The current row over the rights and wrongs of Dominic Cumming’s trip to Durham may seem a long way from the concerns of this blog. Indeed, it is, and I do not propose to spend time here analysing the ethical issues involved. I happen to agree with those who feel that Cummings and Johnson have destroyed their right to impose their moral authority over the citizens of this country. Few will want to take Johnson’s leadership seriously ever again. What now interests me now is the way that many Anglican bishops and clergy have come out to protest openly over the lawlessness of our Prime Minister’s closest adviser. When bishops seem to agree on an ethical principle in society, it is right for us to stop and take note as to what might really be going on. Gilo has written a passionate twitter post on the topic, but he questions the bishops’ moral stance when it is viewed in the context of the Church’s dealing with survivors. The bishops are, in Gilo’s mind, guilty of gross hypocrisy. I give a link to his post. https://twitter.com/seaofcomplicity/status/1264916304244375553/photo/1 To put the question another way, are the bishops engaged in some kind of displacement activity? Are they jumping on a bandwagon of moral outrage when there are issues within their own backyard that should be faced and owned up to?
I have argued for a long while that the bishops of the Church of England exercise oversight over an institution, at times severely compromised. Our Church seems to operate on two levels, and it needs leadership for both these aspects. The first is the theological or ideal aspect. This attempts to embody and articulate the spirit and the ethos of its founder. Thus, the Church would be expected to enrich us all by being a place of reconciliation, healing, forgiveness and joy. The other aspect of the Church is the physical reality of its institutional embodiment. This involves buildings, money and power. It is extremely hard for this second dimension of the Church’s existence to remain anywhere approaching moral perfection. Whenever power and money come into any situation, there will almost inevitably be conflict of some kind. In the Church’s institutional life, as we constantly remind our readers, power games are often played, selfishness is common, and people are often exploited and treated badly. You expect such behaviour in institutions in general, but somehow you always hope that the Church will operate according to a different set of rules and values. Sadly this does not seem to be the case.
A newly ordained clergyman entering the Church to serve it, might hang on to an idealised picture of its life for many years. Even though, as time goes by, examples of greed, narcissistic power games and hypocrisy enter his/her awareness, the hope clings on. Bad behaviour is believed to be in no way typical. We can, thankfully, always find exceptions to patterns of selfish behaviour and self-serving among the Church’s leaders. We need such examples to retain our faith in human nature and in the integrity of the Christian belief system. But perhaps we also have the uncomfortable feeling that were we to know more, the total picture would be far more depressing than we know.
A bishop who takes on the oversight of a whole diocese is the one person in the Church in the area who has access to knowledge about many of the things that may be wrong inside the structure. That knowledge is a heavy burden. Every example of incompetence, laziness or immoral behaviour among the clergy will be causing harm to the people of God. How does the bishop deal with this information? Episcopal power is not exercised in the way that the world understands. Clergy cannot be hired and fired on a whim. A bishop has often to sit by and let things take their course until death or retirement intervenes. The Church has chosen to be an institution which protects its employees, but this comes at a cost that is high. The one who knows how much this costs the church in terms of harm and lost opportunities for mission in a diocese is the one who bear this burden inside his/her head at all times. If there is any sensitivity, possessing this knowledge will cause pain. The role in protecting the institution, its reputation and good name means that all this knowledge remains the bishop’s alone.
The bishop is also the figure that is nominally responsible for all those who live and work in the diocese. He/she is also responsible or those who have lived and maybe suffered under a previous generation of clergy or leaders. The bishop will often alone have access to the filing cabinets that contain that past. Will he/she metaphorically dare to look inside these cabinets, or will there be a preference to leave them firmly shut in the hope that the secrets contain there will not emerge to further disturb his/her equilibrium? The various examples of survivors finding bishops with ‘amnesia’ or less than sympathetic to their appeals for justice and support may perhaps be partly explained by this fact. Some bishops have already had their sympathy and compassion shut down by what they already know. Perhaps they are in some cases victims of what might be known as a form of compassion or justice fatigue? Compassion fatigue may be another way of describing the way that sensitivity and a working for justice have been crushed out of an individual by too much exposure to the realities of human failure. Learning about abuse takes its toll, even for someone on the edge of things like myself. I am sure I could not manage to process as much information as bishops may have in their purview. As T.S Elliot said: ‘Mankind cannot bear much reality’.
