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Part 1 of my exegesis on Matthew 23:1-12, the Gospel reading for the Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity can be found here, along with the other readings for this day.
Today’s post concludes with our Lord’s instructions regarding false teachers, verses 8 to 12.
The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):
Matthew 23:1-12
23:1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,
23:2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;
23:3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.
23:4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.
23:5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.
23:6 They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,
23:7 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.
23:8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students.
23:9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father–the one in heaven.
23:10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.
23:11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
23:12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
I left off yesterday with John MacArthur’s explanation of how horrible the scribes and Pharisees made spiritual growth for the Jewish people of their time. They piled endless manmade burdens upon them. As if that were not bad enough, the people thought that these men were actually holy when, in reality, they were cruel hypocrites, demanding the people do what they thought they were exempt from.
MacArthur contrasts this with Christ and His Gospel message and, later on, Paul the Apostle:
They lacked sympathy. There was no sense of kindness. There was no sense of graciousness. Quite in contrast to the Lord who came and said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Quite in contrast, say, to the apostle Paul who, in writing to the Thessalonians, says, “When we came to you, we were gentle among you as a nursing mother nurses her baby, cherishes her child.” Cherish means to warm with body heat, and Paul says in the intimacy of that marvelous imagery of a nursing baby, that’s how we were with you.
That’s how tender we were. That’s how caring we were with you. That marvelous tenderness that marks the true shepherd, that marked the Savior and those who followed Him. Very different from the unsympathetic legalism and bondage of the false spiritual leader who abuses people, who uses people, who piles and crushes them under rules and regulations which they pretend to fulfill but don’t. They were without sympathy.
Jesus told the people and His disciples that none of them were to be called ‘rabbi’, for they had one teacher and all of them were students (verse 8).
The King James Version of this verse is clearer:
8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.
Matthew Henry’s commentary says, mentioning the example of the great Anglican churchman, the Revd George Herbert (1593-1633):
1. Christ’s ministers must not affect the name of Rabbi or Master, by way of distinction from other people; it is not agreeable to the simplicity of the gospel, for them to covet or accept the honour which they have that are in kings’ palaces. 2. They must not assume the authority and dominion implied in those names; they must not be magisterial, nor domineer over their brethren, or over God’s heritage, as if they had dominion over the faith of Christians: what they received of the Lord, all must receive from them; but in other things they must not make their opinions and wills a rule and standard to all other people, to be admitted with an implicit obedience …
… Note, [1.] Christ is our Master, our Teacher, our Guide. Mr. George Herbert, when he named the name of Christ, usually added, My Master. [2.] Christ only is our Master, ministers are but ushers in the school. Christ only is the Master, the great Prophet, whom we must hear, and be ruled and overruled by; whose word must be an oracle and a law to us; Verily I say unto you, must be enough to us. And if he only be our Master, then for his ministers to set up for dictators, and to pretend to a supremacy and an infallibility, is a daring usurpation of that honour of Christ which he will not give to another.
… Ministers are brethren not only to one another, but to the people; and therefore it ill becomes them to be masters, when there are none for them to master it over but their brethren; yea, and we are all younger brethren, otherwise the eldest might claim an excellency of dignity and power, Gen 49 3. But, to preclude that, Christ himself is the first-born among many brethren, Rom 8 29. Ye are brethren, as ye are all disciples of the same Master. School-fellows are brethren, and, as such, should help one another in getting their lesson; but it will by no means be allowed that one of the scholars step into the master’s seat, and give law to the school. If we are all brethren, we must not be many masters. Jam 3 1.
Jesus then said that the people and His disciples were not to call spiritual leaders ‘Father’, for they had but one Father, the one in heaven (verse 9).
Henry explains the verse, including Paul’s later use of the word:
The fathers of our flesh must be called fathers, and as such we must give them reverence; but God only must be allowed as the Father of our spirits, Heb 12 9. Our religion must not be derived from, or made to depend upon, any man. We are born again to the spiritual and divine life, not of corruptible seed, but by the word of God; not of the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but of God. Now the will of man, not being the rise of our religion, must not be the rule of it. We must not jurare in verba magistri—swear to the dictates of any creature, not the wisest or best, nor pin our faith on any man’s sleeve, because we know not whither he will carry it. St. Paul calls himself a Father to those whose conversion he had been an instrument of (1 Cor 4 15; Phil 10); but he pretends to no dominion over them, and uses that title to denote, not authority, but affection: therefore he calls them not his obliged, but his beloved, sons, 1 Cor 4 14 …
… Christ having taught us to say, Our Father, who art in heaven; let us call no man Father upon earth; no man, because man is a worm, and the son of man is a worm, hewn out of the same rock with us; especially not upon earth, for man upon earth is a sinful worm; there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not, and therefore no one is fit to be called Father.
Jesus added another stipulation: that no spiritual leader was to be called an instructor, because there is only one Instructor, the Messiah (verse 10) — Himself.
His words were a sharp criticism of the Sanhedrin, who craved their titles and delighted in hearing them.
MacArthur tells us:
So when they went through the market, and Jesus is saying this, and they’re there listening to this, they loved to be called by men, “Rabbi, Rabbi.” Now, that doesn’t mean a lot in our culture because rabbi is not a word that we’re accustomed to. What it means is teacher, teacher. But more than that, because teacher isn’t even the right word in our culture because a teacher is so broad, there are so many things in a culture like ours that’s not religious, but to say teacher in a Jewish culture is to say supreme one, superior one, your excellency, most knowledgeable one, great one.
The Latin equivalent, this is painful, is doctor, docere. This is – yes, Doctor So-and-so. They loved those titles that pushed them up, see, that elevated them above everybody else …
Doctor So-and-so, as if that means you’re some great, great one. They wanted to be called that. They demanded to be called that. And another thing they demanded to be called is down in verse 10, master – master. Interesting word. It’s hard to just be very dogmatic in nailing down the meaning of kathēgētēs. The best thing you could do to identify it is leader. They loved to be called leader, see.
They wanted to be called doctor – knowledge; leader – authority. And another word they loved to be called is in verse 9, father. They wanted to be called rabbi or teacher or doctor because that spoke of the fact that they were the source of knowledge. They wanted to be called master because that indicated that they were the source of direction and guiding. By the way some equivalate – give equivalent meaning to the word professor and the word master or leader, kathēgētēs. But the third one was father, and they loved that because that spoke of the fact that they were the source of spiritual life. They were the father of spiritual life. They gave spiritual life.
So they wanted to be called teacher, source of knowledge. They wanted to be called master, as it were, or leader, source of all direction. They wanted to be called father, source of spiritual life.
However, MacArthur points out churches that use these titles:
Now, the word father is interesting. That’s found its way into religion hasn’t it? Primarily in the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Episcopal Church. If you were in the Church of England today and you’re a bishop, your proper title is Right Reverend Father in God.
Can you imagine introducing me to someone and saying this is our pastor, Right Reverend Father in God John MacArthur? Mercy. I mean if – listen, if – it’d be one thing if I was the teacher, but I’m not. It’d be one thing if I was the leader, but I’m not. It’d be one thing if I was your spiritual father, but I’m not. I’m not any of those things – not any of those things. By the way, the word abbot in the Roman Catholic church comes from Abba Father. The word pope even comes from a form of the word father … just a little linguistic insight.
As an Anglican, I checked ‘Right Reverend Father in God’, of which I had not heard. MacArthur is correct.
The term appears in describing bishops who lived in the 18th century: Thomas Wilson, Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man and Edward, Lord Bishop of Elphin.
A modified title designating a bishop, Reverend Father in God, appears in the Anglican Ordination Rite.
In 2015, however, a female Anglican bishop requested that the title be omitted in favour of ‘Bishop’. On October 26 that year, the BBC reported:
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Rev Rachel Treweek, will be introduced as one of 26 Lords Spiritual by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Bishop of London Richard Chartres.
As a diocesan bishop, she is the first woman with enough Church seniority to be appointed to the House of Lords.
She will take the parliamentary oath before taking a place on the benches.
Bishop Treweek sent back the first version of the writ of summons because it termed her a “right reverend father in God”. Instead, it will describe her as “bishop”.
MacArthur continues:
So don’t stick on person up above another person as if that person is the source of truth. And the leveler comes in verse 8 at the end of the verse. “You are all” – what? – “brothers.” Nobody’s a great one. Nobody’s a superior. He just puts us all on the same level, we’re all brothers. You have one teacher and that’s Christ. He is the didaskalos. He taught us the truth which we pass on. Boy, we really lose sight of this in the church …
… It’s better to have no titles and no degrees and no anything than to play an ego-centered game which endeavors to push you up and keep other people in their place.
So the reverend, doctor, bishop, professor, abbot, pope, father, so forth, so on is artificial. We’re all brothers. And if we ever teach truth, it’s because the master teacher taught us. And in verse 9, “Don’t call anybody father.” “Don’t call anybody father upon this earth.” There’s not a soul on this earth that gave you spiritual life, right? Nobody. Nobody here gave you spiritual life. The Sanhedrin members like to be called father as if they were the source of spiritual life. And men in the ministry of some churches today want to be called father, as if they are the source of spiritual life. They are not.
Verse 9 says “One is your Father” – and He is where? – “He is in heaven.” The source of spiritual life is the heavenly Father, not some human person. To call a man father or a higher-ranked priest holy father is unacceptable, a violation of Scripture. It just isn’t right because none of us is the teacher and none of us is the leader and none of us is the Father.
That brings us to the last word leader, verse 10. “Neither be ye called master or leader for One is your leader” – again, Christ. Christ is the teacher. Christ is the guide. And Christ is the source of life. So don’t be called master. We have so many problems. We just love that. We want to get a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree and a doctor’s degree and then we want to keep going up just putting these barriers between ourselves and the common folks.
I can understand it happening in the world, but it shouldn’t happen among those who are all brothers in Christ. None of us is any great one. None of us is the depository of all truth. None of us the leader among leaders who has all insights. None of us is the spiritual life source of anybody. So he says to the people, “You stay away from these false leaders. Now, you disciples, you be true leaders and you avoid the things that they got into and don’t be like them.”
In defence of churches with a hierarchy, it would seem that the Roman Catholic system found its way into the Anglican Church to maintain doctrinal order. If only our bishops and archbishops today were as envisaged centuries ago. The Church Society explains what is contained in the relevant Thirty-nine Articles of Religion pertaining to the Anglican Church:
As we saw in a previous blogpost, there is some significant biblical warrant for episcopacy — the government of the church by bishops (in Greek, episcopoi). The Church of England inherited episcopacy from the early and medieval church. Both Celtic and later Roman forms of Christianity in England had bishops (just as Eastern Orthodoxy does), though they often conceived of their roles in different ways (with the more settled, Roman pattern of a bishop overseeing a territory called a diocese winning the day as time went by). The Protestant Reformers did not seek to abolish the office of bishop, but to capture the power of appointments and reform the office according to the word of God, so that it would be a more useful instrument for the evangelisation and edification of the people. They did not seek to establish government by local committees of presbyters (Presbyterianism), or transfer significant episcopal powers to more ‘democratic’ parish gatherings (Congregationalism); and they certainly did not intend to create new mini-Popes in every parish who could tyrannise their congregations without legal accountability (a sort of hyper-congregationalism with monarchical Presbyters).
The Anglican Formularies
Episcopacy, with a balance of powers and proper accountability, is written in to the Anglican formularies. In the context of our foundational Thirty-nine Articles, and the Prayer Book in which they are found, it is clear that the Church of England does not consider a parish congregation to be ‘the highest tribunal to which an aggrieved party may appeal’, as the Congregationalist theologian Thomas Hooker (1586–1647) claimed in his argument over church polity with the Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford. Thus, the Articles talk about the biblically-circumscribed jurisdiction of the monarch over the church (Article 37); and about archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons (Articles 32 and 36).
The Prayer Book provides for the consecration of bishops and archbishops, charging them to preach, drive away erroneous doctrine, and administer discipline across their dioceses, in accordance with the canon law rules of the Church. Articles 33 and 34 speak about the Church and excommunication (which is reserved to bishops, not local gatherings), and about particular national churches having authority to ordain, change, and abolish rites and ceremonies (which has never been a power given to each individual parish meeting within Anglican polity). So understood in their own context, the Articles cannot (as some have claimed) be singling out the local parish assembly in Article 19 as self-contained and supreme, apart from the wider Church, unless they are contradicting themselves rather blatantly.
Article 19 says that ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered.’ It doesn’t say the local congregation is all that matters. Rather, it defines the whole visible catholic [universal] church as a certain group of those who have faith, called out and distinguished from the world by the preaching of the word and the orderly, disciplined administration of the sacraments (which includes the idea of excommunication or barring people from those sacraments, as the Articles and Prayer Book make clear). In its historical context, it establishes that a church does not need to be under the authority of the Bishop of Rome to be a true church, rejecting that institutional definition in favour of one which prioritises confession over connection, practice over Pope, laity over leadership.
The Reformation of Episcopacy
The proposals in the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (contemporary with the Thirty-nine Articles and drafted by Thomas Cranmer, Peter Martyr Vermigli and others) explain the system of church government and discipline which the Reformers intended to put in place alongside the formularies. It said,
‘Bishops, because they hold the chief place among the other ministers of the church, must therefore govern and pastor the lower orders of the clergy, as well as the whole people of God, with sound doctrine, sober authority and wise counsel, not indeed in order to lord it over their faith, but that they might prove themselves to be true servants of the servants of God. And they shall know that the government / authority and ecclesiastical jurisdiction has been specially entrusted to them for no other reason than that by their ministry and hard work / dedication as many people as possible may be made rich in / joined to Christ…’
It also speaks about the obedience to be shown to such bishops, ‘to foster harmony’ and ‘for the sake of Christian discipline’. Indeed, Cranmer’s committee outlined the tasks of a bishop as: passing on sound doctrine; conferring holy orders and instituting ministers to benefices as well as removing those who are unworthy; settling complaints and quarrels between ministers and their churches; correcting vices by ecclesiastical censures and excommunicating persistent offenders; visiting the whole diocese regularly; holding synods; and confirming people. (Reformatio, 20:10–12)
As well as in the Ordinal, (ordination services), such a view of bishops is set out in Canon Law even today. Canon C18 says of a bishop that “it appertains to his office to teach and to uphold sound and wholesome doctrine, and to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange opinions; and, himself an example of righteous and godly living, it is his duty to set forward and maintain quietness, love, and peace among all men.” This is very much in line with what the Pastoral Epistles and 1 Peter 5 say about the qualifications for elders.
The Wellbeing of the Church
Bishops are not an essential part of our definition of the church, but in the Church of England they have always been regarded as a useful biblical means for safeguarding our spiritual health and good order. They must not ordain rites and ceremonies that are ‘contrary to God’s Word written’ (Article 20). We must have lawfully called and consecrated preachers and ministers (Article 23, Article 36), who do not need to be celibate singles but may be married (Article 32), and who speak in a language understood by the people (Article 24). Sacraments ‘duly administered’ also means properly using the sacraments for the purpose they were instituted (Article 25, Article 28), including baptising infants which is ‘most agreeable with the institution of Christ’ (Article 27), and giving communion in both kinds (Article 30). It also means the ministers who administer the sacraments must be subject to discipline and removal if they fall short (Article 26), and must also discipline others (Article 33), while not offending the common order of the church in their attitude towards traditions which are in themselves not repugnant to the Bible (Article 34).
Bishops have always been a part of my church life, first as a Catholic and now as an Anglican. It would be difficult to govern a denomination without them, even though some of them, in my opinion, do not have a totally biblical mindset.
