Over the past few years, especially since retirement, I have found myself considering the way that confession and absolution are handled at the Eucharist. The first thing that I identify as a problem is the sheer brevity of this whole section within the liturgy. Without having timed it, I calculate that the whole action, containing self-examination/ recollection, confession and declaration of forgiveness, can take less than two minutes. Unless we have done a great deal of self-examination before the service begins, many potential sins will be forgotten or overlooked by the typical worshipper. He/she will hear the absolution without having had the opportunity to recall and confess more than a very small part of his/her undoubted sinfulness.
I have not got any quick answer to offer to this issue of the chronic brevity of this part of the liturgy as used by the Church of England. But there are some other more serious problems to be considered as we reflect on the weekly routine of receiving a declaration of God’s forgiveness for sinful humanity. The first problem is that, although we might believe that we are good at self-examination and the naming of our own sinfulness, Christian opinion is much divided about what in fact needs to be confessed. We might all be able to agree that harming another person, especially one with an obvious vulnerability, is wrong. But then there are a whole raft of activities, typically in the sexual realm, where there is a great deal of disagreement about what constitutes sin in a Christian context. I do not propose to dwell further on this issue, but I am sure that my readers can fill the blank spaces. The problem in a nutshell is that although we readily speak about God knowing our secrets and our desires, we cannot agree about which human activities in fact constitute sinful actions and which are innocent and harmless. Our current inability to agree what is indeed sinful is surely a matter of concern. Any ‘gracious disagreement’ that is being practised does not help the church to be seen by the outsider as being either honest or consistent. If the secular world begins to suspect that the Christian Church lacks integrity in its thinking by not being able to state clearly what is right and wrong, it will be less inclined to listen to whatever else this Church may have to say.
A second problem concerning sin confronts us every time we engage in any kind of self-examination. This is the fact that society has come to recognise that our own ‘grievous faults’ are dwarfed by another kind of sin – corporate sin. Whether we like it or not, the sins that today dominate the attention of people, especially the young who are trying to make the world a better place, are those that involve us simply because we are human beings. As a white educated male in Britain, I am granted many privileges from my position and place in society, which may have little to do with my own effort. Equally, others are severely disadvantaged by having been born in places and environments of deprivation. The inequalities (injustices) in society are matters which involve morality and this should concern all of us who try to live lives of ethical integrity. We live in a society beset by many corporate sins that push people down : racism, classism, ageism and sexism. These societal attitudes impact all of us, even if we do little to disseminate them. It is hard to know how to be innocent in a world of inequality. Like many of my readers no doubt, I am sometimes baffled by all the ways that I am expected to have an attitude about issues that simply were not discussed thirty or forty years ago. But I do recognise that the contemporary new moral issues that emerge in our society do require our attention and thought. Avoiding them altogether should not be an option for a responsible citizen who claims to be Christian. The topical issues of our time, whether global warming, sexual equality, migration or slavery reparations, all demand that we have an informed opinion of some kind. Whatever else we are learning from living in the 21st century, we are discovering that the possession of an informed ethical Christian outlook is not just about personal behaviour. It requires us to think and become informed about numerous issues. In this way an engagement with corporate sin is part of contemporary modern ethics whether we wish it or not. Complete avoidance, whether because it makes us uncomfortable or stressed, cannot be a valid position when we come before God in our regular acts of self-examination.
Personal sin, as well as our collusion in the corporate sins of today, forms much of the conversation that we are to have with God when we come before him in prayer and self-examination. Our conscience is, or should be, compelling us to think about such things as helping charities and avoid contaminating the earth with thoughtless disposals of rubbish. Recycling and ever greater charity donations seem to be among the contributions we can make to a practical engagement with the pressing needs of our world. These wider corporate sins which we have touched on do make living an ethical life extremely complex. But we are right, I believe, to see many practical environmental issues as being spiritual as well as ethical. ‘Negligence, weakness and our own deliberate fault’ may apply to many more things than the individual acts of spite or selfishness that we are guilty of. The ’things we have left undone’ suddenly become so much wider than remembering to show appreciation for the acts of kindness that we receive. Becoming informed about injustice in the world, listening to stories of pain and neglect and simply giving our time and attention to another. These are all things that life and an active Christian conscience demands of us. In writing down even a few of the tasks that our involvement in corporate sin implies, we come to see still more how inadequate the liturgical provision is for this task in Common Worship.