To return to the Cummings affair. I am suggesting that the enthusiasm by the bishops to take a moral stance on this matter may perhaps be explained by the fact that most of the time the moral issues they face are fuzzy around the edges. Here is a clear issue on which to take a stand and reclaim some kind of moral leadership. The role of bishops in the church and society has been blunted in the fact that their own institution has been compromised, as Gilo points out, by failures over safeguarding in the past. In some cases, their personal histories may have involved them in past, morally dubious, episodes in the church. The scandals of Ball, Smyth and Fletcher to name but three, involved many other parties, including some currently serving bishops and clergy. Some were guilty through silence, others by collusion in evil activities, and for every clergyman sent to prison, there must have been many who knew something but did nothing. The IICSA hearings helped us to see a little what was going on behind the curtain in Lambeth Palace and in various Bishop’s palaces. The preoccupation of those in authority in the Church seems always to have been to protect the institution and its employees, even if ordinary survivors were left out in the cold. In contrast to Gilo, I am going to suggest that there needs perhaps to be a greater, more compassionate, understanding for the position many of the bishops find themselves in. Their response to survivors has been poor to the point of being cruelly negligent. Perhaps, were they able to speak to us as human beings, rather than as our spiritual superiors, we might glimpse a suffering and pain as well as a genuine concern for the needs of others. Hitherto that has been hidden beneath the need to preserve the institutional shell.
Thanks Stephen Parsons.
It was encouraging to see three bishops tweet my open letter. Which took courage on their part. There may have been hurried phone calls from Lambeth Palace guard dogs to say “We don’t think that’s very wise.” But there are minds genuinely awake within their structure who are not afraid of voicing criticism of their own establishment and culture. https://twitter.com/paulbayes/status/1264985278885789697
I’m sure you’re right, Stephen. But, if you cause huge suffering to people, the sympathy must go to the weaker ones. A Bishop has money, status and a good pension. If you can’t stand the heat, you know! Maybe they aren’t that worried, or they would leave the kitchen.
Many thanks for this, Stephen. And many thanks also for all the hard work Gilo has done, and continues to do, in relation to this problem.
You state “Episcopal power is not exercised in the way that the world understands. Clergy cannot be hired and fired on a whim. A bishop has often to sit by and let things take their course until death or retirement intervenes. The Church has chosen to be an institution which protects its employees, but this comes at a cost that is high.”
The impact of freehold tenure was that bishops were seldom able to exert authority save in extremis. Whilst they might withhold licences (viz. Gorham) and frustrate patrons, their own patronage rights were sometimes surprisingly limited. Of course very few clergy are now freeholders. Many have protested against the shift to common tenure, but in many ways it mimics various features of the old freehold. It is, in certain ways, very generous towards clergy: for example, how many people in jobs outside education are entitled to 36 days’ paid leave p/a?
One of the most important ways CT had ‘copied’ freehold tenure is that it is possible to remove clergy on CT only via death, or in the event of an adverse disciplinary finding, or a finding of a want of capacity, or through pastoral reorganisation. Absent death, most of these processes, especially pastoral reorganisation, are cumbersome. In addition, the terms of removal in the event of a pastoral reorganisation (i.e., compensation equivalent to one years’ pay) are not ungenerous compared with the wider world of work – at least outside the boss class.
