Charging for admission

The Church Times has had a couple of weeks of correspondence about charging for admission to cathedrals and I was wondering when someone would get round to us. On 13 March Robin Saunders reported the experience of having to admit, reluctantly, that you have come for prayer rather than as a tourist and then being

"escorted, like some highly infectious patient, to a side chapel used as an isolation ward to keep the real users of the cathedral, the tourists, from being contaminated by any suspicion of non-secular values."

The Revd Brian Cranwell thought Mr Saunders' observations "timely and apposite" and he cited the unwillingness of York Minster to allow the consecration of the Bishop of Sheffield on a weekday because of loss of income from tourism. Dr Robin Richmond moved the question to parish churches. (When will we be mentioned? I wondered.) He wrote of the many parish churches who "also see themselves as tourist sites rather than places of worship" with little mention in their literature about the building as a holy place.

We had a staff review of charging this morning, after a week of very high income from visiting groups. We decided that we had it about right. We have changed our external notices to stress that there is no charge for services or prayer (and we don't start charging until 9.30 a.m.). The verger/doorkeepers are very alert to this. We felt that we should give them greater discreton in allowing groups in at a discounted price if they just turned up without knowing about the charge. There is a chapel dedicated to private prayer but you don't have to go there to pray. What we ask is that visitors don't go into that chapel and disturb those who are praying. The new history boards in the Cloister make much of our Christian inheritance and the video shows the building in use for a variety of services.

As we finished the review I received an e-mail drawing my attention to Robert Crampton's Notebook article in todays Times, entitled "I'll pay to see Hugh Grant thumped", which is about a visit to St Bartholomew's, and he is very very nice about us. You can read it on http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/robert_crampton/article5962488.ece (I'm sorry that I haven't mastered link insertion; I did try.)

We will keep charging under review but it does provide both a vitally important income stream and employment for two people.

The flower of the field: God's grace and Judas Iscariot

A roundabout route can sometimes bring you to an unexpected and valuable insight. This intellectual journey began with something rather mundane: I was sorting out books, trying to make space for more. SCM produced a series of books in the 1970s each of which gathered together a selection of studies by a British theologian, mostly drawn from relatively inaccessible journal articles. The theologians were the New Testament scholars Denis Nineham and Christopher Evans (who taught me at King's), Leslie Houlden and Maurice Wiles. Volume 5 was by Donald MacKinnon and included his article “Tillich, Frege, Kittel: Some Reflections on a Dark Theme”. In it he explores the relationship of moral goodness to intellectual insight and the extent to which a thinker’s intellectual achievement must be judged damaged by grave moral faults in the man.

Gottlob Frege was a "a racialist of the most bigoted sort, narrowly nationalist, obsessively anti-Catholic as well as anti-semitic." Gerhard Kittel used his special familiarity with first century Judaism to develop the theological apologia for Nazi racial laws. MacKinnon is concerned with the way Paul Tillich emerges from his wife's memoirs as wilfully promiscuous. It was more than thirty years since I had read Hannah Tillich's book From Time to Time, at the time when I was studying her husband's systematic theology, so I got the rather battered copy of it from the London Library. Although Hannah's account is informed by her passionate love for Paulus, as she calls him, they had a marriage that did not exclude other sexual partners and she certainly depicts Tillich as obsessed with the seduction of ever younger women. Langdon Gilkey was a student, colleague and friend of Tillich's and his book, entitled simply Gilkey on Tillich, does a great deal to reveal the pathos and comedy in his life, as well as exloring the important themes of his now rather neglected theology.

Hannah said this of Tillich:

“Now I was seeing Paulus, the man with the golden mouth, who looked like a Riemenschneider carving in his earlier years. He had a body like a Gothic statue, lean, from the hungry years of World War I. His face was finely carved, with a well-shaped mouth over animal-like teeth. He was the desperate child of the century, who dared to give word to dreams of disaster and hope, carrying on to an ecstatic ‘yes,’ in spite of his philosophy of the demonic, of Kairos. He preached the agony of death in war, instead of heroism.”