But I digress.
Jesus then came to the end of His discourse on false teachers.
First, He said that the greatest among His audience and His disciples would be their servant (verse 11).
That was certainly contrary to what the scribes and the Pharisees thought, which was why He said it. Furthermore, He set the example to the Apostles when He washed their feet the following day at the Last Supper. I believe that Anglican bishops, by and large, follow this example. However, I agree that the unbiblical title of ‘Right Reverend Father in God’ should go by the wayside.
Henry tells us:
Take it as a promise; “He shall be accounted greatest, and stand highest in the favour of God, that is most submissive and serviceable;” or as a precept; “He that is advanced to any place of dignity, trust, and honour, in the church, let him be your servant“ (some copies read esto for estai), “let him not think that his patent of honour is a writ of ease; no; he that is greatest is not a lord, but a minister.” St. Paul, who knew his privilege as well as duty, though free from all, yet made himself servant unto all (1 Cor 9 19); and our Master frequently pressed it upon his disciples to be humble and self-denying, mild and condescending, and to abound in all offices of Christian love, though mean, and to the meanest; and of this he hath set us an example.
MacArthur says similarly:
Greatness consists in humble outpouring of life for others. It’s the servant leader. If you want to be great, then serve, that’s all. Jesus was just Jesus in terms of His earthly name. And He served and He washed feet and He gave His life. And He said “The Son of man has not come to be ministered unto but” – to what? – “to minister” or serve, give His life. That’s the point.
Jesus then concluded by saying that all who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted (verse 12), as He Himself was humbled on the Cross then exalted once He ascended back to Heaven to sit on the right hand of God the Father.
Henry cites examples from the Bible in analysing this verse:
Here is a good reason for all this, v. 12. Consider,
First, The punishment intended for the proud; Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased. If God give them repentance, they will be abased in their own eyes, and will abhor themselves for it; if they repent not, sooner or later they will be abased before the world. Nebuchadnezzar, in the height of his pride, was turned to be a fellow-commoner with the beasts; Herod, to be a feast for the worms; and Babylon, that sat as a queen, to be the scorn of nations. God made the proud and aspiring priests contemptible and base (Mal 2 9), and the lying prophet to be the tail, Isa 9 15. But if proud men have not marks of humiliation set upon them in this world, there is a day coming, when they shall rise to everlasting shame and contempt (Dan 12 2); so plentifully will he reward the proud doer! Ps 31 23.
Secondly, The preferment intended for the humble; He that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Humility is that ornament which is in the sight of God of great price. In this world the humble have the honour of being accepted with the holy God, and respected by all wise and good men; of being qualified for, and often called out to, the most honourable services; for honour is like the shadow, which flees from those that pursue it, and grasp at it, but follows those that flee from it. However, in the other world, they that have humbled themselves in contrition for their sin, in compliance with their God, and in condescension to their brethren, shall be exalted to inherit the throne of glory; shall be not only owned, but crowned, before angels and men.
MacArthur sums our Lord’s lesson up as follows, including with a citation from the Revd Andrew Bonar (1810-1892), a minister in the Free Church of Scotland:
Andrew Bonar was a dear man of God years back. He once said he could always tell when a Christian was growing, and the way he could tell when a Christian was growing is the Christian would always talk more and more of Christ and less and less of himself. And he said it was like the Christian seeing himself get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until like the morning star, he gave way to the rising sun. False spiritual leaders, no authority, no integrity, no sympathy, no spirituality, no humility.
So what is a true spiritual leader? What is a true spiritual leader? Divine authority, where does that come from? Word of God. Integrity, his life matches his message. Sympathy, he’s filled with grace and mercy and pity and care. Spirituality, it’s the heart he’s concerned about, not the outside, not the show. Humility, instead of lacking humility he manifests the heart of a servant who seeks to be humble and let God lift him up.
At this point in the Lectionary, this is the last reading we have until Matthew 25, which is coming up soon.
After Jesus finished His discourse on false teachers, He then condemned the Sanhedrin, pronouncing coming judgement upon them. I wrote about the rest of the chapter in 2016.
It seems that everything our Lord had said on that Wednesday, two days before His death, led up to the following condemnations, all preceded by the word ‘Woe’, signifying judgement:
Matthew 23:13-15 – Jesus, seven woes, scribes and Pharisees, judgement, condemnation
Jesus pronounces the first of the seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees, whom He terms ‘hypocrites’. In other translations of the Bible, there are eight woes to counteract the eight Beatitudes, as per Matthew Henry (cited in the post).
Matthew 23:16-19 – Jesus, seven woes, scribes and Pharisees, judgement, condemnation, Corban
Jesus pronounces the second of the seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees.
Matthew 23:20-22 – Jesus, seven woes, scribes and Pharisees, judgement, condemnation, oaths, promises, the holy Name, kingdom of heaven
These three verses conclude Matthew 23:16-19 …
Matthew 23:23-24 – tithing, scribes, Pharisees, Jesus, judgement
In Jesus’s fourth woe to the scribes and Pharisees, He passed judgement on them for placing more value on how much mint, dill and cumin to tithe than on justice, mercy — and faithfulness to God.
Matthew 23:25-26 – hypocrites, scribes, Pharisees, cup and plate, purity, Jesus
Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees for their outward cleanliness and filthy inwardness, using an analogy of a cup and plate: clean on the outside, dirty on the inside. He was referring to their extortion racket in the temple. You can read more about that in the third woe (here and here). The lesson is to have a pure heart — interior — so that the exterior will also be pure.
Matthew 23:27-28 – Jesus, scribes and Pharisees, whitewashed sepulchres
Jesus compares the scribes and Pharisees to whitewashed sepulchres — tombs. They appear pure and clean on the outside, but are full of sin within. This is the sixth of the seventh woes — judgements — He pronounced upon them.
Matthew 23:29-33 – Jesus, scribes and Pharisees, serpents, brood of vipers, hell
Jesus pronounced the seventh and final woe — judgement, condemnation — on the scribes and Pharisees who continued the egregious legacy of sin from their forefathers: killing prophets and, now, the Messiah, whom the prophets foretold.
Little did the Sanhedrin know that their world would come to an end with the destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans in AD 70. It has never been rebuilt. That said, Paul tells us that the Jews will embrace Christianity before the world ends (Romans 11:25-28).
Forbidden Bible Verses will appear tomorrow.
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur (as indicated below).
Qualifications for Overseers
3 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer[a] must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,[b] sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
———————————————————————————————————-
Last week’s post discussed Paul’s instructions to Timothy about the role of women in church.
This is a long post about overseers in the church.
False teachers had arisen in the churches in Ephesus and surrounding areas. Timothy’s command from Paul was to replace them with good, faithful men. Recall that, at the end of 1 Timothy 1, the Apostle told his protégé that already had to turn Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan.
Matthew Henry’s commentary reminds us of Paul’s departure from Ephesus after three years of establishing the church there (emphases mine):
It seems they were very loth to part with Paul, especially because he told them they should see his face no more (Acts 20 38); for their church was but newly planted, they were afraid of undertaking the care of it, and therefore Paul left Timothy with them to set them in order.
John MacArthur picks up the story:
In Acts 20, he said to the Ephesian elders – he said, “I know that when I leave, perverse men will come in, evil men will rise up on the inside, and both from the inside and the outside will come false leaders to lead this church astray.” He knew the enemy, Satan. He knew the plan and the plot to work against the Kingdom of God, and he knew the inevitability of such an attack. And his prophecy was fulfilled.
By the time he gets out of prison and goes to Ephesus to meet Timothy there, he discovers that the church is filled with false pastors, and false overseers, and false elders, and those who teach lies and heresies. And so, leaving Timothy there to set things in order, he goes on to Macedonia. But isn’t gone long before he pens this letter, writes back to Timothy, and says, “Now, I want you to get this settled in that church.” There are issues that have to be dealt with. And a major issue that sits right in the middle of this epistle is the matter of confronting the church about the qualifications for church leaders.
Paul then lays out the characteristics of men in church leadership roles in 1 Timothy 3.
The Apostle begins with overseers, or ‘bishops’ in some translations. Paul means head pastors.
Verse 1 in Henry’s translation reads as follows:
This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
Right away Paul stamps the authority of truth on the desire to do good when one wants to become a pastor (verse 1).
Henry explains what Paul is conveying to Timothy and contrasts it with how it evolved over the centuries, and not always in the best way. The Church of England had long been established by the time Henry wrote his commentary:
I. The ministry is a work. However the office of a bishop may be now thought a good preferment, then it was thought a good work. 1. The office of a scripture-bishop is an office of divine appointment, and not of human invention. The ministry is not a creature of the state, and it is a pity that the minister should be at any time the tool of the state. The office of the ministry was in the church before the magistrate countenanced Christianity, for this office is one of the great gifts Christ has bestowed on the church, Eph 4 8-11. 2. This office of a Christian bishop is a work, which requires diligence and application: the apostle represents it under the notion and character of a work; not of great honour and advantage, for ministers should always look more to their work than to the honour and advantage of their office. 3. It is a good work, a work of the greatest importance, and designed for the greatest good: the ministry is conversant about no lower concerns than the life and happiness of immortal souls; it is a good work, because designed to illustrate the divine perfections in bringing many sons to glory; the ministry is appointed to open men’s eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, etc., Acts 26 18. 4. There ought to be an earnest desire of the office in those who would be put into it; if a man desire, he should earnestly desire it for the prospect he has of bringing greater glory to God, and of doing the greatest good to the souls of men by this means.
Henry gives us one of the questions those who thought they had a calling to the priesthood in the Church of England were to answer:
This is the question proposed to those who offer themselves to the ministry of the church of England: “Do you think you are moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office?”
MacArthur would agree with that question:
… the statement that you need to know there is, “if a man desire.” That’s the key. You need to understand that all we know about in the New Testament in relation to call springs from desire. It’s a question of, what are you compelled to do? I believe that, where the call in the Old Testament might have been verbally from God out of heaven, the call in the New Testament might have been directly from Jesus Christ, the call in this age is the work of the Spirit of God.
God the Father called in the Old Testament. God the Son called in the New Testament. God the Holy Spirit is calling today. And the call of the Spirit of God today comes through the compulsion of the heart; the strong desire. And if you desire that, that’s a good thing to desire.
MacArthur discusses the words ‘a true saying’:
Notice the phrase: “This is a true saying” – or – “This is a faithful saying.” That little formula introduces something that is of great importance; of great importance. It is attached to something of monumental importance.
Paul uses that phrase five times. He uses it in 1 Timothy 1:15, he uses it here in 3:1, he uses it again in chapter 4, verse 9, he uses it in 2 Timothy 2:11 and he uses it in Titus 3:8. Five times it is used. Now, what that means is, “it is a trustworthy statement,” or to put it simply, “this is the truth, and everybody knows it.” This is axiomatic. This doesn’t need proof. This is obvious. This is patently clear to everyone. Here is a believable fact. Here is a trustworthy statement. Now, that is only a formula used in the pastoral epistles, which means that it didn’t come into use until late in the ministry of Paul.
As for ‘a good work’ or ‘a noble task’, MacArthur says:
Unquestionably, then, this gives to us a sense that the early church put a high value on a call to church leadership. It is a very sacred trust. It was essential in the life of the church.
… in that particular day and time, when the early church developed this saying, you can be sure that people didn’t go rushing into the ministry for the wrong reasons, because there was high risk connected with that; the church was persecuted. There was not a lot of prominence and prestige in the community for someone in that position. Great danger, great risk, problems, difficulty, hard work, great toil, low compensation, no security, very little future, no guarantees about anything.
So, the church, wanting to exalt that role, and encourage the hearts of young people, no doubt developed this saying, that it is a worthy thing to desire that, to impel those who were called to think seriously about that as a life career.
MacArthur points out that a Greek word used in the original manuscript is a masculine one:
You will notice further, verse 1 says, “If a man desires the office of overseer, he desires a good work.” It is limited to men. The use of the Greek tis, T-I-S in English, in the masculine form, indicates that men are in reference here. It means any man, but it is masculine; “if any man desires.”
… The limitations on this calling to men are also fortified by verses 2 through 6. And in verses 2 through 6, there is a listing of all kinds of descriptive qualifications; they’re adjectives. Every one of them in verse 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are in the masculine form.
MacArthur looks at the Greek word for ‘desire’, used twice in that verse:
You will notice that two times, in the Authorized version, the word desire appears in verse 1. “If someone desires the office of an overseer” – or, actually, “desires the overseer’s work” – “he desires a good work.” There are two words for desire, though they’re translated as if they were one in English. The first one is oregō. What that means is, to reach out after, or to stretch out some – oneself, to grasp something. It doesn’t say anything about the inside; it just says what you’re doing on the outside.
It’s the idea of going after something. If someone goes after the function of an overseer; that’s the idea. If he pursues that; and the idea is, he gets in that track. Maybe he goes to school, he reads about that, he studies about that, he learns to do that, he gets under some people that are doing that. If he sort of tracks that track, then it says, if he does that, “he is desiring a good work.” But the second word for desire is completely different. The first word – oregō – is only used three times.
It’s used also, in chapter 6, verse 10, in a negative way; that’s reaching after something bad. It’s used in Hebrew – Hebrews 11:16, I believe it is, reaching for something good. It doesn’t say what you’re reaching for. Here, obviously, it’s reaching out for that pastorate, that leadership in the church. If a person does that, then it says, “he desires,” and he uses a totally different word – epithumeō – used many times in the New Testament, also for bad and good. But this word means a passionate compulsion.
Whereas the first word is something you do outwardly, the second word is something you feel inwardly. And it’s the two of those things that come together in this verse that give us the embodiment of the full understanding of that desire. What you have here, then, is someone who desires to lead in the church, and pursues it on the outside because he’s driven on the inside; he is compelled on the inside …
But it ought to be a compulsion. If it’s from God, it will be a compulsion. Now, the compulsion may be stronger in some than others, but nonetheless, it is a compulsion.
Paul was compelled. We have read many times over the past couple of years in these posts of his compulsion. MacArthur gives us one example. Students of Paul’s epistles will remember more verses:
Paul says, “Look, don’t commend me for my ministry” – 1 Corinthians 9 – “woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” I am a driven man. I am compelled. I am compelled.
MacArthur gave a long citation of a book by the English Reformer, Hugh Latimer (1487-1555), who was one of the three Oxford Martyrs that Mary I — ‘Bloody Mary’ — ordered to be burnt at the stake. The three men — Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer — were Church of England bishops in the Anglican sense, rather than the Pauline sense here, who resisted giving up the Protestant faith for Mary’s Catholicism.
MacArthur cites Latimer’s ‘Sermon of the Plough’, which reveals the depth and gravitas of Christian ministry. Latimer’s intended audience were clergymen who were relaxed about their vocations:
And now I would ask you a strange question: who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passes all the rest in doing his office? I can tell, for I know who he is; I know him well. But now I think you listening and harkening that I should name him. There is one that passes all the others, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all of England. And will you know who it is? I will tell you: it is the devil.
He is the most diligent preacher of all; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure [curacy]; you shall find – never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keeps residence at all times; you shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will, he is ever at home; he is the most diligent preacher in all the realm; he is ever at his plough: no lording or loitering can hinder him; he is ever applying his business, you will never find him idle, I warrant you.