Whilst there have been many critiques of the use – and abuse – of the CDM process, it nonetheless remains quite difficult for parishes to rid themselves of unsatisfactory clergy. Moreover, the very nature of the job precludes effective supervision; unfortunately, it also means that often unsavoury tittle-tattle can be passed up the chain of command by disgruntled parishioners, with deplorable effects on the morale of the clergy thus victimised.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I suspect that the problem with the bishops is that they are being asked to do too much of too many disparate things. They have to be CEOs, prophets, headteachers, counsellors, bureaucrats, commiteemen, legislators, etc., etc., all in one. The great attenuation of financial resources increases the stakes of even seemingly trivial decisions, whilst everything becomes progressively more stressful. This, therefore, is another reason for abolishing diocesan bureaucracies and transferring administrative and financial functions and assets to the centre, so that the time expended by bishops on administration – which is considerable – can be utilised in providing greater pastoral oversight of clergy and laity alike.
‘It is, in certain ways, very generous towards clergy: for example, how many people in jobs outside education are entitled to 36 days’ paid leave p/a?’
How many people are expected to work 6 days every week, up to 11 or more hours a day, and be on call 24/7 (including on their day off)? How many are expected to work every Christmas, every Easter, every Mothering Sunday?
The holiday entitlement is admittedly generous – providing, of course, that one can get cover for services while one is away. In my Macclesfield parish on a dodgy estate, it was common for me to have to make up to 16 phone calls to get cover for a single service. And if you can’t always afford to go away (tricky when you’re running a large vicarage and garden on a single salary), you wind up working your ‘holidays’, because the vicarage phone and doorbell never stop ringing.
I don’t think people need envy us our ’36 days’ paid leave’.
Many thanks. I think my comment was maladroit, and I apologise for that.
It is the case that an NHS nurse, for example, in continuous service for more than a decade, will be entitled to 33 days’ leave. In the civil service it is capped at 30 days for those in post for more than five years. Personally, I have always worked in positions where nothing more than 25 days was permitted and opting out of the Working Time Directive is expected as a matter of course. So, whilst 36 days is on the high side, it is not necessarily too far outside the ordinary. What is perhaps more outside the ordinary these days is the pension entitlement. I am struggling to think of anyone I know who has a non-contributory defined benefit scheme, and that includes the civil service, where contributions have been ramped up in recent years even as salaries have been frozen or have been increased below the rate of inflation over the course of the last decade.
I note your own experiences. My personal experience of parish clergy has been very variable: whilst I have encountered some who have worked heroically hard for scant recognition, I am afraid I have encountered others whom it would be charitable to call lazy – though I hope the numbers in the latter group have shrunk over time. Of course the pay for both the diligent and the idle is about the same. I also had a particularly disagreeable experience with one over a protracted period, which was a major contributory factor to my becoming a peripatetic.
Nearly all the clergy I’ve known have put the hours in. Even too much. But I have known two who sometimes didn’t even turn up for services.
The C of E pension scheme (and the Church in Wales scheme, which I am in) may look generous. But remember that we are often required to live in tied housing until retirement and then find somewhere to live. This is maybe not so bad if you have a partner who is the principal breadwinner or are guaranteed an inheritance. But for those, like myself, who are not in that situation and would like a bit of choice about where to live in retirement, that pension will be important. Retired homeowners in other professions are less likely to still be thinking about things like mortgages.
James
Yes. I have a 75 year old ordained friend who had to take on a mortgage. And a part time job in a parish.
The fact that many clergy have to enter the housing market at 70 is the reason for the lump sum. However, even if they remain on the NMS for their working lives, and are in rent free accommodation, it ought to be possible for a single person with no dependants to either accumulate a capital sum to buy an admittedly modest property outright upon retirement or else to accumulate a deposit after a decade or so, to rent the unit purchased and then to have the rent pay off the balance of the mortgage. Flats for retirees are available at significant discounts across the country. Moreover, if stipendiaries are in straits by retirement the Commissioners often do provide accommodation (I do not know the position in the Church in Wales).
It is very unusual for mortgage credit to be provided to anyone over 70, which has long been the cut-off point (unless you include equity release).
The great mass of the population will be subjected, throughout their working lives, to inflated house prices (i.e., having to fund the lifestyles of predecessors in title) or rents (i.e., funding the lifestyles of rentiers) whilst also having to save vastly more than previous generations for seriously inferior superannuation – which will, in any case, run out not long after they retire. Many of those in their 30s, 40s and 50s have a choice for their old age: starve inside or eat outside – it will not be possible to have secure shelter *and* have a reasonable income.