The carving to which she referred would have been by Tilman Riemenschneider of Wurzburg, active as a master sculptor from 1485 until the middle 1520s. He is one of the sculptors featured in Michael Baxandall's marvellous study The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany and so I turned up the pages concerned with the Altarpiece of the Holy Blood in the St Jakobskirche, Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber. The altarpiece was commissioned in April 1501; it is in limewood and it is nine metres high. Baxandall says that it "declares itself as a gigantic monstrance". The main part of it depicts the Last Supper but the figure that displaces Christ from the centre is Judas, described by Baxandall as "a strange begging dog-like figure".

Why is Judas at the centre? Baxandall thinks that an answer lies in the preaching of an Upper Rhenish Franciscan, Johannes Pauli, and that it concerns "the lack of discrimination with which God offers grace."

You might say: seeing that Christ well knew what Judas would not follow his call and election, but rather betray him and be damned, why did he then call him, and receive him among the Apostles and entrust him with the bag...? The angelic Doctor Saint Bonaventura give the answer saying: Christ called Judas to him and chose him for his fellowship to show us that he will share his grace and mercy among both good and bad, and is ready to give his grace to all men who apply themselves to receive the grace of God. Thus he says: "I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys". Why does he not say: "I am a flower of the garden or the meadow"? Because the sweet scent of the garden flower is only for those who have the key of the garden; but the flower of the field is at large, it grows on the open road, and every pilgrim who passes by may gain it and enjoy its sweet scent.

The reference is to Pseudo-Bonaventura rather than to the Franciscan doctor himself but the idea, of free access to grace, of lack of discrimination on God's part, giving to whoever asks, allowing them the freedom to work out what to do with what is given them, is both hopeful and appealing. The initiative comes from God, the response from the human being and even if the seed does not bear fruit nevertheless it is widely cast. The ways of God are deeper than the systems devised by men. And I am certain that Paul Tillich, whatever his failings, received and conveyed the grace of God.

Erasmus on Motherhood

Erasmus is my Lent companion. He writes quite a lot about women, presenting a lively cast of virgins and mothers, housewives and harlots, shrews and the Renaissance equivalent of feminists. He gives his views on most of these roles and we find, for example, in his dialogue with a new mother, that he is opposed to the use of a wet nurse, saying “the woman who refuses to nurse what she bore is scarcely a half-mother. The better part of childbearing is the nursing of the tender baby, for he’s nourished not only with milk but with the fragrance of the mother’s body as well.” And that is not all, the mother is responsible, in Erasmus’s view, not only for forming the delicate little body of the child but also for fashioning the child’s mind through good education.

The mother, therefore, is responsible for creation, nurture and education, for forming the child in its totality. Erasmus delivered a funeral oration around 1489 for Berta Heyen, a woman who was like a mother to him and it is very illuminating. He said this:

She is gone, she, my guardian, my benefactress, my refuge in times of need. She took me in as an orphan, supported me in my poverty, helped me when I was in need, consoled me time and time again in my despair, encouraged me when I was faint-hearted and sometimes aided me with her advice when the situation called for it. She embraced me with the same love, and equal love, as she gave to her own children. She was as fond of me as though she had given birth to me herself. Indeed, she was not related by blood, but no one could be closer spiritual kin. Why shouldn’t I have loved her as I would a mother, since she cherished me like a son? She was as much like a mother to me as I could have wished, with the sole exception of the actual blood relationship, which I definitely think is the least important aspect of motherhood. Other than that, she fulfilled every single duty of motherhood with a truly remarkable devotion to me.

This is very tender language. It is the sort of language that has been used of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Christ and mother of Christians, but could it not also define our relationship to God our Father? God loves us not because of anything that we have done ourselves. He loves us even when we are estranged from him. He beholds us as orphans. He sees our poverty. He helps us in need, consoles us in despair, encourages us when we faint-hearted, embraces us in love. We do not have a mandate that allows us to call God “mother” or “parent” for the divine nature is revealed as that of Father, Son, and Spirit, but the best characteristics of motherhood belong also to God. And we too are nourished by God as sons and daughters, receiving, as Paul, will say, spiritual milk for our nourishment. But let us also take up Erasmus’s earlier point about the mother feeding her baby; he refers not just to milk but to the fragrance of the mother’s body. He presents us with a picture of the most intimate love between mother and child in which the child receives a fragrance from the mother. And if that is so, how much stronger must be the fragrance we receive from intimacy with God?