When the devil is resident, and has his plough going, there away with books, and up with candles; away with Bibles, and up with beads; away with the light of the gospel, and up with the light of the candles, yea, even at noon-day…up with man’s traditions and his laws, down with God’s traditions and His most holy Word. Oh that our prelates [pastors] would be as diligent to sow the corn of good doctrine, as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel! There was never such a preacher in England as he is.
Latimer concluded his sermon with this:
The prelates are lords, and not laborers: but the devil is diligent at his plough. He is no unpreaching prelate: he is no lordly loiterer from his cure, he is a busy ploughman… Therefore, you unpreaching prelates, learn from the devil: be diligent in doing your office. If you will not learn from God, nor good men, to be diligent in your office, then learn from the devil.
MacArthur explains the Greek word for ‘bishop’ or ‘overseer’:
… the word is episkopos, the word for bishop or overseer …
It really could be used, the word – we could use the word leader or ruler, because that’s the idea. If you’re given responsibility to lead the church, to oversee the church, you are given a great responsibility. It is a very, very responsible calling. In fact, in Hebrews 13:17, it says you have to give an account to God for how you handled your leadership. James 3:1 says, “Don’t be in a hurry to be a teacher, because you’ll have a greater condemnation.” The responsibility is so great for one in a position of leadership.
Now, the word episkopos, or episkopē, comes out of Greek culture. There is a use of that word in the Greek culture. They use it to refer to an inspector, a sort of a city administrator, a finance manager; and some people believe that that word came out of Greek culture into the church. But it’s been discovered, too, that among a group of Jews called Essenes – they were monastic Jews; they were sort of heterodox Jews; they lived out in the wilderness by the Dead Sea – they also had episkopē.
They used the Hebrew term, mebaqqer and they – they had these men who would be called by them, in the Greek, episkopē, and in the Essene culture – the Qumran community, we call it – these men preached, taught, presided, exercised care, exercised authority, and did church discipline. It wouldn’t be called church discipline, but it was community discipline. They had the duty of commanding the people, instructing the people, receiving alms from the people. They had the duty of accusing the people, examining them, dealing with their sins, and generally shepherding.
So, it’s probably likely that the episkopē really gets its definition out of the Qumran community, rather than out of the Greek culture, because the Greek culture is such a narrow definition of administration, whereas the Qumran people saw this as a wide range of spiritual responsibility. So, the overseer – imagine – had that kind of responsibility; to command the people, lead the people, instruct the people, receive the giving from the people, receive accusations against the people and find out if they were true, examine the people, deal with their sins, shepherd the flock.
The range of responsibility, really, that belongs to every pastor and elder. The overseer is the same as a pastor and an elder. As I said earlier, elder – which is the word presbuteros – simply speaks of spiritual maturity; it means an older person. Shepherd is the word pastor – it is one who feeds – and overseer is the word episkopos – the one who leads, administrates, and coordinates, and supervises. They all refer to the same person. They are all used of the same people in Acts 20:28. They are all used of the same people in Titus 1:6 to 9 – in 1:5 to 9. They’re used of the same people in 1 Peter 5:1 and 2 …
So, they refer to the same person. I am an elder, spiritually mature. I am a pastor, I feed you. I am an overseer, I have responsibility of oversight, it’s all one and the same, just looking at it from different facets. And what is the responsibility of the elders at this church, the shepherds and pastors of this church; what is their responsibility? We are to rule. 1 Timothy 5:17 says we rule. That is proistēmi, to be ranked first or to stand first. We have the authority, given us by Christ, to rule in His behalf using His Word.
Finally, MacArthur looks at what Paul means by ‘a good work’:
The word good is kalos, a noble, excellent, honorable, high-quality work. This is the high estimate of the pastorate. It is of great, great value …
Then lastly … it is a demanding calling. And that is implied in the word work. It is a demanding calling. If you’re looking for leisure, if you’re looking for an easy time, you will not find it in the true exercise of the ministry.
You can find it by sort of getting in and just kind of laying low, but you’ll not fulfill the ministry. It is a demanding calling. The word work implies that. It implies energy, and expending of energy, and effort, and zeal, and commitment. And the word here has the idea, not of a one-time task or a one-time deed, but of a life work. It is a demanding occupation, I would like to translate it. It is a demanding life-long task. When Paul uses the same word, in 2 Timothy 4:5, and says to Timothy, “Do the work of an evangelist,” he’s not saying, “Do it today and tomorrow,” he’s saying, “Do that life-long work of an evangelist. You are one; do that work.”
And we are “to esteem” – 1 Thessalonians 5:12 – “those over us in the Lord for their work,” for their occupation, for the thing they do. The work of the ministry is a demanding thing. The work is never done. It’s – you don’t turn it off at five o’clock, let me tell you, folks. It never goes away – never, ever goes away. And there’s no assembly line that stops, and you can walk away. It just never, ever, ever goes away. It is a demanding calling. And when you look at your own heart and ask yourself if you’re called, realize that.
You’re talking about a life-long occupation. And Paul knew that; he suffered so greatly for that work. Well, these are the kind of people the church needs, who are called, because they understand that this is the kind of thing that it is: a demanding calling. And yet a worthy one, a lofty one, a compelling one. A calling that is rising from deep within the heart of a person, who understands its importance, understands that God is driving them to that. This is where church leadership has to begin. It starts with a calling.
Paul then gives Timothy six characteristics of an overseer, or pastor: being above reproach (blameless), a one-woman husband, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable and able to teach (verse 2).
We can see the heavy responsibility of being a pastor. It is a tall order.
In his next sermon on today’s verses, MacArthur cites Richard Baxter (1615-1691), another English clergyman. The Church of England expelled him during the English Civil War. Baxter continued as what is known as a Nonconformist clergyman, one not affiliated with the state church. He embraced Calvinism and became one of the leaders of the Nonconformist movement. Even today, pastors who are not affiliated with the Anglican church are referred to in England as Noncons.
Baxter wrote a book, The Reformed Pastor, first published in 1656, and MacArthur read it. A citation follows which fully expresses the solemn responsibility of a clergyman:
Take heed to yourselves, lest you live in those sins which you preach against in others, and lest you be guilty of that which daily you condemn. Will you make it your work to magnify God, and, when you have done that, dishonor Him as much as others? Will you proclaim Christ’s governing power, and yet condemn it, and rebel yourselves? Will you preach His laws, and willfully break them?
If sin be evil, why do you live in it? If it be not evil, why do you dissuade men from it? If it be dangerous, how dare you venture on it? If it be not dangerous, why do you tell men it is? If God’s threatenings are true, why do you not fear them? If they are false, why do you needlessly trouble men with them, and put them into such frights without a cause? Do you know the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, and yet will you do them? Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?
Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, or be drunk, or covetous, art thou such thyself? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonorest thou God? What! Shall the same tongue speak evil that speaks against evil? Shall those lips censure, and slander, and backbite your neighbor, that cry down these and the like things in others? Take heed to yourselves, lest you cry down sin, and yet do not overcome it; lest, while you seek to bring it down in others, you bow to it, and become its slave yourselves.
For of whom a man is overcome, the same he is brought into bondage. To whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, His servants you are whom you obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. O brethren! It is easier to chide at sin, than it is to overcome it.
Henry explains the importance of each of the characteristics Paul gives Timothy in verse 2:
In order to the discharge of this office, the doing of this work, the workman must be qualified. 1. A minister must be blameless, he must not lie under any scandal; he must give as little occasion for blame as can be, because this would be a prejudice to his ministry and would reflect reproach upon his office. 2. He must be the husband of one wife; not having given a bill of divorce to one, and then taken another, or not having many wives at once, as at that time was too common both among Jews and Gentiles, especially among the Gentiles. 3. He must be vigilant and watchful against Satan, that subtle enemy; he must watch over himself, and the souls of those who are committed to his charge, of whom having taken the oversight, he must improve all opportunities of doing them good. A minister ought to be vigilant, because our adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, 1 Pet 5 8. 4. He must be sober, temperate, moderate in all his actions, and in the use of all creature-comforts. Sobriety and watchfulness are often in scripture put together, because they mutually befriend one another: Be sober, be vigilant. 5. He must be of good behaviour, composed and solid, and not light, vain, and frothy. 6. He must be given to hospitality, open-handed to strangers, and ready to entertain them according to his ability, as one who does not set his heart upon the wealth of the world and who is a true lover of his brethren. 7. Apt to teach. Therefore this is a preaching bishop whom Paul describes, one who is both able and willing to communicate to others the knowledge which God has given him, one who is fit to teach and ready to take all opportunities of giving instructions, who is himself well instructed in the things of the kingdom of heaven, and is communicative of what he knows to others.
MacArthur looks at these qualifications in more detail in his next sermon. He preached seven sermons on today’s verses.
He surmises that Paul mentioned being a one-woman man because avoiding sexual sin is hard, especially for men:
Now, I realize that the Old English, the King James, the Authorized Version says, “The husband of one wife.” That is not an accurate rendering of the Greek text. It uses the word gynaikos which is woman. It uses the word anēr, which is man, and it simply says, “A one-woman man.” The emphatic is the word “one.” “A one-woman man.” Here Paul is not stressing marital status. There is no definite article “the” husband of one wife. It is with without the article “a” one-woman man. And the absence of the article stresses not circumstances and not marital status, but character. It stresses character.
He begins to discuss the blamelessness of this man by a statement about his moral, sexual behavior. His character starts right here.
Somebody says, “Well, why is this first in the list?”
I’ll tell you; in my humble experience through the years, I have found this area of a man’s life to be that which most often puts men out of the ministry – more than any other matter, the inability to be a one-woman man. And that is why it is listed first, because it is such an obvious matter of grave concern, and such a mark of moral character.
He goes on to explain more about what Paul meant:
He’s not talking about polygamy here. Polygamy would disqualify you from even being in the church. They’d discipline you out before you got in. Sexual promiscuity was rampant. Vice was rampant. Prostitutes and deviant sexual priestesses and all of that was rampant in Ephesus, but not polygamy. The issue here is not that you can’t be a polygamist.
Somebody else says, “No, the husband of one wife means you could never have a second wife. You could never be married to more than one person.”
Well, I find that to be difficult in interpretation, because in the first place, that is not what the text originally says; it says “a one-woman man,” and it’s speaking about character, not marital status. But let’s assume even that we translate it the husband of one wife, are we saying that someone who had married a second wife could never be an elder in the church? Not hardly, because there are some terms in Scripture by which God not only permits but honors a second marriage. Is that not right? …
So, the point of this passage, a one-woman man, is not some kind of blanket forbidding that anyone married a second time could ever serve in a ministry. But there have been people who have interpreted it that way, and some who have been widowed, and then remarried men – a man losing his wife, marrying another woman, and some feeling they could no longer serve in the church. That’s not the intent of this text, for God honors that. God allows that.
Then the question comes, “Well, maybe it means divorced people.” Well, if it was intended to say that, it would have been very simple; all he would have had to say was, “This is to be a man who has never been divorced.” But it doesn’t say that either. It doesn’t say a man who has never been divorced. Because that would be such a broad, blanket statement, that that would pose problems as well …
So, the point is this, people: a remarriage, in and of itself is not a sin. If a person was widowed and remarried, if a person was the innocent party in a divorce, where the other person was an unrepentant adulterer, a remarriage is not a sin. If an unbeliever departed, a remarriage is not a sin. So, we cannot blight someone’s life with a second marriage as if that in itself were sinful.
Now, having said all of that, I would confess to you that the majority of second marriages in our particular day and age are sinful. Obviously. Because they do not fit within that narrow definition of tolerable divorce given in the Word of God. But the point now, going back to 1 Timothy 3 – if you’re not there, turn to it, will you please – the point going back here is not that he is saying no one can ever be in church leadership who’s ever been previously married. That’s ridiculous, because there are tolerances within that. That isn’t even the issue here. If he wanted to be explicit about that, he would have said it another way …
The issue here, beloved, is a one-woman man. What that means is man devoted to one woman in his heart and mind. In his heart and mind. Keep in your mind that sexual evil was rampant in Ephesus.
… And what he is saying, you see, to Timothy is, “Hey, Timothy, one thing you’re going to have to do at the very beginning, when you put these men in a position of leadership, it will be made very clear that they are one-woman men, because that’s the only standard that God tolerates in His Church in terms of godly living. This is a man who loves only one woman, who desires only one woman, who thinks of only one woman, whose heart is for only one woman, and that woman is the wife that God has given to him. This is a man who would never do treacherously against the wife of his youth, as the prophet put it, not in a legal sense of divorcing nor in the spiritual sense of violating that commitment to her in his own mind, in his own heart.
The series continues with the rest of verse 2 in part 2.
The ongoing preoccupation and concern about how Anglican parishes will survive, especially in rural England, might be resolved soon.
On June 26, 2022, The Sunday Telegraph reported that wealthier parishes could be allowed to give more to poorer ones. The plan will be debated at the upcoming General Synod meeting in July (emphases mine):
Wealthy church dioceses will be allowed to share funds with their poorer neighbours under plans to be voted on by the Church of England.
The proposals, which have been submitted before the General Synod, the Church of England’s legislative body, will mean that for the first time cash can be more evenly distributed.
The move would remove some barriers to dioceses sharing resources and comes amid concern about the viability of smaller, poorer and more rural parishes.
Why did that not happen sooner? It’s common sense. In Paul’s epistles, we read of his collection for the poor church in Jerusalem. The other churches he planted in Asia Minor and Macedonia gave generously, and he succeeded in presenting the donation to the struggling congregation in Jerusalem.
It will be left to the dioceses to decide if they wish to participate. Hmm. Based on previous diocesan splurging of money on rather useless ‘initiatives’, I do hope they will be generous towards their poorer congregations:
In papers published last week and submitted to the Synod for its conference in July, David White, deputy director of finance for National Church Institutions, said that his amendment would “in effect, enable a Diocesan Board of Finance to grant funds from its income account for use by other dioceses in the Church of England if it wished to do so” …
In May the archbishops admitted that they “got it wrong” by not prioritising rural parishes over city churches, as they announced funding worth £3.6 billion.
We shall see.
On June 23, Andrew Selous MP, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, answered a question from Labour MP Ben Bradshaw on putting more clergy into neglected parishes. I agree with the Revd Giles Fraser of St Anne, Kew, that Selous’s response was far from reassuring:
Churches are struggling to obtain curates, as obtaining more clergy is not in their direct control:
The Save the Parish network will be meeting before the Synod members get together. I wish them all the very best. They have two champions in the Revds Giles Fraser and Marcus Walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in London:
Giles Fraser is enjoying his new assignment at the Parish Church of St Anne in southwest London:
He is out and about meeting fellow residents:
On a serious note, Fraser warns of the Lords Spiritual — serving Church of England bishops in the House of Lords — becoming irrelevant if the parish system breaks down:
In his recent article in UnHerd, he says:
… the bishops draw their moral authority from the fact that the Church of England operates a universal service provision. We serve in all communities, from the richest to the poorest, from cities to rural areas. The bishops are in fact well suited to the Lords because they connect it to every parish in the country — well, in England at least. And if there is a current threat to bishops in the Lords it comes not from the fact that they sometimes irritate the government with moral pronouncements — ‘twas ever thus — but rather because the bishops are dismantling the source of their own authority. Armed with half-arsed MBAs, they want the Church to be run with increasingly centralised efficiency; inefficient parishes are being closed. As a result, the connection between the bishops and the parishes is being severed, and with it the source of their authority to sit in the legislature.
