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Well, well, well.
Who would have been surprised to discover that Church of England rates are still on the decline post-pandemic? Remember how the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was so quick to shut churches during lockdown back in the Spring of 2020?
Here is the man himself, all masked up during those fateful days:
I will get to the statistics in a second, but they brought quite a reaction from the Revd Marcus Walker, Rector at St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, who is also the chairman of the Anglican campaign group, Save the Parish.
He had this to say:
As sure as night follows day if you close parishes and reduce clergy, the number of people who are able to turn up to church will fall.
This is a doom spiral of the church’s own choosing. It has the money to turn this around, the question is: does it have the will?
The Telegraph published the quote as well as the statistics on Saturday, February 17, 2024, ‘Clergy warn of “doom spiral” as church attendance drops off at record rate’ (emphases mine below):
Sunday church attendance is just 80 per cent of what it was in 2019, Telegraph analysis has revealed, despite the Church of England claiming that it has “bounced back” after the pandemic …
In 2023, The Telegraph published an investigation which revealed that parishes are closing at a record rate, prompting fears that the Church had been “dealt a death knell”.
The investigation found that almost 300 parishes have disappeared in the past five years alone – the fastest rate since records began in 1960.
The figures came against the backdrop of claims that senior bishops and clergy were “putting a gun to people’s heads” to drive through controversial plans to cut costs, merge parishes and cut vicars.
They also came amid declining congregation numbers, leaving many clergy afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.
The Telegraph has analysed new data from the Church of England’s latest Statistics for Mission 2022 report, and has found that across the country, usual Sunday church attendance sits at 81 per cent of 2019 levels, meaning that 133,200 regular parishioners had not returned to the Church despite the end of Covid restrictions.
The Telegraph said that the CofE criticised the paper’s previous reporting, but the reporters stand by the numbers:
The Telegraph’s previous reporting on the fall in regular parishioners in 2021 had been described as “misleading” by the Church, as some Covid restrictions were still in place at the time the 2021 report was compiled.
However, the latest figures suggest that this is not the case.
Furthermore, the data show that a further 28 parishes were closed or merged in the past year, which has been controversial among churchgoers.
This, however, is below the record-breaking rate of reductions seen in the preceding five years when an average of 56 parishes ceased a year.
Across the country, 41 churches were closed, meaning 641 churches have been closed since 2000 or 4 per cent.
Despite some recovery in post-pandemic attendance, overall, the big picture does not look good:
… year on year, average attendance has increased by seven per cent.
This means that since 1987, usual Sunday church attendance has more than halved (-52.8 per cent), declining from 1.2 million to 556,800.
The peaks and troughs vary across England:
In Durham, just three-quarters (73 per cent) of usual congregants have returned, whilst in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, it is 89 per cent, the highest in the country …
Furthermore, over the past six years, usual Sunday church attendees have declined at a record rate with an average 32,616 fewer attendees per year.
The CofE put its own spin on the figures:
According to the Church of England’s most recent data, contained in its Statistics for Mission, it claimed that nearly a million people were regular worshippers in 2023 as the Church “continued its post-pandemic bounce back” …
Responding to The Telegraph’s latest analysis, a Church spokesman said: “The Church of England’s 2022 Statistics for Mission – the latest available – showed a welcome rise in attendance for the second year in a row with nearly a million regular worshippers in Church of England churches …
“There is unprecedented investment in mission and ministry taking place in the Church of England of £3.6 billion up to 2031.”
However, that ‘unprecedented investment in mission and ministry’ does not mean that Anglican churches are likely to stay open. The reality, as those involved with Save the Parish will testify, actually means that many are vulnerable to closure. As it is, clergy in some parts of England, particularly Cornwall, are spread thinly on the ground over large benefices.
The Revd Mr Walker is right: the Church has the money, but does it have the will? That is the question.
Last Friday, I wrote about Britain’s Post Office scandal, which has been going on since 1999 and is only now, one hopes, coming to a favourable settlement with subpostmasters later this year.
My post provides a summary of the financial injustice done to subpostmasters, who are pillars of their communities, and of one of the personalities involved, Paula Vennells, who was a CEO of the Post Office during part of that time.
Last Tuesday, January 9, 2024, Ms Vennells says she handed back her CBE, awarded to her for services to the Post Office, although only the monarch has the ultimate power to revoke it.
On January 13, it was revealed that the then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s government pushed for Vennells to receive this honour in 2019. The Telegraph reported (emphases mine):
Theresa May’s government drove through a CBE for Paula Vennells, the former head of the Post Office, despite warnings made on the honours committee about the Horizon [Fujitsu UK accounting system] scandal, it has been reported.
… in which more than 900 Post Office workers were wrongly prosecuted after faulty software in the Horizon IT accounting system gave the appearance that money was missing from branches.
Handing back the honour, she said she was “truly sorry for the devastation” caused to sub-postmasters whose “lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted”.
Ms Vennells received a CBE – the second most prestigious below a knighthood or damehood – in the 2019 New Year Honours list.
The Sunday Times reported that at least one member of the main honours committee questioned the wisdom of giving her a CBE given the controversy over the Post Office’s treatment of sub-postmasters and the fact that she was still in the role.
According to the paper, a source with knowledge of the exchange said that concerns were “brushed aside”. Another source said that responsibility for highlighting potential concerns lay with the “sponsoring department”, in this case the Department for Business which nominated her for the award.
A senior civil servant meanwhile recalled that there had been a view that Ms Vennells had “inherited” the Horizon scandal and was “clearing up rather than being the cause”.
Ms Vennells served as chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019. Until 2015, the Post Office continued to bring private prosecutions over cash shortfalls at branches …
The main committee then confirms a list, which goes to the prime minister and ultimately the monarch.
A spokeswoman for Mrs May said: “The honours system is an independent process which awards honours to more than 2,000 people each year. As prime minister, the Rt Hon Theresa May MP always respected the independence of this system but thinks it is right Paula Vennells has handed back her CBE.”
The Times has more detail on what went on behind the scenes:
Sir Ian Cheshire, now chairman of Channel 4, chaired the sub-committee that recommended Vennells for the most prestigious honour below a knighthood or damehood.
Sources said she was nominated by the Department for Business, although Greg Clark, then business secretary, was not involved. Her name was discussed by the main honours committee, chaired by Sir Jonathan Stephens — then the civil servant responsible for Northern Ireland — in October 2018.
At the time, a group action brought by 555 sub-postmasters persecuted by the Post Office was about to reach trial in the High Court.
Mr Justice Fraser would the following year issue a damning indictment of the Post Office’s conduct, finding that the Horizon system had been defective, despite strenuous denials by the company and Vennells over many years …
A source close to Cheshire denied he brushed aside concerns and said that both committees were reassured about Vennells’ fitness for the honour by civil servants.
Vennells was named CBE in the 2019 new year honours list. In February that year, she announced that she was stepping down as chief executive of the Post Office and was appointed a non-executive director at the Cabinet Office …
Until 2015, the Post Office continued to bring private prosecutions over cash shortfalls at branches that were actually caused by glitches in an IT system supplied by the Japanese giant Fujitsu. “This was her reward for bending her conscience and holding the line,” the source claimed.
Here is where Welby starts to come in:
A source suggested Vennells, a part-time priest who had an unremarkable business career until she ran the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, was being rewarded by the government for taking a tough approach to controlling costs, including by refusing to acknowledge wrongdoing in its pursuit of sub-postmasters.
This cost control involved making the Post Office look attractive for a possible sale. Allegations are said to have revolved around a suspense account which was transferred to a profit account. It is also alleged that personal contributions from subpostmasters making up for their shortfalls caused by a faulty accounting system went into the suspense account. More needs to come out about that, but it is an interesting line.
For now, the article simply says:
The government kept hold of the Post Office when Royal Mail was privatised via a stock market float in 2013. But when Vennells was made chief executive, ministers were hoping to spin it off through a mutualisation process in which it would end up being owned by staff, like John Lewis department stores and Waitrose supermarkets.
With more than 11,500 branches, the Post Office was loss-making and reliant on a government subsidy: taxpayers contributed more than £1 billion during Vennells’s time in charge, although the annual amount was tapered from a peak of £210 million in 2013 to £60 million by 2019. Vennells said in a 2014 interview: “You’ve got to get to commercial sustainability before you can mutualise it.”
Here is more from the article about Vennells as an Anglican priest:
Vennells, 64, was for many years a part-time curate who took Sunday services at a church near her home in Bedford. In 2014, she said that her faith “influences my values and how I approach things” and that “I hear from my parishioners if the Post Office does something they don’t like … They have no compunction.”
Somehow she managed to get plum business appointments, although not everyone thinks she was the sharpest knife in the drawer:
She joined the Post Office in 2007 as network director, having started out as a graduate trainee at the consumer goods company Unilever before moving to L’Oréal, Dixons, Argos and Premier Inn owner Whitbread. Someone who worked with Vennells at an early stage of her career expressed surprise at her inclusion in the 2019 new year honours list. He said: “She was a perfectly nice and pleasant person, but she was never going to be one of our champion business leaders who achieved a huge turnaround. It smacked of ‘jobs for the boys’.”
On January 14, the Mail dredged up a Vennells talk in London from May 2018:
The Post Office was already mired in the Horizon IT scandal when its deeply-religious chief executive, Reverend Paula Vennells, agreed to take part in a panel discussion about business ethics.
The talk, attended by City firm executives, was held at London‘s Canary Wharf in May 2018. Apparently undeterred by the crisis unfolding on her watch – and certainly making no mention of it – Ms Vennells declared herself ‘proud of the Post Office… a really special organisation in terms of its values’.
After explaining how her values came ‘from the glory of God’, she turned to the subject of making mistakes.
‘When we mess up, which we do every day,’ she told the audience, ‘my faith tells me that I can be forgiven, that shortfalls are a perfectly human thing to do and that I can always start again; always, always, always, start again. You can put things right.
‘And for me, I found that very liberating because… you can get it wrong and you can move on.’
Would that she had shown the same mercy to the subpostmasters!
The article says likewise:
Alas! If recent events have shown anything it is that, in the temporal world at least, forgiveness is not quite so easy to come by.
It also points out:
… crucially, she stopped short of admitting responsibility for the debacle which saw more than 700 sub-postmasters prosecuted for crimes they hadn’t committed. Hundreds were left bankrupt, humiliated or in prison. Among those convicted, four committed suicide and 33 others have since died without seeing justice.
A fellow Christian among the subpostmasters told the Mail:
‘Forgiveness comes when you admit the mistakes you’ve made and atone for them,’ Tom Hedges, a 70-year-old former sub-postmaster in the village of Hogsthorpe, Lincolnshire, told the Mail.
Mr Hedges, who is also a lay minister and church warden, was wrongly convicted in 2010 of £60,000 worth of theft and false accounting and given a seven-month prison sentence. His conviction was overturned at the Court of Appeal in 2021.
‘It’s not as simple as saying sorry and moving on,’ he added. ‘We’ve had apologies from her before but they’re all couched in words along the lines that none of it was her fault. Before we can forgive, we need to hear the truth’ …
Former sub-postmaster Mr Hedges said: ‘She is now experiencing the wrath of public opinion that I and all the other innocent people felt when we were convicted and thrown out of our post offices.
‘My human and Christian side feels for her for that. But the other side of me thinks that she brought it upon herself.’
We learn more about Vennells’s life story:
Ms Vennells, the eldest of three children, grew up in Denton, five miles east of Manchester. Her father was an industrial chemist and later a research fellow at Manchester University. Her mother was a bookkeeper.
A keen Girl Guide, she won a funded place at private Manchester High School and, after graduating with a degree in French and Russian at Bradford University, was accepted on to Unilever’s graduate scheme before climbing the managerial ladder …
Ms Vennells, who likes to ski and sails dinghies, lives with her husband John, an engineer, in a £2million farmhouse in Bedfordshire.
Despite giving back her gong, she is now facing demands to hand back the £2.2million bonuses she got during her tenure as Post Office chief. Including her salary, she took home a total of £4.5million for that period.
In the weeks ahead, she is due to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Preparing her is the law firm Mishcon de Reya, which once represented the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
You have to have serious money in order to afford Mishcon de Reya.
She attempted to have an impartial examination of the Horizon system but sacked the firm when she didn’t care much for what they had uncovered:
In 2012, after she was promoted to chief executive, she brought in forensic accountant firm, Second Sight, to conduct an independent inquiry into the Fujitsu software. Before agreeing, Second Sight’s managing director Ron Warmington had a face-to-face meeting with Ms Vennells and the Post Office’s £100,000-a-year chairman, Alice Perkins, wife of former Labour minister Jack Straw.
The Mail understands that after asking both women twice if they were really committed to finding the truth, they replied they were.
Mr Warmington told the Mail: ‘But as soon as we started discovering stuff, the howitzers were brought in and shells were being fired across at us. The Post Office tried to discredit us. Everything they did was underhand, unscrupulous, amateurish trickery.’
A source close to the audit admitted shock at the number of errors being made within the company.
‘I remember thinking they’d be better off making decisions with a dart board because they were getting everything wrong all the time,’ the source said.
‘They couldn’t even get post codes right on some outgoing letters. And there were thousands of documents which had misspelled Paula Vennells’ name.’
As for Ms Vennells herself, the source found her to be ‘dim’ and ‘over-promoted’ and ‘like dealing with a mosquito’.
‘If you’re going to take that top job with the bucks that go with it, you’d better be as sharp as a tack. And she wasn’t.’
Second Sight’s final report described the Horizon system as ‘not fit for purpose’ and warned of ‘potential miscarriages of justice and misconduct by prosecutors acting on behalf of the Post Office’.
But the Post Office insisted that there was ‘absolutely no evidence of any systematic issues with the computer system’.
Ms Vennells left the Post Office in 2019, months before a damning High Court judgment ruled that Horizon was not ‘remotely robust’ and had ‘bugs, errors and defects’.
This is what happened to Vennells after leaving the Post Office in 2019:
… as well as taking jobs as a non-executive director of Morrisons supermarket and retailer Dunelm – which brought in £140,000 a year – Ms Vennells was appointed as an adviser to the Cabinet Office, made a member of the Church of England ethical investments committee and became chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, a paid post.
She was even being considered for the role of Bishop of London, one of the most high-ranking positions in the Church of England.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this story is how those in authority continued to promote her despite the very visible chaos left in her wake.
The Mail interviewed one person who said that attempting to block a Vennells appointment resulted in thinly-veiled threats of a career limiting nature:
An NHS whistleblower, retired consultant psychiatrist Dr Minh Alexander, told the Mail she wrote to the NHS Trust and Care Quality Commission in 2020 to question whether Ms Vennells was a ‘fit and proper person’ to become chairman in light of what had happened at the Post Office …
She was stunned to receive a lengthy ‘private’ email from former BBC Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross, who at the time was a non-executive board member at the trust, telling her: ‘I truly fear you may come to regret your attempts to have Paula Vennells sacked from her existing roles,’ and adding: ‘I worry that, for the best of intentions, you are pursuing a vendetta that may backfire on you.’
Good grief.
However, right prevailed in the end. In early 2021:
Two months after that December 2020 email exchange, Ms Vennells stood down. In April 2021, following the quashing of 39 sub-postmasters convictions, she resigned as an Anglican priest and from her Morrisons and Dunelm directorships. She also stepped down as governor of private Bedford School, where her two sons were educated.
I read elsewhere that she had to be told to resign her sacerdotal duties; she did not go voluntarily.
I know. You’re wondering about Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. We’re nearly there.
On January 9, The Telegraph told us:
It also emerged that in 2017 she was considered for the role of Bishop of London.
On Monday, January 15, The Telegraph featured this story, ‘Justin Welby should quit for supporting Paula Vennells to be Bishop of London’:
Queen Elizabeth II’s former chaplain has called for the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand down amid suggestions he endorsed the disgraced former Post Office boss to be Bishop of London …
Last week it emerged Ms Vennells was shortlisted to become Bishop of London in 2017 – the third most senior role in the Church of England after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York – despite suggestions having emerged at the time that postmasters had been wrongly prosecuted.
Church sources claim the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, was personally supportive of Ms Vennells’ candidacy at the time.
In the wake of the news, the late Queen’s former chaplain, the Rev Canon Jeremy Haselock, who is an associate priest at Great St Bartholomew’s in the City of London, criticised the Archbishop’s reported endorsement of Ms Vennells, saying: “Welby must go.”
The Revd Canon Haselock has a damning indictment of the Archbishop:
Writing on his personal Facebook account hours after the story broke, accompanied by a picture of the Archbishop and Ms Vennells, he said: “Surely this is the point at which Welby must go. Another demonstration of his complete lack of sound judgment.”
In the post, seen by The Telegraph, he added: “His backing for this woman for episcopal office shows how completely he fails to understand the nature of that office.
“His total failure to bring pastoral care to the fore during the pandemic and the disastrous decisions he made at that time shows his complete and utter lack of understanding of the Church and its ministry.
“His has been a terrible primacy and clutching his GCVO [Royal Victorian Order] he should go.”
Rev Canon Jeremy Haselock was appointed Chaplain to Her Majesty the Queen in 2013, a title which he held until 2021, ministering to the late monarch …
The article continues with more about the eventual nomination of the current Bishop of London:
The Daily Telegraph understands that alongside Ms Vennells, other names considered for the role were the Rt Rev Christopher Cocksworth, the former Bishop of Coventry who is now the Dean of Windsor, and Rt Rev Dr Graham Tomlin, the former Bishop of Kensington amd the current director of the Centre for Cultural Witness at Lambeth Palace.