Absent the gnawing uncertainty that a minority might face in the lead-up to retirement, the provision for stipendiaries will, if anything, come to seem ever more generous *relatively speaking* as time passes. That this is to be funded via the parish share by an increasingly penurious laity is problematic.
Of course, that which is not sustainable will stop. The question is whether the living standards of present clergy must be maintained at the expense of their successors or, indeed, of the laity if assets (including churches) must be liquidated to preserve entitlements.
I am sorry to keep making this point ad nauseam. The reason I do so is that I sense the public are being presented with a narrative in which virtual church is considered the ‘Future’ and, as a matter of convenient but unspoken happenstance, churches (which have been paid for out of past taxation) must be dispensed with and privatised to make that Future possible. So, a new ‘conventional wisdom’. In other words, it really is a case of clergy vs. churches and that the paid clergy (i.e., the insiders) must win.
I just want to stress that there are alternative narratives, and that the laity/public should not be softened up or railroaded into accepting a new orthodoxy which conveniently elides with the economic interests, not necessarily of the Church as a whole (which also includes the laity, the unpaid help and, arguably, the wider public), but specifically of stipendiaries. The Church cannot evade this problem.
Froghole, I can see that the pension arrangements look generous from your point of view. However, as a single person without dependants I found it impossible to buy property. Before ordination I worked in (Christian) publishing and bookselling – interesting but poorly paid jobs. I was ordained at 33 but didn’t get the full incumbent’s stipend until I was 46. That was a poor parish and I didn’t feel able to claim all my expenses. And I have always had to put some of my own money into my church housing to make them liveable. Clergy don’t get to choose their housing according to their circumstances and budget.
Some of these these factors are particular to me and to my generation of female clergy, but they will affect some others.
What is more general is that for more than a decade savers have been penalised by interest rates below the rate of inflation, while at the same time house prices have soared. I have always been a saver, but there was absolutely no chance of buying anything.
I was fortunate to be able to choose where to live under the Pension Board’s ill-named Charm scheme, and rent a house from them. But their criteria were incredibly hard to meet and they were so difficult to deal with that they exacerbated the health problems which forced me to take early retirement. Some 3 months after this house was bought they ended the practice of buying a house for retiring clergy; now they will only offer a selection of vacant houses they already own. I understand the reasons for the change but it’s tough on those who, for their whole working lives, have worked unsocial hours which kept them apart form family and friends. Who, at 70, wants to go to a completely new area where they know no one and have no reason to be there ? Especially if they are single.
I frequently thank God for the house and area I live in. I love them. But if had retired only a few months later it would have worked out very differently.
Thanks, Janet. You put it more eloquently than I could have. As you say, things are even harder for some female clergy. I think that the point you make about clergy not feeling able to claim all the expenses to which one is entitled is a common one, even if it will surprise some people to hear it.
Clergy financial fortunes can vary a lot, depending on family background, spousal income, if applicable, and professional circumstances before ordination – not to mention house price variations around the UK. Housing concerns are an area where some clergy feel less free than other professions, thanks to the tied housing scheme. If for any reason you have to give up ministry, you lose your home. I don’t think that is healthy for various reasons, but I don’t know what the answer is. I would just note that living in accommodation provided and maintained by an employer/institution can become a factor in the power dynamics of your relationship with that institution, as well as imposing the stresses of living above the shop.
The Church in Wales Review in 2012 raised the issue of clergy housing, recommending that consideration be given to enabling clergy to be paid in such a way as to be able to purchase their own housing instead of living in vicarages. But it was one of the many recommendations in that review that have not acted upon to date.
In Wales there is assistance possible from the Representative Body with retirement housing if you struggle to afford to buy, but you would lose some freedom to choose the type and location of your home.
Any choice between stipendiary clergy in a virtual Church and the heritage of our buildings, supported by the ministry of fewer and/or more poorly remunerated stipendiary clergy, is invidious. I fear that we will get a bit of both, in piecemeal form, unless there is plenty of the kind of honest, creative thinking that is exemplified by places like this website at its best.