Fraser warns that this plays into secularists’ hands:
The role of the bishops is to represent the whole country spiritually. On the whole, other faiths are glad of this particular role held by the Church of England. The National Secular Society and other troublemakers are keen to sow division among people of faith in order to argue that no one church should have legislative priority over another. But this is simply a ruse to dislodge religion from the public sphere. The Church of England is not a special interest group, it exists for all. Even, heaven help us, for secularists.
On that note, the Revd Stephen Heard is concerned about the single-minded political leanings of C of E clergy, starting with the archbishops. Their constant political pronouncements could be alienating the laity — and potential converts:
https://twitter.com/SAH_Rowan/status/1539245179084886016
He cites an article from The Critic, ‘The closing of the Episcopal mind’, which provides bishops’ opinions dating back to the 19th century, and concludes:
Given this deep uncertainty and debate as to the political implications of Christianity, total political consensus among its leadership makes me very uneasy. It alienates large swathes of lay Anglicans who, in perfectly good faith, come to conclusions that differ from the liberal-left consensus, and makes our mission as a broad national church harder. It belies a real lack of intellectual vibrancy and curiosity, and implies, by some curious happenstance, that the political spirit of a restless and secular age has magically aligned itself with the truths of the Christian religion … What providential perfection! And what an unlikely state of affairs all round.
Political causes have even entered into baptismal and confirmation vows in the Diocese of Oxford, which now requires a promise to uphold God’s creation.
Marcus Walker rightly points out that this places Christ, the Person to whom we pledge our faithful allegiance, in second position:
He wrote an article about it for The Telegraph:
In it, he says:
Baptism and Confirmation are two of the most important steps a human being can make. I say this, I concede, as a clergyman, but what happens at these sacraments is not just a significant religious service, but an event that transforms a person’s life, temporal and eternal.
This is why it’s really important that the Church avoids putting barriers up that would discourage people from encountering this grace. It is difficult enough for the Church to persuade people that the Christian message is true (we’ve all seen the stats). Pushing away those who don’t hold to the ideologies of the current bench of bishops is foolish in the extreme.
This week, the Bishop of Oxford has decided to add to the service of Baptism and Confirmation a new little exchange: “Will you strive to sustain the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth?” “With the help of God, I will.” It is important to note that this is not a change to the actual baptismal vows. It’s part of a rather naff “commissioning” that the new prayer book, Common Worship, allows at the end of these services. Nobody knows what happens if a candidate says “no”, mostly because none of the other questions are controversial so this issue has not come up before.
At this point you might be saying, “but there’s nothing controversial here either”, and, if speaking entirely for myself, I would agree. You might also say that this seems pretty consonant with long-standing mainstream Christian and Anglican theology and this would be true.
But the question of how we engage with environmental concerns has become a major political issue recently, one controversial enough to have even caused long standing conservatives to reconsider their loyalty to the Crown in anger at the way some members of the Royal Family proselytise about “The Environment”.
This is the only part of the service which engages directly with a live political discourse. We are not asked to pledge anything to do with poverty, international relations, race, or even loyalty to the Supreme Governor of the Church of England …
Walker acknowledges that the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) requires confirmands to pledge loyalty to the monarch and says that it is no longer used in today’s confirmation ceremonies:
… to use it now would turn away any republican. It would cause those who don’t think this country should have a monarch to have second thoughts about finding God. High Tory though I am, I would not want to stand before the Throne of Judgment and have held against me the souls I had turned away because of my politics.
Which means my advice to the Bishop of Oxford is not to mess with this liturgy; to those cheerleading the move to ask yourself what if the boot were on the other foot and you were being forced to assent to a political position you dissent from as a condition of baptism; to the Church to be grateful for anyone willing to commit themselves to Christ and to welcome them with open arms.
In closing, this guidance on sermon writing from 2017 is worthwhile reading. It could apply to any essay. Parts of it remind me of the Expository Writing course I took at university many moons ago.
This is called ‘Good to Great: Turning a Decent Sermon into a Wonderful One’:
It’s excellent advice — and difficult to achieve, therefore, all the more worthwhile in the pursuit of ‘good to great’.
On Monday, June 20, 2022, the Telegraph’s columnist Tim Stanley went back in time to explain how the rot set in the Church of England.
This happened early in the Queen’s reign. While she has nothing to do with the appointment of Archbishops of Canterbury, as the Prime Minister has this privileged responsibility, the decay is nearly 70 years old.
When I moved here decades ago, everyone said that the Church of England is the Tory (Conservative) Party at prayer.
Even at that time, our church — as did many other Anglican congregations in England — had non-liturgical services, disproving that trope.
The early morning service I attend probably could be described as mostly Conservative. Even then, I’m not sure, and, as only a handful of us are there week after week we are, therefore, hardly representative. The more widely attended mid-morning service certainly could be described as having adherents in the Liberal Democrats and Labour.
Stanley’s article, ‘How the Church of England became the Labour Party at prayer’, discusses two Archbishops of Canterbury, the Right Revds Geoffrey Fisher and Michael Ramsey.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
Geoffrey Fisher
Geoffrey Fisher was the Archbishop of Canterbury when the Queen acceded the throne.
Like many Anglican clergy, he was a bit of an oxymoron.
On the one hand:
Fisher, a former headmaster, is rumoured to have talked Princess Margaret out of marrying a divorcee …
On the other hand:
in his diary, long ago in 1957, [Conservative Prime Minister] Harold Macmillan wrote that he dreaded his meetings with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher. “I try to talk to him about religion, but he seems to be quite uninterested and reverts all the time to politics.”
Then there was the strange middle ground. Fisher:
opined of the nuclear bomb that “the very worst” it could do “is to sweep a vast number of people from this world into the next, into which they must all go anyway.” Yet he was also against Suez and the premium bond, the latter a lottery cooked up by Macmillan that Fisher regarded as ungodly.
The premium bond is great. It is one of the best investments that one can make these days. I ‘win’ at least one bond worth £25 nearly every month. I don’t need to lift a finger; the draw takes place automatically. This is a much better appreciation in capital than a standard savings account will provide these days.
Fisher got shirty with Macmillan when it came time to select his successor:
Macmillan was as mischievous when it came to clerical appointments. He suggested to Fisher that the best choice for his successor at Canterbury might be Michael Ramsey, the liberal-minded Archbishop of York. “Dr Ramsey is a theologian, a scholar and a man of prayer,” Fisher is supposed to have said. “Therefore he is entirely unsuitable as Archbishop of Canterbury.” He knew this, he explained, because he had been his headmaster. “Well, you may have been Dr Ramsey’s headmaster,” retorted Macmillan, “but you are not mine” – and, one likes to imagine, picked Ramsey for the job in a fit of obstinacy, ushering in the Swinging Sixties.
Michael Ramsey
Again, we have a contradiction in terms if Ramsey was indeed ‘a theologian, a scholar and a man of prayer’, because it was during his tenure, according to Tim Stanley, that the C of E embraced the prevailing culture of the Swinging Sixties:
Under Fisher, the mission was to confirm an ancient Christian identity, but by 1960, it was obvious that England was changing fast. Rather than resist, Ramsey&Co sought to negotiate a new role as the nation’s conscience, not to block legislation, such as on divorce or abortion, but to shape it (so compassionate and forensic was Ramsey’s contribution to parliamentary debate on the legalisation of homosexual acts that one peer accused him of turning Hansard into pornography).
As clerics became dynamic commentators on the state of the nation, it might have seemed as if the gamble were paying off. But they were running on the fumes of the Fifties. It was Fisher-style conservatism that gave them the air of authority that they leant to causes that, in turn, made them sound not like they were trying to transform the world but allowing the world to transform them, that they had become dedicated disciples of fashion. Once, when asked what he thought about a trend for girls in London to walk about topless, Ramsey said, “We must just accept the fact that young people express themselves in new methods of dress that may seem queer to the older among us.”
Political shifts also took place during this time. Ramsey became Archbishop of Canterbury under a Conservative Prime Minister. In the middle of his tenure, Labour’s Harold Wilson took the helm. Edward ‘Ted’ Heath, a wet Conservative, succeeded him.
Harold Wilson ran into problems over immigration legislation with Ramsey:
One of the new archbishop’s interests was immigration. Ramsey called the Conservatives’ 1962 bill, which for the first time limited arrivals from the Commonwealth, “deplorable”. Labour, keen to co-opt the church, made him chair of a committee on race relations, though in 1968 Harold Wilson limited Asian immigration from Kenya and Ramsey condemned that bill, too.
Present day
Over the past seven decades, it has been easier for Archbishops of Canterbury to visit war zones in other parts of the world, but, as Tim Stanley points out, it is often the local vicar who encounters the impact of displaced persons:
Archbishops of Canterbury are part of a global communion: they have visited warzones and dictatorships and seen the horrors that compel people to flee, and when these unfortunates turn up in Britain, it is often the parish clergy who encounter them first. A vicar friend walked into his church one day to discover a Nigerian exile had broken into the children’s creche and was sound asleep in the Wendy house.
Immigration is a bigger issue than ever, especially as the Government is adamant over its plan to send illegals to Rwanda for processing, despite the fact that the June 14 charter flight lost all of its 37 passengers to legal challenges:
Its hierarchy has completely become the Labour Party at prayer … and so, in a bid to find relevance among those who don’t believe in God, the CofE frequently finds itself alienating those who do. It has probably irritated a few Rwandans along the way.
It is still hard for me to believe that most Anglicans voted for Brexit, but I stand corrected. Maybe they no longer go to church? Stanley says:
the one part of the population that has remained steadfastly loyal to the church is Conservative voters (two-thirds of English Anglicans voted for Brexit) …
Most importantly, while most, though not all, C of E clergy are clearly on the Left, they are attempting to court God-fearing Africans, who do not share their social views:
Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, head of the Rwandan Anglicans, has said he supports asylum seekers being sent to his country: he is also one of three African church leaders boycotting the upcoming Lambeth conference over the CofE’s tolerance of homosexuality. Here is the final twist. The Church that bent over backwards to ally with the post-colonial world has, in the process, embraced a liberal theology that now puts it at odds with much of the post-colonial world.
How Anglican clergy will reconcile that conundrum is anyone’s guess.
Would that the clergy concentrate on our souls and the promise of salvation instead.
Perhaps we need more African bishops serving in England. They know what the point of the Church is — and it isn’t politics.
As I was preparing yesterday’s post on what Anglican priests think of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, a lot more material came to the fore.
Trinity Sunday
As regular readers and churchgoers know, June 12, 2022 was Trinity Sunday.
At the Priory Church of St Bartholomew in London, it was also Confirmation Day for a blessed handful of the congregation.
The Revd Marcus Walker, St Bartholomew’s vicar, is on the right of the photo below. The Bishop of London, the Right Revd Sarah Mulally, is in the centre:
Did you ever wonder why mitres are shaped with a point?
Our vicar told us on Pentecost Sunday — the week before Trinity — that mitres are shaped that way to suggest the tongues of fire that descended on the heads of the faithful on the first Pentecost, signifying the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
It is a pity that the Bishop chose to preach on The Shack in her sermon. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear — no!
Not surprisingly, those preaching on Trinity Sunday dread it because it requires in some measure explaining the holy mystery of the Triune God. It is not unusual for a vicar to assign the sermon to an ordinand — trainee priest — who is a member of his congregation.
St Patrick used a shamrock. However, a Lutheran pastor in the United States uses an egg, which, in some ways, is even better. His sister, whom I cited in my post, wrote on another website (emphases mine below):
He set out 3 small bowls. He cracked an egg, separated the white from the yolk, placed them in 2 of the bowls, and the shell in the third. He then asked the children which was the egg (which of course brought out all kinds of interesting responses). He used this illustration to explain the Trinity. I think even the adults in the congregation were enlightened by his talk. The children certainly learned something that day.
Returning to St Bartholomew’s, Marcus Walker exchanges thoughts with a Catholic in the Twitter below:
Walker is absolutely right.
The Revd Matthew Cashmore is the vicar of St Anselm’s in Hayes, Middlesex, near Heathrow Airport. For centuries, it was a rural area. Now it is very much a part of Greater London. Its growth as an industrial suburb began in the mid-19th century with the arrival of the railway. In the 20th century, it was home to many industries, including player pianos, vinyl records, caravans, food manufacturing and aviation companies. Today, it is known for food, aviation and a number of Heathrow’s hotels.
St Mary the Virgin Church is the oldest house of worship in Hayes, dating back to the 13th century.
St Anselm’s was built in the 20th century but its name references the history of St Mary the Virgin, as Wikipedia explains:
St Anselm’s Church was completed in 1929 to the design of architect Hubert Christian Corlette. Noted designer MacDonald Gill was responsible for the panelled ceiling. The church’s foundation stone was laid on 13 May 1927 by Sir John Eldon Bankes. The east window is by James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars, London. The church was Grade II listed in November 2019.[58] St Anselm’s is so-named because William Rufus (1056 – 1100) sent Archbishop (later Saint) Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033 – 1109) to stay in the manor house of St Mary’s Church, as it was the nearest of the Archbishop’s manors to Windsor, where William Rufus resided.[59][60]
William Rufus was the third son of William the Conqueror.
On to the present day, and Matthew Cashmore, like many other vicars, preached on the mystery of the Trinity. This is an excerpt from St Anselm’s Trinity Sunday pew leaflet:
To try to figure out HOW this trinity of God works. We are human and modern humans attempt to understand the world through the lens of science and ‘reason’.
The issue of course is that creation is rather more complex and difficult than we can understand.
We are not God and we are reaching and trying as hard as we can to understand things that He created and put into place.
It’s just not possible.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t try – that we shouldn’t engage in trying to understand the the universe through science and ‘reason’; but rather to accept that there are things that we can not neatly fit into categories of science that are central to how we exist in the universe.
We are not God.
Sometimes we need to accept that it is wiser to exist and simply appreciate and give thanks for what God has made – and our part in it.
Wise words indeed.
Mission work
I found out about St Anselm’s via a tweet from a vicar whose tweets I posted yesterday.
The Revd Sarah Hancock, from Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, posted the church’s brilliant advert for a Mission Priest:
I can see why they have passed a Resolution. Going into rough pubs is probably not the sort of thing even today’s women priests are up for.
Mission work also appeared in Cashmore’s Trinity Sunday sermon, as he exhorted the congregation to think about ways in which they, too, can bring the Gospel to the unchurched. Excerpts follow:
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – Amen.
Today, as I’m sure you’re all aware is Trinity Sunday. It’s a day we call to mind the Holy Trinity and what that means to us today.
Trinity Sunday is an annual reminder of the simple command to live within the love and commandments of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and Jesus tells us how we discern how to do that …
… our faith is a felt faith. It is a faith that exists as much in our hearts and our stomachs as it does in our brains. The moment we forget that we lose the awesome breadth of what God has in store for us – we lose the ability to engage with what Jesus taught us – and we lose sight of what the Holy Spirit wants us to do in this life.
Now, I’m not saying we should leave our brains at the door when we come to church. What I am saying is that academic and intellectual exploration has to work alongside that gut feeling we all experience when we see the work of the Holy Spirit and that gentle warming of our heart we feel when we see the love of Jesus in action.
Our faith is a broad, complex and wonderful thing. It interacts with the world in a myriad of ways and people interact with us – and the faith they see in us – in a myriad of ways.
We should be open to all those possibilities.
The fact that somebody may want to talk to us about where the Trinity appears in scripture for example, is an opportunity to engage people about their faith. For us to crack open the Bible and talk them through the gospel of John and its rich description of the workings of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. (so I suggest you take your pew sheet home and read around these chapters!)
Or it may be that people want to know what the practical outworking of the Trinity in our day to day lives is … or they may want to understand how our love of God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit makes us feel.
