the show blended personal and informative elements very well. It gave its presenter a fair platform to make her points. I’m not an Ann Widdecombe fan in principle, but if you could get over her rather reedy voice, her content seemed sincere, candid and forthright. She had grown up with the ten commandments, and after examining their origins and uses in Judaism and Christianity, she went on to confront militant atheists, liberal scholars and fashionistas with their shortcomings measured against the standards of Torah.

There were holes and howlers. One why-oh-why?” comment on divorce rates rather obscured the fact that UK divorce rates are currently the lowest they have been in 35 years. She described Puritans as “a Protestant Sect” and ventured the suggestion that Henry VIII founded a new Church — a solecism for which His Royal Grubbiness would surely have beheaded a woman in 1545. More serously, she didn’t engage at all with source theory about the books of Moses in the texts themselves, preferring to see it as a liberal aberration, but one she was wiling to tolerate.

Nothing’s perfect, then. But this show was well above average telly, watchable, provocative and intelligent. Ann Widdecombe’s great exemplar of Puritan social action inspired by the ten commandments, the Revd John White of Dorchester, was absolutely on the money. She hinted at, but didn’t quite explain, an interesting theory that strong confident societies have to learn to control their desires to develop strength and confidence. I think I buy that.

Unfortunately the atheists on the show seemed high on testosterone from a public disputation and rather let themselves down. Christopher Hitchens running away through a door stopping his ears was an interesting sight. I’d like her to have taken that segment of the show deeper, to examine how the critique offered of the Church was actually one that rather assumed Judaeo-Christian values based on the ten commandments.

But these are minor reservations. This was a fine and informative show, which critiqued the erection of personal freewheeling into the only absolute value left, and was well presented and entertaining. Kudos, then, and Round 1 of the Great Broadcasting Debate to Ann Widdecombe and Aaqil Ahmed. If I can get the Channel 4 on demand site in India (off on a schools development visit), I’d certainly like to see the others. If this series indicates the kind of stuff we’re in for from the BBC, I think I could live with that, all things considered.

Fashion-conscious Clergy? Hmm...

Vot does a Vooman Vont? Big Issue, of course, for Sigmund Freud. I wondered myself as I appeared fleetingly, but long enough for people to notice, on Trinny and Susannah a couple of days ago. The main subject was my vicar, chaplain and colleague, Rosie Harper, (previous on ths blog here) trying out new alternatives to conventional “Dibley” dog collars with them. And yes, I confess, I did ask Susannah Constantine whether she thought my bum looked big in this. Was (weak) joke, not necessarily intended for primetime national TV... and perhaps it was unfortunate the clip made the trailer as well as the show.

On a rather Female show, I realised how blokey and ignorant I am about Fashion and all its works. It wasn’t quite like Father Ted and colleagues in the lingerie department, but I realised how little I know about that stuff. The TV crew and Susannah Constantine were delightful, and easy to have around. There’s an idiot response to fashion which just sees it as inherently superficial. I disagree, now. I understand that many don’t have much choice about their appearance, but how they look is not inherently egotistical, just part of their real humanity. I was amazed by the dignity and care about appearance of families in Indian Villages last year. Dismissing appearances says, on one level, that people don’t matter, and I think that’s as questionable a notion, for an incarnational religion, as airhead obsession down the mall. OK, ironside Puritans, what’s wrong with people being creative about themseves, and feeling more confident?

Looking around clergy colleagues milling around with Susannah and TV crew, they struck me as a varied, enterprising, original group of people. Actually there wasn't a single look among them you could label “County Lady” or whatever. Some are more appearance conscious than others, and doubtless some more adept than others at the dark arts of knowing and managing how they come over; all, however, very engaged in role, and wonderfully interactive.

Wondering about makeover options for bishops, I came across two interesting image statements from the good old days when bishops really looked like bishops, both Cosmo Gordon Lang.

I fear neither is quite me. The one on the Right especially gives me the creeps. How scary is that? My bum would definitely look big like that...

Like a Puppet on a String

I’m glad to see that Tim Chesterton’s 60’s upbringing included the Very British medium of Gerry Anderson puppet shows. Peter Cook & Dudley Moore scaled the heights of this art form in ways that still induce Shock ’n Awe:

It’s a considerable relief that fallings out between Christians don’t ever involve motivelessly evil puppets or the senseless random destruction of national institutions — there’s always a reason for the behaviours in our fellow Christians that most vex and astound us, if only we can be bothered to look for it from their point of view...