Who pays?
Steve,
I am grateful to you for your question, and also for the remarks made by James and Janet.
In my view the Church *must* educate the public about its finance. Many members of the public assume that the Church is rolling in wealth, and that it bilks the public and pays little tax. This is true in certain ways: the Commissioners and their subsidiaries, and the dioceses, pay little or no tax as exempt charities. However, the greater part of the Church is self-supporting and/or relies on donations.
I have referred to a zero sum game between churches and clergy. It is desperately invidious and poses all sorts of difficult moral questions. Some of my remarks have discounted clergy welfare, and I apologise for that, but I do so largely because the narrative is being spun for the public in one way, and I feel that there are countervailing arguments (which may be more, or less, credible).
It used to be the case that there was a relatively clear bifurcation in the way the Church was sustained: (i) buildings would be funded by rectors (chancels, so implicitly via tithe) and by rate-payers paying church rate (everything but the chancels); and (ii) clergy would be funded by tithe, glebe and fees. The trajectory of Church finance in recent times has muddied that separation, so it is little wonder the public are confused.
The past schemes I developed entailed the Church passing title to the greater part of the stock to the state. The crisis has made that implausible. What I would now suggest is a clear separation in the funding of churches and clergy. The disestablished Church of Sweden still levies the church tax and the tax authorities levy and administer the tax on behalf of the Church. Everyone pays unless they opt-out. What I would suggest is that HMRC administer a national voluntary church rate (NB, *voluntary* church rate was not abolished in 1868) via PAYE and the annual return portal. Actually, I would make it a ‘national heritage’ levy, which would cover rather more than churches and would apply across the whole UK. It would be an opt-in levy.
The revenue would sit in a trust which would maintain heritage properties and so have the economies of scale to procure labour and materials at bulk, discounted rates. PCCs and incumbents would therefore be relieved of the fear of extraordinary capital costs on expensive buildings. The trust could also assume the insurance functions of EI relative to the buildings (which might liberate capital for abuse survivors…).
All diocesan/parochial assets would be appropriated by the Commissioners who would therefore cover all pay and pensions. If the Commissioners’ assets fell below a certain level, the numbers of stipendiaries and/or their entitlements would have to be rationed accordingly.
Anyway, I know I am flying a kite with this, and will need to give it more thought. Of course there is no tradition of a church tax here, but the opt-in is the key difference from Europe.
Janet,
Many thanks for that. Speaking for myself the future is pretty terrifying. I will not bore you with the details, save that I have spent many years paying rents (to cover myself and dependants who had nowhere else to turn) which have crowded out my ability to save, whilst this crisis has seen my DC pension fall in value by at least a quarter, possibly more. My salary lost a large part of its value as it was held below inflation for about a decade. However, compared with a number of people I know I am relatively fortunate. There is a terrible winter approaching my generation and I cannot fathom why it is not being reported.
You mention interest rates. The whole shift to DC saving from the 1990s was predicated upon there being positive real interest rates, of *at least* 2% above CPI/RPI. Instead, interest rates have been in the gutter for a whole generation, and now we have the prospect of them being held *under* the rate of inflation in order to reduce the public sector liabilities which have exploded in recent months (aka ‘financial repression’).
Since many company directors are also trustees of DB schemes and have a personal fiduciary liability, and since DB schemes are required to maintain levels of solvency by law (the Maxwell effect), they will continue to siphon capital from current and future workers to maintain past workers who will extract far more than they ever put in. This will be at the expense of investment (and so future growth). It is a system which encourages depression. The show is only kept on the road via the bond buying (QE) programmes of the central banks which inflate assets already held by the well-off: shares and real estate (property already being lavishly protected via the tax system). It is a deeply regressive system – incidentally, one from which the Commissioners have profited significantly.
So even if arrangements for the clergy may be modest in the round, provision is nonetheless relatively generous compared with many walks of life (including, these days, in many parts of the public sector).