We need to be prepared to answer these questions in the real world.
There are three things that I think any Christian should be ready to answer in the street.
-
- How does God make you feel?
- How does the Holy Spirit guide your daily life?
- How has Jesus taught you to live a life more pleasing to God?
These questions form the heart of what we talk about in the world when we bring people to the love of Jesus – and in so doing – to the love of God and the Holy Spirit.
They are true because we experience them across the breadth of our lives and because we see them in scripture – the test of truth …
Our faith is an experienced faith.
It has to be lived out to be understood …
When we talk to people about God … We engage them with the truth of what we have seen, what we have learnt, what we have experienced in our day-to-day life with Jesus.
And we should be more prepared for it.
We should, each morning as we cross ourselves and say the Our Father – think with our brains, feel with our stomach, experience the joy of love in our heart, and ask ourselves – how can I go into the world today and bring somebody to Jesus.
How can we bring people to this church, this place and bring them to baptism – to a relationship that is earth shatteringly life changing with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit?
It is up to each one of us to figure that out. Each one of us will bring a different gift, each one of us will bring different experiences and feelings, each one of us will have engaged with scripture in different ways and each one of us will reach somebody that another person cannot.
Nobody is beyond the love of God the Father, Son & Holy Sprit.
So, go out into the world my brothers and sisters and bring people to baptism, to this place, to a relationship with the Holy Trinity – because the only way to understand the Trinity – is to live inside its love.
Amen.
St Anselm’s is a High Anglican church, therefore, it adopts some Catholic practices and pre-Vatican II vestments, such as this fiddleback chasuble in gold and blue:
I wish Fr Matthew all the best with his parish work and finding a Mission Priest.
Those interested in reading or watching more of his sermons can find them here.
I can also recommend the one for Pentecost Sunday, another inspiring call to mission:
Another vicar, the Revd Sam Charles Norton, is also concerned about spreading the Good News in the Church of England. He begins by going back to basics, with the Bible, writings of the early Church Fathers as well as Anglican clergy who helped to develop the Church of England in the 16th and 17th centuries when it was theologically at its best:
He says we have replaced doctrine with culture:
People should visit our churches if only for their beauty, as close to a glimpse of heaven as we have in this life:
Who knows where a church visit might lead?
Trivia
In closing, new members were installed into the Order of the Garter on Monday, June 13. This ceremony takes place every June.
This year, the Bishop of Worcester’s brother was one of the newest members of this ancient Royal order. Tony Blair, unfortunately, was, too.
However, the interesting thing is that both the Bishop of Worcester — the Right Revd John Inge — and his brother, who is a Field Marshal, are the sons of butchers. Let no one say that modest parentage prohibits great achievements:
The Bishop is the Lord High Almoner, in charge of distributing alms to the poor. The office dates from 1103 and is a post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom.
The last Lord High Almoner who was the son of a butcher was Cardinal Wolsey (1473-1530):
How marvellous to be parents of sons who went into the military and the Church!
On Thursday afternoon and evening, I watched GB News’s wall-to-wall commentary on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. It has been excellent.
GB News is available worldwide, live and on video.
Nigel Farage was in London for Trooping the Colour and said that the parade and the enthusiasm of everyone he met elsewhere was very moving, indeed:
Retired Royal correspondent Michael Cole, who had watched the Coronation in 1953 as a little boy on his family’s brand new television set, told Farage that he felt the same way:
Continuing on from Thursday’s post on the Platinum Jubilee, likely to be a one-off event in British history, here is the marvellous flypast that took place after Trooping the Colour:
That evening, the Queen symbolically set off the beacon lighting around the UK and Commonwealth nations:
This video shows how the lighting unfolded at Windsor Castle …
… and here we can see them lit up around the world:
On Friday morning, June 3, a Service of Thanksgiving for the Queen’s 70-year reign took place at St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London.
The evening before, Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen would not be attending, having suffered ‘discomfort’ after Trooping the Colour. She made a second appearance on the balcony to acknowledge the military personnel and officers participating.
However, the BBC commentators told us that she was watching the broadcast as it unfolded on television.
Interestingly, Queen Victoria arrived for her Diamond Jubilee at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1897 only to find out that she could not exit her carriage because of ill health. When everyone inside found out, they all — clergy included — went outside to conduct the service there:
The Times‘s Valentine Low wrote the following about Elizabeth II:
The Queen may not have been able to take part in the Trooping the Colour ceremony on Horse Guards, but she takes her role as Colonel-in-Chief very seriously. Her decision to make that extra appearance was prompted by the same motivation that saw her make a last-minute appearance at the opening of the Elizabeth line: her unwavering sense of duty.
The Queen will be extremely disappointed at not going to St Paul’s. She has a sincere religious belief, and takes her role as head of the Church of England seriously too …
For the moment, the jubilee remains all about the Queen: wherever she is.
Personally, I would have had the Service of Thanksgiving at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The Queen returned to the castle after lunch with the Royal Family following Trooping the Colour.
The Sussexes attended the lunch at Buckingham Palace. They did not appear on the balcony as they are not working members of the Royal Family.
However, once at Windsor, where Archie and Lilibet stayed while their parents were in London, the Queen finally got to meet her newest great-grandchild:
The Daily Mail article has the order of the Service of Thanksgiving, which was traditional and dignified in all the best Church of England ways. Why can’t more C of E services be like that?
St Paul’s Cathedral also has the Order of Service as it was printed for those attending:
Crowds had gathered outside by 6 a.m. in the limited space Paternoster (Our Father) Square affords:
Attending these services as invited guests or military guard requires a bladder of steel and optimum decorum. Waiting for everyone to arrive takes longer than the actual service.
Today’s service welcomed as guests the charity sector, military cadets, Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, Commonwealth dignitaries, the military, politicians past and present as well as the extended Royal Family.
The public sector were there, too:
https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1532699298886045696
Outside were a military guard as well as military representatives from the Commonwealth nations. They had to stand perfectly still as the guests filed into the cathedral.
Here is another set of guards inside:
Musicians played traditional music. The Royal Marines provided the brass accompaniment. The Royal Air Force played the closing fanfare introducing the National Anthem, which concluded the service. Everyone sang his/her heart out. I’ve never heard anything like it:
Former Prime Ministers were in attendance: Sir John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Brown and Cameron brought their respective wives, Sarah and Samantha.
Members of the Cabinet, including Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Home Secretary Priti Patel, attended.
Opposition leaders Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey were there, along with Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her husband.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan and his wife also attended.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson got a huge and prolonged cheer when he arrived at the cathedral, accompanied by wife Carrie.
These photos show Boris and Carrie in the main photo. On the top right are the Camerons and on the bottom right are the Blairs, Tony and Cherie:
The only others who got louder cheers were the Sussexes …
… and the Cambridges:
I have read media reports that the Johnsons and the Sussexes were booed. I watched the proceedings on television. What I heard were most definitely cheers for both couples.
A royal expert commenting on the service said that, where the Queen is concerned:
nothing happens by chance.
Therefore, we can conclude that the fact that the Sussexes arrived by private car and got their own mini-procession down the aisle of St Paul’s was an instruction from the Queen (see second tweet):
The couple sat near the front, next to Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who were with their husbands.
The minor Royals arrived in a large black coach (bus). It took ages for them to file in, as they shook hands with a long line of Anglican clergy, including the Bishop of London, the Right Revd and Right Hon Dame Sarah Mulally, who had a lucrative career prior to entering the priesthood.
The clergy wore elaborate crimson and gold copes which were created for George V’s Silver Jubilee service in 1935. Most of them looked as good as new.
Yeoman Warders (Beefeaters) from the Tower of London stood behind them. They were on official duty guarding those inside the cathedral.
You can see both below:
Prince Edward and the Duchess of Wessex brought along their children. I really like Sophie. So does the Queen:
Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall were the last to arrive:
By now, readers might be wondering who the gentleman wearing ermine is.
He is the Lord Mayor of London — the City of London, that is. This is a rotating one-year position and the new Lord Mayor assumes his responsibilities beginning every autumn at the Lord Mayor’s Show, a parade in the City, which is the oldest part of London and still serves as the financial district.
The Lord Mayor of London is in charge of the City and, in that district, is second in power only to the Queen. Therefore, Prince Charles is subordinate to him while within those boundaries.
For centuries, until the Great Fire of 1666, that part of London was the capital, outside of Westminster, which was some distance away.
Everyone lived and worked there unless they had responsibilities at the heart of government in Westminster, which was most easily accessed by boat along the Thames.
Everywhere else that is now very much a part of the capital was a rural suburb until a few hundred years ago.
From that, we can better understand the importance of the Lord Mayor of London’s historical role.
The Lord Mayor has several swords, now ceremonial, that he uses. However, each sword has its own role. Today’s was the sword of state. If the Queen had been in attendance, he would have worn his most important sword.
The Lord Mayor’s assistant also carries a sword and wears a mink hat for ceremonial occasions:
You can see him outside the cathedral, hands resting on the sword, just immediately to the left of the main entrance:
Returning to the service, these chairs were for Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall:
Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge sat right next to them in ordinary chairs:
Here is a view of what the congregation saw — the main altar, the choirmaster and the men and boys choir:
Boris Johnson delivered the New Testament reading, Philippians 4:4-9, which one can imagine that the Queen selected personally, as it truly gave us a message about our present circumstances and the transition of the monarchy. We are to think on higher things — and not worry:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
The Archbishop of York, the Right Revd Stephen Cottrell, gave the sermon, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has coronavirus, along with Prince Andrew.
The Archbishop of York’s sermon began with a brief discourse on how seriously the Queen took her Christian duties and ended on a lighter note with references to her favourite pastime, horse racing, particularly apposite as the Derby is on Saturday. Her Majesty is not expected to attend:
Children from the Commonwealth took turns in giving the prayer intercessions.
After the service, guests went to the Guildhall for lunch:
Meanwhile, Britons up and down the land gathered for street parties:
Thankfully, it was another reasonable day in London, dry and partly cloudy.
On Saturday evening, another spectacular concert in the style of those for the Golden and Diamond Jubilees will take place in front of Buckingham Palace.
On Sunday, a celebratory pageant will take place in the same location.
I plan to have more posts next week on the importance of the Queen’s 70-year reign as well as the many social and political changes during that time.
Last weekend saw an Anglican news story make the papers: that of ordinand Calvin Robinson, who is effectively being prevented from taking Holy Orders in the Church of England.
Even though he is mixed-race black, he appears to be the ‘wrong sort’ of minority for the C of E: too biblical, too conservative, too traditional.
I wrote about him a month ago, when it was clear he was having problems securing a priestly placement, even though he had been offered one in central London at St Alban’s in Holborn.
Background
In 2020, Calvin Robinson was a campaigner for Defund the BBC. Here he tells Dan Wootton, then a broadcaster on talkRADIO, that it was absurd for the BBC’s Countryfile to suggest that people of colour would feel awkward in the countryside. Robinson said that he practically grew up in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire:
He had more to say in September, when the BBC’s A Question of Sport revamped its panel because of their skin colour. Robinson called for more diversity of thought and economic background instead, i.e. conservative working-class people:
Robinson worked as a schoolteacher and assistant principal before entering the seminary. He was also a school governor, so a well-rounded children’s education remains important to him. On October 15, he took exception to radical ‘theories’ entering the British school system:
He had more to say a few days later when Parliament debated the subject. Kemi Badenoch MP is at the despatch box. The Opposition view her as the ‘wrong sort’ of minority woman:
He deplored the National Education Union’s push for school closures early in 2021 because of the pandemic:
Shortly after he tweeted that, he had appeared on a BBC Sunday morning show, The Big Questions. His appearance brought reaction in the form of verbal insults from an activist and academic at Leeds Beckett University, more about whom below. On February 18, he wrote an article about it for the Mail:
… after I had appeared on the long-running BBC discussion show The Big Questions last Sunday morning, I saw a message on Twitter from Aysha Khanom, the founder and director of the Race Trust charity, which works with schools and universities and purports to promote ‘racial equity’.
Aysha Khanom personally tweeted of me: ‘Please somebody deal with this man!’
I found that menacing. I don’t know exactly what she meant by it, but it echoes the sort of language that Tony Soprano would use when he wanted a rival rubbed out.
‘Deal with’ could easily be read as an incitement to violence.
But I shrugged it off. If I obsessed over every piece of abuse I receive through my phone, I would never think about anything else.
Shortly afterwards, though, the Race Trust Twitter account also attacked me — and this time it was less ambiguous.
‘Calvin Robinson,’ the tweet read, ‘does it not shame you that most people see you as a house n****?’
I knew immediately that any decent person would find that language abhorrent. And sure enough, within 48 hours, Leeds Beckett University, which had worked closely in the past with the Race Trust, cut all ties and deleted Aysha Khanom’s profile from its website.
For what it’s worth, Race Trust now denies Aysha Khanom sent that second tweet. It claims it came from an anonymous employee without approval, and that this unnamed person has since been dismissed …
There was no apology to me for labelling me with a racist slur …
The sad truth is that many on the Left want to remove my freedom to speak independently.
To them, my skin colour means I am supposed to be part of a homogenous, faceless group, without a mind of my own.
But I am more than that. I am British, a Christian, a Midlander, a former computer programmer, a qualified teacher, a political adviser, a son and a brother.
I have many elements to my identity, and all these things have far more effect on how I see the world.
Above all, I believe in self-reliance and personal responsibility. I want to make the most of my life and refuse to see myself as oppressed or downtrodden …
After Oprah Winfrey’s interview with the Sussexes aired, Robinson was dismayed that Meghan claimed the Archbishop of Canterbury married her and Harry privately in the garden when it was only a rehearsal. Robinson explains the C of E criteria for a wedding ceremony:
Robinson joined GB News as a panellist and presenter soon after its launch in the summer of 2021.
This appearance of his from August 2021 was excellent. In it, he defended traditional Christian values which have informed the UK’s way of life for centuries:
Two weeks earlier, he reminded us that then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock resolutely said in November 2020 that the coronavirus vaccines would not be given to children. Robinson is opposed to children receiving the vaccine. Yet, by the time he posted this tweet, schoolchildren were receiving it. What a difference several months make:
On August 18, he was very generous in defending the free speech of the aforementioned academic at Leeds Beckett University who called him something offensive. He wrote an article for Spiked about her, saying:
It is for that reason that I haven’t joined in the demands for academic Aysha Khanom to lose her job. Leeds Beckett University has cut ties with Khanom after an organisation she runs, the Race Trust, racially abused me on social media.
Earlier this year, I appeared on BBC One’s The Big Questions to discuss the state of racism in the UK. I spoke about how I have been racially abused for not holding the ‘correct’ opinions. In response, the Race Trust tweeted: ‘Does it not shame you that most people see you as a house negro?’
Khanom maintains that the ‘house negro’ tweet was not sent by her, though she accepts responsibility for it. Either she or someone at her organisation was clearly comfortable using such racist language in public. The good news is that the tweet was rightly challenged and ‘ratioed’ by the masses on Twitter …
In my eyes, what’s most worrying about this incident is that Khanom’s organisation was set up to promote this critical race theory view – or what it calls ‘race literacy’ – in schools and universities. Sadly, this is what passes for ‘anti-racism’ today. Is this really the kind of worldview we want to indoctrinate our young people into?
The rise of identitarian racism should definitely worry us, but we won’t be able to challenge it openly if its defenders aren’t free to express themselves.