Dame Sarah Mullally DBE was eventually appointed the 133rd Bishop of London in December 2017.
As for Vennells:
“I have heard that Welby pushed for her,” one [Church source] said. “Apparently the meeting of the Crown Nominations Committee in 2017 was quite fortuitous because Paula had no parish experience and was a self-supporting minister.
How on earth could he want to appoint a Bishop of London with no parish experience?
The paper quoted their source as saying:
Over the past 10 years the church has become more of a business model so the whole idea of Paula Vennells being the supposed favourite candidate of Justin Welby links to the whole businessification of the church under his reign.
Oh, dear.
A second Church source spoke to The Telegraph:
Another source said the Archbishop was known to be supportive of Ms Vennells, who sat on the church’s Ethical Investments Advisory Group.
“Justin was close to her,” they said. “He was always very supportive of her when she was a member of the Church of England ethical investment advisory committee.”
Not surprisingly:
Lambeth Palace declined to comment.
I realise that the Church of England encourages men and women with previous careers to seek ordination. Welby himself was a highly-paid Shell executive. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, that does not excuse and should not encourage the wrong type of people being given preferment either for ordination or subsequent senior positions that they do not deserve.
I agree that Justin Welby should stand down as Archbishop of Canterbury, but who would succeed him?
It will be interesting to see if this story gathers pace in the coming weeks. More about the Post Office scandal emerges every day, and Paula Vennells’s fingerprints are on a significant portion of it.
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.
All Scripture Is Breathed Out by God
10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11 my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. 12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
————————————————————————————————————————
Last week’s post discussed a further condemnation of Paul concerning false teachers; they prey on the vulnerable and pretend to follow the faith, although they will be found out in the end, just as Jannes and Jambres, the magicians opposing Moses, were. Jannes and Jambres, ancient Jewish writings tell us, were responsible for the golden calf incident, and the Israelites killed them afterwards.
In 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul commands Timothy to get rid of the false teachers corrupting the church in Ephesus and the surrounding towns. Paul either senses or knows that Timothy is having a difficult time of it. The false teachers arose from the midst of the congregation, which probably makes it more difficult for Timothy to assert his authority.
Here, Paul appeals to his younger protégé. At this point, Paul was in his mid- to late 60s and Timothy was 30 years younger. They would have been working closely together in the ministry for around 15 years.
Paul says that Timothy has followed him throughout: the Apostle’s teaching, his conduct, his aim in life, his faith, his patience, his love and his steadfastness (verse 10). Paul truly practised what he preached.
Before analysing the verse, let us contrast Paul’s life with the life of those who profess to be Christians but are lacking in faith.
Matthew Henry’s commentary says that is because such people do not know or understand the word of God (emphases mine):
The more fully we know the doctrine of Christ and the apostles, the more closely we shall cleave to it; the reason why many sit loose to it is because they do not fully know it.
John MacArthur says the same thing:
Let me say again, there are a lot of pastors, there are a lot of Christian leaders, there are a lot of good Christian lay people in the church but there are not many warriors for the truth who guard right doctrine, who cry out for uncompromising holiness. They are few and far between, certainly in this generation. And yet the church desperately needs them if we are to pass on a legacy of truth and conviction to the generation to follow.
Moving on to an analysis of verse 10, Henry tells us:
Now what is it that Timothy had so fully known in Paul? 1. The doctrine that he preached. Paul kept back nothing from his hearers, but declared to them the whole counsel of God (Acts 20 27), so that if it were not their own fault they might fully know it. Timothy had a great advantage in being trained up under such a tutor, and being apprised of the doctrine he preached. 2. He had fully known his conversation: Thou hast fully know my doctrine, and manner of life; his manner of life was of a piece with his doctrine, and did not contradict it. He did not pull down by his living what he built up by his preaching. Those ministers are likely to do good, and leave lasting fruits of their labours, whose manner of life agrees with their doctrine; as, on the contrary, those cannot expect to profit the people at all that preach well and live ill. 3. Timothy fully knew what was the great thing that Paul had in view, both in his preaching and in his conversation: “Thou hast known my purpose, what I drive at, how far it is from any worldly, carnal, secular design, and how sincerely I aim at the glory of God and the good of the souls of men.” 4. Timothy fully knew Paul’s good character, which he might gather from his doctrine, manner of life, and purpose; for he gave proofs of his faith (that is, of his integrity and fidelity, or his faith in Christ, his faith concerning another world, by which Paul lived), his long-suffering towards the churches to which he preached and over which he presided, his charity towards all men, and his patience. These were graces that Paul was eminent for, and Timothy knew it.
MacArthur directs our attention to the words ‘you followed’ in that verse:
Now, the key thing that I want you to note there and underline, two words in verse 10, “you followed,” you followed. And I want to expand on that as the major concept and thrust in this particular text. Timothy had a tremendous spiritual example, the epitome of patterns to trace your life on was Timothy’s pattern, namely the apostle Paul. And as I said, uncompromising champions of the truth usually have learned that at the feet of a stalwart defender of the faith. That was Timothy’s case. Paul himself was the model. You followed, and then Paul lists all those things about himself that Timothy followed.
You patterned your life after me. You followed the – the demonstration of uncompromising loyalty that was true of my life and you set your life in that same pattern. You saw that I suffered and that didn’t deter me. You saw that I was persecuted and that didn’t deflect my goal. You saw that I made the commitment whatever the price. You have had that pattern for your pattern. And several times in 2 Timothy he says you’ve got to suffer like I suffered, you’ve got to endure like I endured, you have to expect persecution like I got it. That’s the pattern. You’ve seen it, you’ve followed it, you’ve traced your life on it. You know what it means to have a strong example …
… Paul says, “But you,” – and that’s in the emphatic position in the original language – “But you,” – on the other hand, in contrast to all the deceitful false teachers and wicked men – “you followed,” – and we’ll just put the word “me” in there to sum up everything Paul says in verses 10 and 11. You had a pattern to follow to make you different. “You” is emphatic, pointing out that Timothy has had a very distinct training.
Let me talk a little about the word “followed.” It’s very important. It’s not just a simple word that means to follow in – in some generic sense. It’s a rich word that has some profound insight, parakoloutheō literally is to follow alongside. That’s simply its literal meaning. But as you see how it’s used in ancient times, it begins to open up in incredible ways. For example, the Stoic philosophers used the word as a technical term for the relationship between a disciple and his master, a student and his teacher.
A very close relationship was expressed in this term. You followed not from afar, not at a distance, but you followed in an intimate relationship as a – as a master and a disciple are connected. Some have translated it, for example, like this: “to study at close quarters,” or “to carefully note with a view to reproducing,” or “to take as an example.” So let’s – let’s take that middle meaning and read it this way, “But you carefully noted my life with a view to reproducing it.” That’s the essence of the word. You patterned after me. You began to think like I think, talk like I talk, walk like I walk, react like I react. You patterned your life after me.
It was Paul the apostle and Timothy the disciple, Paul the father and Timothy the child, Paul the leader and Timothy the companion, Paul the head and Timothy the associate, Paul the leader and Timothy the follower, Paul the example and the friend. That’s the way it went. Timothy the submissive learner and servant. Timothy was ever at his side, always at his side learning, learning, learning to imbibe the spirit of an uncompromising defender of the faith.
There has never lived a greater defender of the faith than Paul. And Timothy had an inestimable privilege that none of us will ever have, to walk alongside that incredible man. The aorist tense is used here which sums – sums up all of Timothy’s experience. You followed. From the beginning of our time together to the present time you patterned your life after me.
And, beloved, I want you to know that that is part of the necessary ingredients in a person who is a champion of the faith. You look for someone who has had a pattern to follow like that. And this really summarizes the whole of Timothy’s experience. So much was Timothy in one sense a clone of the apostle Paul that in 1 Corinthians 4 – Paul, of course, is very upset with the Corinthian church and he says to them, “I exhort you therefore be imitators of me,” verse 16. You need to pattern your life after me. Then he says, “For this reason, because I want you to be like me I have sent to you Timothy.”
Our models, those we choose to follow in some way, affect our lives, too:
And let me say just in a general sense … I am absolutely convinced that this is a tremendously important point. We are all copiers, we are all mimics, we are all imitators. And who you pattern your life after is going to be who you turn out to be in great measure. You are marked by your models. You are marked by your mentors. You are marked by the patterns you choose to follow. Your heroes, your examples mark you.
That’s why I tell young people all the time, it’s so important whose ministry you sit under, what school you go to, particularly what seminary you go to because the people who influence your life will do that. They will mark you. They will mark you with their set of convictions, with their perceptions and perspectives. If Timothy is to be loyal and strong against apostasy, if he is to stand against heresy and all attacks on the church, then he is going to be able to do that if he has learned to do that by patterning his life after someone who is like that. That’s the challenge. And Paul is concerned with Timothy’s loyalty. And he is concerned that Timothy make the most of his privilege of having been patterned after the apostle Paul himself …
We will imitate somebody or somebodies. We might as well imitate people worthy to be imitated. It is not wrong to be a reproduction if you are a reproduction of the right person. And that was the case with Timothy. He had followed all those attributes of Paul. He was the pattern.
MacArthur then examines Paul’s list in verse 10:
Now, I want to talk a little bit about the word “my,” you have followed my teaching … You did what I did in this point, this point, this point, this point, this point …
Now, we could divide this list, Paul loves lists and every time you come across a list of Paul, it’s helpful if you can kind of divide it up and get the flow of his thought. And there are really three areas in this list that Paul covers. And he says you have followed me in all these three areas. The first one is ministry duty, ministry duty. And that’s the first place where you learn how to pattern your life after someone. How do they carry on their ministry? He divides his ministry duty into two things: teaching and conduct. You have followed my teaching, my conduct.
Teaching, didaskalia simply means what it says, doctrine, teaching, divine truth, the basis of everything. He says, Timothy, you followed my teaching of truth, you followed my instruction, God’s revelation. You followed apostolic doctrine, you followed my doctrine. In chapter 2 verse 2, “The things you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses you are to pass on to someone else.” You learned from me, someone else needs to learn from you. The passing on of the apostolic doctrine was vital.
… When he taught, he taught what Paul had taught him. That’s what he was to do. The things you heard from me, teach faithful men and so they’ll teach others also and will keep passing down the unmitigated, unaltered truth. That was absolutely vital …
Secondly, he followed Paul not only in teaching but in conduct. That word agōgē means manner of life, pattern of behavior, lifestyle. It’s a simple word used only here in the New Testament, but it has to do with your daily living. Now, what was wonderful about Paul, and this is a good – good thought to keep in mind. What was wonderful about Paul was that his doctrine was in perfect harmony with his living. And that has such tremendous integrity that it has an overwhelming impact on someone. When you live what you teach, you have a powerful influence. And here was a man who taught truth and lived truth consistently. That is great integrity. Timothy followed the pattern of ministry.
Now ministry in its simplest way can be described in these two things. Your ministry is what you teach and how you live. Those are the – those are the duties of ministry, to teach truth and live truth, to teach what is right and live what is right. And Timothy followed Paul. He knew the pattern of how to teach truth and how to live truth. Those basic duties of ministry Timothy followed. And those things are essential in the patterning process.
… What any of us in leadership communicate to people, first and foremost, is what we teach and the way we live. And if there is disparity and inconsistency, there is tremendous confusion and chaos. A loss of integrity is tragic. So the bottom-line ministerial duty, the bottom-line duty in spiritual mentoring – if we can use that term – is to make sure your teaching and your living are consistent. Paul did that in front of Timothy. Timothy was doing that in front of others.
… not only did Timothy follow the pattern of ministry duty but of … personal qualities. Look again at verse 10. He says, “You also followed my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love,” those four things. You followed in my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love. Those are personal character qualities. You patterned your life after me. Now, let me show you what he means by this. Purpose, that’s the first quality to start with, motive. What’s in your heart? What’s the purpose? Boy, I’m telling you, this is what dictates a man’s life. What is the driving passion of his heart? The word purpose means that. The inner motive, the driving passion, the consuming desire of his heart.
What was it for Paul? I’ll tell you what it was, 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verses 16 to 18, “Woe is unto me if I” – What? – “preach not the gospel.” Acts chapter 20. “I do not count my life dear unto myself, I want to finish the ministry Christ gave to me,” he says in Acts chapter 20. “I have not failed to declare unto you the whole counsel of God.” My hands, as it were, “are clean from any blood, I have discharged my responsibility to proclaim Christ, teach God’s Word” …
Now, this is the thing that I want you to understand. That is the driving force from within that creates a life of truth and duty. When you look at a person and you see great spiritual integrity, you see a person who teaches truth and lives truth, you can know they’re driven by a great internal purpose, to be – to be to the glory of God, the honor of God, to do the thing that God has gifted, called, commissioned them to do …
The second thing he mentions in verse 10 is faith, my faith. It could be that he means here faith in God. That would be certainly a fair translation of pistis. It could mean that. It also could mean faithfulness or trustworthiness. The same term would be translated that way. And, usually, in lists that Paul makes, like Galatians 5, the list there, 1 Timothy 2:15, 1 Timothy 4:12. In the list it seems best to translate it faithfulness. So he may be saying you have followed my consummate faith and trust in God or you have followed my faithfulness, loyalty, trustworthiness with regard to the truth.
In either case, what he is saying is I never compromised, I never wavered in my trust toward God and I never wavered in my loyalty to His Word and His calling. You followed my faith, you followed my faithfulness. That’s a tremendous thought. Faith begets faithfulness, if you really trust God you’ll be faithful to His Word and His will. He stayed true to the purpose. So he says you followed my purpose and that meant you followed my faith and faithfulness. You stayed true to it because you were driven by that purpose.
And even when things don’t go right, he says, you followed my patience, makrothumia. What is that? That is the spirit that endures persecution from people. The steadfast spirit that never gives up and never gives in. It means patience with people, even persecuting people. So he says, “Timothy, you followed my purpose, that resolute uncompromising devotion to do the duty God had given you, to preach Christ, exalt His name, extend His Kingdom with no thought for comfort, no thought for personal success. You did it; you were committed to doing it. Your faith never wavered, your faithfulness and loyalty was exemplary. And even when persecution came you endured that, you took it. You were patient with people, even to people who persecuted you.
Then he adds a fourth characteristic, my love you followed. You loved, you loved God in it all, you never lost your love for Him. You loved the church. That’s why you were willing to do it. And you loved the lost and you loved even your enemies who persecuted you. We can take love and stretch it at the most magnanimous point here. The agape volitional love of Paul was evident in every dimension. He loved God unwaveringly. He loved the world so much that his heart broke when he saw a city given to idolatry. He loved the church so much that he gave his life on their behalf.
And he loved even his enemies, even his enemies to the point where his desire for those who persecuted him was salvation. He had love in its widest broadest sense. Now, do you see the flow of qualities? When a man has a driving purpose to fulfill God’s will he will be faithful to that purpose. Faithful to that purpose even though he is persecuted and hated by those around him. And even though being persecuted and hated, never moves away from loving God, loving the church, loving the lost and loving even the persecutors. Virtue upon virtue marks out the greatness of the heart of Paul. And Timothy followed that. He patterned his life after that.
Paul reminds Timothy that he followed the Apostle throughout his persecutions in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, all of which he endured and from which God rescued him (verse 11).
Henry explains Paul’s message in that verse:
5. He knew that he had suffered ill for doing well (v. 11): “Thou hast fully known the persecutions and afflictions that came unto me” (he mentions those only which happened to him while Timothy was with him, at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra); “and therefore let it be no surprise to thee if thou suffer hard things, it is no more than I have endured before.” 6. He knew what care God had taken of him: Notwithstanding out of them all the Lord delivered me; as he never failed his cause, so his God never failed him. Thou hast fully known my afflictions. When we know the afflictions of good people but in part, they are a temptation to us to decline that cause which they suffer for; when we know only the hardships they undergo for Christ, we may be ready to say, “We will renounce that cause that is likely to cost us so dear in the owning of it;” but when we fully know the afflictions, not only how they suffer, but how they are supported and comforted under their sufferings, then, instead of being discouraged, we shall be animated by them …
MacArthur has more, picking up from ‘steadfastness’ or ‘perseverance’ at the end of verse 10:
Now Paul went through some very difficult experiences and Timothy understood that. He saw that. He learned from that. He benefited from that. The word “perseverance,” hupomonē, means patience with circumstances, not patience with people like the other word, makrothumia, but patience with circumstances …
… People can’t take it away, circumstances can’t take it away, it’s resolute, persevering, enduring. Timothy caught that virtue. He patterned his life after that. He learned that ability to endure negative circumstances, to live under it no matter how difficult. And he learned it from Paul.
And then he says you also followed my persecutions. That word, diōgmos from diōkō, to pursue, means persecution. This is defined here as pursuit, people who wanted his life, plots. He says in Acts 20 the Jews were always lying in wait to kill him, plotting against him, plot after plot after plot to take the life of the apostle Paul. It was a way of life, absolutely constant persecution …
… So he says you were there during my difficult experiences. You’ve learned from me ministry duty. You’ve learned from me personal quality. You’ve learned from me difficult circumstances and how to face them. And then he adds the word “my sufferings.” Sometimes the persecution actually became suffering. That was routine for Paul. The word used here has in it the root of the idea of pathos, suffering, sorrow. Sometimes Paul really got it. It wasn’t just persecution coming at him, it hit him. It hit him and it hit him hard. He suffered in his own body, “I bear in my body the marks of Christ,” he said. It happened not just once but a myriad of times …
So Paul reminds Timothy of sufferings and says, “Timothy, you know, you’ve been there, you’ve endured them, you’ve learned how to handle them with me.” So he says you have followed, in verse 11, all of these ending up with persecutions and sufferings such has happened to me. And then he reaches back at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra.