You mention the cost of housing: this is, of course, the main culprit. Prior to c. 1970 there were no housing bubbles; credit was rationed but people could redeem mortgages quickly. In 1963 taxation of ‘imputed rent’ was abolished creating a preference to owner occupation; in 1971 the ‘corset’ was abolished allowing house price speculation to be financed. Since then prices have generally risen in a parabolic manner; successive generations of freeholders and tenants must not only fund the base cost of their shelter but also the increasing returns to creditors and predecessors in title.
Whilst I have serious reservations about the rhetoric of inter-generational antagonism, there *is* an inter-generational economic ‘war’, and on the whole the asset-rich old are winning it. Only, at present they cannot spend their returns, so the economy is deprived of a major source of stimulus.
James
Yes, the future is terrifying. I’m trying not to think about it because there’s nothing I can do about, and I don’t want to fall into a depression. ‘The day’s own troubles are sufficient for the day.’ And there are certainly enough of them.
I hope things work out OK for you, Froghole.
Janet,
Many thanks. I forgot to mention that shortly after Schedule A of the income tax was abolished by Maudling in 1963, Callaghan introduced capital gains tax in 1965.
CGT specifically exempted the primary place of residence. It was the bourgeois counterpoint to the unions’ push for higher money wages in response to rising inflation and the growing gap between faltering productivity gains and wage growth expectations. It has been vastly more effective at extracting rents from the productive sectors of the economy than the union militancy of the 1960s and 1970s.
Both main parties (and the Liberals) were complicit in this attempt to bribe middle class voters. Shamefully, *not one* historian has ever analysed this phenomenon – which has exercised me for over 20 years – until earlier this year, and then only in passing: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/changing-times-9780199552788?cc=gb&lang=en&.
You can actually lose an argument that by all rights you should win.
As a rule of thumb, when people start calling people “thick”, they’ve lost the moral high ground.
As another heuristic, when bishops start piling into an argument it’s usually mistimed opportunism.
I’ve met some very fine people who are bishops. I’m now more certain than I was before reading this blog, that it’s a near impossible job. Sure there may be some fringe benefits, but for me personally no thanks. Even if I could have made the grade, not my thing. Responsibility without authority. Inbuilt inefficiency in every aspect of the work structure. Etc etc.
Are certain people fair game for repeated denigration? Politicians? Bishops? Their assistants? Is every angry outburst justified because of what they did?
The manner of our discourse shows the caliber of people we are. Are we even Christian in the verbal abuse we pile on people? And by joining our names to the cause we share those abuses, perhaps unwittingly, supposing we consider that we have more subtle erudition.
And in doing so we may even have forfeited a most important argument. So it doesn’t even work. In the case of the bishops, I sense it may have weakened their standing further.
Steve,
Many thanks for these acute remarks. You refer to the calibre of the debate. One of the things that has exercised me over the course of my life has been the remorseless decline in the quality of our public life. I am reminded of the well-known words of the scientist Henry Tizard who remarked (in a government memorandum written in 1949):
“We persist in regarding ourselves as a Great Power capable of everything and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties…We are not a Great Power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation.”
Leaving aside the issue of whether or not we are or ought to be a great power, the point Tizard was making, evidently, was that the most important consideration of all is our national ‘character’. I am afraid I am one of these people who holds to the view that a country will generally – not always, but generally – get the leaders it deserves. Its politicians, entrepreneurs, financiers, pundits, police officers, teachers, etc., and yes, even its bishops, will be mirrors of the people from whose ranks they have been drawn.
As I see it the erosion of our national character does not so much have its origin in any great power contests, as in the prevalence of certain ideas and social and commercial structures which have progressively corroded that character over the last two or three generations, and which have led to a preference for ‘visceral’ over ‘prudent’ behaviour (see, for instance, this: https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199216628.001.0001/acprof-9780199216628).
Also, your phrase ‘responsibility without authority’ reminds me of Kipling’s famous words supposedly written in 1931 for his relative, Baldwin, for the purpose of attacking the Beaverbrook and Harmsworth press: the newspapers “are engines of propaganda for…constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes…. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker’s meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context…What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.” So, we can see that the critiques of social media and ‘manipulation’ are scarcely new.
