John Henry Newman: a personal debt

Tomorrow, John Henry Newman is to be canonised in a ceremony at the Vatican. He will be the first English man or woman to be pronounced a saint since the seventeenth century. So this is an event of major significance to Christians in this country as well as worldwide.

And I mean Christians in an ecumenical sense, not just Catholics. For Newman was the most famous (some said notorious) Catholic convert of the nineteenth century. He was brought up as an Anglican with evangelical tendencies. But his studies of the Christian fathers and the medieval church led him progressively to contemplate a vision of the church that was larger in its embrace and more profound in its theological and spiritual reach than the protestantism in which he had been reared. As one of the leading Tractarians of the Oxford Movement launched in 1833, he preached and wrote energetically in defence of the Church of England as an organic part of the ancient catholic church, for the time being divided but always yearning for ultimate union.

That theological position proved unsustainable for Newman. Always a man of conscience and integrity, he came to realise that the logic of his developing convictions was pointing him away from Anglicanism and towards Roman Catholicism. He crossed the threshold in October 1845. It’s not correct to say that “the rest is history”. His was a questing, searching pilgrim soul, so beautifully and accurately described in his famous hymn Lead, kindly Light. Perhaps he was always too much of an Anglican to regard his conversion as any kind of terminus. Books like The Development of Doctrine articulated his belief that revelation, illumination, “faith seeking understanding” as Anselm said, never stops. “To live is to change” said Newman, “and to live long is to have changed much”. Even a cardinal of the Catholic Church!

On the eve of his canonisation, I want to recall the influence of John Henry Newman on my own formation as a Christian and a priest. In my teenage and student years, I was a fervent evangelical of the most conservative kind. I embraced Calvinism to a degree that was thought extreme even by Christian Union mentors. As an ordinand I inevitably chose to train at what was then regarded as the most reformed and protestant of all the Anglican evangelical theological colleges. (It amuses me now that some colleagues conjecture that I must have studied at Westcott House or Cuddesdon! Let the reader understand.)

In those days, nearly five decades ago, if you had a degree in theology, your training for ministry could be improvised around the Bishops’ modest academic requirements alongside gaining practical experience in pastoral ministry. My tutor sat down with me and asked what I thought I needed to do by way of study during my final year before ordination. I replied that my theology degree had given me a rigorous grounding in the Bible and the Fathers. But my knowledge of church history more or less stopped at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Perhaps I needed to dip my toe into modernity? My tutor’s response was immediate. “Your experience of church has been limited to protestantism. But there’s a bigger world out there. Have you ever read John Henry Newman’s Apologia?”

It’s one of those questions I’ll always be grateful for. Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua was published in 1864. It is his “defence of his own life” in response to Charles Kingsley’s attack on him for lacking honour and integrity in abandoning his Anglicanism. It’s one of the classics of spiritual autobiography of the Victorian or any other age. I found a copy in a secondhand bookshop and paid, I think, 20 pence for it. I don’t want to dramatise things, but it’s not too much to say that it changed my life.

As I began to read, I found I was struggling somewhat. Not with Newman’s limpid writing (he was an acknowledged master of English prose). It was his intellectual and spiritual thought-world. I almost said sound-world, an interesting comment on the almost aural effect of reading him. It was so different from, even alien to, what I was used to. This was a different kind of journey, or at least a differently described quest for holiness from what was familiar to me. We didn’t use the tiresome language of comfort-zones (being out of) in those innocent days, but this was where I was finding myself. Thank God for discomfort!

What changed everything were three insights in particular. The first was the realisation that Christian belief and the church's experience walk hand in hand. What we call “the tradition” isn’t a fixed immutable body of biblical texts or formal dogma so much as a living memory of how the church has reflected on its faith across the centuries. This is what Newman had come to call “the development of doctrine”. It echoed a saying of one of the Scottish Covenanters that I’d come to love: “God has more light and truth to shine out from his holy word”. I glimpsed how the formulation of Christian thought - any thought - was a dynamic process. Tradition means that which is “ handed on”. Newman’s reverence for tradition as a process recognised how each generation cherishes what it has received in order to pass it on to the next. It shouldn’t have been a startling discovery (not if I’d been paying attention to St Paul in 1 Corinthians).  But for me, a light had been switched on.

The second insight from the Apologia was about the place of conscience. For Newman, conscience was crucial in the forming of Christian mind and character. The externals of belief could never stand on their own, disconnected from their inner reception and embrace by the believer’s conscience. That’s about integrity and honour, "truth in the inward parts" as the Prayer Book version of Psalm 51 puts it, the very qualities Kingsley had accused Newman of lacking. And quite suddenly I realised that this was a personal dilemma for me too. It dawned on me that my evangelicalism was not going to survive this Tractarian scrutiny unchanged. And that would mean a serious renegotiation of my faith and my relationship with what I was coming to speak about as my own tradition. Again, I won’t dramatise by speaking of a “Here I stand” moment. But this profoundly disturbing yet liberating discovery of the role of conscience did, I think, prove life-changing.

Newman’s final gift to me was the spirituality with which his writing was imbued. Quite simply, I found it irresistible. Possibly for aesthetic reasons that bear closer  examination (how easy it is to be seduced by Newman!) I was becoming catholic not only in my thinking but also in my praying and feeling. I found myself increasingly at odds with evangelical worship, especially its relentless stream of words, its extraverted busyness and its lack of feeling for the numinous. I can see that this probably sounds like a caricature, but it’s what I was experiencing at the time. No doubt personality type, temperament, comes into liturgy and spirituality. If so, I owe to Newman the instinct to take it more seriously. Eventually I came to serve as a curate in what we would now call an affirming catholic parish where they wore eucharistic vestments, swung the censer from time to time, preached a socially inclusive intelligent Christianity and reserved the sacrament. How much I learned there! It set the direction of my entire ministry.

So it seemed fitting to include a hymn by Newman in our marriage service, “Praise to the Holiest in the height”. A year later my wife sang Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with the local choral society and I heard that great work for the first time. Newman’s poem, from which the hymn is drawn, is not without its flaws. But somehow that performance in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre set the seal on a personal journey I knew would be lifelong.

Decades later I found myself in the company of - well, I won’t name him because he is a well-known church leader. Without any preamble, as if he’d been saving up for this moment, he looked me in the eye: “Michael, back in the seventies we were looking to you as a future leader of evangelicals in the Church of England. It all looked so promising. What happened to you?” It was hardly the question I’d been expecting as we sat over a cup of tea enjoying Belgian biscuits. But I didn’t hesitate with my answer. “I read John Henry Newman” I replied. “That’s all.” “Ah. I see now” he said and smiled. And changed the subject.

