It is a proper tribute to Charles Gore, Canon of Westminster,
bishop successively of three dioceses, founder of the Community of
the Resurrection and distinguished theologian, that a lecture
should be named in his honour. Perhaps it was an even greater
tribute that at the time of his appointment as Bishop of Worcester
he was thought worthy to be prayed against! 'O Lord, open the eyes
of this perjured priest before he becomes a bishop,'
[1]
was the prayer enjoined by
one newspaper of the time after Charles Gore's nomination as Bishop
of Worcester. I am not aware that any such prayer was proposed in
1997, when my appointment to that office was announced, but whether
it was or not, the result is before your eyes. As one of Gore's
successors I am especially grateful to the Chapter for the honour
of being invited to give this lecture (not least since as Bishop of
three dioceses Gore collected quite a list of successors!).
[2]
I hope it honours Gore's memory for me to use this lecture to
raise sharp questions about some decision-making processes in which
I have recently been engaged. Inevitably that means I shall need to
say enough about the incidents that I have in mind for the
reflections to make sense. In different ways the two episodes to
which I shall refer have raised intense clashes of values, and that
in turn means that I shall be telling things from my point of view,
and repeating matters that may already be known to some of you who
are gathered here. I can only hope that the reflections which
follow the telling justify your enduring whatever in the accounts
themselves you find biased or already too well known.
In more than one way Gore's world is not as different from ours
as we might suppose. For instance he opens his Belief in God
published in 1921 and five years later as the first part of his
trilogy, The Reconstruction of Belief
[3]
with these words: 'The world in which we
live today can only be described as chaotic in matters of religious
belief.' He makes it clear that in his reference to chaos in
religious matters he does not have in mind those who are unwilling
to think seriously about religious matters or who lack the
educational attainment to do so or who, in refuge from the
uncertain-ties of the time look to attractive certainties. He
is concerned rather to make the point that (in his words)
...wherever men and women are to be found who
care about religion and feel its value, and who feel bound, as they
say, 'to think for themselves', there we are apt to discover the
prevailing note - not the only note, but the prevailing note - to
be that of uncertainty and even bewilderment, coupled very often
with a feeling of resentment against the Church or against
organised religion on account of what is called its
'failure'.
[4]
The words in which Gore describes his context offer a good
warning against too ready assumptions that we face a radically new
situation, and his attacks on the government because of the
concentration camps established during the Boer War will have a
similarly contemporary echo in the comments on the Iraq War or
perhaps even more the very proper opposition of many in the
churches to the treatment of asylum seekers, which formed the
subject matter of the last Gore Lecture by Dr Nicholas Sagovsky.
True, some of Gore's examples and language demonstrate changes in
our context: we would doubtless not put forward Roman Catholicism,
let alone Christian Science, as the escape routes chosen by those
seeking certainty in an uncertain world; but the fact remains that
he lived in a world of religious uncertainty and indeed religious
conflict, determined as he was to engage with vigour in the defence
of the faith in the uncertain world he had discerned.
Gore's words about his religious context come from the time when
he had already resigned the see of Oxford, the third episcopal
office he had held. By then he was well known as a person of
passionate intellect, a staunch apologist of the Catholic movement
within the Church of England, as well as of biblical criticism,
against those who would have seen it as an attack on orthodox
faith.
His prophetic stance occasioned much controversy and distress
for him when, as a Canon of Westminster, he received in 1901 the
news of his appointment as Bishop of Worcester. The formal
confirmation of his election was challenged by some opposed to his
views, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple,
failed to give Gore the support that he felt was due to him. So
distressed was Gore at the time that it is recorded that he was
found kneeling on the hearthrug in his house here in Little
Cloister 'sobbing in paroxysms'; I rather doubt that the Chapter of
Westminster Abbey has preserved the hearthrug on which Gore wept -
who knows whether it might have become a relic? In passing it is
interesting, and perhaps amusing, to note that The Times of
the day suggested that the ceremony of confirmation of election be
abolished given that it had been shown in court that a bishop could
be consecrated without it - and a century later the same proposal
foundered before the conservatism of the Ecclesiastical Committee,
so that this expensive relic of the legislation of Henry VIII
persists. Again, the distance separating our world from Gore's is
perhaps not as great as we might have supposed.
