Category: Church of England

The Aftermath of Absence

Chris Swift4 Comments

Oscar Wild wrote the line that “wisdom comes with winters”. He might also have added, that growing old should be done with great care. For most of us it is inevitable, and brings all the risks of rejecting the world that is emerging in our wake. It isn’t difficult to recall the pessimism of my grandfather, born before powered flight and dying after the launch of a space shuttle ceased to be headline news. Having lived through rationing he despaired at the “throwaway” society that emerged in the twentieth-century.

In an age when generative artificial intelligence has arrived on many people’s desktops and phones, it feels as though we are in another moment of defining change. Projecting myself into the future, I wonder whether this alteration will become coupled to COVID-19? In other words, before the pandemic, we were fairly certain – bar a ghost writer – that an author had scripted their text from the title to the final word. Yes, there was proof-reading, copy-editing and the influence of publishers, but the script remained the work of the author. After COVID, how do we know the extent to which AI has been used. For example, has it conjured up the title – or a selection of titles – from which the writer has made a choice? Was the overall plan of a novel generated by a computer, complete with chapter headings and key features of the plot? The fact of the existence of chat-GPT, Copilot, and the rest, means that we cannot be certain how far the fingerprints of AI stretch across the work. It will be very difficult for even the most diligent student, pulling her hair out at 2 am ahead of an essay deadline, not to simply press the button, copy what she needs, and go to bed.

The inexorable decline of the Church of England cannot be pegged to a particular event. The concave downward curve of the C of E stretches back to the 1950s, if not earlier. In the current issue of The Church Times, Andrew Brown and others look at the in-tray awaiting the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Brown’s contribution is to review the various past Archbishops and the many attempts, and initiatives, intended to stem the haemorrhaging congregations. Brown argues that the collapse of the Established Church was partly a consequence of wider societal changes to which the Church had been wedded:

“It would be unfair to blame any archbishop for the scale of the subsequent collapse. The Church had been an integral part of a hierarchical and militarised England — as recently as 1990, the Archbishop of Canterbury was a man who had won the MC in action as a tank commander — and, when that country was washed away like a magnificent sandcastle by the tides of history, most of the Church went with it”.

Speaking at a training day for Licensed Lay Ministers in Mirfield yesterday, I was reflecting on just how much the landscape of ministry has changed since I was deaconed on 1991. Every parish had its vicar and vicarage; a minimal amount of money – if any – was sent to the Diocese; local ecumenical work drew together congregants and paid staff from several denominations. As a good friend reminds me from time-to-time, at theological college I predicted that during my time in ministry we would arrive at a point where the only stipendiary post in a deanery would be the Area Dean. If that hasn’t happened yet, it must surely be very close.

Currently I assist on Sundays in a variety of rural churches around York. Many of the church buildings are architectural gems, listed grade one or two, and containing a rich record of parish history. However, it’s always important to take a stole as many of these churches no longer have the items I would expect to find as a visiting priest. In one vestry I noted a processional cross and accompanying candles leaning in the corner, strewn in cobwebs and perhaps last put down by the crucifer on the day the last choir processed back from singing Evensong.

I don’t want to give a false or inadequate impression of the clergy in the past. They were not always glory days, and the scandals of abuse tell a dark story of what happened below the surface. This was true of many professions before a culture of effective safeguarding was established. There were also plenty of spiteful, indolent and career-starved clergy who used the pulpit as a form of performative one-sided therapy. The opportunity to verbalise every prejudice and, of course, list the many failings of the diocesan bishop, who – after all – had the temerity to “overlook” him. The comfortable deanery for which he once hankered was now the cesspit of oligarchy. However, the ancient system of one-priest-one-parish at least allowed the possibility of good, and plenty of good was done. That a gifted parson with compassion, skill and personality might use all her strength to help those beleaguered by modernity, as well as pronounce the forgiveness sins that have been humanity’s lot since Eden.