After all these years, how better to acknowledge the debt than to echo Newman’s own praise to his Creator and Redeemer, the Holiest in the height: “in all his words most wonderful, most sure in all his ways!”

** There are many Newmans. Like all great men and women, he encounters us in different ways. Here's another blog about him on the Laudable Practice website. It's a somewhat different take on him, but well worth reading. This week's edition of The Tablet also has a number of thought-provoking articles.

Northumbrians: a personal take on a new book

On 5 May 1973 my wife and I became engaged. That was the day Sunderland won the Cup Final. My wife's parents were ardent Black Cat supporters. We figured that if Sunderland were to win, her father would say yes to anything, and if they lost he'd be past caring. 

Reader, I married her. And married into her North East family. Her father was from Consett, her mother from Wearside. They hadn't lived in the North East since the war. When I arrived on the scene, they had retired to the Yorkshire Dales. But the region was in their blood. My initiation into North East culture included being presented to the family matriarch who lived in Sunderland and of whom everyone seemed in awe, and an evening drinking in a well-known watering hole just down the road where the only females to be seen were serving behind the bar. (Brown ale, you ask? I'm not saying. It would be a cliché too far.)

To a young Londoner it was all very strange, even exotic. I'd only visited the North East once before, as a schoolboy applying to Durham University to read maths. I've never forgotten the November afternoon I got out of the train at Durham station. It was bleak and grey, the kind of day the North East does so well. Above the rooftops huddled below I took in the apparition of the Castle and Cathedral not, it seemed as the light began to fade, anchored to the bedrock of their acropolis but floating ethereally above. I walked through the darkening streets up to the Castle where I was to spend the night before my interview. I wondered how I had come to be so far from home. Did it cross my mind that one day this would be my home? Not for a moment. I didn't go to Durham University in the end. But the seed of my fascination with northernness had been sown.

A decade later, we were living in rural north Northumberland. That repeated north I found to be both romantic and unsettling. I'd become Vicar of Alnwick. It was my first incumbency. I came to love the place and its people, and to cherish the memory of the ancient Christianity that flourished in Saxon times thanks to the Northumbrian saints like Oswald and Aidan, Cuthbert and Hild. But I won't deny that living and working in a northern country market town posed challenges to a young vicar brought up in the metropolitan suburbs of north London. Was this because any small town was inevitably a more self-contained world? The empty landscapes were sublimely beautiful, but their silence and remoteness could feel unnerving at times. Or was the discomfort due to its northernness, a culture shock that would wear off in time? (It took three decades, I was told, even to begin to belong up here near the Scottish border.)

We went away, but the pull of Northumbria was in my blood. In time we found our way back like returning exiles. "It's marvellous to be back in the North East" I heard myself say at my installation as Dean in Durham Cathedral. I wrote many blogs during my thirteen years in Durham, so I won't say more here. Except to recall one conversation I had with a college principal during my first year as Dean. "Michael" he said, "you'll never understand this Cathedral or the North East until you've been to your first Miners' Gala". So it proved. I began to feel (not just observe) something of the bonds of loyalty and solidarity felt among the North East's mining communities, forged by the shared perils of mining, the common experience of disaster, the loss of livelihood and dignity when the pits closed and the frustration that their people had been all but forgotten about in London where power lay and decisions were taken. I also learned how old wounds ran deep, such as the bitter memories of the miners' strike of 1984 that so divided workers and their families.

Finally (to bring the story up to date) we retired four years ago back to rural Northumberland. We live in what was once a pit manager's house, named after a Tyneside collier ship that went down in the 1880s. It’s right by the railway, Britain’s earliest east-west route that was open when Queen Victoria came to the throne. The River South Tyne tumbles down from the North Pennines a hundred yards away. How very North Eastern. St Cuthbert was here too, once upon a time: the medieval church up on the hill is dedicated to him. It was probably built to commemorate one of the halts made by his community as they travelled the North in the ninth century with the remains of their saints and the Lindisfarne Gospels looking for a permanent resting-place. But an even more ancient story is told here by the Roman Wall as it strides through our parish on the crest of the Whin Sill. There's nothing like the presence of antiquity to put things (like Brexit) into perspective, especially when you find you have what looks plausibly like a substantial Roman stone mortared into your garden wall. Who are we and where have we come from, it seems to ask as I gaze out at it out from the kitchen window. I want to reciprocate with the same question. If only stones could talk!

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These memories have been stirred by reading Dan Jackson's enjoyable new book The Northumbrians: North-East England and Its People - A New History. (Point of order: do you hyphenate North East or not? When I published my own book on the Christian heritage of the region, Landscapes of Faith, my publisher decided that we wouldn't. So out of habit, I don't. The cover of Northumbrians hyphenates but Dan Jackson's text doesn't. Read what you like into that.)

I've loved this book. Perhaps I've read it too quickly because it is so readable. Its take on the North East is refreshingly different from so much other writing on the region. For all that it's called A New History, it doesn't follow any kind of timeline. Nor does it linger especially on landscape, architecture, literature and art as ends in themselves, rather, for what they tell us about the people whose land this is. For the book is a study of people and communities: at work and leisure, in war and peace, in learning and politics, public life and industry, and not least, in the ordinary days where life is lived in home and countryside, city, town and village.

Dan Jackson can write about these things so well, not only because he is a good historian but, much more importantly, because he is a native Northumbrian himself. He writes as a local from inside the experience of North Easternness - you can smell it in his prose and sense that he knows what he's talking about. He is ready to share his own experience of what it is like to grow up and live in the region - inhabit it, I mean, in a way no incomer like me ever can. So this is a very personal book. It's clear that he loves the North East and is proud to be a Northumbrian. But he doesn't rhapsodise as some literature is prone to do. He knows it too well, is too alive to its paradoxes, struggles and real pain, not least due to the steep decline in heavy industry that once made it the power-house of the nation. The book is all the better for having been written from the perspective of a critical friend.

If I had to recommend a book to someone moving to the North East for the first time to help them orientate themselves in a strange but beguiling land, this would be it. I could have done with it forty years ago. I might suggest that they begin by reading the first and last chapters. The opening chapter sets the scene and explores what and who we mean by the idea of "Northumbrian". The closing chapter ponders what the North East is becoming in the twenty-first century, what we should celebrate in the region, and what could be different and better. You'd expect me to say that I was particularly interested in the discussion about why our region voted so decisively for Brexit in 2016 (and before that, against the setting-up of a regional assembly in 2004). What's so helpful here is to begin to understand how the wider context of North East history, politics and culture have all played a part in shaping its assumptions.