On Remembrance Sunday last year, an asylum seeker attempted to bomb Liverpool Cathedral but set himself off at the nearby children’s hospital instead. He had converted to Christianity. Pictured below is a man from his church who housed him for a while. Calvin voiced his opinion:
By early 2022, anyone not towing the media-Government line on coronavirus was anathema. Robinson was empathetic but frank with a university student who lost her friends because she dared to dissent:
Calvin Robinson anathema to C of E bishops
This brings us to the present, the past week, in fact.
On Friday, May 20, Robinson said on GB News that he had no choice but to leave the Church of England. He announced that he would be joining GAFCON, Global Anglican Future Conference, which is traditional in its teaching and practice.
The Mail on Sunday was already working on the story. A Mail+ article from Saturday, May 21, reported (emphases mine):
Internal emails obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby asked to be shown examples of Mr Robinson’s tweets amid mounting alarm within the Church over his criticism of ‘bleeding-heart liberal vicars’ and the Church’s race policy.
In one, The Rt Rev Rob Wickham, Bishop of Edmonton, voiced his fears to senior church leaders after Mr Robinson insisted that Britain was not riven with racism. ‘Calvin’s comments concern me about denying institutional racism in this country,’ he wrote.
Mr Robinson also claimed that the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Sarah Mullally, lectured him about racism in the church, insisting that ‘as a white woman I can tell you that the Church is institutionally racist’.
Mr Robinson, a former teacher who has trained for two years to become an ordained member of the clergy, has been told that plans for him to serve as a deacon at a parish in London have been axed.
Last night he described the decision as ‘soul-destroying’ and claimed it followed a ‘sustained campaign’ against him by the Bishop of Edmonton over his views, including on whether Britain and the Church were institutionally racist. ‘These people are claiming they are institutionally racist, yet they are disregarding the opinion of an ethnic minority because it is not fitting their narrative,’ he said.
In comments set to rock the Church’s hierarchy, he questioned whether the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has claimed the Church is ‘deeply institutionally racist’, had a part in blocking his ordination.
‘I would love to know how big a role the Archbishop had in it because he has certainly been a part of the conversation. He is the boss and the fact they have gone ahead and cancelled me suggests that he was happy with that.’
… The Church said last night there were only a few clergy positions in London and ‘no suitable option’ available in London for Mr Robinson, who became a trainee vicar – an ordinand – at St Stephen’s House, a theological college at the University of Oxford, in October 2020.
Yet, Robinson had already been offered a post at St Alban’s, Holborn.
I gave you his background above because that is what the bishops were examining:
The emails reveal that even before starting his studies, Mr Robinson’s public comments were being scrutinised by church leaders. He claimed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in September 2020 that the Black Lives Matter movement was stoking racial tensions, adding: ‘There are elements of racism in this country we need to stamp out, but while we are seeing everything as racist we are kind of undermining those racial issues we need to address.’
That day the Bishop of Edmonton emailed the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Sarah Mullally, and a PR adviser to the Diocese of London to register ‘concern’ about Mr Robinson’s denial of institutional racism in Britain. ‘Calvin Robinson is not only a political commentator, but he’s an ordinand and former teacher in this area,’ he added. Despite the Church’s view on racism, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities concluded in March 2021 that Britain did not have a systemic racism problem. In November 2021 senior Church leaders received a complaint after Mr Robinson shared on social media a Daily Mail investigation that exposed how the Church gave official advice that being baptised could help failed asylum seekers stay in Britain.
It followed news that suicide bomber Enzo Almeni, who detonated a device at a hospital in Liverpool last year, was baptised there as a Christian in 2015. Mr Robinson, by then a GB News commentator, tweeted that ‘misguided bleeding-heart liberal vicars could be complicit in recent terror attack’, adding: ‘Not to mention abuse of the Holy Sacrament of Baptism.’
Bishop Wickham criticised the ‘highly irresponsible’ comments in an email to Emma Ineson, assistant bishop to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and said they remained online after 27 migrants died in the English Channel. ‘These are clear examples as to why, in my opinion, his ordination should be looked at very closely indeed,’ he wrote. ‘Calvin’s Twitter feed is here. It is worth scrolling down.’ He revealed the Archbishop of Canterbury had ‘asked for examples of Calvin Robinson’s tweets’ and highlighted that Mr Robinson had also criticised the findings of the Church’s anti-racism taskforce, which recommended quotas to boost the number of black and ethnic-minority senior clergy. Bishop Ineson said she would show the information to Archbishop Welby.
Mr Robinson was to be ordained as a deacon with a part-time role as assistant curate at St Alban’s Church in Holborn, central London. But in February the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev Jonathan Baker, told him the role was ‘likely to prove problematic, and would not lead to a fruitful or happy formation for you in your early years in ordained ministry’. Mr Robinson offered to reduce his media work but was told he would still not be able to take up the proposed role because ‘that moment had passed’.
The Bishop of London suggested he was stoking division:
At a meeting with Mr Robinson this month, Bishop Mullally insisted the decision was not about his politics, but because his ‘presence’ on social media and TV ‘is often divisive and brings disunity’.
Robinson received support from a young Conservative MP, Tom Hunt:
Tory MP Tom Hunt backed Mr Robinson last night, saying: ‘The message the Church seems comfortable to send out is that it’s OK to propagate some political views but not others. Sadly, Church of England congregations will continue to decline as millions of Christians are alienated by its behaviour.’
The C of E prelates involved in deciding Robinson’s fate as a future priest declined to comment:
The Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishops of Edmonton and London declined to comment. The Diocese of London said: ‘We have a limited number of curacies available. In this instance, it is felt that there is no suitable option available that London can offer. We continue to be in conversation with Calvin, are willing to work with him to discern the right way forward, and we keep him in our prayers.’
The Mail on Sunday‘s article has this title: ‘EXCLUSIVE: Not woke enough to be a vicar! Black political commentator Calvin Robinson who said Britain is NOT a racist country is BLOCKED from becoming a priest by a white bishop as a result’.
That title sums the situation up perfectly. Is not the bishops’ attitude a racist one, as in ‘We whites know better than you’?
Calvin tweeted the article:
The article is the same as Mail+‘s, but it does include photos of the main players in this story.
The Mail kindly gave space for Robinson to respond beneath their article.
Excerpts follow:
Sitting in an ornate study in the Old Deanery – a 17th Century mansion house opposite St Paul’s Cathedral – the Bishop of London put her hand on my arm and quietly said something that left me astounded.
‘Calvin, as a white woman I can tell you that the Church IS institutionally racist,’ the Rt Rev Sarah Mullally told me.
We had been discussing the Church’s race policy, which I had been vocally objecting to for some time. The Bishop could not understand that as a black man, I simply did not share her – and the Church hierarchy’s – view on this contentious issue.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has proclaimed that the Church of England is ‘deeply institutionally racist’ and called for ‘radical and decisive’ action. Last year an Anti-Racism Task Force recommended using quotas to boost the number of black and ethnic-minority senior clergy, introducing salaried ‘racial justice officers’ in all 42 dioceses and launching ‘racial justice Sunday’ once a year.
I fundamentally disagreed with this approach, which is based on a faith in divisive Left-wing Critical Race Theory, instead of the teachings of Christ. I believe it is divisive and offensive.
I have experienced plenty of racism in my life, but it has always been down to a minority of malicious individuals. I do not think the claim that either the Church, or wider society, is institutionally racist has ever been supported by robust evidence.
The Bishop of London’s hushed condescension during our meeting made me realise that any dissent from the Church’s ingrained view, which to me seems like nothing more than virtue-signalling, is not welcomed. The Church claims it wants to listen to the perspectives of minorities – well, I am one of them but it doesn’t appear to want to hear my view because it also happens to be a conservative one.
For the past two years I have been training for ordination at St Stephen’s House at the University of Oxford. I was due to begin a curacy at a lovely parish in Holborn, Central London, and within a year I hoped to be ordained a priest.
It takes a long time to acknowledge a call from God to serve as a priest, and it’s a vocation that often involves the sacrifice of leaving behind a successful career. I gave up my career as an assistant headteacher and consultant for the Department for Education to throw myself into my theological studies.
He said that the role at St Alban’s would have allowed him time to still appear on GB News and do other media work:
as an acknowledgment that I see my media work, which reaches a huge audience, as part of my calling and future ministry.
Another bishop was involved with deciding Robinson’s fate, the Bishop of Fulham, also in London:
During a Zoom call, the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev Jonathan Baker, told me that there had been ‘a lot of turbulence’ over some of the views I had expressed online and on TV. It was no secret that senior figures in the Church disliked me. I am after all a traditionalist – which means I do not believe in the ordination of women – and I have never been afraid to voice my criticism of the Church’s drift away from what I, and many of its parishioners, think are its core values.
I did not expect everyone to agree with me, but what I did expect is the right to express my own opinions. I had always been taught that the Church of England was a broad church.
I later discovered that Church leaders in London appeared to have had deep misgivings about my ordination from the very beginning of my training – despite spending more than £20,000 of parishioners’ money on sending me to study theology at Oxford.
Emails that I obtained via data-protection rules revealed that bishops at the very top of the Church had been closely scrutinising my public comments.
‘His political agenda is I guess what you would call libertarian – anti-woke, anti-identity politics, Covid-sceptical,’ the Bishop of Fulham wrote in one email. ‘His tweets get him into trouble sometimes and there have been complaints to the Bishop of London that he shouldn’t be ordained.’
Robinson rightly asks why, if the Church is institutionally racist, these white bishops have not tendered their resignations:
If the Church is institutionally racist, as the Archbishop of Canterbury insists, then why have he and other senior figures, including Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, and Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, not resigned? After all, they have all been bishops for years, which suggests they have been unable to solve the problem.
He warns that the C of E is entering apostasy. He is not wrong:
If you defend family values, the sanctity of marriage, all human life being sacred, or the fact that God made us male and female, you’ll face opprobrium.
Something has gone wrong. The established Church is entering apostasy, and the faithful masses in the congregations and the hard-working clergy deserve better.
Fortunately, he has received much support from clergy and laity:
Since my ordination was blocked I’ve been contacted by clergymen and lay people up and down the country who have been sharing their stories of how they’ve been silenced by the Church for holding conservative views.
He confirmed that he will be joining GAFCON and explained why it is so heartbreaking for him to leave the C of E:
After becoming increasingly disillusioned, I recently decided to leave the Church of England and join a more orthodox institution, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Walking away from the Church of England has been heartbreaking.
People often quizzed me on why, if I was so troubled by its direction, I was also so determined to take holy orders in the Church of England. It was because, for me, the Church is the body of Christ and, perhaps naively, I thought I could help pull things back on track from within.
The Sunday Telegraph provided a few more details:
He had been training to become a priest at the University of Oxford for the past two years and was due to begin a curacy at a parish in Holborn, London, but was turned down for the role by the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev Jonathan Baker, in February …
Mr Robinson submitted a subject access request (SAR) to the Church of England – asking the organisation for access to the personal information it held on him.
It was then that he discovered a series of internal emails between Church bosses raising concerns over his opinions on institutional racism in Britain …
In another email, the Bishop of Fulham writes: “I wanted a word about an ordinand, Calvin Robinson. You might be aware of him … ”
Of the Bishop of London, he pointed out the irony of her insisting that the Church was institutionally racist:
Former teacher Mr Robinson added: “She was just ignorant. She accused me of being controversial so I said to her in a polite way that some of the things she says are controversial too – like the fact that she thinks the Church is institutionally racist. And then she turned around and said that.
“She was contradicting herself because in one instance she’s saying the Church is racist and needs to listen to the lived experiences of ethnic minorities, but then she was refusing to listen to my lived experience as a black man because it didn’t fit with her narrative.”
On Sunday evening, he appeared on Mark Dolan’s GB News show:
https://twitter.com/HenryWoodJnr/status/1528801541779558402
On Monday, May 23, The Times carried a report.
In it, we discovered that the Bishop of Edmonton’s child or children attended the school where Robinson was an assistant principal:
Calvin Robinson has been blocked as a priest by the Church of England after the Right Rev Rob Wickham, the Bishop of Edmonton, privately warned church leaders against ordaining him. Robinson, a social commentator, was an assistant principal at a school where Wickham was a parent …
Robinson said that he was shocked to be told in February that his ordination was likely to be problematic. He applied under the Data Protection Act to see the information the church had on him.
He discovered that the Bishop of Edmonton had been reporting him to church leaders since he began his studies. Robinson went on Good Morning Britain in September 2020 to say that he was against Black Lives Matter because it was increasing racial tensions, and he believed that everyone in this country had an equal opportunity to succeed. The same day Wickham wrote to the Right Rev Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, to “bring it to your attention . . . Calvin Robinson is not only a political commentator, but he’s an ordinand and former teacher in this area who has just started at St Stephen’s House. Calvin’s comments concern me about denying institutional racism in this country.”
In December last year, Wickham wrote to the Right Rev Emma Ineson, Bishop to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and also to the Bishop of London. Wickham sent them some of Robinson’s tweets, adding: “These are clear examples as to why his ordination should be looked at very closely.”
Robinson said he felt “betrayed and a bit heartbroken” at Wickham’s conduct. He said: “To hear that people are campaigning behind your back after you have given them all that you have got, I don’t know how to put it into words.”
Church sources said that Wickham’s status as a parent at the school had no bearing on this matter.
Robinson rightly urges the C of E to return to the fundamentals of faith:
The TV pundit, who now works for GB News, accused the church of apostasy by “moving away from core tenets of the faith. They need to focus on scripture because that’s the word of God.”
He said that he had now joined the Global Anglican Future Conference and would be ordained to one of its parishes. “My hope is to attract all the people who feel the Church of England doesn’t represent them because it is obsessed with woke issues.”
The Diocese of London issued an updated statement:
A spokesman for the Diocese of London said: “We wish him well in the ministry he is now going to exercise.”
On Monday evening, Douglas Murray’s editorial for The Times appeared. It listed a modern litany of the C of E’s preoccupation with race at the expense of everything else, including during the time when an African, the Right Revd John Sentamu, now retired, was Archbishop of York. Oh, the irony:
It is two years since Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a speech to the General Synod in which he apologised for the “institutional racism” of the Church of England. “I am sorry and ashamed,” the archbishop said. “I’m ashamed of our history and I’m ashamed of our failure. There is no doubt when we look at our own church that we are still deeply institutionally racist.”
It was a strange claim to make — not least because at the time the next most important bishop in the church was John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York.
Murray rightly points out the diversity among C of E clergy:
This fatal combination of ignorance and present-era preening seems to have become the tenor of the established church — and in no area so much as in the church’s demands for clergy representation. As it happens, the Anglican communion has one of the most diverse bodies of clergy that any religious denomination could wish for. But the church has declared that it will continue to be racist until such a day as minority ethnic groups (or UKME as the acronym-laden C of E likes to call them) are over-represented among the clergy.
Even my church has had a minority vicar, who has since been promoted within the Church.
Murray then discussed Calvin Robinson’s sad situation:
And in a way, here is revealed the modern Church of England’s actual party political affiliation.
Having shut its doors throughout the Covid-19 crisis, the church now seems to be back with a new faith: an evangelical and dogmatic belief in its own iniquity and racism. Fail to go along with that belief and the church has no place for you.
So determined is the C of E about this new gospel that a church hierarchy of white people is even willing to bar a young black man from joining the clergy because he will not agree with their insistence that their own church is racist. It is a farce, certainly, but a tragedy, too — for a church that has need of talent, and an era that has need of institutions that are not principally intent on blowing themselves up.