Recently I’ve been reading Jeff Young’s Wild Twin, Winner of  the TLS Ackerley Prize, 2025. Described as an “hallucinatory memoir of Young’s time as a young man in the 1970s”, the connections of past and present abound in the book. For example, he describes his father’s early life in Liverpool:

“During the Blitz when he climbed up through the skylight onto the roof, he was the watcher of the skies, the overseer of oblivion. He had first-hand knowledge of a place being there, and then not being there, of a thing you know being present and then becoming absent. He was a witness to the erasure and the aftermath of absence”.

Jeff Young, Wild Twin – dream maps of a lost soul and drifter, Little Toller Books, 2024

To some extent we are all witnesses to various erasures, if we endure long enough. Thankfully many of us live without the first hand experience of war, but will live in a world where war is never far away, nor without the risk of escalation. The world is always becoming, and developments such as AI bring both opportunity and risk. Hopefully, AI will enable many people to see health-risks long before they arrive and take appropriate action to halt or temper the worst consequences of that illness. Perhaps, just possibly, the expansion of virtual experiences will lead some people to seek a spirituality that is earthed and rooted in direct experiences and in-person community. There is already some evidence that this is happening. Religion – the oldest cultural expression of humanity – may yet find the wisdom to achieve renewal in the aftermath of absence.

Sister Moon

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Like many others, I’ll probably make an effort to see tonight’s full moon. Noteworthy not only for its fullness but also, today, for the eclipse which will be at least partly visible from the UK. The ‘blood moon’, as it is called, might offer us a spectacular reminder of this strange and beautiful neighbouring globe, held in the earth’s gravity.

As a presenter on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme commented, events such as the eclipse somehow serve to put humanity’s woes into perspective. As we agonise about the various crises of our time, earth’s celestial companion is a daily reminder of a strange place to which few humans have ever been. Unlike the sun, here is an object at which we can stare, or observe with magnification, with little difficulty. When it is waxing or waning we can see the edge of craters silhouetted against the darkness of space.

Inevitably, the moon has always been part of human religious understanding. Intriguingly, although light is created on the first day of the Genesis account, neither the sun nor the moon appear until day four. Like the light on a cloudy day, it appears that the authors of the Genesis account distinguished between “general” light and the specific radiance of the sun and moon. The two bodies were seen as heavenly lamps, signifying that both generated different forms of light. It does not appear to have been understood at the time that the moon was simply reflecting sunlight.

“Genesis attributed another function to the Moon—marking the onset of Israelite festivals. Such a calendrical function of the phases of Moon is by no means restricted to Genesis. The calendrical function of the Moon has been so widespread around the world in other cultures that it might qualify as a cultural universal”.

Murray, G. F. (2021). Moon Traditions: An Overview of Changing Beliefs About Earth’s Moon. The Human Factor in the Settlement of the Moon: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 19-40.

One interpretation of the purpose of the creation narrative was to lend divine authority to the pattern of the seven day week, with the distinctive feature of a sabbath day. While not unique, the seven day week was not universal in biblical times. The Roman Empire, for example, used an eight day structure until the Jewish and Babylonian practice began to become ascendent. With the conversion of Emperor Constantine the seven day model became mandatory across the Empire. It has been suggested that the cause of this shift in the organisation of time, reflects the alteration of farming from a focus on livestock to one of land cultivation. The latter required much more intensive and back-breaking labour which may have made the concept of a sabbath day a necessary part of both human productivity and survival.

In Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun the stars and moon are praised as being “clear and precious and beautiful”. Within our understanding of the solar system as it stands today, we know that the position of sun, moon and stars reveal the dynamic character of the universe. We are on a planet that spins on its axis; in an orbit around the sun; with a moon in orbit around earth; in a solar system that orbits the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. The rare occurrence of a lunar eclipse reminds us of these movements, and the interplay of the heavenly bodies. It doesn’t stop us enjoying the beauty of these moments, or detract from the sense of awe that we live in a universe that is vast beyond our imagination, and exists without the slightest influence of human influence.

What’s Theology Ever Done for Us?