For me, blown into the North East as a migrant from the south (and not properly "English" at that, having a German parent), Dan Jackson raises important questions about place, identity and belonging. I suppose I am one of Theresa May's "citizens of everywhere" who has called lots of places "home". She disparagingly went on to say that this made us "citizens of nowhere". But that's a non sequitur. It's true that part of me would love to apply the epithet Northumbrian to myself. I've lived and worked in the North East, retired here and God willing, expect to die here. So I envy Dan Jackson his authentic Northumbrian identity and the sense of place and belonging that come with it. But I know that it can never quite be mine, any more than I can still call myself a Londoner, except as identifying my place of origin. His book has helped me to see that.

My own relationship with the North East is more complex, perhaps because it's also coloured by an ever more insistent awareness that I am not simply British but European. But I can say that there is no other part of England where I would rather find myself at this late stage of life. There's nowhere alse that the bonds of affection and adoptive loyalty have ever run so deep. Which is why I've found so much to treasure in this book.

On Books, Waves and Not Getting Angry with Rascals

“I have taken so kindly to idleness that I can’t tear myself away from it. So either I amuse myself with books, of which I have a good stock here at Antium, or I count the waves - the weather is unsuitable for mackerel fishing... And my sole form of political activity is to hate the rascals, and even that I do without anger.”

This is Cicero in 59BCE. He had retired from his year as consul with more time to read, write and ponder. If only we had his Secret History, published posthumously because of its fierce denunciations of his enemies. This famous book is lost to us. It would have had much to say about the turbulent times he was living through as his cherished Roman Republic entered its death-throes. The waves he watched were not only those that lapped the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. There were political waves aplenty to watch, and despair at, and try not to get angry with the rascals who were making them.

Remind me of anyone?

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the Sunday my wife and I said goodbye to Durham Cathedral. I had been Dean there for nearly thirteen years. The historic Deanery was home to us for a lot longer than anywhere else we had lived as a couple and a family. It was a poignant day as I wrote at the time. But we soon settled into our new home in the Tyne Valley, and to the gentler rhythms of retirement in the countryside. I’ve blogged from the “front line” of retirement from time to time here, here, and recently (particularly significant for me, this one), here.

Cicero’s self-deprecating take on retirement (amid the demands of his legal practice and speech-making) rings bells for me. We have a good stock of books here at Haydon Bridge, and I’ve fulfilled a lifelong ambition to work in a bookshop (as a volunteer every Wednesday afternoon in the local Oxfam bookshop). I can’t tell you how marvellous it is to indulge a love of reading without feeling guilty.

I could write a whole blog - perhaps I shall one day - about some of the books I’ve enjoyed in the past four years - biography, railways, art, religion, poetry, politics, literature, classical history, music, the life and landscapes of North East England - and whatever else looks interesting. Retirement has demonstrated what I always thought was true of me, that I am a born dilettante. I take comfort from the Italian origin of that word, which means someone who “takes delight”, just as amateur literally means “a lover” (of activities).

“Counting the waves”: well, we don’t have many of those here in upstream Haydon Bridge, though the South Tyne creates an impressive standing wave as it sweeps over the weir below the eponymous old bridge. When the river is in spate, there are always plenty of us on the bridge contemplating this wave (and hoping that the Tyne knows its place and doesn’t invade our cellars, as Storm Desmond drove it to do just three months after we had retired here).

And contemplation comes into things in retirement. Cicero evidently enjoyed his mackerel fishing, perhaps because it made for enjoyable hours in the open air, and encouraged a reflective outlook on life, something that Izaak Walton was to write winsomely about in his classic book The Compleat Angler. For me, not an angler, there are the pleasures of walking in the Northumberland Hills, pottering round the Roman sites along Hadrian’s Wall, and other delights on offer in the beautiful environment of the Tyne Valley.

The ancient philosophers wrote about the dichotomy between the active and contemplative aspects of healthy human living. The spiritual tradition found emblems of these two sides of life in the gospel figures of Mary and Martha: Martha, busy caring for the home and managing its hospitality, frustrated at Mary whom she resented sitting and listening to Jesus when there were jobs to do. If we are lucky enough to have worked, the chances are that we have invested heavily in the active life. But retirement, with its invitation to lay activity aside at least to an extent, offers the opportunity to develop a more reflective outlook, nurture our contemplative side. I would go as far as to say that a healthy retirement requires us to do this, and learn how to quieten our spirits by being present and attentive to the moment. After all, what is contemplation but purposeful idleness? This seems to me to be the kind of spirituality we should cultivate in older age.

This is the clue to Cicero’s final point about observing politics, hating rascals but not getting angry. I hadn’t expected retirement to be so dominated by national politics and the antics of rascals. Within three months of retiring, the EU Referendum was called. I found myself writing, speaking and blogging about it, spending many waking hours reading news reports and commentary, immersing myself in it as a matter of very personal concern. (You’ll find all my blogs on this website - just trawl through the content dating from 2016 onwards.) Why was I lying awake worrying about it? Because as a child of Anglo-German parentage, Europeanism was instilled in me at a very early age. I could not bear the thought that the UK might leave the European Union, this project inaugurated by people of vision who wanted to secure peace in our continent for the sake of future generations. I still can’t.

I confess that all my life, I’ve never felt so angry about British politics as I have done in these years of retirement. “Rascals” is a benign word to describe the kind of deceit and chicanery we’ve witnessed from hard Brexiters since the campaign was launched. And yes, a propensity for hatred comes into things if you are a man or woman who believes in something passionately and wants to safeguard it against those who would wilfully dismantle it. I’m not defending myself by pointing to those Psalms where the author puts into words his visceral hatred towards those whom he talks about as his, and God’s, enemies. Yes, it can soon collapse into an ugly self-righteousness. I can be prone to that. But I simply want to notice that anger and hatred are present in the experience of the people of God. It’s not edited out of their prayer.

Dealing with anger is a spiritual issue. I really do not want to be angry in my spirit as I grow old. In Psalm 37, the Psalmist advises: “fret not thyself because of the ungodly”. The secret is, I think, the contemplative spirit Cicero exhibits. Stoic teaching (which he admired) and the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible are at one here. A quiet eye inculcates a quiet spirit - not without feelings and passions, but not ruled by them, especially the negative ones. “They who are run away with by their lust or anger have quoted the command over themselves” writes Cicero in a piece called “On Grief of Mind”. A contemplative take on politics, even the politics of madness - this is what I’m trying to cultivate. This means channelling anger towards rascals into positive action, discovering how hatred can be transcended, if not by love, then at least by what R. S. Thomas called in one of his poems, “willed gentleness”. And try to respect and to disagree well, even when we differ so profoundly.