Spandex Heroes?

Lent began as a training season. Reactions to training, like diets, often focus on “how?” The real question is “what for?” What image do we have of ourselves as the people and disciples we are, and would like to be? Here, to help us tame and train our fantasies about ourselves, are some ordinary wannabe New American Gladiators...

Notice how lack of peripheral vision has prevented the D-cup Toupée gentleman spotting his own need of a bra...

Sharia — Chameleons on the carpet?

Yesterday I slunk away from the kiddies’ sleepover for Jon Moulton’s Dispatches programme on Banks and the Credit Crunch. Mr Moulton is a high powered Private Equity specialist, founder of Alchemy Partnership. He knows a lot about dodgy finance, and he thinks the whole silly thing is a self-inflicted wound, born of greed. Banks bought shedloads of dodgy debt on the back of Collateralized Loan Obligations — World of Warcraft style “alchemy” that transforms dross debt into a golden opportunity for six figure bonuses. Turns out it was fool’s gold, but the suits picked up their bonuses anyway. Make no mistake who’s paying for this lot long term — it isn’t the suits. On the day they nationalised Northern Rock, John McFall (Chair of the UK Treasury Select Committee) reminds us

banks are the only institutions that socialise the losses and privatise the profits

“all because those men in expensive suits got too greedy,’’ concludes Mr Moulton. The FSA is enquiring into its own handling of the Northern Rock Fiasco and will surely conclude (Mystic Meg Voice, please) “It was just One of Those Things.” Meanwhile the UK banks are, I think, £31Bn down the Swanee, and new Fantastickal Alchemy models are lining up on the runway to ensure next year’s bonuses.

One interesting study option in a debt driven crisis is Sharia Finance. Like Traditional (=pre-Capitalist) Christianity, this forbids the Scriptural Sin of Usury. It’s particularly interesting at a time the British government has been making the City of London what it calls “the Key Western Centre for Muslim Finance.” But you can only mention this in company if you play the Sharia Card (below).
You play this to people and see if they explosively fill their pants and start screaming at you. If they don’t, you can have a rational discussion. As a lad I wondered whether chameleons really exploded on Tartan Carpets. Now I can find out, by playing the Sharia Card with the editor of the Daily Mail. The worst Bad Thing in the DM world is being Foreign and Muslim. The highest Good is a prosperous housing market. So Sharia finance must be good. No it’s not, it’s bad. No it’s not, it’s good. No, it’s bad. No, Good. Bad. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. Boooooom!

No Daily Mail. Clean Air at last.

L4/6 Turns me off, baby

6. Have a TV-free evening and play games instead

I managed to have a TV free evening, but I have to say I usually do. When we moved here there was satellite TV, and I dreamed of happy hours channel hopping between priceless costume jewelery sales and dumper truck racing from Stuttgart. I’ve tried it and confidentially, friends, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be as a way of life. Stewart and Nicholas are developing serious blokiness by spending hours on Dave (the TV Channel, that is = wall-to-wall Jeremy Clarkson.) Lucy has now seen every Ground Force there ever was, and I've done ditto for Grand Designs. We did the X Factor. The troops do like their Big Brother, though not as much as they did. Ah! Big Brother. Ten weeks hard Vicky Pollard in Slow Motion.

Stentorian Geordie Voice: Day nine-ee foour. Three-Thirt-ee Pee-em. Taser has been Soomoned to the Diarrhy Room.
Big Brother (for it is s/he): Housemates are reminded that it is against the rules to urinate in the Teapot
Taser (real name Lee): Yeah well Big Brother. It was Stig and GBH. They was doing my ’ead in.
Big Brother (for it is still s/he): How did they do that?
Taser (real name Lee): Dunno but they was fu**ing doing my head in and I told them they was fu**ing motherfu**ers and GBH said it's your own fu**ing fault so I pissed in his tea, but I missed cos it was still in the fu**ing pot and anyway GBH has been shagging Tasha and Day-glo in the boys toilets cos she's a fu**ing slag...
Stentorian Geordie Voice: Foour pee-em. Day-glo and Satnav are in the sandpit with Play-Doh, Yasser and Chippy, doing nothing... etc etc etc. for 10 weeks

Anyway eventually I realised this was enticing stuff but it wasn’t really me, so tried to be a brave soldier and cut down, and by and large I managed pretty well...