Why? Let me tell you something. Why does he go back there? Because those three cities were in the province of Galatia and that was Timothy’s home province. Lystra was Timothy’s hometown. Now, that is also the first place where there was recorded hostility against Paul, so he’s simply going back to the beginning. And he says, “Such has happened to me at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra.” And that’s where the persecution began, on his first missionary journey, that’s the first record of persecutions coming against the apostle Paul.
In Acts 13 – look at it for just a moment – we’ll see a little bit of insight, tremendous insight into what happened. It says in verse 14 that they arrived at Antioch and “on the Sabbath day went to the synagogue, sat down after the reading of the law and the prophets, the synagogue official sent to them saying, ‘Brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say it.’”
So here is Paul, he’s a guest in the synagogue. He’s obviously a teacher from the Jews. So they read the Scripture and they say, all right, we’ve got a guest rabbi, you stand up, you have something to say, say it. So he stands up and says what he has to say and what he has to say is about the Messiah Jesus. And so here he is in a Jewish synagogue preaching the gospel. And what happens as a result? Verse 42. “Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people kept begging these things might be spoken to them the next Sabbath. And when the meeting of the synagogue had broken up, many of the Jews and the God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas who speaking to them were urging them to continue in the grace of God.
“And the next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the Word of God but when the Jews saw the crowds they were filled with jealousy, began contradicting the things spoken by Paul and they were blaspheming.” Drop down to verse 50, “The Jews aroused the devout women of prominence and the leading men of the city and instigated a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district.”
Now this was the beginning. This was in Galatia, the province where Timothy’s hometown existed. So Timothy knew about this. This is way back to the early days, to the very spiritual roots of Timothy in terms of his experience with Paul. Then Paul went to Iconium, chapter 14 says, they came into Iconium, they entered the synagogue of the Jews together, spoke in such a manner that a great multitude believed, both of Jews and of Greeks. But the Jews who disbelieved stirred up the minds of the Gentiles and embittered them against the brethren. And again you have this tremendous hostility. Verse 5, an attempt was made by the Gentiles and the Jews with their rulers to mistreat and stone them.
So they couldn’t stay in Antioch and now they can’t stay in Iconium, so they head to Lystra. They come to Lystra in verse 8. Paul heals a man there, a miraculous healing of a cripple. The people don’t like that. The response to that is that they stone Paul, verse 19, drag him out of the city supposing that he is dead, they throw him on the dump heap in Lystra. Now that, no doubt, was Timothy’s first meeting with Paul. He sees him heal this man. He hears him preach. He sees him stoned and thrown on the dump. Tremendously powerful impressions on young Timothy.
This is his first understanding of Paul. Now even though these events happened before Paul takes Timothy with him, before chapter 16 where Paul links up with Timothy, certainly Timothy was aware of these events. If for no other reason Paul no doubt filled him in on all the details. So Timothy’s first impression of Paul was as a man of tremendous courage, a man of tremendous resolution, uncompromising character who would give his life in the proclamation of the gospel.
That was Timothy’s first impression of Paul. What a tremendous legacy. What a tremendous legacy. He – he experienced Paul’s first sufferings vicariously and must have thought, “What a man. What an incredible man. What a strong man. What a courageous man!” And it’s Paul’s way of saying, “Timothy, you remember when in Lystra I was stoned. You can recall the kind of suffering I experienced from the start of your Christian life. You know what it’s been like all along and you’ve learned how to respond to that. You followed that kind of pattern. You know what it is to be courageous” …
And Timothy was there in some of them and vicariously there in all of them. So Paul reminds him of that. And then I love the way he closes, verse 11, “And out of them all the Lord delivered me.” Out of them all the Lord delivered me. You know that, too, Timothy. You know the Lord preserved me out of them all. And he quotes really from Psalm 34:19. That’s again his Old Testament background leaking through. Psalm 34:19, “But many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” He almost quotes it verbatim. The Lord delivered him out of all of his trials, but isn’t that what God promised to do? …
… That word delivered means to drag or rescue. God provided the rescue. So what is Paul saying? He’s saying, “Timothy, you have had a pattern to follow. You have a strong mentor relationship. You know the quality of life it takes. You know the ministry duties required. You know the inevitability of spiritual persecution and difficulty. You have had the ingredients to be a strong, strong defender of the faith.”
Paul goes on to say, prefacing his next statement with the word ‘Indeed’ — in other words, it’s a certainty — that all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (verse 12). And, at that time, instructions had been sent from Rome throughout the empire that Christians were persona non grata. Because Christians believe that all are equal in Christ Jesus, the Romans feared a slave rebellion, the slaves outnumbering their masters. As such, Paul, having evangelised so extensively throughout the empire, was the authorities’ top target.
Henry says that persecution comes to the faithful in greater or lesser degrees:
… not always alike; at that time those who professed the faith of Christ were more exposed to persecution than at other times; but at all times, more or less, those who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. They must expect to be despised, and that their religion will stand in the way of their preferment; those who will live godly must expect it, especially those who will live godly in Christ Jesus, that is, according to the strict rules of the Christian religion, those who will wear the livery and bear the name of the crucified Redeemer. All who will show their religion in their conversation, who will not only be godly, but live godly, let them expect persecution, especially when they are resolute in it.
MacArthur tells us:
Now, let me take that statement apart for just a moment. All will be persecuted. All Christians? No, not all Christians, all who desire to live godly. If you’re a disobedient, weak, uninvolved, unconcerned, apathetic, inconsequential Christian, you may never be persecuted. You’re not a problem. Satan’s not going to waste his time with you; you’re not doing anything. But if you desire to live godly, the “who desire” there is literally a participle, the willing ones, the ones willing to live godly. Not that you’re going to be perfect but that’s your cry, that’s your desire. If you desire to live godly, you’re going to get persecuted …
And by the way, if all you want is to be godly and you’re not concerned about Jesus Christ, you may never get persecuted either because you’re no threat to the system. You’re in the system. Yours is paganism. And paganism doesn’t persecute paganism usually, although sometimes the demons get a bit confused about that. But the point is, “all” qualifies itself, “who desires to live godly,” qualifies itself, “in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” Because when you desire to live godly by virtue of your union with Christ Jesus, then you are a threat to the system and you are a threat to the kingdom of darkness and you will be persecuted. That’s a future passive, you will be persecuted. That’s a guarantee, that’s a promise.
So if you look at your life and you’re not having a lot of persecution, maybe you haven’t got a compassion for being godly. Maybe you’re not desiring to be godly or maybe you’re not in Christ Jesus. Now it doesn’t mean you’re going to be persecuted all the time at the maximum level. There will be varying times and seasons and varying degrees of persecution. But anyone who seeks to confront an ungodly society with a godly life in Christ Jesus is going to get some negative reaction. There will be hostility.
Jesus said in John 15, “If they hated Me they’ll hate you. In this world you shall have tribulation. Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” The Sermon on the Mount, all the way back when Jesus was first articulating the principles of salvation, “Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, persecute you, say all kinds of evil against you falsely on account of me, rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Count it a joy to be persecuted. They put you in good company. And the world will react to a godly life. They have to. The persecution is going to come, Timothy, he says. You ought to be ready for it. You’ve had a pattern to follow, you know how to handle it. It’s going to come on you and it’s going to come on everybody who seeks to live godly in Christ Jesus during these last days.
Paul says that, while godly Christians are being persecuted, evil people and impostors go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived (verse 13).
Henry says:
Observe, As good men, by the grace of God, grow better and better, so bad men, through the subtlety of Satan and the power of their own corruptions, grow worse and worse. The way of sin is down-hill; for such proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Those who deceive others do but deceive themselves; those who draw others into error run themselves into more and more mistakes, and they will find it so at last, to their cost.
MacArthur says that Paul is referring to the false teachers he discussed earlier in the chapter:
Verse 13, “Because evil men and impostor – impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” By the way, the evil men and impostors are the group described in verses 1 to 8. Verses 2 to 4 describes their evil. Verses 5 to 8 describes their impostoring. They are evil. That’s ponēros. It’s used of Satan in Matthew 13:19, they’re as malicious and wicked as he is. And then the second word translated here as “impostors” is translated many ways in Greek writing. Diviners, wizards, magicians, sorcerers, swindlers, cheaters. It refers to the crafty tricky deceitful people like Jannes and Jambres in verse 8, who tried to deceive the people with their tricks into believing that what Moses was doing was not of God.
These are the oppressors of the church. And because there will always be the wicked and the fakes and the frauds and the charlatans and the phonies and the swindlers, there’s always going to be the persecution. And it says – please note this – they proceed from bad to worse. They advance toward the worse. Verse 9 says their work doesn’t advance, it’s limited. It won’t progress where they’d like it to, God puts a boundary on their work. They’ll not destroy His work. But internally, they get worse and worse and their influence gets worse and worse.
MacArthur explains their moving from bad to worse:
Now, Bible scholars debate over this – this idea of proceeding from bad to worse. Does this mean the evil men and the impostors internally get worse and worse or does it mean that cumulatively their effect gets worse and worse? And I take it that the answer is yes to both of those. The future tense means that in the future they are going to degenerate internally and they’re going to have a degenerating deteriorating impact externally. Evil men get worse and worse and worse internally. Why? Because as they continue to live evil lives, the evil accumulating adds a degenerating element to their existence.
You know what I’m saying? A 20-year-old wicked seducer isn’t nearly as vile as a 70-year-old wicked seducer. Why? Because the constant compounding of that wickedness degenerates his own heart down, down and down. But on the outside, it is also true that the more wicked the men are, the more wicked the influence they have is. So there is an internal and an external accumulating vileness expressed here. And because men are getting more and more wicked, they’re getting more and more hostile. And because the environment is more and more influenced by their wickedness, the environment gets more and more hostile.
So the longer we go toward the Second Coming of Christ, the more the mystery of iniquity unfolds and the worse it gets. The godly are suffering through this church age and their suffering will escalate even until the terrible suffering that comes toward the end because evil men are getting worse internally and, collectively, their impact is worse externally. And then he says of them they are deceiving. That’s what they’re trying to do. Impostors misleading, deluding, leading people astray. And at the same time being deceived because their own sin, their own wretchedness blinds their own minds. Their own increasing evil makes them self-deceived and deceivers of others.
These are dangerous times, dangerous times. The closer we come to the time of our Lord’s return, the worse men get and the worse their influence … gets. And the accumulation of all the lies and false teaching mounts and escalates and we’re in dangerous times.
MacArthur preached that sermon in 1987, by the way: 36 years ago.
He concludes:
… dangerous times call for strong people. What kind of people is it going to take to stem the tide, to stand against it? Great champions for the truth. And what are the ingredients that make people strong?
First ingredient, they have strong mentors to follow as their spiritual models. And so what I can say to you as we draw this to a conclusion, beloved, is make sure that you’re patterning your life after spiritually strong people, who with uncompromising resolution stand as defenders of God’s truth. And some people will criticize you. In fact … they may criticize you somewhat relentlessly not only outside the church but even inside the church. But you know that the call of God is on the church to defend the faith, to guard the faith, to hold the treasure to pass it on to the next generation.
And we live in a day when the Church is sloppy in its self-defense, sloppy in its ability to stand against the tide of false teaching. It is not discerning. In some cases it doesn’t even care to be discerning. It just opens its mind to every kind of thing. And the church has a soft belly in which Satan can plunge the knife and bring about a severe wound. We need strong men, strong women who defend the faith who are discerning and resolute and uncompromising. And Paul says, “Timothy, you’ve got it going for you because you patterned your life after me.” What a tremendous privilege.
I write this post just days after YouGov took a poll of Anglican clergy for The Times. The former BBC presenter John Humphreys has more on the devastating findings of a group of notionally religious men and women called to defend the faith:
The survey uncovered high levels of stress among priests, many of whom feel over-stretched under the “pressure of justifying the Church of England’s position to increasingly secular and sceptical audiences”. They fear that the church’s efforts to arrest the decline in attendance will fail and this may ultimately lead to its “extinction”. Asked whether they think “Britain can or cannot be described as a Christian country”, only a quarter answered: “Yes”. Almost two thirds said Britain can be called Christian “but only historically, not currently”. The most glaring finding, according to The Times, is that is that “the foot soldiers” of the established religion believe that Christianity has been marginalised as a social force in this country.” Seven in ten believe that it’s a thing of the past.
This defeatism extends to the clergy’s individual working lives. Almost a quarter have considered quitting the priesthood because of overwork. Most are now faced with having to run more than one church, and some as many as ten. Disillusionment with a “remote church hierarchy” is widespread. Some priests described a “profound lack of support from their bishops.” There was a “strong desire” among the clergy for significant changes in church doctrine on issues such as sex, sexuality, marriage and the role of women to bring it into greater line with public opinion. Most priests want the church to start conducting same-sex weddings and drop its opposition to premarital and gay sex.
I have news for those priests. Paul’s epistles and the Book of Acts show time and time again that preaching about Jesus Christ was always difficult, even life threatening. Furthermore, Jesus Himself was hounded by His enemies throughout His three-year ministry, pursued unto death. What makes these priests think that their job should be easy? They are to defend the faith, not water it down to meet the world’s satisfaction. The Church is always opposed to the world. That is its holy purpose.
St Paul knew that. St Timothy knew that.
More importantly, Jesus told the disciples — and us — through the Gospels that this would be the case.
There is something deeply wrong with Anglican seminaries if they are teaching future priests and deacons that their road will be an easy one. It is not, not an easy road at all.
Next time — 2 Timothy 4:9-15
On Thursday evening, June 29, 2023, Nigel Farage told his GB News audience that his bank accounts — personal and business — had been mysteriously suspended and would be closed within a matter of weeks.
This is his video from earlier in the day, the contents of which he repeated on his show that evening:
He is one of those fortunate individuals who has a personal account manager. Recently, that relationship had changed and he was assigned a new one, who broke the bad news in a rather perfunctory way, according to Farage, and with no explanation other than that it was no longer commercially viable.
Farage thinks it was because he is what the EU calls a politically exposed person (PEP).
Farage said that he had been with the same bank since 1980.
That evening, he had the Free Speech Union’s Toby Young on to discuss the matter. Toby Young said that one does not need to be a PEP in order to have his/her account closed. One can simply respond to a bank survey, as one Yorkshire Building Society customer did. The customer said that he disagreed with the building society’s promotion of Pride month. His account was summarily closed.
Young himself had his PayPal accounts cancelled temporarily. Those closures could have been permanent had he not taken to the airwaves on GB News and his own website.
Young’s website, The Daily Sceptic, covered Farage’s ominous complaint, as covered in The Mail (emphases mine):
Mr. Farage claimed that the extraordinary measure was effectively tantamount to making him a “non-person”, adding: “I won’t really be able to exist or function in a modern 21st century Britain. I’m beginning to think that perhaps life in the United Kingdom is now becoming completely unliveable because of the levels of prejudice against me.”
Mr. Farage speculated that the “establishment” was targeting him due to his role in campaigning for Brexit during the 2016 referendum on British membership of the EU. He also suggested that his reputation had been smeared by Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant, who last year used parliamentary privilege to claim that Mr. Farage was paid more than £500,000 by the Russian state through his appearances on Russia Today in 2018. He vehemently denied this, saying: “I didn’t receive a penny from any source with even any link to Russia.”
At the end of the show, Farage announced that he would be taking some time off from his GB News programme and hinted at moving overseas.
He also added that what made it worse was that close family members of his suffered the same fate.
Of course, Farage and the Yorkshire Building Society customer are not the first to have had their accounts closed. Two other Britons have had the same experience, albeit some years before. They were involved in controversial sociopolitical movements or activity seen to go against the governments of the day.
The Express also had a report covering the Farage debacle and denials issued to two other political parties:
Express.co.uk understands that all the British-based banks have denied the Reclaim Party [actor Laurence Fox] a bank account and one of the accounts for Reform UK [businessman Richard Tice] was also closed with minimum notice.
On Friday, June 30, The Telegraph also covered the two account closures: Farage’s and the person with Yorkshire Building Society. Of Farage’s situation, the article says:
Whilst he did not name the institution, it has previously been reported that he had a mortgage with Coutts, which is owned by NatWest.
Coutts is the ne plus ultra of British banks. It is not for most of the population. I do not know if this is still the case, but they used to send written invitations to people they viewed as potential customers. In other words: don’t call us; we’ll call you.
Also:
Writing for The Telegraph, the former Brexit Party leader said he was then rejected by seven other banks when he approached them to become a customer.
The former Ukip leader said that the decision was proof that “we are living through the politicisation of our corporate sector”.
“It should alarm everybody that a bank has the power to punish those it considers to have erred or strayed,” he wrote.
It turns out other high-profile Brexit Party members also had their accounts closed:
Two former Brexit Party MEPs have revealed how their bank accounts were also cancelled after they were elected to the EU Parliament in 2019.
Henrik Overgaard Nielsen said MetroBank severed ties with him “without an explanation” after “months of paying bills on time and having stable income and outgoings”.
Christina Jordan added that, months after she was elected for the Eurosceptic party, she suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Nationwide Building Society.
“My family and I had all our accounts closed even though I’d been a loyal customer for 30 years,” she wrote on Twitter.