It is fascinating exploring the life and teaching of Erasmus, looking at his picture, reading his words, but over and over again, as a good Christian, a cleric, scholar and teacher, he points to Christ his master. He urges his hearers to know Christ, to respond in love to his love, to breathe in the divine fragrance that comes from him, to be nourished by his heavenly food. And the season of the Passion, which will soon be upon us, offers an unparalleled opportunity to sharing also in his dying as the gift of the loving God that brings us eternal life.

Boiling the thurible or the tale of the stockpot

Once upon a time, long long ago, the thurifers complained that the thurible was coated in a nasty residue. "Could not the vergers remove it?" they asked, and Father recalled that one of the vergers had told at interview of his skill in boiling thuribles. So Father asked that this be done and was surprised when the thurifers complained and complained again. "Why has this not been done?" asked Father. "I have no pot in which to cook them," replied the verger. "Buy one," said Father. "I have no money," said the verger, "You buy one." So we bought one from Argos. And the thurifers complained that the thurible was not clean and Father asked why, and the verger said "The pot isn't large enough." So the pot was taken back to Argos, as directed, but when it was taken back they said "We must come and collect it" and it was done, as directed. Then came the verger to Father and said "I have no pot in which to boil the thurible." "Right," said Father, "let us search for one," and one was found thanks to cookware-uk and an order was placed online. Then cookware-uk telephoned and said "The stockpot is not in stock" but they then searched diligently and found a bigger and better one and said we could have it at the same price, and lo, it has arrived, in an enormous box,and it is enormous, and it was taken to the verger who rejoiced greatly, and is, hopefully, boiling it up so that the thurifers will cease from complaining.

This is an ordinary everyday event in the SBG Parish Office where we seem to deal with increasingly unlikely requests to do things. Could we bring 350 firemen to your church? Would you mind police photographers practising in the church? We are looking for a crypt. (Why?) Can we film some more of "Waking the Dead"? (Yes, but don't wake any of ours.) Could celebrity chefs be filmed in the churchyard? Could we film a piece about the Bible in the Middle Ages in your cloister? Could we have a life drawing class in the Lady Chapel? (Won't it be cold?) Could you arrange my funeral (I'm not dead yet)? Could our German boy's choir come to sing? (We so enjoyed the League of Gentlemen Christmas Special.) Could we have a fashion show in church? And then we seem to be a general church enquiry office, including, this morning, "I am going to a funeral in Camden Town. Which church will it be?"

Is our willingness to say "Yes" to (almost) everything the cause of this?

A New Archdeacon

An email from the diocese announces a new archdeacon in succession to Peter Delaney, who retires on 1 June: 62 year old David Meara of St Bride's, Fleet Street, takes over from 70 year old Peter Delaney. David is a splendid man, a scholar, a gentleman, a fellow antiquary and an authority on monumental brasses. He has certainly carried on the work of his excellent predecessor, John Oates, but is he the right choice for Archdeacon of London?

I would say not, and I do so for a number of reasons. First, we had only heard rumours of Peter Delaney's retirement up until today's announcement, and there has been no consultation with the City clergy about the qualities needed in an archdeacon, or even if the diocese has the right job description. There have been a number of archidiaconal jobs advertised recently, as well as cathedral jobs, with really excellent job descriptions - and they were advertised so that anyone could apply.

Second, before Peter's appointment, George Cassidy was Archdeacon; he was 45 and became a bishop 12 years later; Peter was already 60 when he was appointed. This means that our archdeacons are getting older, but the City is a vibrant place full of younger people. The mean age of our congregation is under 40. Instead of having an older archdeacon heading for retirement, we needed a younger archdeacon who would gain experience here and then move to greater things.