Chris Swift2 Comments

This is a question that many people in church pews might ask. For those absent from pews, or any place of worship, this questions would not even cross their minds. Why would it?

Professor Sarah Coakley dropped a pebble into this discussion in an extract from her lecture at Christ Church, Oxford, published in The Church Times. It became the most read on-line article of that week and sparked several responses, including a piece by Canon Jarel Robinson-Brown published on the Modern Church website.

Sarah Coakley’s paper is entitled: “Bring theology back to the parishes“. The context for her this was the 20th anniversary of the Littlemore Group. In the past I have raised my own concerns about theology, and where it is done. Oxbridge colleges are synonymous with the historic production of English Anglican theology and this may not have been the most promising location in which to call theology home to the parishes of the land. Nevertheless, Coakley’ s appeal certainly merits discussion.

“…it is surely not true that good theology (richly substantive and imaginatively engaging theology) is the enemy of mission and effective “leadership”. Rather it is precisely its necessary medium and handmaid”.

Extract from Sarah Coakley’s address to the Littlemore Group, published in the Church Times.

Coakley’s argument goes on to appeal for the development of high quality, imaginative and of politically relevant Anglican theology developed and available to all. There is recognition of the clerical habit of underestimating lay interest in theology, alongside the divisive debates within theology between what might be termed “academic” and “practical”. Coakley’s call, across such divisions, is for there to be good theology, defined as: “deep, demanding, contentful, prayerful, and imaginatively life-changing”.

Jarel Robinson-Brown’s response to Coakley’s work identifies a number of concerns. While in broad agreement with her objective, Robinson-Brown critiques the tendency for theology to appear indifferent to “the worlds that real flesh and blood humans inhabit”. I think this is a fair point. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Kairos Document, which identified the false theological foundations which were claimed to legitimate Apartheid. Robinson-Brown, while not citing this specific example, nevertheless feels that Coakley has not acknowledged the need for theology to repent for its many errors and the damage those errors have done to people across the world.

District Six is a former residential area in Cape Town, South Africa, known for its diverse community and vibrant culture before the apartheid era. It became a symbol of the forced removals and displacement caused by apartheid. The area was designated for white residents in 1966, and over 60,000 people were forcibly removed and relocated. St Mark’s Church became a focus for resistance against this process of segregation.

During a recent Journal Group meeting at the Leeds Church Institute, where I am Director, there was a good example of these tensions and differences. An engaging paper on theology and disability was presented, followed by a discussion about the strengths, weaknesses and applications of what was being argued. In a light-hearted manner, I observed that the paper contained some significant heresies. As I noted at the time, I wasn’t unduly concerned about these but – in terms of systematic theology – they were present. Chief among them was the notion of God being in need. Reflecting on this discussion I realise that my articulation of formal theology was guilty of closing down less orthodox but genuine, experience-informed theological discernment. Perhaps the material was heretical if measured by certain criteria, but it arose out of the lived experience of being a Christian, and from within a community that is repeatedly marginalised and made the object of condescending charity. It is also a community that has been the victim of theologically mandated disdain and shunning.

Between these two recent explorations of theology in the parish, I have been reading a paper from 2022 about intercultural theological education in South Africa, written by Professor Marilyn Naidoo. Here the author questions the universalising tendencies of Western knowledge, not least in the field of theology. Rather than imposing categories of heresy or orthodoxy, Naidoo argues for an approach that takes the experiences of oppressed people as a place from which theology must be generated.

“Classical theological methodology has always looked to scripture, tradition, and reason and found the person largely irrelevant”.

Naidoo, M. (2022). Nurturing intercultural theological education towards social justice ideals in South Africa. Religions, 13(9), 830.

The paper goes on to make the point that “the way scripture is interpreted and acted upon depends on a person’s lived reality”. In one way or another, and to varying extents, Coakley, Robinson-Brown and Naidoo re-assert the importance of people in the task of theology. This is not a minor correction but an urgent plea for theologians of all kinds to attend to the experiences of people – and to enable people to attend to the task of theology. It is not a question of theology being done for us – but a genuine intent for theology to be done by us, where “us” is not the ordained, but the baptised.