“To those cheering and celebrating the cancellation of Nigel Farage’s bank accounts, let’s hope it never happens to you.”
Of the Yorkshire Building Society customer, at that point anonymous, the article stated:
A leading building society has revealed that it closes customers’ accounts if they engage in “rude” or “discriminatory” behaviour.
The Yorkshire Building Society made the admission after claims that it severed ties with a client who questioned the use of Pride flags in their branches …
The Yorkshire Building Society, which has three million customers, said that it does “not close savings accounts based on different opinions regarding beliefs”.
In a statement it added: “We would only make the difficult decision to close a savings account if a customer is rude, abusive, violent or discriminates in any way, based on the specific facts and behaviour in each case.”
It is interesting that a building society can close a ‘customer’ account, because, by definition, such a financial institution has members, not customers or clients. Together, the members own the institution as a mutual society.
That day, Farage wrote more about his personal experience for The Telegraph:
I wasn’t too surprised to receive a call a few weeks ago informing me that my business and personal accounts would be closed. In recent years, the same thing has happened to colleagues in Ukip and the Brexit Party, and I am well aware of the procedure. No reasons are ever given. The bank simply informs the customer that their accounts will be shuttered.
I can trace this vile process back to 2014, when it happened to a Ukip by-election candidate. Those targeted have usually chosen to stay quiet as they search desperately for an alternative bank and hope the situation will right itself. Not everybody is prepared to hush it up, though. Christina Jordan, a former nurse originally from Malaysia who came out of retirement in 2019 and was elected as a Brexit Party MEP, has allowed me to share that she suffered this fate too. Soon after her election, the bank she had used for 31 years summarily cancelled her account and those of her husband and daughter. I believe this has happened to too many people for it to be a coincidence.
In my case, I was told by the banking group with whom I’ve been a customer since 1980 – and with which all of my business and personal accounts have been held – that a letter would follow the call I received. It would offer a full explanation. The letter arrived, but it merely re-stated the impending closure and supplied the date by which I should remove my money.
I kept this to myself while I sought a different bank. After many hours of trying, this has come to nothing. I’ve been rejected by seven other banks. Apparently, I am a “politically exposed person” and carry too much risk and too many compliance costs …
I smell a rat and am certain something much bigger is going on. For years, I have been falsely accused of having financial links to Russian funding. Even though this is nonsense, MPs have used parliamentary privilege to accuse various people associated with the Brexit campaign of the same thing. Last year, the Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant claimed in the Commons chamber that I received £548,573 in one calendar year “from the Russian state”. Despite my pleas to him and the Speaker to correct this assertion, there has been no retraction.
Has Bryant ever stopped to consider the knock-on effects of his slander? Several of my family members have also had their bank accounts closed. I feel not just anger about this, but also guilt. Once, everybody in the UK was entitled to a bank account. But since the Post Office was privatised, this no longer applies. Without a bank account, you become a non-person, unable to live within the law. In Germany and other countries the right to a bank account still exists. Our law must change.
He acknowledged the account holder with Yorkshire Building Society …
If you were to post a political opinion on social media that did not conform to your bank’s “values”, you could find yourself in my position. This happened to a gentleman recently who questioned why his bank was celebrating Pride. He is now being advised by the Free Speech Union.
… before concluding:
I am going to take some time off to work out what to do. But all this makes me wonder: has Britain gone so far down the road of authoritarianism that it is too late to turn back?
By Saturday, July 1, we discovered that an Anglican priest, a former vicar, was the Yorkshire Building Society’s victim.
Just after midnight, The Times reported:
An Anglican church leader has accused the Yorkshire Building Society of bullying after it announced that it was closing his account within 14 days when he protested against it allegedly pushing transgender “ideology”.
The Rev Richard Fothergill, who has been with the building society for 17 years, wrote to them online in June, after he was invited to give general feedback.
He insists his message was a polite rebuttal of transgender ideology, which he claims the institution has been actively promoting during Pride month. He received a letter four days later saying that his internet savings account would be closed.
Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) told him in the note, seen by The Times, that it had a “zero tolerance approach to discrimination” and that their relationship had “irrevocably broken down”.
Fothergill, 62, told The Times: “I wasn’t even aware that our relationship had a problem. They are a financial house – they are not there to do social engineering. I think they should concentrate their efforts on managing money, instead of promoting LGBT ideology.
“I know cancel culture exists and this is my first first-hand experience of it. I wouldn’t want this bullying to happen to anyone else.”
Fothergill, from Windermere, Cumbria, typed out his views on transgender ideology to the building society on June 18. He responded to a monthly email he gets from YBS asking for his feedback, after noticing that it was displaying support for Pride month on its website. The minister, who no longer has his own parish but founded the Filling Station evangelical network, wrote out “a couple of paragraphs” about how he did not agree with trans ideology — or the idea that you can have alternative genders — being pushed on children.
Fothergill said: “I was polite all the way through. I was pointing out that they are a financial house – surely they should just be worrying about financial issues.”
On June 22 he received a letter from YBS about his “views regarding LGBTQIA+”. It said the comments he made were “not tolerable” and the building society had a “zero tolerance approach to discrimination”.
The building society, which has three million customers, questioned Fothergill’s version of events …
Fothergill approached the Free Speech Union after his bank’s letter.
Toby Young, the union’s founder, told The Times: “People who’ve been debanked contact the Free Speech Union all the time, but even I was shocked by this story. If you respond to a bank’s request for feedback in good faith you shouldn’t lose your account if you say something it doesn’t like.
“That‘s the kind of thing we’d expect to happen in Communist China, not a supposedly free country like ours.”
That day, one of Young’s contributors, Ian Rons, reminded us of other people, somewhat in the public eye, who befell the same fate:
The targets have included those associated with UKIP and the Brexit Party (including two former MEPs), Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, Wings Over Scotland [also a Reverend!], a Church of England vicar – and probably many more that we don’t know about.
Remember the Canadian truckers who had their accounts frozen when they protested over having to get covid vaccines just to work.
Here are more we do know about:
the children’s rights group UsForThem, Gays Against Groomers, the gender-critical evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, alternative news site The Exposé, the conservative group Moms for Liberty, socialist outlets Consortium News and MintPress News, the UK Medical Freedom Alliance, Left Lockdown Sceptics and Law or Fiction, as well as probably many more who either don’t have the clout to draw attention to their plight, or who decided it was best to keep quiet.
To that list, we can add Triggernometry, a podcast hosted by Konstantin Kisin — the son of Russian émigrés, no less — and Francis Foster.
Ian Rons, however, disagrees with Farage on his alleged PEP status:
… he doesn’t meet the definition. In my view, this “cancellation” is a political attack that signals the left-wing/woke blob’s capture of the banking system – a new and very dangerous phase of the culture war where everything including one’s ability to pay the rent is under threat.
That said, Rons zeroes in on Farage being the victim of parliamentary privilege via Labour MP Chris Bryant:
… particularly irritating for me, in this respect, is Chris Bryant’s claim last year in the House of Commons that Nigel Farage took £548,573 from RT (formerly Russia Today) in the 2018 calendar year – which may have been the pretext for his banking cancellation …
The fact that these allegations were made in the chamber of the House of Commons, taking advantage of parliamentary privilege to make a defamatory allegation about an individual who, by virtue of parliamentary privilege, isn’t able to take legal action to defend his reputation, is a disgrace. The last time someone did that, it didn’t work out too well – although like Tom Watson [former Labour MP, now peer], it probably won’t stop Chris Bryant from getting a peerage. However, the reason he did it is because, like Harry Reid, he knows it can be effective. And the reasons I don’t believe Bryant are because: (a) I think Nigel Farage is an honourable person; (b) because RT wouldn’t pay someone half a million pounds unless they were on screen almost constantly (and Farage denies appearing on RT at all in 2018 – a claim that could easily be challenged if it were false); and (c) because if Bryant had any evidence to back up his allegations, he’d have made them outside parliament instead of hiding behind parliamentary privilege. The coward! And also, I think Farage could beat him in a cage fight.
The Free Speech union will endeavour to help those whose bank accounts are being closed. Rons ended his article helpfully with this:
Stop Press: I have learned that the Free Speech Union has records of 10 cases where they are supporting or have supported members suffering financial exclusion (including debanking, being kicked off crowdfunding platforms, etc.). Additionally, there have been 31 reports from members of financial exclusion cases (often historical) in which no action was requested or expected, and 7 of these members had written to their MP. But this is likely the tip of the iceberg. As ever, if your right to free speech is being infringed or you are being penalised in some way for exercising your lawful right to free speech please email help@freespeechunion.org.
GB News was on the case, defending both Nigel Farage and the Revd Richard Fothergill.
On Saturday afternoon, Nana Akua spoke about Farage’s plight and said, ‘We must fight this!’
Neil Oliver’s show followed hers. His editorial firmly opposed the financial institutions. He said, ‘To be deprived of a bank account is to be the victim of social murder’:
Financial pundit Jasmine Birtles and Professor Ralph Schollhammer reacted to the closure of Farage’s accounts. Both were empathetic and disappointed for him, but Prof Schollhammer said that the Netherlands has even more to consider, albeit not bank closures. The Dutch government is considering laws dictating to whom homeowners can sell their homes, e.g. ethnicity, income threshold. Furthermore, all homes worth €250,000 or less will be liable for Net Zero-type home improvements. N.B.: That means the Dutch elites do not need to worry about their homes being eco-compliant! The result is that working and middle-class sellers are lumbered with a financial drawback. They either spend their own money — estimated to be €80,000, Schollhammer says — putting in the improvements or accepting a loss on their sale because the buyer will have to assume the cost. Dear, oh dear. Here’s the segment:
The Revd Calvin Robinson, whose show followed Neil Oliver’s, interviewed the Revd Fothergill, who seems like a decent cove. See if you don’t think so, too. He’s a well mannered chap and explained what happened with the Yorkshire Building Society survey and the aftermath. No one commenting on YouTube, including atheists and gays, had a bad thing to say about him:
For those who do not have time to watch the short video, this is what he told The Telegraph:
“I wrote to them on their feedback portal making two points: one was ‘is this really a good use of your time, you’re not here for social engineering’ and [secondly] said I have serious ethical problems with the transsexual element, and the implications of broadcasting that to young children” …
“They didn’t justify it – they said ‘your comments will not stand’. I think its fairly sinister and we’re in very dangerous water when banks can pick and choose who they’re going to do business with based on prejudicial whims”.
One of Calvin’s panellists mentioned ESG — Environmental, Social, Governance — policies upon which medium to large companies are scored. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for that to be explored in depth.
ESG has become an industry practically overnight. Do a search and you will find any number of consulting companies or sole practitioners advising how a firm can raise its ESG score.
ESG did not even show up in the stories about these account closures until after the weekend, although, admittedly, The Sunday Times featured columnist Rod Liddle’s view on it in ‘If the banks want to be loved, banning people is an interesting way to proceed’:
Farage has had his Coutts bank account frozen, with no reason given. There has been some suggestion that Farage’s work for Russia Today — a long time ago — may be one of the reasons, but I have yet to read that other former RT stalwarts such as Jeremy Corbyn [former Labour leader] or Vince Cable [former leader of the Liberal Democrats] have had their banking facilities withdrawn. Anyway, Farage has been given no reason, and none of the other pusillanimous banks will accept Farage’s custom.
This, I would contend, is utterly loathsome, and yet it is happening quite a lot at the moment.
He discussed ESG without naming it:
It is not hard to understand why it has been happening. The banks believe, with some justification, that they are probably the most hated institutions in the country and wish to curry favour — especially with young people, whom they can later rob blind through overdraft charges and the like. So they strike a pose. The mithering near-adolescent dullards in their social media units are never happier than when issuing fatuous counter-rational slogans about diversity, inclusivity and how loads of women have penises. And this virtue-signalling now extends to banning from their institutions people with whom their prospective young customers might disagree. It is worth noting that they are often propelled towards this sort of action by the relentlessly busy activists, who want everyone except themselves banned from everything. The banks and corporations succumb, because they are themselves amoral two-bit thugs.
Even the Bank of England, which isn’t a consumer or business bank in any sense, joined in on Monday. That bank’s job is to regulate money supply sensibly and to manage inflation properly. On Monday, July 3, Guido Fawkes reported that they, too, are in thrall to special interest groups (red emphases in the original):
Inflation is at 8.7%, interest rates are at 5%, two-year gilt yields are at their highest since 2008 and the UK is teetering on the edge of recession. The good news, however, is that the Bank of England have announced staff of any gender can get pregnant. According to the Bank’s 103-page submission to Stonewall, their new family leave policy “talks about parents without specifying gender” and insists all gender identities are capable of birthing a child. Anything about… mothers?
They are also planning to introduce gender neutral toilets as part of their plan to change their facilities. Do they plan to change governor any time soon?
But notice this article which mentions how the BoE was 57th in Stonewall’s placement in 2022:
Late on Sunday, however, there was a bright spot. We have to hope that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s heart might be in the right place for once.
The Telegraph‘s View stated that Hunt would be looking into bank account closures:
… it is welcome to learn that Jeremy Hunt is “deeply concerned” by these stories and has ordered an investigation – on the basis that it would be quite wrong if banks and payment providers deny financial services to those exercising the right to free speech.
… The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has agreed to report on how higher interest rates are being passed on to savers.
Perhaps the FCA should also remind banks that they are not in the business of social engineering? They might favour certain causes, such as Pride, and find the opinions of certain customers unsavoury – but that does not mean they have the right to prevent anybody from engaging in our society and economy.
If the Conservatives stand for anything, it is for economic liberty and freedom of conscience, and they should consider it an urgent priority – a matter of party mission – to prevent any misuse of power.
I couldn’t agree more.
On Monday morning, July 3, the Conservatives’ Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer also called for action. The Times reported:
Banks must not close people’s accounts for political reasons, a cabinet minister has said, in an escalating free speech row sparked by Nigel Farage.
Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, said regulators should take action against banks which shut off access to people with controversial views, saying she was “concerned that people’s bank accounts might be closed for the wrong reasons” …
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is said to be “deeply concerned” about the politicisation of banking decisions and is planning to set out measures to strengthen protections for customers.
A Treasury source told The Daily Telegraph: “No one should have their bank account denied on the grounds of freedom of expression. We expect to take action on this issue within weeks.”
This morning Frazer told LBC: “I agree with Jeremy on that. It’s important that people are able to get [banking] facilities.”
Meanwhile, over at The Telegraph, columnist Tim Stanley wrote, ‘The elites are using banks to take back control’:
… It’s amazing how fast customer services can move when it wants to …
He then compared this to the non-violent political assault on Boris Johnson. I agree. It’s odd — strangely coincidental — that these events are occurring at the same time:
A holdout against this phenomenon ought to be Parliament, where all ideas are equal and given time. But here, as in universities, there’s been a shift away from free speech as the common commitment and towards the promotion of liberal values that are increasingly presented as institutional; if you don’t hold them, perhaps you shouldn’t be here. You can interpret this as a response to the expenses scandal. There was a widespread perception that Parliament was out of touch, that it needed to define its values and police them better.
Under the [former Speaker of the House of Commons, anti-Brexit] John Bercow doctrine, MPs were encouraged to challenge the executive and committees were given a new status, creating the context to the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson.
Finding him guilty of misleading MPs was perhaps a fair cop; drumming him out of the Commons, overkill. But to then write a report on the people who criticised their report was sinister, and depended upon another charade of neutrality. The committee claims to operate above party politics, thus anyone who calls it partisan must be mad or bad. But the court is parliamentary; it is composed of MPs. So, it is by its very nature political.
What a cast of characters history has given us to play with. Sir Chris Bryant formerly headed the committee; he’s the man who used parliamentary privilege to accuse Farage of taking money from Russia, which Nigel thinks might be why he cannot get a bank account. Bryant hates Boris; to his credit, he recused himself from the investigation before it started. His replacement, Harriet Harman, had previously suggested Boris might be dishonest, too – but for some reason was considered above reproach. In an earlier incarnation, she was a legal officer for what became Liberty, a free speech organisation. Over the weekend, however, she welcomed the press regulator, Ipso, upholding a complaint against Jeremy Clarkson for sexism in a column he wrote about Meghan Markle – an overreach by the regulator that will have a chilling effect on opinion writing.
For now I can still write what I think, which puts me in the position of being freer than my MP to criticise the operation of Parliament. So here goes: the committee’s actions are part of a wider attempt by the establishment to take back control after Brexit, and they should not be separated from the unpleasant atmosphere in the Commons towards anyone with a dissenting view on, say, trans – or from Keir Starmer’s purge of the hard Left. Downing Street has gone along with the committee, I presume, because it calculates that kicking out populists will help its cause. That’s the Tories for you. Do not be surprised if, within a decade, it is declared illegal to be a “reactionary”, with the legislation passed by a Conservative government. Penny Mordaunt will stand outside No 10, dressed as Elizabeth I, and declare that she did it “because I am a conservative!”
No, it’s not a conspiracy, just a class of people who think alike, acting alike. The only way to understand Britain is to grasp that the lunatics took over our pretty asylum years ago.
That evening, Conservative MP Sir Charles Walker told GB News in no uncertain terms that Nigel Farage was ‘owed an explanation’ as to why his bank accounts were closed:
Later that night, The Telegraph reported on ESG — ‘Most high street banks are signed up to Stonewall diversity schemes’:
The majority of High Street banks are members of diversity schemes run by the controversial charity Stonewall, The Telegraph can reveal.