How am I getting on? Fitfully, I think. Brexit is a big test of my Christianity. But wisdom, with its insights into who and what I am, and why human behaviour (including mine) is so wayward and liable to corruption, comes to the rescue. Contemplation brings a larger perspective. And this bigger picture is an essential spiritual aspect of ageing if our lives are not to be narrowed as we face our mortality. Today’s anniversary is an opportunity to pause and take stock.

So books, waves and not getting angry are all part of the same picture. Perhaps it’s time I took up fishing?

Called to the Priesthood, Called to be Lay

In one sense, there’s nothing provocative about that title. When we are ordained deacon, priest or bishop, we don’t cease to be members of the laos, the community of the baptised, the holy common people of God. I’ve been a lay person all my Christian life. That’s been fundamental to my vocation as a priest. The priesthood has been how my obedience to the call of my baptism has been shaped for nearly half a century.

Discerning our vocation is something we all need to do as people of faith. Often it’s far from straightforward. If only there could be Damascene moments that clearly pointed to the destined path ahead! But as we know, life is not usually like that. It can take years to recognise and respond to the call of God to take some particular direction in life. That call may at first have been no more than a whisper amid the babble of voices that competed for our attention. It almost certainly took a lot of listening, and prayer, and the accompaniment of wise, experienced friends before we were ready to say yes, even tentatively.

In my own case, it was about seven years from beginning to explore the possibility of ordination to standing before a bishop on my ordination day. How tentative those words are sounding now that I look back on the experience 44 years later! Beginning, explore, possibility. But I like words like those. They are provisional and don’t claim more than they should. Before we can rise up with confident wings like eagles, or run and not be weary, we need to learn to walk and not faint, to borrow an image from the Book of Isaiah (40.31). We need to discover how to feel our way more slowly, in God’s time and at his pace.

I think retirement is like this because it entails reimagining life in a wholly new way. You have to ask the question, what does God want me to become, and to do, here, now, in this stage of life we’re learning to call the third age? I’ve blogged on this before here, and here, and here. It’s a work in progress as I keep saying. Each time I write about it, there is something new to say about how “inhabiting” retirement is working out in the lived experience of it. And just as the journey of entering stipendiary ministry to begin with took years, so leaving it is also a journey of years, not months or days. Even if it looked as though you were working one Sunday and on the Monday morning you woke up and lo! you had retired!

I blogged a while ago about exploring vocation in the third age. I’ve since become much clearer about this. I’ve reached a (possibly startling?) conclusion that’s implied by the title of this blog even if it’s the less obvious reading. It is this: that just as I was once called to the priesthood and gladly gave my working life to fulfilling that vocation in the best way I knew how, I now discern an equally insistent call to live as a lay person once again. 

What do I mean by that?

Simply, that my way of serving God in the world and in the church will no longer be as an ordained man in public ministry. I no longer see myself called to preside at the eucharist, conduct baptisms, weddings and funerals, preach sermons, give lectures or lead retreats and quiet days. I’ve loved doing all these things and regard them as among the most privileged kinds of ministry anyone could undertake. I’ve also been immensely fortunate in living and working as a priest in beautiful environments surrounded by wonderful communities and colleagues. As I look back on my career as a curate, a theological educator, a parish priest, a cathedral canon and as a dean in two dioceses, I realise how much I have to be thankful for.

But now in retirement, the time has come to lay all this aside. I need to hand on the baton to the next generation of clergy (in whom, I’m glad to say, I have complete confidence). This decision doesn’t reflect any regret or negativity on my part. I may sometimes be grumpy with the Church of England that I serve (who isn’t?), but there is no falling out, no crisis, no parting of friends. I feel wholly positive, even excited, about renegotiating life on a new set of terms. It will open up opportunities for discovering, I hope, a different quality of life in which there will being more time for  family and friendship as well as volunteering, travel and recreation, and, I hope, productive writing. And of course to understand and make my own the spirituality of growing old. I shall continue to serve on the church committees I’m currently a member of. I intend to go on seeing clergy and ordinands for mentoring and spiritual accompaniment for as long as they want me to.  I shall go  on trying to  support the parish and diocese in whatever way I can.

I suggested in my last blog that this was the way things seemed to be leading. But I admit to being deeply influenced by watching the TV documentary about the mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker a few months ago. I wrote about this at the time. She made the courageous decision in her 50s to say farewell to her career in opera, and a few years later, to lay aside her recital and recording activity as well. She was at the height of her powers, and was being followed by an adoring public. In her book Full Circle, she chronicled her final year on the operatic stage and offered insights into what it was like to know that so much of her music-making was for the last time. Of retirement she said that it wasn’t about leaving a life behind so much as engaging with it more fully, in a more wholesome way. There was work to be done at that stage of life that she did not want to neglect. Human work. Heart work. The work of love. I warmed greatly to that way of putting it.

The fact that I turn seventy next Easter has concentrated the mind. I am no Janet Baker (if only!) but the human and spiritual issues feel similar: the need to change direction, the need to pay attention to matters I’ve neglected thus far. There is a time to speak and a time to be silent, says the preacher in Ecclesiastes. My time to fall silent in public ministry is coming. I won’t pretend it’s not hard, at times, to contemplate it. But it’s what my discernment  process late in life has brought me to recognise should happen.

I admit that I’m haunted by the ontology. Once a priest, always a priest. That character (as it’s called in catholic theology) is indelible. So what does it mean to lay aside the practice of priesthood, hold the order but not exercise it? I don’t know, yet. But I do know that there would inevitably come a time when old age or illness or disability would mean facing this question in any case. In my seventieth year, stamina is not what it once was. Hundreds of clergy are forced by circumstance to lay aside the exercise of their priesthood, and most do it with grace and dignity. If my discernment leads me to take this step in a more intentional way, anticipate the endgame so to speak, it’s no different in principle. And as I’ve said, living out a lay vocation in the service of God and neighbour is not pretence or play-acting. It’s what I already am and have always been.

I wrote to the Bishop of Newcastle, the Diocese in which I was once an incumbent and where we live in retirement, to outline my thinking. I hold her permission to officiate (PTO) so she had a right to know. She asked to see me so that I could explain more fully. It was a good meeting, not least because it helped to have to put inchoate thoughts into words in the presence of a kind and  sympathetic - but shrewd - listener. “It feels a bit all or nothing” she remarked. Maybe. But when you arrive at a crossroads, for whatever reason, you have to make a choice. So we reached a settlement. The deal was that I would not send her back my PTO. Not yet, anyway. “You never know” she said. True. I might need to come out of retirement to help in an emergency at the vicarage across the road. I might be asked to preside at a family rite of passage. I’ve promised to preach at the funerals of a former churchwarden and of my closest friend if they die before me. I suppose a clean ending would have pandered to my tidy mind. But instinct tells me that the Bishop was right.