Thought Forgery

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I have begun experimenting with artificial intelligence. Using the available free programmes I am exploring how AI might be used, and what risks or concerns need to shape my approach. It is fascinating – if a little disconcerting. For example, last week I resurrected the towering Anglican Archbishop of the 20th century, William Temple. I asked ChatGPT what Archbishop Temple might say to the Church of England today. At lightening speed, after presumably trawling all available Temple content in cyberspace – and assessing the state of the Church of England today – the headline answer emerged as follows:

Temple might say:

“The Church must never be merely the chaplain of the comfortable, but always the conscience of the nation. We are stewards not just of grace, but of justice.”

From what I know of Temple’s writing, and my awareness of the Church of England today, this isn’t half bad, or inconsistent with Temple’s thought. Who else might we resurrect to offer their historical voice to the contemporary world?

As any tutor will tell you, AI is plaguing the world of academia. Not only are students asking programmes to write their essays, but as a consequence, numbers are falling in lectures. Why bother going to the class if you aren’t going to be the one producing the work? One of the greatest challenges for markers is spotting and addressing an excessive use of ChatGPT. After all, this is not plagiarism. AI produces unique content depending on the question asked and the time of asking. I imagine, as time goes on, that AI will become bespoke and personalised for the user, mimicking their mistakes and linguistic styles. This will be all but impossible to identify and may be the path back to some element of supervised examination.

If not plagiarism, then perhaps AI is best described as forgery. I have no idea whether my blogs have been mined by AI, or my books scanned and absorbed. In generating Temple’s pithy comment to the CofE today, AI hasn’t copied his words – but created them based on what cyberspace contains of Temple’s own work and the many commentators on his theology and public statements. This is why it is becoming so difficult to tell fact from fiction and, into this space of doubt, a whole world of mischief can be wrought. When something sounds so like someone, how do we know if it is true? Similarly, it casts doubt on photographs and their authenticity which, in somewhere like Gaza, can both undermine genuine evidence of war crimes and simultaneously manufacture material that conceals what is going on.

Photo by Beyzaa Yurtkuran on Pexels.com

Undoubtedly, AI has arrived and is here to stay. The questions is, how are we to live in a world where the level of power and sophistication demonstrated by AI continues to grow. Media outlets like the BBC have an important role to play in fact-checking and evaluating the validity of information. They will not be perfect, but few individuals will have the time or skills to do this for themselves.

For better or for worse, I won’t be using AI to write or proof my blogs. Perhaps we need this kind of statement on material that is published, indicating the level of AI usage, from entire authorship to copy-editing. In the meantime, I imagine that everything I write will be scoured, consumed and used to inform the continuing development of artificial intelligence. Thoughts will increasingly emerge that are second-hand amalgams, seemingly undetectable forgeries that don’t arise out of direct experiences, but appear uncannily authentic. I wonder what would William Temple say about that?

Faith and the City

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My grandfather would not have approved. A former church warden of a large market-town parish church, he voted Tory at every opportunity, and would have seen the Church’s critical examination of urban life – Faith in the City – as the latest example of its waywardness. Every day he awaited the arrival of his copy of The Daily Mail, which he embraced as a comfort blanket for all his favourite prejudices. He waved the paper at me energetically when it earnestly condemned various speakers in the televised General Synod debate on nuclear deterrence in 1983. (He had less to say about the owner of The Mail’s enthusiastic admiration of Hitler back in the 1930s). When I argued with him about the valuable work of the post-war Labour Government he was quick to reply that those politicians were “different”. I very much doubt he said that at the time.