Lenders are facing questions over their links to the charity amid a backlash over closing the bank accounts of some people with gender-critical views.
A vicar who questioned his building society’s Pride branding had his account closed, while a Scottish blogger [the Reverend from Wings Over Scotland] believes action was taken by his bank over his stance on gender issues.
Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme includes guidance to employers on gender-neutral spaces and the use of pronouns. The company also runs a top 100 index that measures employers on diversity and inclusion.
HSBC, which allows customers to register as gender-neutral, is the top ranking bank in Stonewall’s annual Equality Index, and Natwest, which is still one-third owned by the Government, is linked to the charity.
NatWest — or Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), as it was at the time — got into deep trouble during the 2008 banking crisis. The Government — i.e. the taxpayers — had to bail it out. This is the thanks we get for helping them survive. They go ahead and close accounts arbitrarily, such as Nigel Farage’s:
The article continues:
Barclays, which offers private medical cover for employees transitioning, and Nationwide, which encourages staff to use pronouns in email signatures, are also among Stonewall’s top 100 employers. Santander is a member of the index, while TSB is a member of the Diversity Champions Scheme.
Lloyds Banking Group, which runs its own branches as well as Halifax and Bank of Scotland, was the only major lender to fail to respond to queries about the scheme, but was previously named as the country’s top employer by Stonewall …
Guidance has included describing mothers as a “parent who has given birth”, to remove gendered language and to allow those who self-identify as women to use female toilets and changing rooms.
Yet, some non-financial institutions have disassociated themselves from Stonewall:
A number of high-profile organisations including the BBC, Channel 4, the Cabinet Office, and the Department of Health have stopped working with Stonewall amid concerns over its schemes.
They had good reason so to do:
The Information Commissioner has previously found that the index and the Diversity Champions scheme allowed Stonewall to exercise “a significant degree of influence over the policies that participating members operate”.
The article also told us:
Stuart Campbell, who runs the pro-independence Wings Over Scotland blog, had his accounts shut by First Direct, owned by HSBC, which he believes was over his stance on gender issues.
Barclays recently had to pay out £21,500 in compensation to the Core Issues Trust, a Christian ministry, after shutting its account over its stance on gender identity.
Yet, some organisations defend the account closures:
UK Finance, the industry trade body, defended the rights of banks to shut accounts as they see fit, arguing that lenders only do so after conducting an “extensive review”.
Tide, an online business bank, became the latest to face questions on Monday as the hosts of Triggernometry, a free speech YouTube show and podcast, said they would take it to the Financial Ombudsman after their account was closed.
Konstantin Kisin, one of the hosts, said he had been told the issue was because of the podcast, which has more than half a million subscribers, receiving donations, but added that this “doesn’t seem to be a very credible explanation”.
“We can’t possibly be the only organisation that’s a business and accepts donations,” he said.
Tide said any decisions on account closures had “no connection whatsoever to a member’s beliefs” and that it was “categorically false” to suggest otherwise.
Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay said that:
he was concerned that decisions were being made by “activist banking staff” and lenders were hurting those who “dared air a view”.
“With most banks signed up to Stonewall, one wonders if too much discretionary power now sits with some activist banking staff,” he said. “Diversity, inclusion and equality works both ways including the right to a variety of opinions in a free society.”
Absolutely.
A Stonewall spokesperson ostensibly defended the right to free speech:
There are no requirements in the Diversity Champions programme over how members engage with any customers, and we do not seek to influence operational decisions for any Diversity Champion on matters such as these.
Our Diversity Champions programme simply provides resources and guidance to support member organisations to include and support LGBTQ+ colleagues at work.
Yet, some banks are issuing new terms and conditions coming into force in July 2023. Note the parts with red bullets:
Hmm.
Who or what is responsible for all this?
On Tuesday, July 4, Conservative MP Ranil Jayawardena told Dan Wootton that he blamed Tony Blair for introducing such legislation with the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act (start watching at the 19:02 mark):
Britons, like many other Westerners who have had these policies foisted upon them, have taken strongly against them. On February 12, 2023, The Telegraph reported on Professor Matt Goodwin’s findings in ‘”Woke” companies risk inciting “hostile” public, research finds’:
Matt Goodwin, politics professor at Kent University, who carried out the polling, said a growing number of companies are now ‘adrift’ from the wider public …
Britons are “cynical” and “tired” of attempts by big business to force political views on employees and customers, according to Policy Exchange.
New polling by the think-tank reveals that the majority of the public (58 per cent) reject the suggestion that companies should be able to demand that their employees declare gender pronouns …
Matt Goodwin, politics professor at Kent University, who carried out the polling, said a growing number of companies are now “adrift” from the wider public by “lecturing them about political issues and being seen to stifle their free speech and expression” …
Policy Exchange carried out the polling to launch a new research project on “Corporate Culture Wars in the United Kingdom”, which will explore the rise of “woke capitalism”.
This includes self-censorship in the workplace and reports of political discrimination against employees, consumers, or account holders because they are deemed to hold “controversial” beliefs …
It seems that, hard as it would have been to believe four years ago, we are on our way to a despised social credit score system, the kind that has been active in China for some time now.
We shall see what happens in the weeks ahead with Nigel Farage and the Revd Richard Fothergill and many others, unknown to us. May God bless them through this ordeal and may the Holy Spirit guide them, through Jesus Christ our Lord, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
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.
Fight the Good Fight of Faith
11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Last week’s post discussed Paul’s emphasis on personal contentment and ended with a warning about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evils. That is something to which the false teachers in Ephesus were particularly prone (emphases mine):
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
Paul meant that the possibility exists of being condemned to eternal death, never mind the other travails that take place in this temporal life when people fall in love with money. Money itself is not a bad thing, but our attitude towards it can lead us severely astray.
So Paul begins by instructing Timothy, calling him ‘O man of God’, to flee these things and instead pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentlentess (verse 11).
Let’s look at Matthew Henry’s translation of the Bible:
11 But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. 12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
First, Timothy is to remember that he is a man of God. Secondly, he is to flee severe temptations such as the love of money. Thirdly, in short, he is to follow a path involving doing the right things, those things that please God.
There is much to examine in that verse.
Beginning with ‘O man of God’, Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
Ministers are men of God, and ought to conduct themselves accordingly in every thing; they are men employed for God, devoted to his honour more immediately. The prophets under the Old Testament were called men of God.
John MacArthur has more on the expression and its use in the Old Testament. In fact, only Paul and Peter use it in the New Testament — and only thrice, Paul using it twice — which makes it all the more significant:
The subject of these verses is the man of God – the man of God. That in itself is one of my very favorite biblical descriptive phrases – man of God. It appears in verse 11 as a title the Apostle Paul gives to Timothy, a title that is simple yet immeasurably wonderful and rich. What a privilege to be called man of God or God’s man. It is a possessive phrase indicating that Timothy belonged to God in a special and unique way.
The fact is though this term ‘man of God’ is a very common term in the Old Testament, it is a very uncommon term in the New Testament. Only one person on the pages of the New Testament is ever called man of God, and it is Timothy and it is in this text. In a very special and unique way, Timothy was God’s man. And Paul uses this title to increase the sense of responsibility that Timothy had to discharge his ministry. To be reminded that you are God’s man, that you are the very possession of God is to be reminded of great responsibility. And that is precisely the sense in which the Apostle Paul uses the phrase in designating Timothy.
Though it is us uncommon in the New Testament, it is common in the Old Testament. It first appears in designation of Moses, the great prophet of God who wrote the Pentateuch. In Deuteronomy 33:1, Moses is first called the man of God. He is called the man of God again in 1 Chronicles 23:14 and Ezra 3:2. The term ‘man of God’ one time in the Old Testament was used of an angelic messenger, one who came in the form of a man to bring a message from God to the wife of Manoah that she was to bring forth a child who came to be the man Samson. That occurs in Judges 13:6 and 7. In 1 Samuel 2:27 it was used to describe a prophet who spoke on behalf of God to the high priest Eli about the divine judgment soon to come on his sinful family. It was used again in 1 Samuel 9:6 and following to designate Samuel himself as the man of God who spoke divine truth.
Anyone who was the prophet of God was God’s man. And the term ‘the man of God’ was always used in reference to one who bore the Word of God, who represented God by speaking in God’s behalf God’s truth. It was used of the prophet Shemaiah who was sent from God to prophesy against Rehoboam in 1 Kings 12:22. It was used again for the prophet who spoke the Word of God to Jeroboam regarding his being replaced and then judged, 1 Kings 13. Elijah is called the man of God in 1 Kings 17:18 and following, and Elisha in 2 Kings 4 and following is called the man of God many times. David in Nehemiah 12 verses 24 and 36 is also called the man of God. The prophet who confronted Amaziah is called the man of God in 2 Chronicles 25:7 and a prophet by the name of Igdaliah in Jeremiah chapter 35 verse 4 is also called the man of God.
All of the uses in the Old Testament reflect someone who uniquely represents God by speaking the Word of God. The sum of all those uses then tells us unequivocally that it is a reference to a messenger who is sent by God to speak for God. When Timothy then is called the man of God, it is reflective of his call and his ordination and his responsibility to speak the truth of God.
There are two other uses of the term ‘man of God’ in the New Testament. One of them reflects back to the Old Testament men of God, that is 2 Peter 1:21. It says, “The prophecy came not” – referring to the Old Testament – “at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” And there you want to see that as a technical term for the authors of Scripture who were the spokesmen of God, the holy men of God.
The one other use of it is a generic use in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Would you look at that for just a moment? Every use of the man of God is specific up to this point, referring to one or another prophet, referring as in 2 Peter 1:21 to a group of prophets, referring in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 11 to Timothy specifically, but here in verses 16 and 17 of 2 Timothy 3 it is broadened and used in a somewhat generic sense. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness in order that” – and here’s the phrase – “the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” While Timothy is certainly the object in the context here, since he is the recipient of the letter and since his own conversion has been mentioned in verses 14 and 15, the term in use in verse 17 broadens beyond Timothy to include any man of God. The statement then in verses 16 and 17 is primarily for the benefit of those who are the articulators of the Word of God, the messengers of the Word of God, though it certainly extends beyond that at the widest point of interpretation to every believer.
MacArthur explains what ‘O’ means in the Bible. We often pray, ‘O Lord’, and this is why:
The word ‘O’ is a personal appeal. It’s an emotional appeal.
Therefore, when Paul addresses Timothy as ‘O man of God’, he is expressing a deeply emotional appeal to his protégé:
It’s very rare, by the way, in personal greetings in the Greek that word would be used, and it shows the pleading in the heart of Paul. “But you, O man of God,” remember your spiritual beginnings, your spiritual calling. Don’t lose sight of your identity. As a man of God, you have a unique calling. As a man of God, you are to be uniquely identifiable. As a man of God, you are to have characteristics that can be seen and measured.
MacArthur tells us more about the word ‘flee’ in Greek:
That’s a present imperative, keep on continually fleeing. It’s a continual running from. It’s the word pheuge, from which we get fugitive. Someone who is running to escape a pursuer. It pictures one running from a plague, running from a serpent that’s poisonous, running from an attacking enemy. The man of God is a runner. The man of God does not stand still. He runs and he runs from things. He is known by what he flees from. First Corinthians 6:18 the Apostle Paul says, “Flee sexual sin.” First Corinthians 10:14, “Flee idolatry.” Second Timothy 2:22 Paul writes to Timothy, “Flee youthful lusts.” We are fleeing. The man of God is fleeing at all times those kinds of corrupting things.
As for fleeing these things — e.g. the love of money — the man of God must pursue something worthy, otherwise he has not completed his divine mission.
Henry says simply:
Observe, It is not enough that men of God flee these things, but they must follow after what is directly contrary thereto.
Timothy must ‘follow after’ or ‘pursue’ six virtues. As Paul has called him a ‘man of God’, these are particularly important for Timothy.
MacArthur says:
Obviously the Word of God will perfect all believers, but his particular object in mind is the man of God. Now it’s interesting to me that the last usage of this phrase in Scripture is a generic use and therefore we do not feel reluctant to broaden the use of ‘the man of God’ to encompass any today who are the spokesman for God in our generation or in any other generation. God has always had His spokesmen, He has always had His prophets, He has always had His preachers. Men of God are those who uniquely speak His Word …
It’s important that Paul use the term here because of the weighty ministry at the feet of Timothy. You remember that Timothy had been left in Ephesus to put things right in the church, to bring order to a church that had lost its way. False doctrine had crept in. False leadership was there. People unworthy of pastoral roles and serving as elders were in those roles. Sinful leaders, heresy, ungodliness, tolerance of sin, all of that was in the church, and Timothy was given the task of making it right. In order to lay upon him the weight of that responsibility, he calls him God’s man. You are there as the representative of the living God. That adds tremendous sense of responsibility.
In fact, this is such a strategic letter for such a strategic church that Paul three times in the letter points out false teachers and how Timothy is to respond to them. And each time he does it by reminding Timothy of the sacredness of his calling.
These are the mentions of false teachers in 1 Timothy. They had an adverse effect on the congregation:
1 Timothy 1:3-7 – doctrine, command, love, good conscience, sincere faith, false teachers
1 Timothy 1:8-11 – false teachers, sin, Ten Commandments
1 Timothy 1:18-20 – spiritual warfare, false teachers, Hymenaeus, Alexander, shipwreck of their faith, blasphemy, turning over to Satan
1 Timothy 4:1-5 – some depart from the faith, deceitful spirits, teachings of demons, liars with seared consciences, God’s creation good
1 Timothy 6:3-5 – false teacher, conceit, pride, ignorance, quarrels, controversy, greed
1 Timothy 6:6-10 – godliness with contentment, trust in God, love of money, greed, false teachers
Paul’s message is meant for clergy:
So all of us who are called by God, set apart for the proclamation of His Word, to be preachers and teachers and proclaimers are to be men of God. And we should bear that title in some measure of consistency with the long line of holy men who make up the elite company of those so designated men of God. We as men of God today take our place in the ranks of those who are the historic spokesman for the eternal God. What a tremendous calling. Paul’s instruction to Timothy then back in 1 Timothy 6 is heightened, intensified, and made even greater when he calls Timothy man of God, because in so doing he identifies Timothy with that long line of historic spokesmen for God and intensifies his own need to be committed to the task at hand …
… Men of God are men who have been lifted above worldly aims and who have been devoted to divine service, men belonging to a spiritual order with which things temporal, transitory, and passing have no permanent relationship. We are men who are not the world’s men. We are not our own men. We are God’s men. We have been raised above earthly things; we have been raised to the heavenlies; we have become the unique possession of God, His property; we stand in His stead to speak His Word.
Henry wraps these virtues up as being connected:
To arm him against the love of the world, he directs him to follow that which is good. Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness: righteousness in his conversation towards men, godliness towards God, faith and love as living principles, to support him and carry him on in the practice both of righteousness and godliness. Those that follow after righteousness and godliness, from a principle of faith and love, have need to put on patience and meekness—patience to bear both the rebukes of Providence and the reproaches of men, and meekness wherewith to instruct gainsayers and pass by the affronts and injuries that are done us.
MacArthur addresses them individually, but note his Bible translation has Henry’s ‘patience’ and the ESVUK’s ‘steadfastness’ as ‘endurance’, such as an athlete or soldier would practice:
Verse 11 says, “Follow after” – and six virtues are mentioned, “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and meekness.”
MacArthur discusses righteousness:
The first is righteousness – the beautiful word righteousness. And I don’t want to beg the issue and you all know what this means, that rich word – dikaiosunē – basically means to do right, do right before man, do right before God; do right to man, do right to God. The remnant of faithful Israel were called by Isaiah in chapter 51 verse 1, “You that follow after righteousness.” The writer of Hebrews says, “The only people who see the Lord are those who follow after holiness,” Hebrews 12:14.
And the righteousness Paul has in mind here is not imputed righteousness. It’s not sort of that declared righteousness that you receive positionally in Christ in salvation. It’s practical righteousness. The man of God is known by doing right. He does right in his life. He lives according to the standard of God. He obeys God. His conduct is right; his behavior is right; his life is right; he does what’s right.
MacArthur says that godliness is the partner of righteousness:
And the partner to that spiritual virtue is the next one, godliness. That has to do with the inside. Righteousness has to do with the behavior, godliness has to do with the attitude and the motive. This moves inside to direct our thought to the spirit of reverence, the spirit of holiness, the spirit of piety that’s in the heart. Eusebeia, that beautiful word used nine times in the pastoral epistles, a very rich theme throughout all these letters. Right behavior flows out of right attitude; right action flows out of right motive. Reverence for God is what eusebeia means – godliness. It means a worshiping heart. This is a person who not only does right but thinks right, who not only behaves properly but is properly motivated. This is one who, in the words of Hebrews 12:28, serves God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. This is one who lives life in the conscious presence of the holiness of God. Godliness – what a beautiful term. Those are the two overarching virtues the man of God should be known by. They are the things he pursues. They are at the core of his usefulness. They are at the core of his power. They are at the core of his character. Watch your heart. Watch your motives. Watch your desires. Watch your conduct. Watch your behavior. Don’t be an unsanctified preacher.
MacArthur addresses faith:
What does faith mean? Confident trust in God for everything, loyalty to the Lord, unwavering confidence in God’s power, unwavering confidence in God’s purpose, unwavering confidence in God’s plan, unwavering confidence in God’s provision, unwavering confidence in God’s promise. We live believing God. The man of God lives by faith. He trusts the sovereign God to keep His Word and meet his needs and provide everything. There’s no frustration. There’s no forcing. There’s no manipulation. He lives in what I call a relaxed desperation. He is desperate because of the tremendous ramifications of the ministry, but he is relaxed because of his confidence in the sovereignty of God. He lives in faith. The dominant internal attitude is faith. He trusts God. He lives in that confidence. He believes God for everything. He is loyal to God in everything. Unwavering.