Third, George Cassidy was both Archdeacon of London and a canon of St Paul's. He was outside of the City clergy and able to take a more detached view. Peter Delaney came from among us, and David Meara does the same. Being of the City clergy doesn't help them and it certainly confuses the role of archdeacon and area dean, both of whom are drawn from the City clergy.

Finally, the Bishop of London is a big man in many senses, with many ideas that are forcefully expressed. It seems to me that he needs an Archdeacon, who might also be his Chief of Staff, who can tell him, sometimes, that he is wrong. A new archdeacon coming from outside the City, better still from outside the Diocese and outside London, would have brought fresh insights and new vigour to the Diocese and the City.

One of the real excitements about Monday's election is having fifteen new members of the Court of Common Council, an influx that will change the dynamic and encourage fresh ideas and questioning of old certainties. I believe that is something to be encouraged, but in the Diocese of London it looks like business as usual and no rocking the boat.

After Polling Day

When I first joined the governing body of the City of London Corporation, known as the Court of Common Council, in 2002, I was the third priest to be elected in two months. There was a strong sense of anti-clericalism amid suggestions that it was a co-ordinated campaign (from those who clearly didn't grasp of the CofE's inability to co-ordinate anything). I remember having to reassure the then Chairman of policy Resources, Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas, that there was not a conspiracy. To the claims that there were too many clergy I replied with a question: "Too many solicitors or accountants?"

The number of clergy has gone up and down since then. The original pair were Brian Lee, from St Botolph's, Aldgate, who was for a while a pillar of the Establishment, and Fr William Campbell-Taylor, who was its scourge. Fr William dropped off - at the time of annual elections - and then got re-elected the next time and the Revd Stephen Haines (more financier than priest, which I do not mean to be at all unkindly) came onto the Court. Fr Brian was lost to us earlier in the year when ill-health led him to resign from the Parish; he nominally continued on the Court but no longer attended anything. Fr William did not stand for re-election this time, so Fr Stephen and I are now the only clergy. He serves in Cornhill ("Can anything good come out of Cornhill?") and I in Aldersgate.

I was returned yesterday, in the City-wide election, for a further four-year term, polling 300 votes. Unusually we had a challenge from the City of London Labour Party which is, as you might guess, rather a small body. The Party didn't really understand why we have no political parties in the City and also didn't believe our protestations that we are not all closet Tories. It did, stupidly, suggest we were all bankers! It put up seven candidates and none of them were elected, but the campaign focussed our minds and that was a good thing. Residential members might now be more inclined to voice their concerns and to insist on being heard.

My question, for myself, is whether I've gone native and become Citified. When I stood unsuccessfully as an alderman last year, I was accused of worldliness. I stick to the idea that "here we have no abiding city" and I try to seek the city which is to come. Erasmus, my Lenten companion, really stresses the need to strive for heavenly treasures, but that doesn't stop us bringing a thoroughly businesslike approach to things earthly.

I am glad I have kept my place on the Court and I will continue to be vigilant against worldliness. Incidentally, someone kindly described me as "the only original political thinker" among the Barbican candidates; he clearly hadn't read Machiavelli.

Ebor replies

The Archbishop of York replied to my letter. At first I wrote "graciously replied" but one line was, perhaps, not gracious.

He begins by being thankful "that in Christ I am a member of a tribe which includes people of all races. I have also said frequently, and continue to say, that the body of Christ is inclusive of all, without prejudice on grounds of sexuality."

But, he says, "the church is not obliged to treat debates about race and about sexuality in relation to the ordained ministry [my emphasis] as if they were equivalent. There is widespread agreement throughout the Christian world on matters of racial equality. Christian teaching about sexuality however is not so widely agreed."

He then refers to the blessing of the civil partnership and observes "As I recall, this event did not receive a welcome from your own diocesan bishop either." That wasn't gracious! Truthful but not gracious....