As I commented earlier this year, 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Faith in the City, and several small celebrations have been held. Most of us attending the one in Sheffield were north of 60, with Alan Billings, one of the original commissioners and a speaker at the conference, being in his 80s. I wasn’t altogether clear why the event was taking place on the same weekend as General Synod, but perhaps it reflects the Church of England’s limited interest in questions of urban theology and action. More than one speaker noted that in the twenty years after the report there was considerable activity by the CofE in the cities. However, the last 20 years have told a different story.

I was in the middle year of my undergraduate degree, living in Hull, when Faith in the City hit the presses. Alan told us that the Cabinet had leaked the report to the right wing press, enabling its publication to be met with claims of Marxism and a Church failing to attend to its primary task. While many in the Church supported the report, I recall a parishioner in the rural parish where my parents lived asking: “what about the rural areas – where’s the support for us?” I’ve no doubt that those comments were widespread in rural communities.

It felt in the 1980s that the Church of England could still occupy that strange land of “critical solidarity” with the institutions of which it was also a part. Not easy, but it was also the decade in which Archbishop Runcie dared to pray for the dead on both sides at the Falklands Memorial Service in 1982, saying that: “a shared anguish can be a bridge of reconciliation; our neighbours are indeed like us”. Mrs Thatcher was not pleased. In 1984, the Church led by Runcie consecrated David Jenkins as the bishop for Durham. Once again, the Church supplied the right-wing press with oodles of content to bolster its appetite for righteous indignation. My grandfather had gone to glory by that stage but he would have enjoyed the temporal exasperations of the tabloid press.

Looking back is not always a good idea. The seeds of change were already planted in the Church of England of the 1980s. Fewer vocations; difficulties in recruiting to inner-city parishes; a world changing as a rate of knots. However, I’m less certain that those around at the time could have envisaged how radical the changes would become, and the number of parishes that would be forced to merge. The unwinding of Anglicanism’s commitment to provide every church with a parson; a parsonage and burden of finance that could be borne, has happening at a dizzying pace. Volunteers have vanished and the struggle to maintain a meaningful presence has intensified.

It isn’t all doom and gloom. The church I assist at once a month has rallied without any jazzy new initiatives from the centre. Speaking with the organist (a working farmer) he told me that they had got down to an attendance of 10 on a typical Sunday morning. Now it’s at 30. Why? He put it down to the loving pastoral care of a Reader, who made some simple improvements to worship but – perhaps most importantly – helped keep the service at the same time every Sunday. Sometimes it is Morning Prayer and at others, Holy Communion – but the people come nonetheless. In the cities there are also signs of renewed interest in Christianity, with a more diverse population bringing fresh energy to places of worship. The context of Faith in the City has changed – but faith is to be found nonetheless, and the questions raised 40 years ago remain relevant today.

What remains constant, however, is the need for deep listening, authentic presence, recognition of transience and journey, and genuine collaboration. As one of us concluded, “It has to be ‘we’ if we are to make a difference”.

William Temple Foundation blog, 21 May 2025

War with Trolls

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Norway is a country of stunning beauty which experiences, for some of the year, either endless light or total darkness. I can’t quite imagine what winter must be like here, with deep cold as well as an absence of the sun. In summer it is awash with light, at all hours. Perhaps the drama of this experience accounts for the great composers and poets who have come from Norway.

Henrik Ibsen is Norway’s celebrated playwright and the author of the world’s most frequently performed plays (after those of Shakespeare). Ibsen is highly critical of clergy and what he sees as the inhuman demands of upholding a certain kind of Christian Orthodoxy. As an outstanding dramatist, Ibsen crafts his plays to reflect and expose the failings of key institutions and how individuals strive to live authentic lives despite the ingrained failures and disappointments arising from the unattainable expectations of society. As Ibsen reflected from his Norwegian context: “To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul”. His plays go a long way to identify some of these trolls.

“the tragic poets and dramatists, such as Ibsen, those who seem to understand something like holiness, and that life’s real question, ‘the psycho-moral dilemma’, as Arthur Miller calls it, is not ‘How do I feel about God?’ but ‘What dealings have I with God?’, not as a concept but as the leading character in the unfolding drama”.