More seriously, however, this story raises an issue close to my
main purpose; for it illustrates the point that legal structures,
even ones conceived as a protection against corruption and
incompetence, can themselves be an obstruction to the Church's
organic life. What Gore experienced at that point, at the hands, in
his case, of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, was a disdaining of
his own conscientious position. From the standpoint of the
Archbishop all that was taking place was his support of the legal
structure within which the Church was working. A structure of
legality had become, as Gore experienced it, a structure of
disdain.
It has been two of my own recent experiences as part of the
structure of the Church Commissioners, its Assets Committee and as
a representative of that Committee on the Church of England's
Ethical Investment Advisory Group, that have caused me to raise the
same issue about the structures which were deployed in the making
of those decisions, as well as to reflect on my own responses and
the theological issues involved. At the outset I must stress that
it is structures of disdain with which I am concerned; the
attitudes of individuals are not in question here - I am clear that
all concerned acted in good faith, and that the clashes of values
which undoubtedly occurred were entirely about how best to serve
the Church and its mission. But structures of disdain cannot
continue for ever in existence without at some point bearing fruit
in disdainful attitudes; the actions we are compelled to take as a
result of the places we occupy within the structures eventually and
inevitably mould our consciousness, affecting our attitudes and
behaviour in the future. That is why structural issues are
important: they change outcomes not only in the matter under
examination but in the hearts and minds of those involved. The
phrase ' institutional racism' that has come into the language
since the Stephen Lawrence enquiry reflects precisely this insight,
that if unchallenged, structures of disdain - of which
institutional racism is a prominent example - make disdainful
behaviour acceptable and inculcate the attitudes that go with
it.
One final introductory point is needed before I embark on the
specific stories I wish to examine. The events of which we shall
speak concern money, the making of money, the guarding of money,
the use of money, the spending of money and the investing of money.
We are often misled into thinking that money is a commodity like
any other, and that the fact that it is money that is the matter
being handled is not itself particularly important. But money is
without doubt a structural matter, connecting those who
manage it to a whole system of exchange, interest, markets and
regulation, both national and international. For reasons I shall
need to mention, and which are examined in far more detail in the
chapter on money in the recent Church of England Doctrine
Commission Report, Being Human,
[5]
money therefore structures us, our
thinking and behaviour in ways that often elude our consciousness
but are pervasive of our life as individuals and as ecclesial
institutions. That these stories are about money is no accident; it
is not just that we handle money; it moulds us by the structures to
which it connects us.
The source of these reflections
The fact that, as you know from the advertisement for it, this
lecture originated in events in which I was personally involved
carries obvious dangers. My wish is to engage in theological
reflection on these events, not to continue them, though for
various and predictable reasons the events themselves continue to
excite interest and controversy. The events in question were the
decision of the Assets Committee to sell the Octavia Hill estates
to the highest bidder rather than limiting possible buyers to
registered social landlords, and the decision of the Ethical
Investment Advisory Group to refuse to recommend disinvestment in
Caterpillar Inc., despite the wishes of campaigners, of the
Anglican Church in Jerusalem, and despite in the end a resolution
of the General Synod asking that the EIAG reconsider its decision.
My own actions in these matters are a matter of public record: I
was in the minority of members of the Assets Committee who voted
against the sale that has since been effected. The decisions of the
EIAG were unanimous; I was at the meeting and have continued as
Deputy Chair of the Group to defend those decisions.
The issues were and remain deeply contentious. The processes
surrounding the sale of the Octavia Hill estates were among the
most difficult I have ever experienced, and the feelings engendered
on both sides of the argument have been very intense, and to some
extent remain so. Ill feeling has resulted towards the Assets
Committee on the part of the tenants' representatives and the
parishes and diocese in which most of the estates are to be
found.
Equally, for those who disagree with the EIAG's decision not to
recommend disinvestment from Caterpillar, the decision remains
deeply unpopular, and on the other side of the argument the passage
of the resolution at the General Synod occasioned serious breaches
of relationship between the Jewish community and the Church of
England which came to public attention through the very open and
searing argument between the Chief Rabbi and the Archbishop of
Canterbury.