The debate about civil partnerships, he says "continues both within the Church of England and in the wider Anglican Communion, as well as amongst our ecumenical partners" and meanwhile we must continue to be guided by Synod, Lambeth 1.10 and the House of Bishops.

On his silence about Peter Mullen, as against his public statement about me, he says that Dr Mullen's statement "was indeed reprehensible - but I do not find the time to respond to everything written in the press on this matter."

I don't intend to argue with the Archbishop but if you are discriminated against because of your sexual orientation, it is unlikely to feel very different from being discriminated against because of your race or colour, but notice that the Archbishop limits the discussion to the ordained ministry. He does not deal with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in general but only as it applies to the ordained. At Saint Bartholomew the Great we refuse to discriminate (by which I mean treat people less favourably) on the basis of sexual orientation and that applies to the ordained and the lay. The same must apply with regard to ordination, treating men and women as equally able to receive ordination.

My difficulties, incidentally, with ordaining women to the episcopate at this time are just like those of the Archbishop over civil partnerships. Christian teaching about the ministry of women in the priesthood and episcopate is not as widely agreed as the attitude to race. Debate about it continues, within the Church of England, the wider Anglican Communion, and with our ecumenical partners. While the discussion continues, we should not take precipitate or unilateral action. Now the American Church has women bishops, which many in England want, but also has a gay bishop, when many in England apparently don't want. It seems to me that the American Church accepted the inevitable logic of its stand against certain types of negative discrimination and accepted that it should be much more welcoming. And that is my objection to the Archbishop of York's response; it refines the welcome. It takes the "all" of Jesus' "Come to me all..." and says "except the following".

I would also like an assurance that the debate about civil partnerships includes those who are in them and that they are not being discussed by others as "a problem" in and for the Church.

A dilemma, perhaps

This blog comes with a warning. When I said that I had given up controversy for Lent someone suggested that it might not have given me up. If you do not want controversy, do not read this blog; wait for the next one!

The next Master of a livery company asked to see me today. He was superficially very friendly and agreeable but I knew that he had come with a purpose. Like my predecessors I am the Chaplain to the Master of this Company. It is the Master's appointment but, to my knowledge, the Rector has been appointed every year; certainly I have done it now for fourteen years. My visitor is intent on appointing someone else, one of the clergy from St Helen's, Bishopsgate, and more than that, one of the signatories of the so called "Joint Statement from the City of London Deanery Synod representatives from St Helen Bishopsgate, St Peter-upon-Cornhill, and St Botolph-without-Aldersgate, made at the Deanery Synod on 16th October 2008". You may recall that statement - it was put on the web by a body calling itself "Anglican Mainstream". It said:

We do not presume to have any authority over Dr Dudley or his church, but given this service took place within the Deanery and that the Deanery Synod meets with an assumption of shared fellowship, we feel the need, with great sadness, to make clear that our fellowship with Dr Dudley has been broken by his recent actions. In particular, we cannot recognise him as a teacher of the same gospel as ours.

Now one of the usual functions of the Chaplain, apart from saying grace at the monthly lunch and a couple of dinners, is to preach at the annual service in the Company Church, which is St Bartholomew the Great. An invitation to preach comes from me, and you may wonder - and I am wondering too - how I can invite someone who is out of fellowship with me and refuses to recognise me as "a teacher of the same gospel". Those who have come recently to St Bartholomew's may be confused by now but it is, of course, all about the blessing of the civil partnership of Fr Peter Cowell and Fr David Lord in this church last 31 May.

There were two particular deficiences in the St Helen's Bishopsgate Statement. The first was the way in which breach of fellowship was expressed. The Church of England is not a series of parish churches which work together in a partnership agreed by each parish. It is an episcopally ordered Church, which means that the focus of our unity is the Bishop. Whether you agree with the bishop or not, whether you like the bishop or not, is irrelevant; when you are in a diocese your communion with the greater Church - the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church - is mediated through the Bishop. The Bishop represents the local church to the universal Church and the universal Church to the local church. The real point of last summer's controversy was whether I had somehow fallen out of communion with the Bishop of London. I hadn't and the matter is now closed. The St Helen's Bishopsgate Statement has, however, not been rescinded, though we may consider it to be so flawed as to be irrelevant, a piece of posturing by evangelicals.