Then comes love, faith’s partner:
And coupled with it is love. That beautiful volitional love, the love of choice, agapē, unrestricted and unrestrained. You say, what does this mean? Love to whom here? Love to everybody, love to God, love to men, love to Christians, love to non-Christians. It’s unrestricted; it’s unrestrained; it’s just love. His internal virtue is predominantly that of faith in the sovereign God and love to the sovereign God and love to all men. He understands the great commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” and he also understands how essential it is to love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew 22:37 to 39.
The man of God is a lover of God. He longs for God. He understands what Paul means when he says, “O that I may know Him.” He understands the significance of a spiritual Father in 1 John 2 who knows Him who is from the beginning. He is a lover of God more than a lover of self. And because he is a lover of God, he loves whom God loves, and God loves men and so he loves men. The man of God is known as one who pursues after a life of confident trust in the sovereignty of God and love to God and love to men. He seeks to let the love of God shed abroad in his heart, as Romans 5:5 says, out that it may touch the world. He is a lover. And in the sense, please, that he loves enough to confront with the truth, do not pretend to love someone whose sins you will not confront.
Then there is endurance, or patience, an outward virtue:
Endurance or patience is hupomonē. It means to remain under. It refers not to a passive resignation but a victorious triumphant endurance, an unswerving loyalty to the Lord in the middle of trials. That’s what it means. Going through severe troubles, severe anguish, severe difficulty, never wavering, never compromising, always trusting, always believing whatever the circumstance. This is the endurance of the martyr who will give his life if need be for the cause, the shepherd who if need be will lay down his life for his own flock as his master did. This is the person who under the worst of circumstances makes no issue out of his own rights and his own needs and his own demands. This is the noble virtue, the ability to endure injustice, to endure deprivation, pain, battle, grief, whatever it is with spiritual staying power, to endure even to death. This is the spirit that takes what comes in victory.
And finally, there is meekness, or gentleness, or humility — another outward virtue:
And then that second outward attitude is one of meekness or humility. He projects a selflessness. He projects a meekness, the sweet gentleness of one who though consumed with a great cause recognizes that he makes no contribution to its success. Meekness.
MacArthur ends his commentary on verse 11 by saying:
Those are the marks of the man of God. And again I say you may be a preacher but if these are not the things that you pursue, you’re not the man of God.
Paul then uses words he has employed before — ‘Fight the good fight’ — the good fight of the faith, telling Timothy to take hold of the eternal life to which he was called, about which he made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses (verse 12).
Henry explains the expression:
He exhorts him to do the part of a soldier: Fight the good fight of faith. Note, Those who will get to heaven must fight their way thither. There must be a conflict with corruption and temptations, and the opposition of the powers of darkness. Observe, It is a good fight, it is a good cause, and it will have a good issue. It is the fight of faith; we do not war after the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, 2 Cor 10 3, 4.
MacArthur also uses the example of a soldier:
Thirdly, the man of God is known not only by what he flees from and what he follows after but by what he fights for … Let me say this very directly to you. I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the literature of the New Testament supports the fact that a man of God who speaks for God is to see himself as a fighter – as a fighter. We are polemicists. We are usually on the attack. We are fighters, contenders, battlers, soldiers, and protagonists. We must understand that ministry is war, and we are warring with the truth against error. We are called to be soldiers.
In fact, in chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, we are soldiers who must endure hardness, who cannot entangle ourselves with civilian life, and who do everything we do to please the one who called us to be a soldier. When Paul came to the end of his pilgrimage and ministry he said in 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight.” It was a battle. It was a warfare. And to perceive it as anything less is to lose. We battle the world. We battle the flesh. We battle the devil. We battle sin. We battle heresy. We battle error. We battle apathy and lethargy in the church. We battle the kingdom of darkness that yields to us reluctantly. And so it is a severe and never ending battle.
Sadly, some people don’t even know there’s a battle. And some people feel that if things don’t go exactly the way they want them, they better quit. That if it isn’t the way you think it ought to be you ought to leave. And they may be doing nothing but going AWOL. This is a battle. We expect a battle. All that live godly in this present age, 2 Timothy 3:12 says, will suffer persecution. There’s no way around it. We were made for war. We were made for battle. And it is a battle. And first of all, we have to admit to the battle. And Jesus said if you’re not willing to lose your life to find it, you lose it. And if you’re not willing to take up your cross and follow Me, which means to the death if need be, you’re not even worthy to be My disciple. This is a warfare.
And so he says fight. And it’s again present imperative, as the first two verbs were, keep on continually fighting, be always battling. The term is used in military context as well as athletic ones to describe the concentration and the great effort coupled with discipline and conviction required to win. It’s used repeatedly in the New Testament. It’s the word agōnizomai, from which we get agonize. And the word fight is the same root, agōn. Agonize the agōn. Agonize through the battle, spiritual conflict with sin, with unrighteousness with the kingdom of Satan. Play your part as a man of God with a noble commitment to the contest for the truth.
I’m thrilled to be a soldier … It’s the battle over truth. And I am greatly distressed that we live in a time when the idea is that you don’t want to be a battler for truth, you want to do all you can to set aside any theology that might make someone else disagree with you. It’s frightening to me. We are to earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. In spite of the intensity and the danger in the fight, beloved, it’s a good fight. Fight the good fight. The word good – kalos – is best translated, I think, excellent or noble. Fight the excellent fight, fight the noble fight, battle for truth, battle for the faith. He says fight the good fight of the faith.
Then we come to Paul’s instruction for taking hold of or laying hold on eternal life.
Henry says:
He exhorts him to lay hold on eternal life. Observe, (1.) Eternal life is the crown proposed to us, for our encouragement to war, and to fight the good fight of faith, the good warfare. (2.) This we must lay hold on, as those that are afraid of coming short of it and losing it. Lay hold, and take heed of losing your hold. Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown, Rev 3 11. (3.) We are called to the fight, and to lay hold on eternal life.
MacArthur says that Paul is telling Timothy not to take his eyes off his eternal prize for fighting the good fight:
“Lay hold on eternal life unto which you were also called and have confessed a good confession before many witnesses.” What does he mean by that? Does he mean get saved? No. Timothy’s already saved. Does he mean go to heaven? No, he doesn’t mean go to heaven when he says lay hold on eternal life. What he means is very simple: Get a grip on eternal life.
In other words, you won’t mind giving yourself up in this world if you’ve got a grip on eternal life. In other words, live in the light of eternity. Isn’t that great? Hey, if you’re ministering here just for what you can gain here, you’ve got the wrong perspective. That’s not the perspective of a man of God. Lay hold on eternal life. To put it in the terms of Colossians 3, “Set your affections on things” – what? – “above and not on things on the earth.” Recognize your citizenship, Philippians 3:20, is not on the earth but it’s in heaven. Live and minister in the light of eternity. That keeps your focus in the battle.
MacArthur says that the confession before many witnesses could refer to any and all of the following spiritual events in Timothy’s life:
And then he says, after all, you were called to eternal life and you confessed a noble confession before many witnesses of that eternal life. Now live in the light of it. You were called to it. By the way, every time you see the word called used, the reference to calling used in the epistles, it is always the effectual call of a sovereign God to salvation. You were called to salvation which is eternal life. You confessed your confession, publicly confessing Jesus as Lord with your mouth. You affirmed your salvation unto eternal life. You confessed that Christ was your Lord. You confessed it before many witnesses. He may have in mind Timothy’s baptism. He may have in mind his ordination. He probably has in mind everything from his conversion on through every confession he ever made. He says you have confessed to being a possessor of eternal life, now live in the light of it. See that?
In summary:
The man of God who has been called to eternal life, who has confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior has entered into a battle with the forces of sin and a battle with the forces of hell, a battle with lies, a fight for the faith which demands everything he has. And the only way he’s going to be able to give himself to that battle is if he can divorce himself from this world and live in the light of eternity.
MacArthur has several meaningful quotes from Puritan and Anglican preachers from Britain:
Richard Baxter said in The Reformed Pastor, back in the seventeenth century, “Many a tailor goes in rags that makes costly clothes for others and many a cook scarcely licks his fingers when he has dressed for others the most costly dishes.” Don’t be a tailor in rags, don’t be a starving cook, don’t be preparing things for others that you don’t have yourself. Paul was so concerned with these matters of godliness that in Acts 20 he said to the Ephesian elders, “Take heed to yourselves.”
John Flavel, the Puritan writer, said, “It is easier to cry against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves.” Is that not so? And it is the duty of the preacher to cry against the thousand sins in the lives of others. It is also his duty to deal with the one sin in himself. John Owen wrote, “A minister may fill his pews, his communion role, the ears of the public, but what he is on his knees in secret before almighty God, that he is and no more.”
Charles Bridges [Anglican, 1794 – 1869] wrote in The Christian Ministry this, and I think it’s so direct, “If we should study the Bible more as ministers than as Christians, more to find matter for the instruction of our people than food for the nourishment of our own souls, we neglect then to place ourselves at the feet of our divine teacher, our communion with Him is cut off, and we become mere formalists in sacred profession. We cannot live by feeding others or heal ourselves by the mere employment of healing our people. And therefore, by this course of official service, our familiarity with the awful realities of death and eternity may be rather like that of the grave digger, the physician, and the soldier than of the man of God, viewing eternity with deep seriousness and concern and bringing to his people the profitable fruit of his contemplations. It has well been remarked that when once a man begins to view religion not as of personal but merely of professional importance, he has an obstacle in his course with which a private Christian is unacquainted. It is indeed difficult to determine whether our familiar intercourse with the things of God is more to our temptation or to our advantage.”
It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if the principles here were discussed at length in every seminary in the world. Some years ago, I began writing a series of critiques of seminary curricula in the United States. It was so samey and so depressing that I stopped. There was very little that was edifying in most of the coursework.
That was about a decade ago, but the rot set in decades before that. Think of the tens of thousands of priests and ministers who have left those seminaries and became pastors.
Dear, oh dear. It is hard to imagine how few good ones are in our churches.
Paul then goes on to repeat his charge — command — to Timothy for his work in Ephesus.
Next time — 1 Timothy 6:13-16
It was by sheer coincidence that yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, I happened to be writing about 1 Timothy 6:3-5, a passage that gives the characteristics of false teachers, and then ran across a profile of a former vicar.
Those verses are worth reading before proceeding with the following post.
It is unfortunate that the ex-vicar in question is the Revd Richard Coles, famous in Britain for being on nearly every reality television series going.
It is unfortunate because his on-screen persona is exactly what one would want in a vicar: joviality, warmth and humour. No doubt many Britons empathised when his civil partner David, also a Church of England priest, died a week before Christmas in 2019.
In July 2020, Coles, who was straddling his responsibilities as a vicar with television engagements, defended the Church over slavery. This was a month after George Floyd protests had taken place during lockdown — no problem there, as we saw — and discussions continued from henceforth.
On July 2 that year, The Express reported:
Reverend Richard Coles was shut down by African Studies Professor Kehinde Andrews who explained the Anglo-Church paid some of the largest compensation after the end of the slave trade. The pair clashed in a heated debate over the portrayal of Jesus. It comes as the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has called for reconsideration of Jesus being perceived as a white man.
Speaking on GMB [ITV’s Good Morning Britain], Reverend Richard Coles said: “The Church has also played a prophetic part in seeking equality for black people around the world.
“The Church of England in the 18th and 19th centuries played a significant role in the legislation to bring about the abolition of the slave trade.
“The Church of England played a very important part.”
However, the professor was unhappy and cited Isaiah 1:18:
“The image of the white Jesus was given to us as the enslaved.
“It was taken to African schools and put on to us in one of the main ways to pacify us.
“You still have people in Black churches in this country saying that ‘he will wash you white as snow’.
“That’s the original white saviour image and the whole purpose of it was to embed colonialism and slavery …”
This is the problem with taking anything, including the Bible, out of context. The Lord was referring to scarlet sins.
Here is an excerpt from Isaiah 1 (emphases mine):
15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
16 Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
17 Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.[a]
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
20 but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
In 2022, Coles made a one-off documentary for Channel 4, Good Grief, which aired on August 8. By then, he had just retired as a vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire in the East Midlands and had moved to a seaside village in Sussex, on the south coast.
The day before the programme aired, Coles told The Telegraph of the anger he felt when his alcoholic partner, the priest, died. We also got a synopsis of the show. Note that there is no mention of Scripture:
In the show, we see him searching for new ways to process his sense of loss, immersing himself in a plethora of grief therapies.
He throws himself into skydiving, boxing and surfing to escape his thoughts and tries yoga laughter to “act” his way out of pain; he gathers with others for a grief “supper club” and, perhaps most movingly, a grief cruise in Miami …
Researching the film reminded Richard that there are, of course, no quick fixes to the outrageous pain of grief. “You won’t find something that will magically make you feel better. But there are things which can help you connect to the part of yourself that’s most vulnerable, and I found this helpful. Boxing, especially, was my favourite.”
This might surprise his fans, who know him as an erudite, witty man more at home on the Strictly dance floor, rather than sweating in a gym. He laughs when I suggest this.
“Boxing licensed my anger. As a vicar, you swallow your own feelings to help other people manage theirs. Boxing was a way of legitimising the pointless fury of grief.” The more physical activities also helped him push back against the sense of life becoming diminished and made smaller, which grief brings with it. “Grief can make you feel irrational anger towards the dead person for having wrecked your life, which is perhaps why grief, guilt and anger often go around as a trio. Boxing allowed me to feel everything, which was helpful.”
There was also an element of catharsis at work, because Richard is honest about how angry he felt over David’s continued drinking. “At its worst, his addiction was very bad, and I think I knew, at a deep level, that it could only end with his death,” he confides. “And I felt furious with him for drinking like that, and also guilty for feeling furious. But when it was especially bad, I’d arrive home and sit in the drive thinking, what fresh hell awaits me inside?”
Coles has a famous friend in Northamptonshire, Earl Spencer, Princess Diana’s brother:
He tells me about spending the Christmas following David’s death with his friend, Charles [9th Earl Spencer and younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales]. “And we ended up at Diana’s grave, the most mourned person in my entire life, so yes, we would all see the dark comedy in that.”
Coles retains his house in Northamptonshire.
He rightly pointed out that we no longer know how to cope with death. He also rightly brought up his Christian beliefs:
It’s interesting to hear Richard wrestling with the transcendent power of his own faith in relation to his very human and earthly longing to see David again. “Because I am a Christian and believe in the power of the Gospel, I live in hope of something that awaits beyond the horizon of death. But while the thought of David enduring is wonderful, all I really want today is for him to walk in through the door again.”
However, all I could think of was that Coles would have done better to immerse himself in the epistles at his time of grief, Paul’s, in particular. We are all bound to suffer to some degree in this life. As we know, the death of a loved one affects us all. When we are mourning and calling upon Christ to comfort us, we are also called to use that as a means of sanctification.
In my post on 1 Timothy 6:3-5, I cited John MacArthur’s sermon on those verses. MacArthur spoke of the importance of knowing and understanding the Bible:
If false teaching is contrary to Scripture, it is easily recognized by one who knows what Scripture teaches, one who, in the terms of 1 John 2, has become a spiritual young man, because the Word of God abides in you and you are strong and therefore you have overcome the wicked one. The wicked one plying his false teaching is overcome by one who is strong in the Word …
That’s why the primary task of the shepherd is to feed the sheep, so that they begin to recognize what is their proper diet, and they don’t go out to eat the noxious deadly weeds that grow on the fringes of their pasture …
When you know good doctrine and your people know good doctrine, you’re protected. You’re protected from the deadly virus of error. And the only protecting antibiotic that we have against false teaching is the truth – the truth of God.
Yoga isn’t going to cure our inner pain as a mourner. Neither is boxing, although there will be some need to release tension and, for some, boxing fulfils the brief. Yet, the most important element of mourning is keeping an eye on Christ and His infinite grace. Our grief, in some measure, shall pass with time.
On May 28, 2023, on the feast of Pentecost, The Sunday Times Magazine published Decca Aitkenhead’s interview with the celebrity ex-vicar, ‘Richard Coles: “I met my new boyfriend on EliteSingles”‘.
I was stunned to read of the amount of anger that this man of the cloth had had since his youth. Couple that with greed as well as the love of fame, and it’s an unholy mix. It seems apposite that he is now retired from the pulpit. Good grief.
Consider Paul’s verses, then contemplate the following anecdotes.
His fury and materialism began during his schooldays, something he is writing about in his third novel involving a protagonist named Daniel:
Coles’s own father was a wealthy shoe manufacturer who similarly went broke while Coles was a teenager at a prestigious boarding school. It was “an excoriating experience, a life-changing experience” — the emotional legacy of which, he agrees, is betrayed in Daniel’s mother.
“At school everyone judged their fathers by the car they drove. And woe betide the person who once turned up in a Rolls-Royce and next turned up in a Ford Granada.” The memory still haunts him. “Status,” he murmurs reverently. “Prestige.” He has a friend whose father also lost everything while he was at boarding school, and is one of the most driven people he knows. “We both think some iron entered our souls at that point when we were teenagers and we lost prestige because our parents lost wealth. Yeah, that was really formative.”
