Reforrm and Renewal - the South African way

From the website of the Archbishop of South Africa, Thabo Makgoba:

In just over six weeks' time, representatives from all 28 dioceses, including experts in strategic planning, will hold two meetings, back-to-back, in which the Province will seize a Kairos moment to review our Vision and Mission as a church, to strategise around ways to implement our priorities, and then to make practical decisions on how to implement them in a manner that is productive, holistic and transformative.

Five years ago, the Province adopted a Vision and Mission Statement. In it we declared that the Anglican community in Southern Africa seeks to be:

• Anchored – in the love of Christ
• Committed – to God’s mission
• Transformed – by the Holy Spirit

Archbishop visits victims of Duduza tornado
4 October 2011 (Hope Africa gallery)

We added that across the diverse countries and cultures of our region, we seek:

• To honour God in worship that feeds and empowers us for faithful witness and service
• To embody and proclaim the message of God’s redemptive hope and healing for people and creation
• To grow communities of faith that form, inform, and transform those who follow Christ.

Within the context provided by that statement, we declared our Provincial priorities in the succeeding decade to be: 

• Renewal for transformative worship
• Theological education and formation
• Leadership development
• Health (HIV and AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis)
• The environment
• Women and gender
• Protection and nurture of children and young people
• public advocacy

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To me the tone and substance might have significant and constructive lessons for the CofE, if we could hear.

1. To begin with God-orientated vision. Not fear of collapse.
2. A history of Kairos (remember the Kairos document of 1985?): embracing the possibility of transformation (wiki). As opposed to cautious and arthritic legislative reform and tinkering.
3. To look equally inwards and out: to see that the church is only whole when it is engaged in a transformative - and reflexive - manner with the injustices of the society in which we live.
4. And, as a united church, to be prepared to address public issues which are neither easy nor one-sided but where there is the possibility that the church could make a substantive and positive difference to people's live.

And, frankly, a sense of excitement. 

I don't doubt that in the cities and the deep countryside there will also be significant anxiety about what all this will mean for them. The view through the Archbishop's eyes is most unlikely to be the same view as a worshipper in a village outside Olifantshoek, say, or in the centre of Bloemfontein.

But we are buried under too much sediment: not only our history but also the weight of being the State church.

Elections for General Synod

General Synod is the governing body of the Church of England. It is a largely elected body with three 'houses' (chambers): Bishops, Clergy and Laity.

Clergy are elected by vote of almost all ordained clergy. The exception is ordained clergy with no permission to officiate. For electoral purposes at  least - they're nobody. They have no standing as clergy and cannot vote as laity.

The laity have an electoral college - Deanery Synod members - who alone vote for representatives of the laity on General Synod. In my view this is wholly unacceptable and embodies the marginalisation of the laity. (I've wittered on about this elsewhere.)

(Curiously, at least on a quick look, I couldn't find a general page about Deanery Synods of the CofE official site - only a leaflet (pdf) and the rules.)

Undoubtedly this new Synod is going to be busy. It has to begin the process of dismantling and rebuilding the CofE.

I personally hope it goes for wholesale reform but that's not the Anglican way: look for slow, piecemeal and insufficient change.

Here's some more talking heads:

Religiously motivated violence

Archbishop Justin Welby at Lambeth Palace

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has given a considered lecture on aspects of religiously motivated violence, entitled

‘The Abolition of the Global – Learning to Live in the World in One City’

Amongst other things he calls the idea of "a war of civilizations" a dangerous myth, which I would heartily endorse.

The phrase is largely intended to reinforce 'us' as the good guys against an amorphous 'them', the enemy. It suggests a gulf which isn't there, and boundaries which don't exist.

His argument is based in part on an understanding of the way the world has changed:

let us start with reflecting on the nature of electronic media. Electronic media makes everything local. The global has been abolished, ...

What was once something happening to some stranger on the other side of the world is now happening to a friend of a friend on Facebook. 

When we face each other, deeply and sincerely, we begin to catch a glimpse of our creation, our Creator, and thus our shared humanity. 

However, at present the result of digitisation is

diversity but without facing each other. 

He goes on to put a lot of emphasis on "facing one another." which "enables us to perceive selfhood in others. To see that the person we're looking at is a human being of infinite dignity." He cites a Church of England project called Near Neighbours intended

to bring people together who are near neighbours in communities that are religiously and ethnically diverse, so that they can get to know each other better, build relationships of trust and collaborate together on initiatives that improve the local community they live in.