Nevertheless, I am now entering the home stretch of what I’m calling my formal public ministry. I have preaching commitments during the coming months that I need to honour, including during Holy Week next year. These engagements will be all the more precious because they will be among the last I undertake. And then?

Greatly daring, I wrote to the incumbent of the church where I became a chorister at the age of eleven. In that place, the whole Christian journey began for me. What I owe it is incalculable. So I wondered whether I might recognise the part that church and its people and music had played in my life and say thank you. It’s not that I want to make an event out of preaching “for the last time”. Simply that I would love to share something of my Christian and vocational story with the community where the seed was first planted all those years ago. He has been generous enough to welcome that idea. So some time next year, aged three score years and ten, I’ll have the chance to acknowledge the debt. And in my inmost self, say farewell to a ministry that has meant everything to me. And always will.

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Here’s a link to a recent feature in the Church Times that’s relevant to this blog.

Memories of the Proms: on Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

For me it’s still summertime. That’s nothing to do with the weather, even if meteorologists’ autumn began on 1 September. Nor is it to do with the nights drawing in - astronomers’ autumn arrives with the equinox in three weeks’ time. No, I define summer by the Proms. For as long as there are nightly concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, broadcast on Radio 3, as far as I’m concerned it’s summer. The last night of the Proms this year is on 14 September. So my autumn begins the next day. 

I started going to the Promenade Concerts when I was a teenager living in London. I’d learned to love live music through the Robert Mayer Children’s Concerts that used to take place on Saturday mornings at the Festival Hall in the 1950s and 60s. The programmes included a good deal of twentieth century music that was new to this young audience. An electrifying performance of Walton’s Portsmouth Point Overture stands out in my memory, I can also remember being awed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who must have been in the last year of his life, coming on to the stage to be applauded after a performance of one of his works - maybe his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis or The Lark Ascending.

My memories of the Proms are many. At the Albert Hall I heard for the first time so much of the music that’s stayed with me all my life. It was an irreplaceable introduction to the canon of the greatest baroque, classical and romantic orchestral works, and the choral repertoire too, for my piano teacher sang with the BBC Choral Society and used to distribute free Proms tickets to her lucky  pupils. 

Not all my Proms memories are musical. As I look back to the 1960s, it’s a heady concoction of teenage recollections that come into my mind. There was the frisson of taking girls to the concerts (will I ever hear Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony without the mental image of...well, it would be indiscreet to say any more). Then there was my coming to a conscious Christian faith during those years, which gave the sacred music I heard at the Proms particular significance: Haydn’s Creation, for example, and Bach’s Mass in B Minor. And one evening, queuing with my friends outside the Albert Hall, suffering an attack of tachycardia and wondering if my wildly beating heart would ever return to normal, or whether I was destined to die on a pavement in South Kensington. If only I could remember what music was performed that evening. I wonder why I’ve forgotten.

There’s one piece of music that I overwhelmingly associate with the Proms, and which I used to  return to year after year. This was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Choral. In those days, this mighty work was always performed on the penultimate night of the season, the final Friday evening. Some of the other music I heard at the Proms I’d already got to know through listening to my parents’ LP collection at home. But the Ninth was not to be found there. Of the Beethoven symphonies, they had only the Third (Eroica) and the Eighth, whose opening theme had been adopted by them as their personal “call sign”. All the others I discovered in the Royal Albert Hall. Including the immortal Ninth.

The symphony made an extraordinary impression on me. It felt like a miraculous achievement, music that seemed to transcend the ordinary world by speaking from another realm entirely. Even today, I don’t know of any other work that has such an arresting opening as the Ninth. It begins with a shimmering whisper that initiates one of the greatest crescendos in all of music culminating in the dramatic statement of the opening theme. You know, if the performance is up to it (which it always was at the Proms), that this is going to be a uniquely powerful experience. It never failed to move me then. It never fails to move me now.

The final, choral, movement is, of course, Beethoven’s setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy. In those days, the words and music had not yet acquired the European associations they now have: it was only in 1972 that the Council of Europe, in an inspired decision, adopted it as the anthem of Europe. But you could hardly listen to it without catching the optimistic spirit of Enlightenment internationalism. Alle Menschen werden Brüder wrote Schiller in a text clearly endorsed with enthusiasm by Beethoven in his ecstatic music, “all humanity will be brothers and sisters”. It was a powerful message in the era of the Cold War when we were living with the recent memory of the Cuba Missile Crisis in 1962.

I think I glimpsed on those Friday nights at the Proms the capacity of great music to forge people together in a community that, for a while, can transcend us. Beethoven’s Ninth seemed to epitomise a global vision of peace, freedom and happiness that we could all endorse. In a recent book, the renowned pianist Stephen Hough describes the Proms as “the greatest music festival in the world”. In Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More, he says: “the Proms has an important social function. We should not take for granted music’s extraordinary power to unite, that spell of solidarity when over six thousand people are moved as if by one heart.” Yes, I thought as I read those words, I recognise that experience. 

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is still performed every year at the Proms. But sadly, no longer on that last Friday night of the season. That evening always felt to me like a summing up of all the glorious music we had enjoyed over the summer, a final spiritual statement of human aspiration and joy before the more playful fun and games of the last night. When the Ninth made its annual appearance and heralded the end of another Proms season, the Albert Hall seemed like a holy place. Can’t we have that Friday evening ceremony back, please?

No matter if not. The Ninth will always be one of those universal works of art that are emblematic of our human longings and hopes. It touches our souls at the most profound of levels. It holds out a vision of life together as one human family. It inspires us to go on praying and working for a world in which we are at peace with one another. It urges us and encourages us never to give up in the pursuit of that joyful vision. Joy, it says, transforms everything. And joy will have the last word.  

Which is why, when you phone me, what I’ll hear on my mobile is the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Ode to Joy. If I don’t answer straight away, don’t hang up. I’m simply enjoying the music. 

Proroguing Parliament: how “cavalier disregard” endangers democracy

The words have nothing to do with each other, of course. To prorogue is to ask for a deferment (pro + rogare). It has nothing to do with roguery. At least, not etymologically.