His relationship with money is “hugely” loaded. “I’ve always disguised it from myself and told myself I’m committed to antimaterialistic doctrines and Christianity. But you know what? I’ve always been able to make a buck. And I have always been scared of poverty.”
He recently told his accountant he was frightened that he would end up living on the street, destitute. The astonished accountant assured him that was not going to happen. “Well, you say that,” Coles retorted, implacably unconvinced.
Years ago, Coles lied about being HIV-positive. It is unclear why he did so:
I’m still trying to work out how someone so honest about himself could ever have told his closest friends a total lie about being HIV positive. “It was an awful thing to do.” He shudders. “Even talking about it now, I’m ashamed of it. It’s there on the record, for ever, and it makes me feel very bad. But I am that person.”
At the end of the interview, Aitkenhead cornered him on his love of prestige and lying:
Years ago, in the course of research for an article about a pair of fraudsters, I read a lot of books about liars. One consistent theme, I begin to say — “I think I can guess what it is,” he interrupts. “Was it loss of prestige in their teenage years?” It was indeed.
“That makes perfect sense to me.” He nods. “Perfect sense.”
Dear, oh dear.
Even his friendship with Earl Spencer seems to have lost a bit of its glow, only because the two know each other so well now:
In his former parish Coles used to spend a good deal of time at nearby Althorp House, the home of Earl Spencer, Princess Diana’s brother. It feels unlikely, I suggest, that anyone could accidentally have made so many famous friends.
“I suppose what I would have said in the past is, ‘Oh, it just sort of happened that way because that’s the world I live in, dah dah dah.’ But it’s because I seek them out. And find, in their company and society, something that affirms me.” To restore his own lost prestige? He thinks for a moment. “Maybe if I’m in their golden glow, I’ll be a bit safer.” He pauses again. “But what happens of course is that it only lasts for a bit. There’s a dazzle. And then after that, if a friendship with someone comes out of it, then you’re just two people, right?”
Let’s return to anger and add lust to the mix.
This is what happened after his father’s financial failure:
In the early Eighties Coles was an angry young man on the dole in King’s Cross, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt at 17, and full of fury about homophobia and Margaret Thatcher.
Then he made a name for himself in popular music:
He joined a radical gay activist theatrical troupe and made friends with the Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville. Together they formed the Communards in 1985 and became huge pop stars practically overnight.
Enter anger and the lie about being HIV-positive:
Yet Coles couldn’t enjoy all the fun and five-star hotels and first-class flights because he was always furious with Somerville for getting more attention than him.
Perhaps Somerville had the more winsome personality.
Anyway:
During one of their many blazing rows, in a fit of jealous pique Coles screamed that he had just been diagnosed with HIV. The upper hand and dark glamour this lie conferred was so gratifying, he repeated it to all his closest friends and couldn’t bring himself to come clean for five years. Most of his friends were extraordinarily forgiving — “That took something to admit, doll,” was all Somerville said — but one was so upset he didn’t speak to Coles for a year.
While he kept the lie alive:
the Communards had long since split, undone by mutual loathing — although they later made up and remain on friendly terms — and Coles had survived an epic two-year bender on Ecstasy, cocaine and speed.
Then came Christianity:
What had begun as high-spirited hedonism descended into wretched self-destruction and squalor, but after coming to his senses in his late twenties and cleaning up, to his surprise he found God.
Then came theology studies — and more fame:
By the early Nineties he was a theology student, a Sony award-winning BBC radio presenter and a big hit in celebrity media social circles.
When he had finished studying theology:
On graduation he moved back to his home county of Northamptonshire, where he took up dogging. He thinks that having roadside sex with random strangers was “actually rather good for me”, remedying his lifelong sense of undesirability. “But I think also I was unkind to people sometimes, so absorbed in my own gratification.”
At that point, the first half of St Paul’s 1 Timothy 6:4 came alive:
4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.
Then came seminary:
The dogging had stopped by the time he began training for the clergy, and in 2005 he was ordained.
I am sure that John MacArthur’s Masters Seminary would have despatched Coles quickly for reasons various.
Then came his parish work, partner and more television:
Two years later, by then a vicar in Norfolk, he fell in love with a fellow clergyman from a neighbouring parish, David, and their relationship was formalised with a civil partnership in 2010. The following year Coles moved to a Northamptonshire parish, began presenting Saturday Live and became Britain’s favourite vicar. The jovial dog-collared doyen of light entertainment has appeared on everything from Celebrity MasterChef to Celebrity Mastermind, The Weakest Link to Strictly Come Dancing, and the tragedy of David’s death from alcoholism in 2019, at just 43, shocked the nation.
Coles feels no regrets about breaking his ordination vow of celibacy in light of the nature of his sexual relationship:
He doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about breaking the same-sex celibacy oath CofE rules obliged him to take. “It’s true, bang to rights, I was dishonest. I don’t like breaking an oath, but if it is one that is unholy then I don’t feel the moral obligation to observe it.” To honour an oath that he “thought was unjust and inhuman and degrading”, he adds, “ would be much worse”.
All of that made me think of 1 Timothy 6:3 …
3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound[a] words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness,
… and the end of verse 5:
imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
Aitkenhead, herself an atheist, found that aspects of Coles’s life didn’t sit well with her:
… most of all I’m intrigued by his conversion from brittle pop diva to humble cleric — chiefly because it has always struck me as fishy. In my experience, fame-hungry, troubled young pop stars do not grow up to be self-effacing saints. The disarming surprise is how cheerfully he agrees.
“Yes, I don’t actually believe that finding God can fundamentally rewire most of that.” The young Coles who used to storm out of Communards interviews because all the questions had been directed at Somerville is, he chuckles, the person he remains to this day. So why has everyone mistaken him for a sweetie? “Because I’ve offered them that version of me.” With a soft groan, he despairs, “Why do I do it? Sometimes I could drown in a sea of my own whimsy.”
It is a good thing that he has retired.
He admits to his former parishoners having the same impression as Aitkenhead:
I wonder if his celebrity circles made any parishioners suspicious of him. “I’m sure it did.” Of the only two arguments he had with them, one was sparked when someone made a snide swipe about “you and your fancy friends”. He looks embarrassed. “And I snapped. I lost my temper. And why do I lose my temper? Because I’m called out on something.”
A similar disagreement occurred with his late partner:
He had a whopping row with his late husband when he was voted off Strictly and pretended not to mind. “And David knew that I really minded, he wasn’t buying it, and we had a big fight. I lost my temper. And then I felt stupid.” The honest truth, he admits, is he had secretly thought he might win.
That is the Coles story up to this point.
More verses from 1 Timothy have come to mind over the past few hours.
In 1 Timothy 1:3-7, Paul introduced his discussion on false teachers, including this assertion of truth:
5 The aim of our charge [command] is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
Then there are the verses from 1 Timothy 3:1-7 (continued here and here) about the characteristics of a good overseer — a pastor or vicar:
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.
St Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, knew what he was talking about. The Church would be restored if only more of today’s seminaries followed his instructions to Timothy.
The Revd Giles Fraser is a past Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral and former Rector at the south London church of St Mary, Newington. He also writes for UnHerd and is author of Chosen.
He will soon be taking up a new post as Vicar of St Anne’s in Kew, West London.
Fortunately, Fraser was able to stay at St Mary’s for Easter, the Church’s greatest feast, celebrating Christ’s resurrection from the dead:
The object hanging over the altar is a pyx. It contains a consecrated host, representing the Body of Christ, as remembered from the Last Supper in the sacrament of Holy Communion:
The congregation bought a very special bottle of wine for him to consecrate at his last Communion service there. How fitting that the winemaker’s surname is Le Moine — Monk:
These were members of St Mary’s on Easter 2019:
St Mary’s held a farewell party for him on Easter Day, April 17, 2022:
Then it was off to St Anne’s in Kew Green. How wonderful to have a cricket pitch next door:
Fraser has met the vicar of St Luke’s, also in Kew:
One wonders if they discussed Brexit:
In lighter matters, St Anne’s new vicar is planning on learning the piano. He received many supportive comments to this tweet:
Note the sheet music: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’, one of the grandest of hymns.
Fraser posted his thoughts about changing parishes for UnHerd: ‘Have I abandoned my flock?’
It is a deeply moving account of faith, a church family and the challenges that ministry presents.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
He describes his final Easter at St Mary, Newington, damaged by the Germans in the Second World War:
When I celebrate Mass here for the final time, I need to remind myself that I am not abandoning people, because it’s not all about me. The only real job of a priest is to point beyond him or herself to that God who, I believe, is the only true ground of lasting hope. In a funny way, I suspect my departure has helped focus that for some of the congregation …
On Easter Sunday, as dawn breaks over South London, I will light a fire in the crumbling remains of my old church, substantially redesigned by the Luftwaffe, yet unbowed. I will take that fire into church and the first of the day’s baptisms will begin. Clouds of incense will pick up the light now streaming in through the window. The fire will be shared as everyone’s candles are lit. I will cry. Hugs will be shared. The victory over death will be proclaimed.
Later, we will feast on Jollof rice, which is a kind of sacrament of community round these parts. That seems a perfect way to say goodbye. We will always be family.
That morning, Fraser baptised two adults and two children. Easter Sunday is the traditional day for group baptisms.
He had this to say about the sacrament, which involves sprinkling of water, symbolic of full immersion:
… like learning to swim, faith also involves the prospect of drowning. Baptism isn’t a little bit of genteel water sprinkling. The imagery is one of death and rebirth. It’s a simulated drowning. The old person is destroyed; the new one rises from the waters. Like Neo being unplugged from the Matrix and being reborn into a new reality. Evangelicals are not wrong when they speak of being born again. You can’t fully plan for what that involves. At some level, you just have to take the plunge.
He discussed moving out, discarding old belongings, comparing it to a type of death, rather apposite for Holy Week, the culmination of which is Good Friday:
I have been the priest at St Mary, Newington for ten years. This Sunday, I am moving on. A new parish awaits. The skip is full of stuff I remember buying with much excitement, but now looks like pointless trash; the salvation promised by advertising and the shopping centre is so short-lived. And now the removal vans have been — and trashed more of our apparently precious belongings — there are further trips to the local tip, which is rather poignantly located next to the crematorium.
This is where things come when they have stopped working: our fridges and our bodies. The tip and the crem are Good Friday places. This is the wasteland, the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps one day we should gather here, rather than in a lovely church, to experience the full existential desolation of the crucifixion. Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion, was itself a rubbish dump. A place of human landfill. This is where our dreams come to die.
I have never been especially threatened by atheism. For one thing, atheism is good for business: it helps maintain the tension. Indifference is the real enemy. But also because atheism is assigned a pivotal place in the Christian narrative. The period between 3pm on Friday and dawn on Sunday symbolises my own atheistic imaginings. When He is murdered by the Romans, all the expectation and excitement of Jesus-following is shown up as a terrible, embarrassing mistake. We were conned. He wasn’t the new King after all. Might is right. Oh, I get atheism all right. It’s an essential part of the cycle of Holy Week.
Then he discusses the Resurrection:
A wander around Kew Gardens, right next to my new church, reveals the natural world coming back to glorious life after the dead of winter. It’s a wholly natural expression of deep Christian instinct: that there is life beyond death. That even death cannot keep life down.
The resurrection of Jesus is not magic. Not “a conjuring trick with bones”, as the great Bishop David Jenkins once put it.
By the way, Jenkins’s full quote was ‘Well, it’s certainly much more than just a conjuring trick with bones’.
Fraser continues:
It’s an acknowledgement that a life rooted in the eternal will not remain under the heel of perpetual nothingness. Agreed, this is not an empirical statement. I have stepped outside what can be demonstrated naturally. The God I describe is beyond time and space, the author of all things, not one thing among others.
“Blah,” go the atheists. But upon this “blah” I hang my whole life. The God who is there in the person of Jesus is the same one in whom everything moves and has their being. It’s not that physical death doesn’t happen. It’s just that it doesn’t mean what nihilists believe it means. Hope exists because God exists.
He expressed his concerns about leaving his congregation at St Mary, Newington, and remembered his arrival ten years ago. He left St Paul’s under a cloud, having run into trouble after hosting Occupy London on the Cathedral grounds:
As I leave my old parish, I feel a terrible sense of abandoning my people. It was hard to start with. Ten years ago, I was parachuted in by the Bishop who took pity on me after my resignation from St Paul’s Cathedral. Like all parishes, they wanted St Francis of Assisi with an MBA. What they got was a broken spirit, in hiding from the world. And to start with, many of them didn’t much care for what they got.
I don’t blame them really. I was a mess. Some of them left the church. But slowly we rebuilt and we bonded. Now they are my family, the water of baptism being thicker than the blood of biological relatedness. We have been through everything together: bereavements, deep disappointments, some of the happiest parties you can ever imagine, then the emotional desolation of lockdown. During my ten years here, some of the post-war estates have been demolished and new more expensive and private developments have taken their place. As gentrification spread, our congregation has become much younger and whiter …
Our new church intake looks very different. Apart from being younger and whiter, they were not raised in the faith. There were fewer infant baptisms for this generation. Here, faith is a choice not an inheritance. “I wish my parents had done this for me,” said one of the new baptismal candidates. I understand this. Becoming a Christian is much harder to do as an act of choice, more fraught with anxiety.
The generation raised under the aegis of liberalism have to bear the weight of their own choices. This is problematic because to be in a church is to be a part of a family. The idea that you choose your family, choose to be baptised, seems to introduce a strange contractual aspect to this relationship, like taking out a mobile phone contract. I wonder if those “wanting more” in baptism preparation are, on some level, asking me for the small print. Is that how they see the Bible, I wonder? I hope I have helped to disabuse them of this idea.
He says that he doesn’t have all the answers to people’s problems, however, the church is where we bring the problems we cannot solve:
I don’t have answers to many of the problems that people bring into this church. I can’t solve the deep poverty that many experience, nor the broken relationships, nor the desperate sense that the world is not responsive to everyone’s deepest needs. I am there to carry them, and they carry me. The church is where you can bring all the stuff that is impossible to solve. And there are advantages to this — it means that we are not frightened of all the stuff that cannot be remedied. We can carry failure. And we can only do this because, as I said before, hope exists because God exists.
I wish Giles Fraser well in Kew, with his ministry — and his piano lessons. I have a feeling he will really enjoy his new assignment and new pastime.
On May 1, 2022, The Sunday Times reported that the Church of England hopes to recruit retiree pew-sitters to the priesthood in an initiative called Caleb, a fast-track route to ordination (emphases mine):
Retired City workers, head teachers and police officers are being fast-tracked into the clergy to bring a “lifetime of work experience” to rural churches and share the load with over-stretched vicars.
It is hoped that up to 8,000 Church of England worshippers in their late fifties, sixties or seventies, particularly those with managerial experience from their careers and a track record of serving as church wardens or lay ministers, could be tempted to train as priests to serve in their local parish after retirement.
The scheme is called Caleb for the faithful Israelite, who, with Joshua, arrived in the Promised Land at the ripe old age of 85.
Learn Religions has an excellent biography, complete with Bible verses, about this faithful servant, who was one of 12 men sent to scout the Promised Land before the Israelites’ arrival. Ten of the 12 spies said that the people — descendants of the Nephilim from Genesis — were too large and their fortresses too formidable to be conquered:
Moses sent spies, one from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, into Canaan to scout the territory. Among them were Joshua and Caleb. All the spies agreed on the richness of the land, but ten of them said Israel could not conquer it because its inhabitants were too powerful and their cities were like fortresses. Only Caleb and Joshua dared to contradict them.
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” (Numbers 13:30, NIV)
God was so angry at the Israelites for their lack of faith in him that he forced them to wander in the desert 40 years until that entire generation had died–all except Joshua and Caleb.
Upon conquering the territory:
Joshua, the new leader, gave Caleb the territory around Hebron, belonging to the Anakites. These giants, descendants of the Nephilim, had terrified the original spies but proved no match for God’s people.
Caleb and his descendants prospered.
More information about him follows. It is thought he was born a pagan and an Egyptian slave:
Caleb’s name means “raging with canine madness.” Some Bible scholars think Caleb or his tribe came from a pagan people who were assimilated into the Jewish nation. He represented the tribe of Judah, from which came Jesus Christ, Savior of the world.
Caleb was physically strong, vigorous to old age, and ingenious in dealing with trouble. Most importantly, he followed God with his whole heart.
Caleb knew that when God gave him a task to do, God would supply him with all he needed to complete that mission. Caleb spoke up for truth, even when he was in the minority. Often, to stand up for truth we must stand alone.
We can learn from Caleb that our own weakness brings an inpouring of God’s strength. Caleb teaches us to be loyal to God and to expect him to be loyal to us in return.
Returning to The Sunday Times article, the C of E article hopes not to have to pay for the Caleb priests’ housing or upkeep:
They will be “self-supporting” priests, who are not paid a stipend and do not need a vicarage as they already live locally.
The Revd Nicky Gumbel, founder of the Alpha course and vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) in London, is going to retire at the age of 67. He is championing the ‘Caleb stream’, which is run by the HTB Church Revitalisation Trust. Note that he is retiring at the age where he expects others to become ordained:
Speaking to The Times for his farewell interview and before the Global Alpha Leadership Conference this week, he said there were about half a million Anglican churchgoers aged between 55 and 72. With life expectancy now in the eighties, many want to pursue a new passion in retirement.
“They’ve been involved in church all their life, some are licensed lay ministers, lay chaplains, church wardens, some are just dedicated church people,” he said. “How hard would it be to find 8,000 who would give 25 years for free after they’ve left life in the City or police force?”