The existence of corporate sin, as I have started to describe it, might make us feel thoroughly discouraged in our attempts to deal with our personal sin and failure. I do believe, however, it is possible to recover a degree of honest integrity as we revisit the essential ethical aspects of the Christian faith. When we strip our faith down to its bare essentials we find a single command. My summary of this command is this: Practise unconditional love as Jesus did. Working out the implications of unconditional love for us in terms of our generosity and relationships gives us a good starting place. If we regard sin as anything that gets in the way of fulfilling this command, we have a solid foundation for beginning to see the meaning of Christian wholeness and integrity. The question that might be asked of each one of us when we die is whether we have been individuals showing this kind of integrity -one that demonstrates the exercise of unconditional love as Jesus showed it to us. Sin in this perspective is found in any way that we fall short of this potential for love and generosity. That is our calling – to realise this potential as far as we can.
My involvement with the safeguarding cause over the past few years has made me aware of another aspect of sin and wrongdoing which the liturgical prayers of confession do little to expose. My summary of this 21st century failing is what I describe as DARVO sin. DARVO, as many of us know, is an acronym for the typical response of a guilty party when confronted with strong evidence of guilt. Instinctively the accused person goes on to a defence mode which is first expressed as a denial. This may be followed by attempt to attack someone else for the failing. The third stage is to reframe or reverse the accusation so that the offender becomes somehow reframed as a victim. All these reactions and responses are made without the slightest notion of guilt or disturbed conscience. Such a DARVO response commonly occurs, as many of us have noted, when the Church makes an institutional response to cases of abuse perpetrated by its own clergy. All too often in the safeguarding narratives that I am familiar with, the original victim becomes the ‘villain’ of the narrative. Their telling of their story and what they have suffered is disturbing to the status quo. Bishop Peter Ball successfully persuaded the then Prince of Wales that his accuser was the source of a vindictive evil. Neil Todd, the innocent victim of this DARVO attack, took his own life. We need constantly to be reminded of the way that DARVO sin can have far more devastating consequences for its victims than the original abuse. Many examples of DARVO sin involve senior members of the Church of England. Some have been exposed in the public domain. Attacking an innocent victim or survivor by a leading church official as a way to protect the good name of the institution is a wicked devastating course of action. These spiritual leaders have somehow been able to convince themselves and their consciences that DARVO sin, even when it involves telling lies and tolerating institutional corruption, is not sin at all. That is a serious problem for the Church’s reputation and integrity.
I began by pointing out the issue of extreme brevity given to self-examination in the liturgy and how this raises a problem for the Church. But in my further reflection I have come to see that not being able to agree what sin is really is a still greater dilemma. The outside world is mystified by many of our squabbles over morality. It will be even more unimpressed when it sees Church leaders practising DARVO sin in their misguided attempts to fend off the legitimate claims of survivors, who have suffered so long because the Church has believed that it reputation matters more than the claims of justice. Perhaps in describing the Church we all want to see, and which would impress a waiting world, we should remind ourselves once more of the principles set out in the prophet Micah. “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God”.
‘Corporate sin’ didn’t seem to exist when I became a Christian five decades ago – then the message was exclusively about personal sins and salvation. I know a fair few Christians who still don’t look much beyond that even today; the corporate aspect seems very hard to define. To give a few examples – one ‘aware’ friend said that, as a Christian, I shouldn’t be taxing new cars, thus damaging the environment; others that I shouldn’t have worked for the MOD. The small problem, that God had provided me with those jobs in a region of diminishing employment, didn’t seem to enter into the equation!
How do you define ‘sin’? How far back down the line do you go? I can think of plenty of historic issues which that could involve. We all (I hope) loathe the Nazi leaders who imposed the ‘final solution’ and their camp guards – but what about the enginemen who drove the resettlement trains? Were they just as guilty? (And, under a harshly directed labour regime, what real choice did they have?) Without being disrespectful in any way, my forebears most certainly did not own slaves. Arguably, they themselves were treated as little better, in the mines and pot banks of the Georgian Potteries.
I’ve discussed this several times with my closest friend – my wife – who’s politically a very strong Tory, and a committed evangelical Christian to boot, who is adamant that we are only called to atone for our own specific sins, and ours alone. That shows just how wide the Christian perspective on ethical issues is – the Channel migrants is another good contemporary example. The ‘hostile’ border protection policies (instigated by a Christian Home Secretary, subsequently PM, remember) are a total negation of the ‘pure’ commandments of Christ – but only if you as an individual choose to take them that way. (And a good few Christians I know would take the view that we haven’t the room, we’re only a small island!) There is just no overall, consistent and universally held approach within the church as a whole.