And yet Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament feels to many of us to be the action of a rogue. At a stroke it delivers all power to the executive, unchallenged by Parliament. Select committees cannot meet, so ministers are not held to account anywhere for their actions. At a time of national crisis, the elected members who represent us in Parliament are rendered voiceless. All formal debate is stifled at a blow. To silence Parliament at such a time like this is nothing short of a shocking undermining of democracy. 

I’m not going to rehearse the arguments here. I’m not a constitutional historian or an expert on parliamentary process. It may well turn out that to prorogue Parliament is perfectly legal. That is for the lawyers now to determine under judicial review. No doubt The Queen was advised that she could safely accede to the Prime Minister’s request, indeed, that she had no alternative.

But legality is not the real point here. It’s whether the decision to prorogue is ethical, judicious and wise. And whether it’s free of the charge of duplicity, given that a Queen’s Speech does not require proroguing for more than a few days. Members of Mr Johnson’s cabinet are on record as having said during the Conservative leadership contest that they could not support suspending Parliament in order to achieve Brexit by 31 October. No one believes (whatever some may say) that curtailing the Brexit debate in Parliament does not lie at the heart of this otherwise needless decision. 

I don’t think the British public will be fooled by it, at least not for long. Elected members from all opposition parties, always jealous for their parliamentary privileges, are outraged. A growing chorus of voices in the Conservative party itself is expressing alarm and dissent. Others are keeping silent, perhaps embarrassed by a decision that leaves them deeply conflicted. 

My own MP here in Hexham constituency, Guy Opperman, is perhaps one of these. He voted Remain in the referendum, and represents a constituency that also voted Remain by a small majority. But about proroguing Parliament, his Twitter feed has said nothing so far. So I challenged him in a tweet this morning. I asked: “Does @GuyOpperman believe that: 1 it’s the right thing to do because it will deliver #Brexit, ‘do or die’? 2 It’s the wrong thing to do because it subverts parliamentary sovereignty? Or 3 it’s a regrettable act, but necessary to concentrate minds?” 

Perhaps Mr Opperman’s media advisers are telling him to say nothing. Maybe personal integrity and party loyalty pull in opposite directions. No loyal MP goes off-message without considerable provocation. But possibly his silence is conveying precisely the message that his democratic one-nation principles are being placed under considerable strain by his leader’s actions. Who can say? I’m trying to put the best interpretation on his silence, but I’m conjecturing. I’ve written personally to him to express my dismay. I look forward to his reply. He is more than welcome to comment on this blog too. This is not a time to keep quiet about these deeply troubling developments. Elected members are there to engage. Interrogating their words and actions is part of what it means to be a citizen.

Our parliamentary system is the cornerstone of the nation’s governance. It’s why so much was made of the sovereignty of Parliament during the referendum campaign. I did not think that the Brexiters’ rallying cry “take back control!” would mean an assault by the executive on Parliament itself. This should be a matter of the utmost concern to all parliamentarians in both Houses, and to those for whom they speak, either as their directly elected representatives or as those charged with the scrutiny of legislation that affects the people of this nation.

Which brings me to offer one final observation. I think that the prorogation of Parliament puts the Church of England bishops in the House of Lords in a particularly difficult position. They sit in Parliament to share in the guardianship of the nation’s spiritual, moral and political health. They are therefore as much the champions of our democratic freedoms as everyone else in the two Houses. As the spokesmen and women of the Established Church of England, are they not bound to deplore this erosion of parliamentary democracy at a time of crisis in the strongest possible terms? Will they not be compelled to protest against prorogation out of their concern for the wellbeing of the people towards whom they have a duty of care?

A number of bishops published an open letter earlier this week about the consequences of a No Deal Brexit. It was a good piece of writing that deserves careful study. It’s unfortunate that it was overshadowed by the simultaneous announcement of the prorogation of Parliament. But uncannily, a paragraph of their text spoke directly into the big news that was breaking that day. They said: “The sovereignty of Parliament is not just an empty term. It is based on institutions to be honoured and respected: our democracy is endangered by cavalier disregard for these.”

The bishops could hardly have known how prescient these words would turn out to be. Honour and respect are precisely what are lacking in the Prime Minister’s cynical decision to suspend parliamentary process. Cavalier disregard is precisely how to describe this act of chicanery. 

I’m delighted that the bishops have found their voice after so long (though I’m wondering why not all the Diocesan bishops signed the letter). My question now is, how are they going to make sure that the questions they pose in their letter, especially in the paragraph I’ve quoted, are heard by those who need to pay attention? It seems to me that the bishops have no option but to speak further about honouring and respecting our democratic institutions, and to point out in no uncertain terms how we will not, as a church and as a nation, tolerate cavalier disregard for them. 

The question, as I’ve said, is not whether prorogation is against the letter of the law. Rather, it’s that it is utterly opposed to the spirit of the hard-won legislation that guarantees democracy in our country. We urge the bishops, along with their fellow peers and elected members, not to concede this fundamental point. As good parliamentarians, the bishops must bear witness in the House of Lords. And they must do this at the earliest possible opportunity. 

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Update at 1758 today, 30 August: Guy Opperman MP has now blogged about this. 

The Benefits of Brexit

Yes, you read that correctly. I want to write about the benefits of Brexit. It may be news to you that there could be any. Or at least, that I might imagine so. Am I losing my head?

I don't think so. For the avoidance of doubt, I've not changed my mind about Brexit. I believe it to be a disastrous decision for the United Kingdom. If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I've rehearsed the arguments ad nauseam. To me, it makes no sense either economically or politically. It cuts across the idea that I imagined was becoming mainstream opinion, that we are better off together than alone, that a world in which we collaborate to tackle the threats we face is more likely to be one in which we all live more safely and at peace with one another, care more effectively for the poor and vulnerable, share our resources in combating the climate emergency, and have more likelihood of flourishing. Pooling our sovereignty gives us leverage to achieve what is beyond the reach of any of our peoples separately. To me as a Christian, this comes down to loving our neighbour as ourselves. The best future for our world is based on relationships and community, not on isolation and self-interest.

I've not changed my mind about any of this. If anything, I believe in these (to me) self-evident benefits of EU membership more strongly than I ever did, the more I listen to the spurious arguments against them.

It's these very arguments, in fact, that lead me to think that Brexit could bring benefits after all. I have two in mind. The lesser benefit would be for the UK finally to rid the EU of the burden we have become to it. When you are a thorn in someone else's side, the kindest thing to do is to remove yourself from a relationship that is giving the other party so much grief. We don't deserve the longsuffering patience our European friends have shown to us British since 2015. And they don't need, and never needed, our foot-dragging, curmudgeonly, resentful attitude towards them as the EEC and then the EU, our reluctance ever to become fully-fledged Europeans who pull our weight in this family of nations.