Goroncy, J. A. (2006). Bitter Tonic for our Time–Why the Church needs the World: Peter Taylor Forsyth on Henrik Ibsen. European journal of theology, 15(2).

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, during my time away I have been reading Hanna Reichel’s After Method: queer grace, conceptual design, and the possibility of theology. It is not a quick read, but one that has captivated my attention and provided lucid language to describe and interrogate issues in theology I have long experienced, but not always found the framework to express. At its heart this concerns the tensions, and illegibilities, between systematic theology and constructive theology. To illustrate this let me describe some correspondence from many years ago, which relates to something I experienced in ministry and wrote about previously: neonatal loss. From time to time I have been asked to baptise a baby that has died, or was alive only briefly, assisted by significant medical intervention. As I explored this and what it means, theologically, I came across a note in Common Worship written by the illustrious octogenarian (as of yesterday) and onetime Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church, Oliver O’Donovan. O’Donovan, a former professor of systematic theology, writes: “You cannot baptize someone who is dead”.

From the standpoint of systematic theology this is consistent with Scripture; the history of Church doctrine; and the practice of the Church’s ministry. Well, it is and it isn’t. As I discovered when researching this topic, the Church in its history has found ways round this situation to preserve doctrine and meet the pastoral needs of parents. This creativity lead to the creation of “resurrection chapels” where an apparently deceased child could be handed to a priest, who then disappeared into a chapel, and came back saying that the baby had miraculously been resurrected for a moment, baptised, but then – alas – died. This enabled the veneer of orthodoxy to be preserved while meeting the earnest and sincere needs of parents. In a desire to sustain a credible doctrinal position the Church tolerated these kinds of “work arounds” but failed to allow the realities of human experience to interrogate the substance of systematic theology itself.

The core problem, it seems to me, is that the attempt to uphold a systematic understanding of faith at all costs results in a punished humanity and a pedestrian God. A theological educator said to me some years ago, with an evident sense of relief, that he was so glad they’d abandoned the use of “case studies” in the seminary where he taught. Tales from the frontline of Christian living can be very inconvenient for certain kinds of theology. Preaching at Evensong in an Oxford college, I happened to mention a pastoral call I’d received in the early hours of that day from the northern hospital where I worked. The Master thanked me afterwards for bringing in some “réalité”. It amused me that a French word was required to express the real life that had intruded into the college chapel. The question arises, what kind of theology emerges when human life is stripped out of the equation? For some key critical commentators it is theology devoid of “the messiness of incarnation and real peoples’ lives”, which makes it difficult to imagine what use it is to the people orthodoxy claims to be at the centre of God’s mission.

Monstrous Theology

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Over the centuries theologians have defended the continuation of slavery; National Socialism in Germany; and the creation of Apartheid. This is only to reference some of the most obscene and horrific examples of the countless ways in which theology has been corrupted. The Bible pillaged for verses to undergird human atrocities, deprivations of dignity and squalid efforts to impose conformity.

In a recent performance of Esther’s Revenge during the Leeds Lit Festival I was reminded once again of this disturbing truth. Esther – played by Bola Atiteba – entered her trial, in the setting of Leeds Minster, holding a Bible. While she clutched it close for much of the performance, it was never cited. No verses were read, yet its silent presence reminded the audience that the Good Book has been used to justify wickedness and, simultaneously, to inspire those who oppose everything that diminishes human life.

The monstrous abuse of Scripture, to enable the destruction of others, has been going on from at least the time its oral state was transformed into text. I have recently started reading Hanna Reichel’s fascinating new book After Method: queer grace, conceptual design, and the possibility of theology. It begins with the question as to whether we need better theology, responding in part to Kevin Garcia’s provocatively titled Bad Theology Kills. As Reichel puts it:

“I baulked at how the church hierarchy in Argentina had been hopelessly complicit in the dictatorship. Had their theology not protected them from the seductions of power and fear, even saw in their survival a greater good over the lives that they abandoned and betrayed?”