The second deficiency shows the true nature of the flaw. The Statement said "we cannot recognise him as a teacher of the same gospel as ours". I don't believe that we have any gospel other than the good news of Jesus Christ; this gospel is not "ours" in the sense that we can give it a distinctive meaning that differs from that embodied in the text. The Church can only proclaim the good news that it has received and I can find no place in the New Testament where the Lord Jesus Christ has anything at all to say about same-sex relations. Now I don't want to revisit all that (and I did accept that while I had done what I believed to be the right thing, I had almost certainly broken church law in the process) but St Helen's does seem to think that it has a gospel - a purer version than the one preached here - and that I cannot, in consequence, be recognised as a teacher of the gospel (not their gospel anyway).

So, a nice young priest (though he probably doesn't call himself that) signs the St Helen's Bishopsgate Statement, declares he is out of fellowship with me, denies that I am a teacher of the Gospel - which I have been preaching to this livery company for fourteen years - and then becomes the Master's Chaplain with the expectation, presumably, of preaching here! Should I invite him?

No reply from the Archbishop

Those who receive the SBG E-bulletin will know already that I wrote, on 19 February, to the Archbishop of York. The reason is to be found in the Church Times report of last month's General Synod meeting and specifically of the debate about a policy that would ban clergy, ordinands and lay office-holders who represent or speak for the Church from being members of the British National Party and similar organisations. In the debate the Archbishop of York said (according to the Church Times) that "although he was very proud of the tribe into which he was born, the tribe into which he was baptised was the tribe of Jesus Christ, which welcomed everybody without distinction." I decided to make my personal stand on racism a long time ago.

My father, a white, middle-aged, middle-class, mid-Englander, held views that we would now see as racist. They were not extreme in any way but this neighbour or that was very nice "in spite of being coloured", as he would have said. His experience as a war-time sailor in South Africa hadn't helped; he believed in apartheid and supported the Smith regime in Rhodesia. A strong supporter of the Baptist Missionary Society, my mother frequently had black pastors to stay, and that was fine because they were just visitors. My position was fundamentally opposed to racism and I decided that I would not let a racist comment pass without comment. I tried to do this without turning every mealtime into a battlefield. My mother would say "Those Asian children down the road are very noisy"; I suggested that she try the sentence without the word "Asian" to see if it made a difference. She found that it worked just as well without a racist overtone.

After being a visiting scholar in New York and meeting black clergy in significant positions - rectors, archdeacons, seminary directors of studies, cathedral deans - I felt a need to do something about it. With the agreement of the Bishop of Oxford, I worked one day a week at the Simon of Cyrene Theological Institute in Wandsworth. Under the inspiring and charismatic leadership of Sehon Goodridge (see http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=50701), the Institute provided access courses and theological education for black and minority ethnic students. I was the token white member of staff and I taught liturgy and Anglican studies. It was there that I met Father Christopher Oladuji, our Chaplain. I left the Institute shortly after Sehon departed to become a bishop in the West Indies, but happily retained my connection with Fr Christopher.

So why did I write to the Archbishop and what did I say? The reason was another form of discrimination, that against homosexuals and lesbians, and the statement that he made with the Archbishop of Canterbury following the blessing of Fr Peter Cowell and Fr David Lord last summer. This is what I wrote:

Your Grace,

The Church Times reports your pride in being baptised “into the tribe of Jesus Christ, which welcomed everybody without distinction.” The context was, of course, the discussion about racism. However, I recall that you were not so inclusive in your approach when it came to the blessing of the civil partnership of two gay clergy last summer, when a clear distinction was made and there was no noticeable welcome. I also note that you made a public statement concerning me but made no equivalent statement condemning Dr Peter Mullen’s proposal to tattoo gays. I wonder how you square these positions.

I have the honour to be Your Grace’s faithful servant,

There has as yet been no reply from Bishopthorpe.