These are arguments carried on for the most part within the
Church, though others, like the Chief Rabbi and the Jewish
community, have strong interests also. Arguments within the Church
may make attractive newspaper copy, but are not necessarily of
continuing importance. In this case, however, the issues are
profound and the passion with which they have been expressed, not
least by myself, very powerful.
What makes the matters about which I wish to reflect this
evening important is the fact that they raise ethical and
theological questions that connect, as I hope to show, with other
controversies of recent years, and that they have potential to
arise on future occasions. What makes them continue to exercise my
mind is the inconsistency of my own responses. In the Octavia Hill
case, I frequently deployed the argument that we, the Assets
Committee, were acting against the declared will of the local
church and its perception of its mission; in the case of the
Caterpillar decision I voted to advise the Assets Committee, and
then to persist in advising it, to override the wishes expressed by
the General Synod, and, more importantly, the wishes of the
Palestinian Christians suffering by the misuse of the Caterpillar
equipment, represented by the strong request for disinvestment
presented to us by the Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Jerusalem.
The discovery of inconsistency is always important as an indication
of unresolved issues, and in this case, since I have not changed my
opinions about either decision, the issues remain so, and the
inconsistency - whether apparent or real - remains
present.
Tidying up the debris of my cluttered mind could not possibly
justify your time even if it could be valuable for me. But in the
process of reflecting on this inconsistency and the powerful
passions raised by both these issues, I believe I have detected
some wider connections.
I am aware of some dangers in this exercise. It is bound to be
the case that in reviewing matters in which I myself was closely
involved there will be an element of self-justification, and likely
to be some moments when it appears that I am indeed simply
continuing arguments which were not resolved elsewhere. It is
possible, though this I should greatly regret, that others who were
also involved, some of whom are here this evening, will consider
their views misrepresented or even caricatured. To the extent that
these dangers materialise and obscure my aim I shall have failed in
my endeavour as well as owing them an apology. But what I hope is
that to the extent that there are implied criticisms of the past in
what I propose for the future they will be heard as constructive
and designed to improve the responses of all of us in tackling
issues that are bound to recur from time to time.
Theological reflection is not about continuing arguments that
have already been deployed, but about - as the etymology of
'reflection' suggests - a 'bending back' of the mind over certain
events, arguments, passions and decisions with a view to
discovering theological meaning within them and therefore the
possibility of fruitful change in the future.
What the stories tell us
The two stories - the Octavia Hill story and the Caterpillar
story - have marked differences. The Octavia Hill decision fell to
be made by the Assets Committee, a body charged with the sole power
and duty to manage the assets of the Church Commissioners; the
second came to the Ethical Investment Advisory Group, a body whose
function, as its name implies, is to give advice to the three
Church of England Investing Bodies, in practice to the Assets
Committee, the only one of the three investing bodies with holdings
in Caterpillar; any decision whether to act on that advice or not
is a matter for that Committee.
A second difference lay in the area of initiative: the Octavia
Hill decision came at the initiative of the Assets Committee, while
the EIAG came to consider the Caterpillar issue only because of
pressure from outside, chiefly from campaigning bodies concerned to
act in the Palestinian cause.
A third difference lay in the fact that the Octavia Hill
decision was made primarily for asset management reasons: the
Committee came to the view that their holdings in residential
property were too large a proportion of their portfolio, and that
it was not realistic to suppose that they would be able to invest
enough in the properties to refurbish them and still make an
appropriate return. In the case of the Caterpillar question no
particular financial issues were ever raised: it was assumed
without even being said that had the recommendation been to
disinvest a holding would have been purchased with a similar
return. As a result, although there was and remains strong
criticism of the decision made by the Group, it has never been
suggested that it was made for financial advantage. In the case of
the Octavia Hill decision the price to be paid was the determining
factor, a position justified by the Committee's interpretation of
the Vice-Chancellor's judgment in the case of Harries v Church
Commissioners, 'The Oxford Judgement', which in their minds offers
the authoritative account of 'fiduciary duty', requiring, except in
limited circumstances, the realising of the maximum financial
return for the Church.