On GB News Monday evening, presenter Dan Wootton chose the Bishop of Edmonton as his Union Jackass of the day. Good on the former Brexit Party MEP, the lady on the right, for nominating him:
Conclusion
Calvin Robinson is surely doing all the right things. That is why our pharisaical clergy have opposed his ordination.
May God continue to sustain Calvin with his grace. May our Lord Jesus continue to give him inner peace. And may the Holy Spirit continue to enhance his gifts of wisdom, fortitude and discernment.
I wish him all the best as he pursues a path to ordination.
On May 15, 2022, the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year C) was from John 13, wherein Jesus gave the Apostles a new commandment at the Last Supper:
13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
When I returned home from my local Anglican church that day, I read about two rather sad situations in the Church of England involving senior clergy.
The way the bishops handled these situations made me wonder how Christlike they are.
Loving each other the way Christ loves us demands a lot of concessions on our part, the very same that He showed towards His disciples, making allowances for human misunderstanding and weakness. Above all, He forgave those faults time and time again, with loving patience.
The Save the Parish network has been doing much heavy lifting in trying to get bishops to become more responsive to and respectful of parish churches across the country.
What follows are two examples of their efforts.
Cornwall
A conflict has been growing between Anglicans in Cornwall and their bishop, the Right Revd Philip Mounstephen, over the axeing of clergy, meaning the potential closure of historical churches in that beautiful county.
The Diocese of Truro prefers to spend money on administrative positions, as the following Save the Parish letter to the bishop makes clear:
The bishop sent back a terse reply, saying that, as the group had gone to the press with the story, he would not be meeting with them, as they had requested:
Given that you have taken this route I’m afraid I will not be offering you a meeting.
Rather, I encourage you to engage seriously in the On the Way process in your local community.
If you have continuing concerns these should best be raised in your PCC and by the normal synodical processes by which we work.
That sounds so petty and so corporate. Would our Lord have responded in such a cold and unforgiving way? Certainly not.
A Catholic chimed in to say that the same thing is going on in the Diocese of Plymouth. Very sad:
The Catholic Diocese of Plymouth is in serious decline and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that my Bishop (and the entire episcopate of England & Wales) and your Bishop are sharing & comparing notes on this planned ‘reconfiguration’. Very best wishes to you in this.
Other Anglicans were also unhappy with the direction the C of E has taken over the past few years:
I agree with the next tweets that say the rot started around 30 years ago:
Without churches, how will the faithful gather together to worship? Please don’t say via a Zoom call with self-consecrated sandwich bread and a glass of whatever juice or wine one has to hand. We are not Evangelicals.
Where is the Great Commission (Matthew 28) in this plan?
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Budget
Earlier this month, on May 11, the C of E issued its triennial budget, channelling £3.6 billion into parishes and social action.
Some people, like the Revd Giles Fraser, were happy but others wondered how much money would actually be going to parishes. Pictured is the Archbishop of Canterbury:
https://twitter.com/samueljmargrave/status/1524723790101590017
The Revd Marcus Walker of St Bartholomew in London, who chairs the Save The Parish network, was guardedly optimistic about the budget and its allocation to individual churches:
Interestingly, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York will not deliver the budget to the General Synod until July — with no vote.
Why wasn’t it presented to them upon release?
Someone noted the irony and hypocrisy of the Archbishops going to the press to announce the budget. Hmm:
On May 12, the Archbishop of Canterbury announced that the hierarchy ‘got it wrong’ in ignoring parish churches, especially those in the countryside:
If it hadn’t been for Save The Parish, would the hierarchy have admitted their mistake?
Would Jesus have ignored the humble faithful? No, certainly not. The people the disciples tried to shoo away, Jesus invited to approach Him. He never turned His back on anyone.
The Guardian‘s account of the budget emphasised its social action aspects (emphases mine):
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, admitted the C of E had been heavy-handed in concentrating funds on urban churches in recent years. “Allocating money in the past was perhaps, if we’re honest, a bit too driven from the centre. Now we’re trusting the dioceses much more,” said Cottrell.
Rural parishes have complained that they have been starved of cash, which has been diverted to inner-city churches. As a result, churches have closed and clergy jobs have been lost, according to a campaign group, Save the Parish.
Welby said: “Over the last few years, the priority has been very much for the more heavily populated areas. Having listened carefully to what people were saying, this [funding] is for everyone, including the rural areas.”
The core of the extra funding will be used for programmes that focus on young and disadvantaged people, deliver social action work, address racism and cut the church’s carbon footprint.
It will support churches in the poorest areas of the country and fund more clergy in frontline ministries, including chaplaincies. “This funding will help the C of E raise its game in its service to the nation,” said Cottrell.
The Telegraph‘s article focused more on individual parish churches, the ones that Save The Parish is concerned about:
The Church of England’s Archbishops have admitted that they “got it wrong” by not prioritising rural parishes over city churches, as they announced new funding worth £3.6 billion …
In an online press conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, announced the plans and reiterated their commitment to rural church communities, saying that rural parishes “really matter” …
Furthermore, in December, figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed that the number of Christians in England is close to falling below 50 per cent for the first time, as atheists now account for more than a third of “faith” groups in an increasingly secular society.
Do we think the bishops and two archbishops care about that statistic? They should, given that they, too, must follow the Great Commission. It wasn’t meant only for the Apostles.
The Archbishop of York, the Most Revd Stephen Cottrell said:
I don’t think we don’t need to be embarrassed by saying we’ve learned, we’ve listened. We’ve changed our mind. It’s not that what was done in the past was bad and this is now good. It’s: that was good and we think this is better.
The money which was distributed in this kind of way in recent years, was much more focused on populous areas. And of course populous areas, they really matter. But so do rural areas, and there’s a lot of hidden rural poverty, and it just meant that they didn’t meet the criteria. So we’ve changed the criteria and that’s a good thing to do …
We do want to move to try to decentralise it a bit and work much more closely with dioceses and parishes.
I think the game changer has been that we’ve now much more clearly got a set of owned priorities as a church and that therefore provides the criteria for spending.
And it might be in very small ways in rural communities or in so-called larger ways.
It’s the ‘or’ that bothers me in that sentence, but I could be reading too much into it. Why not say ‘and’ instead?
Save The Parish gave a level-headed response:
Following the press conference, Admiral Sir James Burnell-Nugent, of the Save the Parish campaign group, said: “We welcome the recognition of the pleading from Save The Parish and similar organisations that are fighting against cuts in clergy and the formation of mega-parishes.
“It is very pleasing that rural and small parishes will be able to apply for the new funding, having been deliberately excluded from the previous three-year round.
“The proof of the pudding will be whether these new funds are genuinely accessible in a way that eases the huge burden of the parish share which is a struggle for so many parishes.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Conclusion
The two illustrations above show how pharisaical the C of E senior clergy are.
They remind me of the Sanhedrin in the Gospels: haughtily lording their position over those they considered to be inferior — the faithful.
I do hope this new plan works out, but, on a wider note, senior clergy must really do better to be more Christlike in the way they deal with priests and laity.
Reaction to Justin Welby’s Easter heavily politicised sermon last Sunday was strong.
We appreciate that he has no time for Boris Johnson or other Conservatives, but could he please put a sock in — sorry, stop to — it and start preaching about the Risen Christ, particularly during Eastertide?
An article in The Telegraph on Easter Monday noted:
The Archbishop’s Easter sermon is the latest in a series of interventions by him over government policy.
The Telegraph‘s report is titled ‘Stop your misguided moralising on Rwanda deal, MPs tell Archbishop of Canterbury’.
Here is the background (emphases mine below):
The Archbishop of Canterbury has been accused of “misguided moralising” after leading the Church of England’s attack on the Government’s Rwanda deal and “partygate”.
The Most Rev Justin Welby was said to have undermined the role of the Church by using his Easter Sunday address to criticise the Prime Minister’s plan to send asylum seekers to the landlocked east African nation.
On the same morning, the Archbishop of York questioned what kind of country people want Britain to be and suggested that public servants should lead by example when it comes to morality.
In what has been perceived as a veiled attack on Boris Johnson over the Downing Street parties scandal, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell asked whether the UK wants to be known for being a country where “those in public life live to the highest standards, and where we can trust those who lead us to behave with integrity and honour”.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Sunday that the policy on sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda raises “serious ethical questions” and “cannot stand the judgment of God” or “carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values” …
On Sunday night, the Archbishop was accused of hypocrisy after Whitehall sources pointed out he has warned four times about the problems of illegal immigration.
Conservative MPs were quick to react:
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, appeared to hit back, writing in The Times: “We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans, fail to offer their own solutions.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg told The Telegraph that whilst the Church is “authoritative in all matters that pertain to God”, the same cannot be said for “day-to-day practical solutions”.
“This is not an unreasonable perspective for an Archbishop, he is completely entitled to it,” he said. “But he has missed the effect of the policy. It is an informed and important opinion, but it is not revealed truth.”
Tim Loughton, the Tory MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, and a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, said: “There is nothing ungodly about trying to come up with practical solutions to end the vile trade in human misery where criminal gangs daily put lives at risk to profit from trafficking people into the UK illegally, based on ability to pay rather the legitimacy of their claim.
“The people traffickers and those who turn a blind eye to ending this ungodly activity are the ones who should really be the target of the Archbishop’s misguided moralising.”
He went on to say that the Church of England’s failure to distinguish between good and evil is “directly linked to its greatly diminishing influence in our country”.
Ben Bradley, the Tory MP for Mansfield, said that the Archbishop is “way out of tune with public opinion”, adding that “commenting on government policy is not Justin Welby’s job”.
He said: “Given that Welby has previously raised concerns about immigration overburdening communities, and the importance of recognising concerns about immigration, it’s pretty hypocritical to now slate the Government for finding solutions to those issues.”
Good on Ben Bradley for remembering what Welby has said in the past:
The Archbishop has previously warned about the problems of small-boat Channel crossings. He described the deaths of at least 27 migrants off the coast in France last November as a “devastating loss of human life”, adding: “This cannot go on.”
At the time, he said Britain needs a “better system based on safety, compassion, justice and co-operation across frontiers”.
He also acknowledged that “we can’t overburden communities, we have to be realistic about that” and called on states, religious groups and civil society to “come together in a spirit of pragmatism and compassion” to find a solution to immigration.
The article has more of the Archbishop’s best hits.
So, we had no message about the Resurrection from him or his second in command, the Archbishop of York, who started well with this opening on BBC Radio 4:
The message of Easter is that stones are rolled away …
Yes, yes, go on:
… and barriers are broken down, and therefore it’s truly appalling and distressing. I’m appalled at what’s being proposed and I think we can do better than this.”
Oh.
He added that:
the Government was “out of tune with British people” and those arriving on small boats are in “just as much need” as Ukrainians.
Hmm. Really?
Tens of thousands of able-bodied men under the age of 40 are crossing the Channel in droves. Ukrainian women and children in need of shelter and support are coming to the UK. Goodness knows what they’ve been through since the end of February while their partners or husbands fight for their country.
A Telegraph editorial tells us what else was in Welby’s sermon:
Mr Welby’s strictures were not confined to asylum policy. He also said families were “waking up in fear” because households were facing the “greatest cost-of-living crisis we have known in our lifetimes”. They had “cold homes and empty stomachs” and the soaring cost of everyday life was the “first and overwhelming thought of the day” for most people, he added.
The paper sees an issue with Welby’s never-ending pronouncements. He, much like the Labour Party, never has a solution:
Mr Welby sees it as his duty to speak out on behalf of the poor and dispossessed, though it is never clear what he wants to see happen as an alternative. The asylum policy is certainly radical, but is it the Church’s position that anyone who makes it to the UK should be allowed to stay? What is the Church doing to look after and house them?
Mr Welby opposed the rise in National Insurance contributions to pay for more to be spent on the NHS. This newspaper also argued against it, but because we think people in general are overtaxed, whereas Mr Welby thinks the better-off should pay more. Is it really the Church’s job to conduct a running political commentary in this way?
No.
On Easter Monday evening, I tuned into Nigel Farage on GB News.
Farage is Anglican. He accused Welby of deeply damaging the Church of England’s reputation. I agree.
Here’s a bit more from his editorial:
GB News presenter Nigel described the Archbishop’s statement as a “big virtue signal”.
The former Brexit Party Leader said: “He didn’t mention anything about the criminal traffickers, he didn’t mention anything about the drownings in the Channel, he didn’t mention anything about those who come to this country and finish up effectively working in slave labour conditions.”
He added: “It is true form as a left-wing archbishop who has done more to damage the reputation of the Church of England, to decrease the numbers turning up every Sunday than almost anybody who has ever lived.”
You can watch it in full:
One of the former chaplains to the Queen, Dr Gavin Ashenden, who recently converted to Catholicism, discussed Welby’s sermon. He said that the Archbishop has a religion:
but the religion isn’t Christianity.
Ashenden said that a BBC Panorama programme warned some years ago that we would have a global problem with immigration from the equatorial countries northward:
Farage also interviewed Steve Valdez-Symonds from Amnesty International UK, who is a relatively frequent GB News guest:
This article has a partial transcript of their discussion:
Steve Valdez-Symonds, from Amnesty International UK, criticised the Home Secretary’s proposal and said “the evidence doesn’t suggest it can work.”
“People on these journeys are on the whole not in the position to assess what’s going to happen to them at the end,” added Steve Valdez-Symonds in an exclusive interview with GB News.
Nigel Farage hit back at the Refugee & Asylum Rights Director’s explanation: “Oh no, they are[;] otherwise they would stay in France. They come here because they see four-star hotels.”
“They think we’re treasure island. That’s why they all want to come here, it’s obvious isn’t it?” said the GB News Presenter.
Mr Valdez-Symonds responded: “I think that’s absolutely nonsense I’m afraid. If that were the case, why is it that France continues to receive so many of more people into its asylum system than do we?”
The former Brexit Party Leader said: “It’s because they are on the Mediterranean. France isn’t choosing to have large numbers of people to come in, but they’re coming across the Med.”
The dinghies continue to arrive:
https://twitter.com/jonnyg0156/status/1516117595979665412
France requires an 18-month wait before benefits can begin. The UK has a much shorter waiting time.
Furthermore, it is unlikely that France puts migrants in four-star hotels. But, as our MPs so often say in the House of Commons:
We’re better than that.
Yes, we certainly are, for better or worse.
The first part of this series was yesterday’s post: … from the sublime John Donne.
Today’s entry looks at the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has been in that post since 2013. He is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury.
There could not be a greater contrast with John Donne, who was followed all over London by people who wanted to hear him preach.
It is unlikely that people would follow Welby around the capital.
In 2015, he told Michael Gove MP, who interviewed him for The Spectator‘s Christmas issue that year (emphases mine):
I suppose I struggle with a sense that I’m the wrong person for the job. An imposter syndrome, that’s the phrase I’m looking for.
He was not concerned about the severe decline in Church of England (CofE) worship over the past few decades:
Church attendance in this country has fallen hugely both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population. The number of Christians around the world has risen hugely since the nineteenth century and continues to rise at an extraordinary rate: it is over two billion now. So we’re seeing a change in the pattern of where the church is: the Anglican Communion is essentially global, as much for a sub-Saharan woman and not just someone in a church in England.
You can find a vast range of churches in the Church of England with examples of growth and examples of decline. Sometimes it is simply circumstances: populations move. Sometimes it’s that people feel the church is not welcoming, there is not an ethos which makes them look outwards to those around them. Where they grow it will usually be because they relate extraordinarily well to their communities and that the circumstances are there, there is a clear spirituality, there is a clear sense of what they are about.