Reichel, H. (2023). After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology. Presbyterian Publishing Corp.

Reichel’s words are an encouraging affirmation of what I have long believed as a chaplain. Theology should be written in intensive care, not behind the walls of ivy-clad colleges. Charles Taylor puts it succinctly in his seminal work, A Secular Age, when he laments the tendency of the Church to be ‘excarnational’. For Taylor, many theologians have failed to live up to their promise because they have driven the discipline into their heads at the cost of embodied experience and learning. This has promoted theologies that have ignored the human cost of beliefs legitimated by centres of power and education.

Heading this blog is a photograph of an installation – ‘Beast’ – by the American artist Matthew Angelo Harrison. It is featured in the inaugural exhibition of PoMo, the new gallery of modern art in Trondheim, Norway. The beast is encased in a block of polyurethane resin: like a prehistoric creature preserved in amber. However, Harrison’s work is a monster of our own time, created and immersed in acrylic only last year. Attempting to photograph such an object is not easy. Wherever I was standing, my reflection was captured. Perhaps that was Harrison’s intent. We can look at the otherness of the terrifying but make little effort to identify our own complicity in its creation. As Reichel puts it, bad theology is always at work in the creation of ‘us-and-them’ myths that strive to legitimate monstrous deeds. There are those who might think that the easy answer is to dump theology as a whole. However, disposing of words won’t abolish the things to which they refer. Theology – good theology – will always be needed, because human beings will never cease to contest questions about ultimate purposes, what is sacred, and how we treat one another as we seek to determine our destiny.

God in the City

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In the late 1980s I spent a year as a youth worker in the Isle of Dogs. The youth club operated in the crypt of Christ Church, and catered for local children up to the age of 11. Although I’d lived and studied in Hull, this was the first time I worked in an urban context. At that time much of the East End was undergoing the transformation from urban poverty to city banks and their associated wealth. Sparkling new buildings were springing up alongside docks where once no one had wanted to live. I was told that in those days taxi drivers had refused to drive into the island at night. During the 1980s the two communities, old and new, lived together uneasily. Some in the increasingly expensive gated estates, others in the council housing that was yet to be sold.

In my new role as Director of Leeds Church Institute I am once again reflecting on the relationship of ‘faith and the city’. Incidentally, it’s exactly 40 years since the report with that title was published by the Church of England, to be met with the ire of Mrs Thatcher and many other conservative voices. In the mildest of possible forms, perhaps this was the C of E’s modest response to the influence of liberation theology – the school of praxis and thought which arose chiefly in the favelas of Latin America. However, one of the criticisms of the report was its lack of a significant and developed theology to frame its analysis and recommendations. A subsequent publication, Theology in the City, responded to this criticism, partly arguing that the alleged lacuna arose from the misunderstanding of the more implicit theological approach Faith in the City had embodied.

During a year in Argentina I read Gutierrez’s classic work Teología de la liberación. Living in Córdoba and Buenos Aires, I grew more and more aware of the particular dynamics of city living, with rich and poor living cheek by jowl. A few metres apart, but separated in their different worlds by steel and security. Cities concentrate divisions in way often unseen in more rural settings. Gutierrez inspired a way of thinking that reflected his conviction, based on a liberative hermeneutics of the Bible, that God has a preferential love for the poor. This understanding led many followers of liberation theology to locate themselves alongside the poor, exhibiting a commitment to share and to learn before even considering the option to teach.

After years in which the power of the Church was used to contain and constrain liberation theology, the Pontificate of Francis marked a sea-change of significance. Rather than beginning with doctrine and only seeing the world through its parameters, Francis favoured attention to concrete situations and experiences as the place from which theology emerged. This was reflected most keenly in his persistent interest in the wellbeing of the poor and his sometimes stern address to the world’s wealthy and powerful (be they institutions or individuals).