Brilliant, thank you so much to Stephen and Gilo. To read Gilo’s Twitter page meant that I slept without a burning rage that one of the Bishops that has acted so badly in my case has been reported widely on his condemnation of Cummings, gross hypocrisy!
I agree about justice/compassion fatigue but that has to be viewed alongside the level of psychological support freely available to clergy. Funds for counselling, retreats and even long term psychotherapy can all be accessed whereas survivors have to largely find funding, particularly in the long term, for themselves. Justice fatigue does not lead to hypocrisy and Bishops need to look at their own actions before criticising others.
So many issues here. I agree that only a mad person would want to be a bishop. Rotten job, loads of committees. Like fighting in the army, I’m just glad some are willing to do it. I think it’s more than ok for Christians to comment on politics. Theology and politics concern us all, they are both about real life. But, if a Bishop has themselves behaved badly, does the principle of equity mean they have forfeited that right? Surely, few of us would be left in the debating chamber if that were the case. But, if you do speak out, be prepared to be called out on it. Jesus did that, too. Are you a whited sepulchre, Bishop?
Froghole’s point about getting the leaders we deserve is an important one. To get the change we want (and the leaders) we must exemplify the qualities we value.
That said, for a while now it has been argued that the bishops aren’t actually able to lead in the conventional sense, at all. Some have risen above their restraints by strength of character, but the circumstances they are in are hardly conducive. The role is more a ceremonial one.
In the world of business, inefficient cumbersome cost-laden structures go bust, sooner or later. If any of the trade can be salvaged, it is usually done without the senior management who are expensive. Maybe the C/E will go the same way. Roles just disappear, which is a terrible shock to those of us who were senior management (well, senior anyway) but surprise surprise the new girls and boys seem to get by ok.
Regarding politics, it is a mistake to think people are like us and think like us. It’s also a mistake to assume they are usually incapable of thinking and this must be done for them. I’m treading on dangerous territory I know, but in a sense this is why I’d be very careful about taking a political stand as a cleric.
When I was at school we ran mock general elections at the same time as the actual ones. An overtly Christian teacher called a meeting of the overtly Christian pupils to discuss the school election. He assumed, he told us, that we would all be voting “Liberal” (this dates me). No one said anything at the meeting, but word got back to the Head, and the man’s candidacy was withdrawn. We were free to vote as we chose.
Maybe it is an impertinent and inaccurate observation, but arriving in my Twitter feed, I see far more political likes, retweets and some comments from the clergy, than on God, Jesus or what they have to offer or stand for themselves. Social media has a volatile coverage spectrum ranging from zero impact to viral. The more emotionally charged, the greater the impact exponentially. Bishops cannot pretend not to know this. It’s a logical extension of the media methodology Froghole describes above and is hardly new.
What is it that the Church stands for? Now more than ever we need to hear this.
Just as a brief aside, can anyone help me understand what training there is at “vicar factory” for managing workloads? Not just here, but elsewhere I’ve heard reports of the job ranging from it being a total doss, to 24-7 on call.
Is there a methodology taught, or say a model used to protect personal boundaries, for example?
I trained with ordinands. What I saw suggests they are very reactive, and don’t get organised enough to control the workload and be able to plan. Even saying the office is going to be a shock to the system if you’re not prepared for it.
Plainly, managing old age has been a problem for many. I was in low paid employment, retail management, with no pension. I managed to buy a house while single and earning less than £8,500 a year. It was hard, but I got in just before the prices shot up. So we are mortgage free. But our actual income is low, and we have no savings. Our children have low paid jobs, in spite of Masters degrees. What will save our bacon is hard saving parents. We should be able to help our offspring, and shore up savings when our mothers go to their eternal reward. Ordinary people have not been helped by successive governments. I don’t think we are alone.
“Dodgy” not a very nice word to describe your parishioners.
Gary, who called their parishioners dodgy?