In sum, a consequence of digitization and digital communication is both centralization and centripetalism: it brings together and creates new divisions, it crosses old boundaries and reinforces old ones. In particular religion (implicitly replacing nationalism) becomes the plane on which the 'outsider' is identified and which 'justifies' violence - itself facilitated and intensified by the same changes in technology.

Therefore, the Archbishop's proposal is, effectively, that those seeking peace and mutual respect in our differences must themselves also dissolve the old language and seek new ways and words. We need a "narrative ...underpinned by a commitment to human flourishing." which is not bounded by the old lines of religious division.

In turn this entails a need for a new literacy on matters of faith amongst governmental players.
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When I began this post I had not intended to simply summarise the Archbishop's lecture - better to read it in full - but I found on more careful reading that I agreed with him  more than I expected.

However I think his references to economic and political forces too slight (accepting it wasn't his theme), They remain powerful and self-serving, marginalising far too many people. I also think that whatever eventually emerges won't be quite what anyone had planned or campaigned for.

ISIS's apocalyptic theology is such that it cannot listen to outsiders. Christians should be able to understand this because Christianity holds the same capacity for such thinking. In the short-term violence seems likely to grow rather than diminish.

And it is precisely because the task seems so great, the violence so horrific, the ideology so absolute that we need to re-affirm the value of love in public policy: respect, affirmation of, consideration for strangers and enemies solely because we are all children of God. Somehow face-to-face valuing of the person in front of us needs to be translated to digital communication and global ordering.

A scene from religiously motivated violence in Egypt

An imaginative Church?

The CofE does a weekly podcast. I'd never bothered with it before, but thought I'd have a listen to one (dated 16 July).

Bishop Thornton: blue skies man

What caught my ear first was Tim Thornton, Bishop of Truro, desperately not saying "imagination's in short supply." (at about 5min 40secs)

Instead he got to: "... imagination is in, er, very great demand, is not around very much."

He was selling a notion that vicars (and congregations) could and should re-imagine roles and  relationships. He  cited leadership in churches in mixed lay/clerical teams.

You could say that sounds basically like a PCC working well, but that might be too simplistic.

However if we take seriously - and I think we should - the notion that imagination is in short supply then it might be helpful to look at some possible reasons.

I suggest, for starters:

• The episcopal system effectively leaves all initiative with the bishop. Tim Thorton can get people to work in different ways because he is bishop. When a new bishop arrives with different ideas they too will be followed by the clergy.  
• Thornton says people need permission to be imaginative. Presumably because the episcopacy has previously constrained them.
• In effect Thornton says: by the authority vested in me I desire and permit you to be imaginative but (implicit but taught and heard well down the generations) only within the boundaries that I set. Those boundaries also include Thornton's tenure in office. New bishop, new ideas, new fashions and practices come into favour. However no bishop (nor, therefore incumbent) can bind the hands of their successor. 

It's not that people lack imagination. It's that the structures and relationships of the CofE have taught both clergy and laity that, first, each member should stay in their allotted place, second, that imagination comes close to insubordination and, third, that any exercise of the imagination is acceptable only within certain prescribed boundaries (which may or may not be set out clearly and in advance).

I found this image when I searched for 'PCC'

There are also, I think, also deeper and religious reasons for unimaginative practice.

• Faith is not only held (object-like) but lived, embodied. Insofar as faith is part of one's identity (individual or shared) behavioural change also entails becoming a different person, a different church. Of course, change is normal - it is the nature of life. But persuading someone else to deliberately change their identity, their sense of who they are and their relationships with others, is a very tall and often scary order.
• And there is always an anxiety in faith faced with novelty: how do we know we're getting it right? To do what has been done before is safe. It may not be adequate but it is secure. Part of  embodied faith is the reassurance which comes from hallowed repetition.

It maybe that a disproportionate number of unimaginative people make their home in the  CofE. or that the CofE has consistently devalued imagination. Or, probably, both. Either way it'll take more than episcopal encouragement to make a thousand flowers bloom.

Destination Imagination

The last sustained and effective re-imagining of the CofE was by the Oxford Movement. It was, of course, initially opposed by bishops. It evoked opposition, some of it violent, sent some clergy to gaol, and took perhaps 100+ years to become the new normal. In part we need new imagination because we are only now shedding such victoriana.

St Hilda on twitter

This is all very new to me, but I've just created a twitter account for St Hilda's:

St Hilda Marden  

 

We'd be delighted if you were  to follow us - and would, of course, return the compliment. 

 

I note the twitter link for blogger is 'broken'. I can't imagine why Google would leave it so.