The Octavia Hill decision was therefore made on the basis of
three structural realities: the statutory role of the Committee as
sole guardian of the Church Commissioners' capital assets; the laws
of property and tenancy which in general do not give the tenants
any role in decisions to sell the freehold of their homes; the
Oxford Judgment, which the majority of the Committee believed
limited their options in selling the property to one determined in
the last resort by the price to be realised; and what I have
referred to as the structure of money itself.
In the case of the Caterpillar decision, there are similarly
structural determinants of the Advisory Group's action. The
autonomy of the different Anglican provinces means that the
Episcopal Church in Jerusalem cannot exert a claim upon the Church
of England to deploy its assets in any particular way. The EIAG is
limited in the brief it has to giving advice on the ethical issues
involved in investment, and functions within an ethical
investment policy which has been agreed with those whom it advises;
its task is principally to examine particular companies' actions,
and particular sectors of the economy, to discern whether continued
investment in those areas is according to the policy inimical to
the Church's task. In that discernment it has a policy of not
investing in companies manufacturing offensive military equipment;
the argument was and is that Caterpillar equipment is being used
for essentially military purposes, and in support of an illegal
occupation; the counter-argument, endorsed by the EIAG, is that the
company is not directly complicit in the end-use of the equipment
it has sold, that there are no current or projected sales from
which the Church is profiting, and that more can therefore be
achieved by engagement with the company than by disinvestment.
All these structures as I have described them are, I would
suggest, essentially 'disdainful'. That is to say they prescribe
the views and issues which cannot be considered in the decision. In
these two cases a vast variety of issues arise. In both cases, for
instance, the matters in question concerned people's homes, in the
one case the existing tenants and those who in the future would
have need of the affordable housing which the Octavia Hill estates
had provided for a century; in the other case the homes of
Palestinian people which were being destroyed by the use of
Caterpillar equipment. That could not be considered.
In both cases the matter concerned relations with the part of
the Church most directly and immediately involved. In the case of
the Caterpillar decision, it is well known that the Anglican Church
in Jerusalem is strongly committed to demanding disinvestment, a
stance given some support by the Anglican Consultative Council. In
the case of the Octavia Hill estates, the parishes and the diocese
of Southwark in which the majority of the estates are situated all
strongly opposed the sale of the estates other than to a registered
social landlord.
It is not that these considerations were unimportant in the
minds of myself and my colleagues in the EIAG and on the Assets
Committee. The point I am making is that there was a structurally
imposed hierarchy of considerations in which the ones to which I
have referred - the well being of present and future occupiers, the
attitude of the local church - were effectively at the bottom end
of the agenda. They were in practice bound to be objects of disdain
in the structure of things.
Reflections on disdain: 'I have no need of
you'
Like many organisations, the Church of England has lately
engaged in much debate and re-organisation in the search for
coherence. The title of the report which eventually emerged from
the Turnbull Commission - Working as One Body
[6]
- and which eventually led
to the passing of the National Institutions Measure and the
creation of an Archbishops' Council to give central direction to
the national institutions of the Church of England, is more than
just a title. It represents the harnessing of St Paul's metaphor of
the body in I Corinthians 12 - no mere metaphor, but at least that
- to commend that process of achieving enhanced coherence. The
harnessing of that metaphor, and in the process that seminal
biblical passage, to these ecclesiastical purposes has had in my
view a most damaging effect. The key verses in the passage
read:
For just as the body is one and has many members,
and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it
is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one
body -Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to
drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one
member but of many. If the foot were to say, 'Because I am not a
hand, I do not belong to the body', that would not make it any less
a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, 'Because I am not
an eye, I do not belong to the body', that would not make it any
less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would
the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the
sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the
body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member,
where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one
body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you', nor
again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the
contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are
indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less
honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable
members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more
respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the
body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there
may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the
same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer
together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together
with it.
[7]
Although it is possible to draw a message of coherence from this
passage, its main purpose is clearly something else. In the society
of ancient Corinth, a society whose culture had, in the mind of the
apostle, invaded the Church far too much, issues of status and
greed had come to exercise a dominant role. The 'body' metaphor had
a history within the ancient literature of being used precisely to
support a demand for loyalty by those lower in society to those in
established positions, supporting, we might say, an order of
established disdain. Paul's words clearly stand this on its head,
calling for the honouring precisely of those who occupy the most
marginal and despised positions; honour and loyalty are to be
deployed in precisely the reverse direction.