Given our divisions over LLF, same sex relationships and abortion, to name but three, that’s not surprising. And I doubt if we will ever find one. I find it frustrating, but have to live with it – as we all do if we’re honest. I gave up reading books about ‘THE Christian view’ of politics or ethics a long time ago – it seemed pretty clear that very few Christians actually held to them, other than the authors or the occasional minister who didn’t mind getting the bum’s rush for offending his congregation.
Its very hard to know who to believe, or how to interpret scriptures So, perhaps, is it so surprising we’re so divided? The CofE is not disimilar to the civil service in its attitude – ‘never apologise, never admit to faults, never embarrass the top boss’ – above all, save face at all costs. And so long as that is the prime motivation, things won’t improve very much at all. (What constitutes genuine, deep repentance comes in…
I don’t think it’s that easy to make a distinction between personal sin and corporate sin. Isaiah recognised this when he said, ‘Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.’
It’s almost impossible for those of us living in e.g. the UK not to participate in the trashing of ecosystems and the exploitation of workers, especially those in other countries. And the right to vote involves us in a series of dilemmas: we may choose the party which we think best represents biblical values (my list would include justice and hospitality to ‘the alien and stranger among you’, among others), but every manifesto will also include points which we don’t feel match God’s will for human beings. So we share responsibility for the wrongs that are done by that government, or we sin by not voting and shirking our civic responsibility.
Nor can we ever be sure that our view of what our own ‘specific personal sins’ are matches God’s view. What a good thing that God is merciful, and recognises when we are trying our best, and forgives our failures.
I’m coming to think that the whole matter of personal and corporate sin is far more complex than I had ever considered. Take someone who experiences sexual abuse at a young age and goes on to have a string of empty sexual relationships, or indeed becomes an abuser themselves. Who is responsible? Clearly the matter of personal responsibility cannot be evaded, but nevertheless it is obvious that the original abuser bears a large measure of responsibility for whatever sins his victim has committed. This is a gross example, but I think it can be universally extended to the point that, effectively, all our sins are mixed up together, and in this sense sin can be understood as a corporate matter. One way of understanding Christian discipleship is the rediscovery of myself as an individual and a child of God, and the recognition that I have to carry my own cross, and work out the salvation that has been given to me, but I think it’s also possible that it includes the recognition that much of what I am now has come about from how I was formed and shaped as a child, which will involve to a greater or lesser extent the sins of others. It’s in this sense that I now think that what matters is not so much that Jesus has forgiven my individual sin as that he has forgiven the sins of the world, in which I am able to partake.
We’re not very good at spotting our own contribution to church-wide wrongdoing. Generally by attending regularly, or serving additionally in some capacity there is a sense of doing good; of being good. We know salvation comes from the Lord, but by our activities we imagine we are ‘working out our salvation’.
When someone points out that we have contributed to an abuse or enabled it some way, the accusation seems like an affront. At best it is most unwelcome.
Part of this is our routine subcontracting of responsibility up to our leaders. He says it’s good, so it must be. Some degree of trust is essential in the leader follower relationship, but we must not abrogate responsibility for everything we do or don’t say in their name. It’s lazy thinking, and that’s a sin. Those of us with the ability to think through these things have more responsibility to act on our findings than those with fewer capabilities.
Others here have noted how some of the ideas of corporate sin seem relatively new, or at least our awareness is. Partly this awareness has arisen by an increasing level of insight growing across the internet, with the ability to contribute to the debate enhanced by social media, but also by its levelling effect. Anyone with a mobile phone or tablet can have a say. There are hardly any barriers to entry. It’s not quite, one Twitter handle, one vote, but it’s getting closer.
Church leaders and their senior people have inadvertently speeded up the process of awareness of corporate wrongdoing. In using outdated methods of attempting control to shut down dissenters, it has had the exact opposite effect. Blatant hypocrisy gets broadcast as such, immediately.
But the fastest way to learn about what we have got wrong as a group, is to have been party to one of the numerous scandals emerging in recent years. When it all goes painfully pear-shaped, lessons cannot easily be avoided.
But they can be “refined”!