The Church cannot abandon the city, because every city is its people. If cities shelter some of the poorest people in society then God’s preference and presence cannot be ignored. As a chaplain in Leeds for 16 years I was privileged to meet the whole spectrum of city dwellers although, poverty and illness being what they are, those encounters were weighted towards the most marginalised people in Leeds. In the conduct of funerals funded by the hospital (due to lack of means and/ore relatives) I visited homes whose meagre furnishings reminded me that, ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions’. It would seem that when the balance favours the rich, with wealth removing many of the burdens of everyday life, the opposite end of the scale descends; as the weight of poverty, exclusion and injustices mount, one on top of another. As Francis wisely knew, a rich Church will never be sufficiently open to allow God to use it as a means to rectify and redress the fundamental injustices of the city. As he declared shortly after coming into office: “How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor”.

Fear and Joy

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Perhaps the soldiers were sleeping because their task seemed so simple: to guard a dead man. In the painting, part of an altarpiece, only one soldier has been stirred by the strange sounds coming from the tomb. The feet of Christ stand simply on the grave slab, familiar to countless millions down the centuries by their telltale marks of blood.

The status of Jesus as dead and buried is suddenly transposed. Now, in the hour of resurrection, the guards are ‘so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men’.

The soldiers are scattered out of fear. The women at the tomb also disperse but with different sentiments. They are ‘afraid yet filled with joy’. The feet Christ places on the earth do not bring vengeance or a settling of scores. They stand in confident conviction that a new era has begun when peace is more than a balance of arms.

A very Happy Easter to all blog readers, and especially to those who have struggled through ‘A Sterne Lent’ to reach this joyful Eastertide.

Another reader’s response to the marbled page stencil in ‘A Sterne Lent’.

The Art of Not Taking the Deal

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

We are about the enter Holy Week. Many Christians will mark these days by attending additional church services and spending time in reflection. I never tire of reading the passion narratives because I have no doubt that in them lie the central themes of Christianity. There is a crowd in an city eager to give the inspiring young rabbi their adulation. The intimacy of close friends at supper on an important festival. The isolation of the garden outside the city walls, and then the bitter work of captivity; costly fidelity; suffering and death.

At a time when the world has become increasingly chaotic it is important to be reminded of Christ’s stillness before the powers of his day. The High Priest and Pilate undoubtedly saw the brewing popularity of Jesus as something that would be ended by his execution. On all the metrics of religious power and secular control, the Jesus who goes to the cross is done. The watching world could agree with Jesus’ last words: “It is finished”. Perhaps those two leaders saw it as the messy and unfortunate price to be paid for maintaining control; keeping the peace. The sacrifice of Jesus would enable things to stay as they were – and as they should be.

Maybe Jesus didn’t know the art of the deal? His time in the wilderness at the beginning of Lent suggest that he had set his face against compromises in his ministry. When he stood before Pilate he had no cards to play. Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say that he chose not to accept the terms of the game. Appearing to go meekly to his death probably confirmed to many of the leaders that Jesus simply didn’t understand the reality of the world he claimed to be saving. Sad, but there you go. One death wouldn’t change anything.

A Station of the Cross by Sepo b. Ntuluna from Tanzania, in the hotel Mattli Antoniushaus, Morschach – built on the grounds of the Franciscan Community in German-Speaking Switzerland.

Then there is the humanity of loss – of which we all know something. Mary caressing the body of her son. A parent unable to intervene to save her child. The powerlessness of love which cradles the life-left body of the son she would have done anything to save. This is the darkness of despair; the earth shaken; the light of the world put out. The day of absence.

‘Faith’ is perhaps the best answer as to why Jesus doesn’t do a deal. That our miserable card games take place inside a much, much bigger story than most of us are willing to acknowledge. Soldiers at the foot of the cross didn’t have cards, but they had dice. It would be beyond their imagining that 2000 years later the events of that sorry day would still be remembered. A miserable death a few hours before a dusk that would usher in the city’s shabbat. It would be hard to imagine something less important. It was ended – time to divvy up the possessions and go home.

“Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain”.

WH Vanstone from Hymn to the Creator in ‘Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense‘