My pointing to the effects of the use of the 'body' metaphor in
the title of the 1995 report is not so as to enter into a debate
about the particular reforms it set in train, but to note the
serious mis-education that has resulted from the appropriation of
Paul's language in the service of the quest for coherence rather
than of the challenging of disdain. Paul's message in this setting
is clearly not so much about the importance of coherence and unity
- though they were very important aspirations; the principal issue
was the confronting of patterns of disdain: I have no need of
you is what no part of the body may say to another.
[8]
There is in any case no
possibility of the kind of unity with which Paul is concerned
unless patterns of disdain are brought to an end.
But the emergence of a hierarchy of responsibility always
presents the possibility of disdain; it is possible that the lack
of any sense of disdain, the belief that one holds
other people in respect, can mislead one into ignoring the fact
that the structural relationship declares, loud and clear, 'I
have no need of you'. The Assets Committee's 'exclusive right
and duty' to manage the Church's assets has already been referred
to: and what does 'exclusive right and duty' mean if not the
absence of any obligation to involve others in the decision?
Individual members may have motives of charity and engagement as
they go about their decision-making, and the Committee itself may
believe that it has heard the concerns of others - I am questioning
neither the motives nor the belief - but the structure is
one in which consultation is a matter of their decision rather than
of obligation. That is what makes it a structure of disdain in
precisely the sense conveyed in Paul's account of the workings of
the body: in the last resort the Committee had no need of
the assent of others or even to show that it had heard them.
But structuring the end of disdain has to extend more widely
than the relationships of different parts of the Church. It has
also to be based on that other image of Church, in Matthew chapter
25, where the 'least of the brothers and sisters' become, as the
parable unfolds, Christ himself. So far were the poor, the sick,
the prisoners disdained that they were not even recognised as the
form under which the Body of Christ presented itself. What has to
be structured therefore is the end of disdain not just for other
parts of the Church and individuals within it, but the weak,
vulnerable and indeed 'disdained' wherever they are.
Again, the structures involved in the two decisions which form
the basis of this reflection contrast sharply with this picture. In
the case of the Caterpillar there was no obligation to
consider the views of those personally suffering from the way in
which the Israeli government uses the equipment. I say this having
said quite clearly that within the structure we currently have I
believed in the decision taken by the EIAG not to recommend
disinvestment; had a different structure existed I should still
have argued for what we decided. But that structure remains a
structure of disdain. A different structure might well have
produced a different decision, even if one against which I had
personally argued.
In the case of the Octavia Hill decision, once again an ' I
have no need of you' structure is what we have, and within that
structure different of us came to different conclusions. For my own
part, had the decision required the involvement of the local
church, in parish and diocese, I am sure I would have taken the
view I did at the time. My colleagues who decided for the sale
might or might not have taken a different view in a different
structural setting. I say that because were the structure different
the Committee' s
obligations would also be different, affecting the duties
required of them and therefore their inner sense of their own
task.
"I have no need of you" "Inasmuch as you did it to one
of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to
me" These are the contrasting texts of disdain and esteem, and,
as I have indicated, it is patterns of esteem that require to be
reflected in the structures we inhabit if they are also to
shape our souls.
The Wider Context
My engagement with the structural issues surrounding two recent
and painful episodes in which I have been involved has also turned
my mind to the structures of autonomy and communion which have of
late been dominant questions in the life of the Anglican Communion
and in an ongoing way in our ecumenical relationships also. The
Windsor Report
[9]
reflects in a profound way about what happens when structures of
autonomy are seen not just as the legal basis of our operations as
provinces but as defining theological relationships - where
they declare in all sorts of circumstances 'I have no need
of you'. The call to 'autonomy in communion' is, like the other
matters of which I have been speaking, a structural issue,
one that cannot be tackled without the spiritual
transformation of which St Paul also speaks, but a
structural transformation nonetheless.
What is critical, however, is an accurate discernment of the
kind of structural-cum-spiritual transformation that is required
for the redemption of structures of disdain. Failure to diagnose
accurately the nature of the problem will inevitably produce
inappropriate solutions. We are dealing with disdain, and the
remedy we seek is a remedy precisely for that. If we are to avoid
replicating structures of disdain, then the character of such
structures have to be accurately discerned.