Although Welby is pleased with the proliferation of the social gospel at the expense of evangelism, this is where he and others before him have been going wrong:
This is one of the most interesting changes from the 50s and 60s and 70s, where social gospel was for one part of the church and evangelism for another. The two are absolutely inextricable now.
Yes, and most Sunday sermons from CofE priests sound as if they came from The Guardian‘s op-ed pages. Therefore, why not simply stay in bed and read a newspaper? Oh, wait, they already do.
In 2022, he told the BBC’s Michael Buerk in an interview for the Radio Times (‘There’s an end to darkness’, 19-25 February 2022, pp 19-23):
‘None of us want to see the thing go down on our watch’, he says. He talks of ‘bad moments’ when he has a sense of ‘oh, my goodness, am I going to be the one who they’ll say finished the Church of England off?’ He pauses. ‘Then I realise it’s God’s problem, not mine.’
Wow. Welby, along with other clerics, will be held accountable on that fateful day of the Last Judgement. They are supposed to evangelise, as Jesus Himself instructed the Apostles in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20):
The Great Commission
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Perhaps Welby thinks that applied only to the eleven remaining Apostles at that time. If so, how sad.
In December 2019, he gave an interview to the Big Issue before the general election that year, when Boris’s ‘Get Brexit done’ slogan won an 80-seat majority for the Conservatives.
Days after the election, the BBC carried highlights from that interview. Welby said:
“I’m not saying we are in a crisis”, he said. “I’m just saying the direction of travel is not what we want.”
He batted away a question about Prince Andrew:
Archbishop Welby was also asked about the controversy involving the Duke of York’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
He refused to comment on any particular member of the Royal Family, but said it was wrong to expect them to be “superhuman saints”.
He intimated that those who voted Conservative were consumed by fear:
The interview – which was conducted before last Thursday’s general election – concluded with the Archbishop quoting from the First Letter of John in the New Testament, which says that “perfect love casts out fear”.
He said that people should reject fear and, instead, accept that love of God which – he said – “changes the world dramatically”.
Brexit was largely a huge no-no for CofE clergy, from the top to the bottom. Pewsitters, on the other hand, wanted to leave the EU, as The Economist reported in April 2019:
Justin Welby’s dilemma over Brexit is all the more difficult because he was a declared Remain voter in the June 2016 referendum, while 66% of self-identified Anglicans opted for Brexit.
Yet, there were still some clergy who wanted to part from Brussels, including a former Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Revd Giles Fraser:
Giles Fraser, an Anglican cleric who is a prominent figure on the religious and intellectual left, is a convinced supporter of leaving what he sees as the capitalist European club. “The emotional core of Brexit, and the reason I remain a passionate Brexiter, despite all its problems, is that it seeks to collapse the distance between power and ordinary people,” he wrote recently.
True!
This was Welby’s prayer as the UK exited the EU for good at the end of January 2020. I agree with the reply:
Yes, that’s the eternal essential, not Brexit. However, the prayer shows where Welby’s priorities lie. They do not appear to be with evangelism.
We had just left the EU when coronavirus hit.
This could have been a huge moment for the CofE. Had John Donne been Archbishop of Canterbury, no doubt he would have recognised this.
But Justin Welby thought otherwise and went along with the decision to close Anglican churches, a closure that even forbade priests from entering their own churches for a moment of private prayer or even cleaning for several weeks. Many vicars were distraught.
Welby issued the closure tweet one week before lockdown:
Welby told the Radio Times this year (p. 23):
If I had the time again, I would be more cautious about closing the churches. At the time, we were being told the virus can stay on surfaces for ages and that it could kill 30 per cent of the people who caught it.
It wasn’t just me. It’s not a dictatorship. I am not the Pope. But I had an influence and I’m not sure I got that right.
No, he definitely did not get that right. People were bereft. They would have loved to actually enter a church and worship in person, even if socially distanced and even without Communion. Morning Prayer services would have sufficed for the first few months. Masks were not mandated until the first lockdown was lifted.
Sure, there were Zoom services later in the Spring …
… when participants were erroneously told to consecrate their own piece of bread and sip of wine for Holy Communion. That is not a tenet of the CofE.
Welby could have called for a National Day of Prayer, but he didn’t:
What happened in June 2020 was startling. It was as if the pandemic never happened. Here he was, responding to an American issue. Once more, I agree with the reply:
If Welby wants to feel guilty for physical characteristics that God gave him, then, by so doing, he disgraces God, who chose him to be created as he is.
On June 8, he wanted to create a collective sin, when what he accuses the majority of Britons of has been rare in recent decades. His job is to preach the Gospel, not identity politics:
https://twitter.com/Robfm/status/1270441455656599554
At the end of June 2020, Welby pledged that the CofE would review its monuments in place at Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Readers will not be surprised to find that I agree with the replies:
The following day, Welby tweeted again. A layman has a better perspective than he does:
https://twitter.com/Walshevik/status/1276813464099606528
On June 28, The Telegraph‘s Nick Timothy wrote an excellent editorial on Welby’s pronouncements, far more numerous than any he ever made on the pandemic, which was still very much a concern in Britain. Churches continued to be closed.
Nick Timothy shows he understands Christian theology better than Welby:
Nobody personifies the madness of our times, and the moral cowardice of our leaders, like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
On Friday, under pressure from precisely nobody, Justin Welby climbed atop his chosen pulpit – an interview on BBC Radio 4 – and announced a review of statues and commemorative names in Anglican churches and buildings. “Some will have to come down,” he said, and “some names will have to change.”
… Welby seems to believe Britain, and all white people, carry collective sin specific to them. He recently invited us to pray for “white Christians [to] repent of our own prejudices”. On Friday, he said: “For this country and for this country in the world, there’s got to be a generosity … there’s got to be that new life which is always on offer.” Britain, and specifically Britain, he believes, must repent its unique sins to be born again.
When a Black Lives Matter activist called for statues of Jesus to be pulled down because they portrayed Him as a white European, Welby had the chance to draw the line. Jesus is depicted in different ways the world over, the Archbishop explained. He might have gone on to say that the significance of Jesus is spiritual, not political or racial, that Jesus was God made flesh, and that we are all made in God’s own image. Instead, he agreed that the depiction of Christ in Western countries should change and criticised the “sense that God is white”. Jesus was “Middle Eastern, not white,” he later reiterated, studiously avoiding the more accurate description that Jesus was a Jew. But then Middle Eastern Jews, or Israelis as we also call them, are these days an unfashionable minority to defend.
In this strange fusion between a belief in collective national or racial guilt and Christian forgiveness, Welby articulated a new – and utterly incoherent – account of forgiveness and mercy. “There can be forgiveness [of those from the past we commemorate],” he said, “but only if there’s justice: if we change the way we behave now.”
There is, of course, an unanswerable Christian case for treating all our fellow beings with respect and love. There is still racism in our society, and great disparities in the experiences of people from different ethnic backgrounds, just as there is for people from different class backgrounds. There is a Christian case for seeking to address all such disadvantages. But there is no such case for the conditional forgiveness he proposes.
The Bible tells us “a son will not bear the iniquity of the father, and a father will not bear the iniquity of the son.” We are responsible before God for the trespasses we commit, but not for the trespasses of others. And just as God will forgive us, so we should forgive others. “Pardon, and you will be pardoned,” Saint Luke tells us. There is no biblical justification for making the forgiveness of one generation conditional on the actions of another, just as there is no biblical justification for a presupposition of collective national or racial guilt.
Whether you are a Christian or not, this departure from scripture is profoundly worrying. Christianity’s promise of redemption, and the idea that we are each accountable for our own sins, has shaped our civilisation. We are members of families and communities large and small, but we are more than just featureless components of some greater group identity. This is one reason why we have equal political and civil rights, and stand equal before the law.
Our Christian heritage – and our associated history of bloody religious conflict – also inspired another important Western principle. The realisation that clashes between different values, beliefs and interests are inevitable gave rise to the essential liberal idea of pluralism. We should accept and tolerate difference, while agreeing laws and processes to mediate clashes, guaranteeing rights for minorities, and protecting the norms, traditions and institutions that foster a common, unifying identity to build trust and reciprocity.
Now this principle is also under attack. The more our society boasts of diversity and inclusion, the more it becomes illiberal and intolerant. Businesses, public services, universities and other important institutions are engaged in an organised hypocrisy, closing down debate, sacking people with the wrong opinions, and participating knowingly in a politically correct doublethink …
Such nonsense and nihilism is possible because through ignorance and cowardice our leaders have allowed the pillars that support our society – built up through time by thinkers and statesmen upon foundations laid in part by Christianity – to crumble. Time will tell if we are worthy of our inheritance, but one thing we do know. A civilisation that ceases to believe in itself is doomed to self-destruction.
The next day, The Telegraph published several letters in which readers expressed their disapproval with Welby. The first three are from Scotland:
SIR – Nick Timothy (Comment, June 29) rightly points to the most recent example of the divisive leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in his response to the Black Lives Matter protests.
The Archbishop has often talked of “reconciliation”, but his latest comments seem to continue a trend of the divisiveness of his leadership in a whole range of matters, from Brexit to Covid-19.
It’s a terrible shame: the Church has missed a multitude of opportunities to be an institution that can unite the population.
———–
SIR – About 25 years ago, as a white, middle-aged, middle-class, mildly overweight woman, I had the supreme privilege of training for ordination under the authority of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
I wish the Archbishop of Canterbury would seek advice from him about the kind of discourse that leads to real truth and reconciliation, and forgiveness and justice. Each life matters.
———–
SIR – Regarding church memorials, if we wiped from history everyone who has done great things but might have done something politically incorrect in the past, the list would have to include Moses (murder), Jacob (deceit), Rahab, an ancestor of Jesus (prostitution), and King David (adultery and murder).
———–
SIR – The Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of worrying about the colour of Jesus’s skin, should perhaps be concerned about how Jesus would react to being charged £12 to enter Canterbury Cathedral, the House of God, and having to exit via the shop.
———–
SIR – In his haste to jump on a bandwagon, the Archbishop of Canterbury contradicts himself. He says the Church is guilty of portraying Jesus as a white European, but he celebrates his portrayal as black, Chinese, Middle Eastern and Fijian.
Is not the portrayal of Jesus as white in Europe the same kind of legitimate cultural contextualisation as his portrayal differently in other societies? Unless we confine ourselves to depicting Jesus as a first-century Middle Eastern Jew (whatever that might have been) we are bound to portray him in the various ways he has been throughout history. And it cannot be otherwise since he is the Saviour of people from all nations.
Later in 2020, the Government and scientific advisers put us on track for a winter lockdown, which started early in the New Year. This time, Welby proposed that churches be allowed to remain open, with coronavirus measures in place:
On February 27, 2022, Welby admitted he was not very good at attracting more worshippers to Anglican churches in Britain.
Now, John MacArthur considers unbelievers to be his ‘mission field’, which is very true. So, one would think that the spiritual head of a denomination with millions of members the world over would think the same.
Not so. The Daily Mail reported on Welby’s interview with an atheist on Radio 4:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has accepted responsibility for failing to attract more worshippers into the Church of England, with numbers hitting record lows in recent years.
In a BBC radio interview being broadcast today, Justin Welby makes his admission to Dr Susan Blackmore, a psychologist and atheist, after she expressed doubts about whether she would ever convert to a faith.
The Most Rev Welby, 66, said: ‘As you can tell from numbers in the Church of England, I don’t persuade many people.’
He almost wears that admission as a badge of honour. It’s ridiculous and heinous in equal measure.
He has an odd sense of his relationship with God:
The Archbishop also said there were times when even he questioned God.
He described one encounter with a warlord, whom he did not identify, as the only time he had come face to face with evil.
A warlord?
Anyway:
Asked how he coped with those situations, he said: ‘I go back to the Psalms, the Psalms of protest and lament, and say to God, “This is all wrong. What do you think you are up to?”‘
He told Michael Buerk more about his spirituality and devotions in the Radio Times interview.
He never mentioned Jesus Christ, not once.
He began speaking in tongues while he was at Eton (p. 23). Note that this is not the type of speaking in tongues that the Book of Acts describes — foreign languages understood not by the speaker but by listeners — just mere ululating:
… in what he describes as both a process and a moment of awareness, he says he opened his heart to a God he ‘didn’t even know existed’.
From that moment, Welby began speaking ‘in tongues’, producing a stream of sounds, often involuntarily, that have no obvious meaning, but which Pentecostalists, in particular, regard as a sign of the Holy Spirit.
The Archbishop continues to do so to this day, which has raised eyebrows in the more conservative ranks of his church. He plays it down. ‘It’s unduly controversial, and not really as interesting as it sounds.
‘I get up very early in the morning and, after making a cup of tea, I go into my study, read the Bible, and speak in tongues. I don’t pray in a language I know. I do it quietly — it’s before six in the morning, remember — with no sense of ecstasy or excitement at all. I’d rather be in bed.
‘It helps me focus’, he says, perhaps defensively. ‘It’s not something that leads me dancing or clapping, or waving a tambourine.’
He gave few details on his journey from Eton to Cambridge to being an oil company executive to the Church, other than to say that his bishop at the time told him:
There’s no place for you in the Church of England.
The bishop was not wrong.
Yet, Welby ‘persisted’ and, somehow, reached the heady heights of Lambeth Palace in London, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official residence:
I’ve been surprised to be here every single day of the nine years I have been doing the job.
So have millions of us.
Most of the interview has some political bent to it, and he told Michael Buerk that he allows Boris Johnson to jog in the Lambeth Palace garden, which is near Downing Street.
Buerk tried to press him on the matter:
‘It’s such a live party-political issue, it’s not for me to step into it too much,’ he maintains. I say I thought having a moral view on public life was what he was paid for. ‘Not exactly,’ he replies, a little sharply. ‘I am paid to talk about God.’
Really? Interesting response. Where does talking about Jesus fit into his job description?
Strangely, perhaps, he is also on antidepressants. I still do not understand how so many clergy can be depressed.
I can appreciate that Welby is still grieving over the death of his seven-month-old daughter Johanna who was killed in a car crash in 1983, but, surely, over the years, a closer relationship with God would help him to reconcile that in his mind.
Welby told Buerk that consolation (p. 21):
eventually came from friends, which he regards as coming from God anyway, even if indirectly. ‘There’s an end to darkness. There’s light but you might be surprised by how it comes,’ he says.
Indeed, the Archbishop makes no secret of his lifelong battle with depression: ‘Only last week, I really messed up something in a way that really left me down for several days.’
In the past, Welby says he would have denied it was a problem. But dark moods, which he likens to what Churchill called his ‘Black Dog’, made him feel ‘hopeless’.
He’s open about it now, though. ‘I’m on daily antidepressants, which work quite well, but it is a struggle. Certain things trigger it, principally about myself, and sometimes it comes out of the blue. But it’s a lot better than it used to be,’ he says.
The other major disappointment for him was finding out that the man he thought was his father — Gavin Welby — wasn’t (pp 21, 23):
DNA tests have shown that his biological father was actually Churchill’s private secretary, Sir Anthony Montague Browne.
Welby’s mother, Jane Portal, had been Churchill’s personal secretary. She came from a long line of well-connected, prominent people.
I am sorry that Justin Welby is such a tortured soul. I’m even sorrier that he feels the need to project his insecurities on most of the Anglicans in Britain.
I hope that his relationship with God and Jesus Christ, in particular, improves.
May the Lord grant us a better Archbishop of Canterbury someday. We haven’t had a good one in decades.
Churchmouse Campanologist 