The greater benefit would be that Brexit, hard or soft, would provide a response to David Cameron's endlessly repeated mantra before the referendum campaign, when he tried to renegotiate the UK's EU membership. "What's in it for Britain?" he kept asking, "What's in it for us?"

Here's my answer. What Brexit would (will?) achieve is quite simply to make it clear beyond any doubt that the UK has now become a very ordinary, very average, unexceptional middleweight nation. It no longer has a special role in the world, or at least a role that's any more special than any other nation. It has lost any credible claim to exceptionalism. It is one nation among many, better than some, not as good as others, a middling kind of power in global politics and economic strength that can expect to be overtaken in terms of influence, wealth and political clout by a dozen other nations in the next few decades.

Why would this be a benefit to Britain?

Simply because it would require us to pursue a more modest way of being in the world. From being a significant world power with enormous moral influence and reach across the globe, and with a strong sense of a unique British destiny, we would have to become used to a less exalted, more humble role such as we have not been had since at least the eighteenth century. We would have to learn to know our place.

All this would pose something of a spiritual and moral crisis for the United Kingdom. For if we were to learn true humility, it would require us as a nation to become a great deal more self-aware, more spiritually and emotionally intelligent, than we have been during this decade. It has been a national embarrassment to watch ourselves behaving as if we were suffering from some kind of corporate psychotic episode, a collective nervous breakdown. It's been instructive, if cruel, to read the commentary on Brexit in the overseas media, and see ourselves as others see us. We have become a source of bafflement even to our allies, and of scornful ridicule to our enemies. Brexit has already demonstrated its capacity to humble us in the sight of others. And this can only increase as the clock ticks down towards Hallowe'en and, as seems increasingly likely, we crash out of the European Unon without a deal.

The biblical and classical stories of what we tend to call a "fall" are essentially about how peoples, nations and individuals have to face the truth about themselves as a result of some tragic flaw or misplaced hubris, when grasp exceeds reach and we are toppled from some place of privilege or pride. This seems to me to be the crisis we are reaching in Britain. A crisis is literally a "judgment", and implicit in the idea of "fall" is that of nemesis, just deserts that are reaped not as a result of some external intervention but because of what we do to ourselves through our own presumption, how decisions and their consequences draw out of ourselves a hitherto unguessed potential for self-harm if not self-destruction.

In the case of Brexit, I think we can ascribe a good deal of this to the naked self-interest (not to say self-importance) that has dominated the EU debate for years. Instead of asking how our membership could benefit other members of the Union, all that has seemed to matter to us has been our own profit. And as the gospel says, if we strive to gain the whole world, we put at risk our own soul. This, I fear, is the condition Britain is reaching, may already have reached. Brexit has driven us to the brink of spiritual, ethical and moral bankruptcy. Appeals to collaborate for the sake of social justice, peace-making, security, the environment and the welfare of the most needy members of our society fall on increasingly deaf ears. The clamour is "do or die", Brexit at all costs, deal or no deal. If ever a nation was suffering a nervous breakdown that clouded judgment and common sense, this is it.

Which is why I'm reluctantly coming to the view that Brexit may actually be necessary if we are to come to our senses and be healed of this craziness. Could it be that to learn to see ourselves as a rather ordinary offshore island could be good for the national psyche? Could it be that this fall from perceived privilege could give us back our soul?  Could it be that the sheer shock of Brexit teaches us lessons we are incapable of learning in any other way. that it could bring us to our senses? I'm thinking of the prodigal son who lost everything in his far country, and only then began to find himself again and make the long journey home.

"He that is down need fear no fall; he that is low no pride" wrote John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress. I wonder what this quintessentially English writer would say to the Britain of the twenty-first century. I think he would tell us that humility is the first lesson we need to learn if we are to become truly wise and, in any sense that ultimately matters, truly great in our moral stature and spiritual character. St Benedict, patron saint of Europe, says the same which is why he devotes so much space to humility in his Rule. It's a principle we have forgotten in the shrill politics of our time. If "righteousness exalts a nation", then humility is the first step to it.

I'm resigned to Brexit now. I shall continue to resist it by any means possible, especially in its no-deal incarnation. But in my waters, I don't believe it can be avoided. I won't deny that I feel unutterably despondent about the prospect of waking up on All Saints Day no longer a citizen of the European Union. But something in me says that this could be a profoundly important moment in the history of our nation. If, after 1 November, we begin to experience buyer's remorse and ask ourselves, as I think we are likely to, "how on earth could we have committed such a foolish act?", it could lead to a new seriousness in public life that restored truth-seeking to the place it ought to have occupied all along. It could be a kind of conversio.

If that in turn helped foster a more realistic self-understanding on the part of the nation, a more sober perception of our place in the world, an altogether more humble view of ourselves and our destiny, that would have to be a good thing, wouldn't it? And if we were to find ourselves more free of our historic ambitions for power, hegemony, growth, influence and wealth, it might just bring about our capacity to become the best selves we have it within us to be. It would put us back on the path of healing and reconciliation after years of bitter division, help us be at ease with ourselves once again. That would be a vocation worth pursuing. We might well be a sadder nation, but I think we would be a better and a wiser one.

The hectoring, relentlessly upbeat Brexit rhetoric of Boris Johnson and his government doesn't encourage me to think that this will happen very soon. But in the longer term, under a leadership that is less in thrall to romantic notions of past greatness, and more realistic in scanning horizons and responding intelligently to events, change might be possible. And then we shall need to apologise - to our European neighbours whose friendship and trust we have abused, and to the people of Scotland and Ireland in particular who will find it hard to forgive the English for the forces of disintegration that we have unleashed. Indeed, saying sorry and meaning it is always important evidence that we have learned from our mistakes and can begin to tell the truth about ourselves once more.

Which is what humility, recognising our ordinariness and knowing our place are all about.

Brexit and the Church of England: a correspondence

I received this email yesterday. My reply to it is below. I have anonymised it and publish it here because I hope it echoes a wider concern about the failure of the Church of England to engage at an institutional level with Brexit. This was always regrettable, but is especially so now that a No Deal Brexit is a real threat facing this nation. My reply says nothing that I haven't rehearsed on this blog many times before. And I do recognise that Church leaders have been active behind the scenes in debates and discussions about our future in relation to Europe, not least in a recent symposium held at Lambeth Palace. 

However, when it comes to speaking in the "public square", entering the political fray, reframing the debate so that it is not dominated by self-interest, and not least, helping to shape at least the questions its own membership ought to be asking, I'm afraid I find a lot that falls short of a truly prophetic and wise contribution to this crisis that will go on dominating our lives for many years to come. 