Hmm.
The article explains how the Caleb scheme contrasts with conventional ordination:
Those who feel called to the priesthood discuss it with their priest before embarking on a series of interviews. The usual selection process can last for up to two years, ending with a bishop recommending them for ordination. They then spend two or three years at theological college before being ordained as a deacon and then a priest.
Under the Caleb scheme, candidates can start a one-year training course immediately with the local bishop’s blessing and have interviews as they train. Gumbel aims to sign up more theological colleges.
Quite a few Anglican priests have already had a career in the secular world before ordination. Our small parish has had several over the past 30 years.
The Times gives us a profile of the first Caleb priest:
The Rev Anthony Goddard, 67, is the first Caleb graduate. He was ordained last June and is a curate at his parish in West Sussex. He spent 20 years working for ICI and four years as a partner at Accenture.
“Most people at around 60 have a lot of life experience, a lot of professional experience quite possibly in leadership roles, and hopefully have a good track record of Christian ministry,” he said. “I spent 25 years in business and then 13 as head and [lay] chaplain of an independent school and was always actively involved in the church …”
A married couple also enrolled themselves and will be taking up assignments this year:
Andy Green spent 30 years as a police constable while his wife, Caroline, worked as a dressmaker and GP practice manager. They will be 69 and 65 years old when they enter Worcester Cathedral in July to be ordained by a bishop to embark on new lives in the priesthood.
The pair will return to serve as deacons and then priests at their home church of St Egwin’s near Evesham in Worcestershire. “It’ll be the first time in about 50 years that St Egwin’s will have had its own ordained minister at the church,” Andy said, adding that older worshippers could bring a “lifetime of work experience” to the priesthood.
The Caleb scheme is a departure from the C of E’s earlier post-pandemic plan to close local churches and have regional ‘hub’ churches for traditional in-person worship. I have no idea if that is still a plan or if the Caleb scheme has replaced it.
In any event, Anglican churches have needed more clergy for decades now:
Thousands of churches no longer have their own dedicated vicar. Some priests have 20 or more parishes under their care, reliant on teams of assistant priests, retired clergy and lay parishioners to hold services across large areas.
Those large areas are called benefices. The article has an alarming graph showing how many benefices have four or more churches with too few priests to assign to them.
It is hoped that new, second-career priests would save those churches:
Critics have said that restoring a system of “one-priest-per-church” would boost congregations by forming closer bonds between communities and their vicars. The new “Caleb” scheme aims to find new priests for parishes from within their congregations.
The article has another graph breaking down the age and sex of ordinands into the C of E. Younger ordinands tend to be men. However, after the age of 40, women predominate, especially after the age of 55.
I do not know if the Caleb scheme will work, but I hope it does. The C of E needs something. A return to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion would be a start. So would more biblical preaching, rather than a focus on identity politics and climate change.
My post of January 26 discussed the parlous state of the Church of England (CofE) today, covering events from the summer of 2021.
The CofE hierarchy and General Synod are looking for a way to ‘do church’ differently by seeking to close down our beautiful church buildings, some of which have been in existence since Norman times, i.e. the 11th century.
The plan is called Myriad.
Many clergy are just as angry as the laity. The laity put together a network called Save the Parish. My post last week left off at that point, which was July 2021.
I have a few more tweets to share from that month.
The Revd Marcus Walker from St Bartholomew’s in London pointed out that, once the clergy and the church buildings have been sold, there isn’t much left to the Church of England. In any event, this is OUR church, not the hierarchy’s or the General Synod’s:
Furthermore, it is wrong for priests to think like businessmen, viewing those in the pews as consumers:
On July 13, The Telegraph‘s Alison Pearson wrote, ‘It’s time to rebel — the Church of England is abandoning its flock’. Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
Lately, the Church of England has been hellbent on a course which is almost designed to cause distress to traditionally-minded vicars and parishioners: the lowly footsoldiers who do the flowers, run the choir and generally keep their beloved old church going while raising money to send a “Parish Offer” to fund the dioceses with their cloth-eared management jargon, their painfully woke initiatives and proliferating job titles like Mission Enablers and Director of Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, with hefty salaries to match.
Some of us were under the impression that the Director of Creation job was filled rather successfully over two thousand years ago. Having lost faith in the eternal verities, the CofE now makes stipendiary clergy redundant – some rural benefices of 10 churches have to share one vicar! – while lunging for relevance with lectures like the one immortally entitled The Church and the Clitoris. Er, it’s been a while since I was a Sunday school teacher but isn’t the G in “G-spot” supposed to stand for God?
In a nutshell, the things which most Britons still value about the CofE are about to be destroyed by the very people who are meant to be its custodians. Parish priests and regular worshippers are up in arms over the “Vision and Strategy” plan which was unveiled by the Archbishop of York at the General Synod at the weekend. The new “growth strategy” is called Myriad. It means getting rid of the clergy with their tedious theological knowledge about, you know, the Bible …
This is not a joke. Canon John McGinley explained: “Lay-led churches release the church from key limiting factors. When you don’t need a building and a stipend and long, costly, college-based training for every leader of the church… then we can release new people to lead and new churches to form.”
As a church warden, one of many to write movingly on this topic to the Telegraph’s Letters Page, said: “Our incumbent vicar will be retiring soon. He will not be replaced. In return, for our generous Parish Offer, a church with a 1,400-year history will expect to have a clergy-delivered act of worship once every six weeks. I fear the end of worship is nigh. I will become a steward of an empty, soulless medieval building, haunted by the echoes and shadows of past congregations. What has the Church of England come to?”
Good question. Some vicars may be frightened into complicit silence, but they are deeply offended at being called “key limiting factors”, while their loyal parishioners are sneered at as “passengers”. Increasingly, prominent clergy like Marcus Walker and Giles Fraser are speaking out against the idiocy of pretending you can simply “plant” 10,000 lay churches without any proper structure or safeguarding measures. Let alone the worry of allowing over 12,500 listed buildings to fall into disuse while potentially permitting untrained shysters to instruct vulnerable people in the faith in their sitting rooms.
This is particularly important, as it relates to the cowardly closure of our churches during the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020:
What the hell are the Archbishop and bishops playing at? It is a bitter irony that those who have presided over the decline of the faith now indulge in this sort of displacement activity to distract attention from their own ineptitude and extravagance, indulging in empire-building while allowing the vast practical good done by the parishes to wither on the vine. During the pandemic, millions craved a place of reassurance, a slender handrail of belief to cling on to. Churches were the ideal refuge, but the Archbishop didn’t fight to keep them open. A vital opportunity for spreading Jesus’s teaching was lost.
I couldn’t agree more.
Alison Pearson advises concerned parishoners what to do, mentioning Save the Parish:
What can we do? The clergy and the people do have a say and this is the moment for rebellion. We need to assist the parishes to withstand the assault from the dioceses which are better described as the “key limiting factors”. You can go to savetheparish.com, which offers a number of ways to help. Write to your MP. Parochial Church Council consent is needed for the closure of churches – don’t give it. The church building belongs to the parish, so does the vicarage, if they haven’t sold it yet.
You can ringfence your parish assets and put them in a trust out of reach of the diocese. The Parish Share is voluntary – a “free-will offering” – so you definitely don’t have to give it to a hierarchy that wants to starve your parish and its wonderful church of resources so that Ray and Brenda can host Holy Communion in their hot tub.
She concludes by quoting one of my favourite hymns, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind:
Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive their foolish ways. Reclothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence, praise.
In August, George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, joined the revolt.
The Revd Peter Anthony directed disgruntled and disaffected Anglicans to an article by the Revd Giles Fraser, co-founder of UnHerd and former Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Pictured below is the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby:
Giles Fraser wrote:
A quiet but unmistakable rebellion is taking place within the Church of England, a groundswell of anger bubbling up from that most British of institutions: the Parish Church. And support for it shows no sign of waning.
“The current trajectory of our church is a huge mistake and the leadership is out of touch with ordinary churchgoers,” George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote yesterday. “It is time to rally the troops.”
He was writing in support of the newly formed Save the Parish movement — a group I have been plotting with from its creation. And yes, that is a staggering thing for a former Archbishop to say about the current leadership.
Fraser outlines the problem which has pitted the laity and local vicars against the CofE Establishment — the plan to replace existing churches with home churches, thereby getting rid of clergy:
It is ordinary churchgoers and faithful church wardens who have looked after their churches for years, as well as clergy padding about in their parish, visiting the sick, burying the dead and administering the sacraments, who are most angry about this betrayal. It feels like we are in the middle of an aggressive corporate takeover.
If you flick through the jobs section of the Church Times, you can see this effect almost straight away. It used to be full of jobs for the Rector of This and the Vicar of That. But such vacancies have increasingly been replaced by people with unrecognisable and convoluted job descriptions. Now they advertise areas of responsibility that have little to do with parish ministry, answerable directly to a line manager somewhere in Church House.
Jobs that began as a way of supporting the mission of the parish are now being regarded as its cheaper replacement. The parish clergy are “limiting factors” and the people in the pews merely “passengers”, as one senior Anglican clergyman put it last month.
No need for priests, or expensive theological education and the like. 10,000 new churches are imagined, led by lay people, not clergy. Many will not have a building, just a website. Many will meet on Zoom. It’s not really what most of us would call a church. But if “the church is the people not the building”, as goes the oft-heard mantra, then why not? There is certainly no need to worry about a leaky roof when you’re only online …
… the idea that we would be more entrepreneurial and light of foot if we were to hand the keys over to the National Trust is an absolute fantasy.
“Pioneers” is what the Church’s Head of Evangelism, Canon Dave Male, wants more of. Pioneers must be “freed up”, he says. But the problem here is that the weight of parish commitments, even the building, is what keeps us from floating off into some abstract theological space. The parish is grounded, rooted in place and time.
Yes, the pandemic has left the church feeling the pinch financially — and there is much need for belt-tightening. But we have far too many Bishops for the number of churchgoers that we now have. Probably far too many Dioceses as well, each with its own set of managers and advisors. Save the Parish believes that in times when finances are hard, it is the front-line parishes that should be supported as a priority rather than directing funds away towards another new top-down initiative.
Too right.
The rot started as long ago as 1976! This is unbelievable:
In 1976, the central Church decided that the parish was an inefficient way of running things and brought the ownership of parish assets under the control of the Diocese, introducing a whole new layer of management to look after the parish’s assets. From here on in, the Diocese began to have its own ideas about how best to spend a parish’s assets. Vicarages were sold off. The clergy were paid from a central pot. And power shifted from the parishes to the Diocesan structures.
This is the result:
Last week, we gathered as Save the Parish for the first time in the ancient St Bartholomew’s church in Smithfield. Alison Millbank, Canon Theologian from Southwell Cathedral, put the matter plainly: “the Church of England has totally capitulated to market values and managerialism… There has been a tendency to view the parish like some inherited embarrassing knick-knack from a great-aunt that you wish were in the attic.”
The fightback, it’s safe to say, has started. At the end of the event, Fr Marcus Walker, the Rector of St Bartholomew’s, described Save the Parish as “the last chance to save the system that has defined Christianity in this country for 1000 years”. He may not have been exaggerating.
Wow.
Fraser’s article appeared on August 11.
On August 12, UnHerd generously, in my opinion, published a response by the Revd James Mumford, ‘What the “Save the Parish” campaign doesn’t understand’.
Mumford wants the Church to become more secular, something that I also posted about last week, with warnings from John MacArthur.
Mumford says, erroneously:
What is frustrating about the traditionalists is that they don’t seem to be willing to make room for secular 21st century Brits. Father Marcus Walker, Rector of St. Bartholomew’s in London, at the launch of Save the Parish dismissed ‘a style of church set up in a cinema or bar or converted Chinese takeaway,’ but this has the whiff of snobbery about it. It seems to suggest that people exist for the sake of the church, not the church for the sake of people. Jonah felt the same way about the Ninevites. He, not they, were engorged by the obliging whale.
Then there’s the criticism that any ecclesial attempts to innovate, to do things differently, to experiment is, as academic Alison Milbank puts it, ‘a capitulation to market values.’ This, again, simply isn’t true. The church is merely trying to reach as many souls as it can.
Jesus of Nazareth clearly saw his mission as a desacralizing one. Instead of hallowing one particular place in which to worship, Christ tells the Samaritan woman in John 4, ‘a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.’ It wasn’t about stones any more, he taught, it was about people.
Jesus meant that it wasn’t about the temple in Jerusalem anymore, because it had become a den of vipers. He never called for local synagogues to be closed. In fact, He preached in them (e.g. Nazareth, Capernaum).
The Revd Marcus Walker responded to Mumford’s article, explaining his objection to the Church’s purchase of a Chinese takeaway in Rochdale, Lancashire, for £5 million when there is a perfectly serviceable church nearby:
This will cost far more than £5 million. The Church will have to pay a lay team to run it:
Now I’m sure that Janie Cronin is wonderful & will make a great success of the Nelson Street Church. I know that there are wonderful examples of plants revitalising parishes gloriously. But I hope
will concede that my concerns are about this allocation of resources
A priest responded to the thread in just the right way:
Woah! Excuse me, the church exists for the sake of Jesus Christ! ‘The church exists for the sake of people’, no it exists for the glory of God. The proposed reforms are essentially a mix of humanism and marketing. #SaveTheParish
Giles Fraser picked up on the thread:
Sure enough, a priest did challenge Marcus Walker:
Returning to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, a few people blamed him for the current shift away from parish churches. Here is one of them:
Now, on to the present day. Churchgoers are deeply unhappy with the current Archbishop of Canterbury and the plan for fewer parish churches. This theologian has a way with words:
On August 19, Giles Fraser told The Telegraph‘s Planet Normal hosts, Alison Pearson and Tim Stanley, that the parish church takes in everyone who wants to attend, regardless of their personal or political persuasions, even though Brexit can be problematic at times:
As if things couldn’t get any worse, on Thursday, October 14, an editorial appeared in The Times: ‘Thanks to Church of England accounting, parishes are disappearing’.
It begins with this:
Last Saturday was a sad day for the Church of England. In Leicester diocese, the governing body voted in favour of a plan to fold 234 parishes into the embrace of 20 to 25 huge groups, called minster communities, by 2026. One in five local vicars will disappear, creating what sounds like a clerical car pool. “Thank you for calling the minster community help line. Press 1 for help with a very sick relative or friend. Press 2 for help with bereavement. Press 3 to arrange a funeral.” This could be the future for the people of Leicester’s historic parishes.
Those closures didn’t necessarily need to happen:
An alternative option, to cut Leicester’s diocesan administrative costs by 10 per cent, was rejected. The C of E behaves like a socialist republic: demanding increasing “tax” (parish share) from dwindling numbers of churchgoers, then spending too much of it on its own bureaucracy. Moreover, as The Times reported last month, in 2017-2020 it spent £248 million on “renewal and reform” projects that failed to increase church attendance.
The editorial says that only one person guarantees large donations — a priest:
Bureaucracy and waste deter donors. Yet Leicester hopes to increase giving by 2 per cent — how? The church’s own studies show that donations correlate to numbers of paid clergy. The one identifiable Christian in the community is a priest in a dog collar. Grouping parishes empowers dioceses to sell parish-owned assets, incontinently using the capital to pay their own running costs, but it disincentivises donors. A 1,000-year-old system of independent parishes could be collapsed by short-term panic thinking and inadequate projections.
Furthermore:
The church’s growth policy report, From Anecdote to Evidence, confirms what rural parishioners like me witness: that parish amalgamations and building sales establish a spiral of decline. Selling a parsonage signals “game over” and leaves a community unlikely to have a vicar again.
Ironically, Justin Welby said not so long ago that he supports the traditional parish model:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has said, “I am passionate that the parish is essential.” In the Archbishop of York’s current General Synod update GS2223 he calls for “priest and people working together”. These exhortations from our spiritual leaders, the trend towards localism and the church’s own empirical evidence are all being ignored.
Words and actions are two entirely different things. I despair.
Meanwhile, there is always the Save the Parish Network. May the grace of God be with them:
I hope to have more on this situation at a future date.
A well known Catholic priest from Glasgow, the Revd James ‘Big Jim’ Doherty, died earlier this month.
On January 10, 2022, Tim Stanley, a Catholic and a columnist for The Telegraph, related one of his favourite anecdotes about Big Jim:
A tribute to another outspoken Catholic
Speaking of outspoken Catholics, I’d like to pay tribute to Fr James Doherty, AKA “Big Jim”, a Glasgow priest who died last week, of whom the stories are legendary. On one occasion, a man appeared at the presbytery with a notepad that read: “I am homeless, deaf and dumb. Please help.” The cleric had seen this trick before.
“Can you lip read?” asked Big Jim. The man nodded. “Well, I’ve nae money, honey, but if you’ll come into the house, I’ll make you a sandwich.” Thank you, the man nodded.
As they walked past the huge gong the house keeper would use to summon the clergy to lunch, Jim whacked it so hard it rang like Big Ben. “Good God!” cried the homeless man, “What the Hell did you do that for?!”
“Oh, it’s a double miracle!” said Big Jim. “Ye can hear and ye can speak!!”
“Aye well,” replied the man, rubbing his ears, “you’ve got to work bloody hard to get any money out of people nowadays.”
Jim made the man his sandwich.
That’s one of the best anecdotes I’ve read in some time.
Lying does not pay, especially to a priest. Priests have heard or seen everything under the sun. They are not to be underestimated.
Churchmouse Campanologist 