Dear Michael, N and P

Forgive my temerity in writing to you all. 

I am quietly going mad on the subject of Brexit and noticing how few prophetic Christian theological voices are being raised against the forthcoming national disaster. 

All my political education is now coming from Twitter but sadly there is virtually no overlap between my political life and my church life. 

You three are the only senior people I’ve read speaking out strongly positively with a pro-EU vision and warning of the dangerous territory we are entering.

So I thought I’d write to you all and ask if you know if there is any big hitting “Christians Against Brexit” type of grouping that I haven’t yet found. 

And if there isn’t, to ask if you would consider starting one. 

And if you do, please count me in as first follower. 

I’m a newbie activist and currently limited to Twitter and supporting crowdfunding of the major legal cases. Would be willing to put a few personal ££ behind setting up a wee website as a repository of good writing worth sharing, and linking to all the other Remain campaigns. 

I don’t even know why I’m writing this because the day job is already way too big, but just feel I can’t stand by and do nothing. 

Best wishes – and thanks for your voices. 

S

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Dear S,

Thank you for writing. As you know I share your concerns entirely. 

However, I’m at a loss to know how to reply with any ideas. As you know I’ve blogged regularly about Brexit (http://northernwoolgatherer.blogspot.com) and what I perceive as the failure of the Church of England to engage with it at a public, institutional level (which is different from individuals including the Bishops of Europe and Leeds among others who have regularly spoken personally about it). 

My argument has been that as Brexit profoundly affects national identity, both of the UK as a whole and of the four nations that comprise it, it is properlye the concern of the two national churches of the UK. The Church of Scotland has consistently spoken up for our EU membership, while recognising that there is room for debate and dissent because not all its members will see things that way. But the Church of England has not done so, despite the fact that Brexit is predominantly an English phenomenon. It has observed a studied neutrality and our Archbishops have taken the line (which is deeply questionable in my view) that because the referendum delivered a Leave result in 2016, we are bound to respect that vote and should not question it. There was no General Synod debate when it might have made a difference before the referendum. I was assured there would be a debate in the House of Bishops at that time, but I don’t believe this ever happened. How could these opportunities have been passed by as if Brexit were a thing indifferent, and not the proper business of the national church in England to discuss?

I can’t deny how deeply disappointed I am in the church I’ve served as an ordained minister all my adult life. I believe it has behaved in a cowardly way during the greatest crisis to face England and the UK since the last war. It’s not too much to say that I’m ashamed of its performance and am afraid that history will demonstrate that the national church stood back when it ought to have been engaged in a critical national debate. I think it has forfeited its role as an established church, though that’s perhaps a different matter from the one you’re raising in your email.

I convened an online forum called “Christians for Europe” which was (in a non-overt way) hosted by the LibDems and had a presence on FaceBook and Twitter as well as a website. It was active during the referendum campaign and can still be found online, though I discontinued actively tweeting a few months after the referendum. I’m not inclined to reactivate it unless there is clear institutional support from the Church of England - which there won’t be.

I know that there are a great many Anglicans in England who are profoundly worried about the nation’s future. This includes, I believe, the great majority of its leaders, particularly the bishops. It’s for them to speak up now. A superannuated jobbing priest like me has a much diminished influence. I’ll continue to be a campaigner against Brexit, especially in any No Deal form. I am a European through and through. But I am not hopeful it can be averted. And I’m ashamed that our church has not done more to point to the threats that face us and, at the very least, try to reset the terms of the debate not as a matter of self-interest and economic prosperity only, but of loving our neighbour and building global communities of peace, friendship, reconciliation and justice for the world’s voiceless and poor. 

Sorry I can’t be more positive! 
Best wishes
Michael

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And here is another response received on 12 August.

I can only echo what you have written. I too feel pretty helpless. After my letter in the Church Times (which I shared with all my contacts) the Guardian published another, saying much the same in a different way. The latter was largely talking to the converted. It should probably have been in the Mail or Telegraph. All this has led to a lot of follow up. I've had some moving, even heart-rending responses. I have totally kept clear of social media... and that has left me some space to think and write.... A very few bishops are doing their best. but only corporate action could have done some good. In response to the CT letter Justin [Welby] said it was no use shouting at poiticians. I replied that what I hoped for was  leadership, signs of the kingdom, for his 'little flock'. I'm afraid my former NSM curate writing to me was right when he said 'most of the bishops know the score but are afraid of the dwindling number of churchgoers who voted leave'. The same lot mutatis mutandis who in 1933 thought Hitler was a godsend. It is small comfort to know we are nowhere near alone.and probably even a majority. At Peterloo the state sent in the cavalry. The mood now seems to be 'keep calm and drink strong tea'. If not even our genocidal submarines will bring Christian people on to the streets, this near coup d'etat will not either. Optimistic?  No. Hope, however, is on another plane.

P

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And another....

The more important issue now is to imagine and envisage some vision for a post-Brexit UK. I have not hidden my views about Brexit, but we still have to offer hope for beyond an outcome we don’t want and even think will be seriously damaging. We also have to be hard-nosed about some of this: speaking out is not always good leadership – especially if it is an exercise in salving our own conscience by having ‘done something’. Our primary task now is to keep asking the questions, making the case and holding the government to account, but the reality is that Cummings/Johnson populist communication is likely to be more effective and emotive than rational recourse to reality or facts – something I think is appalling, but I also think is real. Doing this at local level is as – or more – important than at national level.

I think it generally unwise and inappropriate to compare Brexit to Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s (despite some apparent populist parallels), but, if such comparisons are at all useful, then the need for people to look beyond the immediate and have some vision for the future (in exile?) is essential. It seems to me that this is the prophetic calling, too.

N

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And here is a further comment from the person who originally wrote to me and to others.

Really appreciate you taking the trouble to respond – it’s tough stuff and given me lots of food for thought. I was reaching out feeling particularly Gloomy and Despondent on the subject and this conversation has encouraged and disheartened me in approximately equal measure. I think my own path has to be to continue to campaigning at least to block no deal, and although revoke/referendum hopes are now vanishingly slim I do want to feel I’ve tried even if I have to accept the charge of a degree of self-indulgence in that. And if we fail then I’m glad people like N are doing the thinking ahead. And maybe the case does just have to be made politically now and theology is not relevant. No, it must be there between the cracks so I guess I keep looking. I do feel sad that there isn’t a consolidated Christian voice regardless of whether that’s the established church or an informal grouping. Will keep reading your respective blogs/articles for inspiration and maybe it even challenges me to be more serious in trying privately to articulate this theologically for myself too…

S