At the heart of most structures of disdain is the suggestion
that we need clarity and coherence in decision-making so that
decisions can be taken with firmness and above all with the
necessary speed. Among the pressures to eliminate alternative
sources of power and further requirements of consultation is the
sense that there needs to be a point of reference to which
decisions can be put with the assurance of an authoritative
response.
Without doubt that pressure operates increasingly in the society
at large. Pressures to circumvent, abbreviate or even eliminate
processes that lengthen the time it takes to reach decisions are
everywhere to be seen. Government dislikes delay - unless it is
itself in charge of the delay. Interference with the delaying or
reviewing powers of the judiciary, or of the second chamber of
Parliament is a constant feature of government at the present time.
From urgency come structures of disdain.
Fear and Money as Sources of Structures of
Disdain
There is not time here to survey all the pressures that are
manifest in our society at the present to reduce the time - and
therefore the processes - necessary for making decisions. The
period since the 9/11 massacre has seen increasingly repressive
measures against people seen as a danger, apparent particularly in
the endless pressures on the rule of law in the interests either of
the 'war' on terrorism or the 'fight' against crime - the
pugnacious metaphors are not co-incidental. In his Atlee Foundation
Lecture, Lord Steyn points to the dangerous erosion of the rule of
law, a development not in any way prevented any longer by the
practice of parliamentary democracy; after some frightening
illustrations from the most repressive regimes of the twentieth
century and their use of democratic structure to secure their way,
he remarks
Here I pause to summarise why I regard these
examples of some of the great tyrannies of the twentieth century as
containing important lessons. They demonstrate that majority rule
by itself, and legality on its own, are insufficient to guarantee a
civil and just society. Even totalitarian states mostly act
according to the laws of their countries. They demonstrate the
dangers of uncontrolled executive power. They also show how it is
impossible to maintain true judicial independence in the
contaminated moral environment of an authoritarian state.
[10]
The pressure in an environment of fear is not only to circumvent
due process but, in a close parallel with decision-making processes
in the Church's own life, to exclude especially the lives and
voices of those deemed to be 'outside' - especially in the case of
the government's current priorities, immigrants and asylum seekers.
That represents precisely the encroachment of structures of
disdain; the current obsession with deportation parallels
discussions about expulsion from communion, as more and more are
deemed people of whom we have no need: we have no need of
youholding up our decisions, or even in our midst.
But the climate of fear is not all that engenders cultures and
structures of disdain. I stated earlier that the money was itself a
structure and not just a commodity. Part of the pressure to
expedite decision-making, to enhance its clarity and authority and
therefore to disdain what might interfere with that is the far
greater volume of money at stake, and the vastly increased speed
with which monetary movements are made because of technical advance
and the processes of globalisation. There is a quantifiable cost to
delay, with an accompanying suspicion of, and therefore disdain
for, all that may slow things down. A high level of technical skill
and understanding is required; not to make use of it exposes
those who hold money to the costs of delay and the potential for
corruption and fraud. As someone who is regularly present at Assets
Committee discussing matters far beyond my understanding, I can
only marvel at the technical skill of those who do understand and
the generosity and commitment with which that skill is freely
offered for the benefit of the Church; of that motivation there
should be no doubt.
Nonetheless money, its power, speed and technical complexity,
have led to the creation of a structure of disdain for other
considerations, ones which as individuals the members of the
Committee can be just as committed but which as a Committee they
are persuaded they have to exclude. Their commitment to doing the
best they can to fund the Church's mission means that their place
in that mission, the non-financial effects of their
decision-making, have come to take very clearly a lower place.
Financial detriment is a matter of profound concern; but what of
other kinds of detriment that cannot have a figure put on them?
Justice delayed
Lest I should appear to be arguing for slowness as an end in
itself, as though all things could be submitted to an endless
filibuster, there is a more spiritually compelling reason for
proceeding to decision with the maximum possible speed, and
therefore the exercise of disdain towards what - or who - ever
stands in the way. That is that there are urgent issues of
injustice, urgent missionary requirements. Urgency is a biblical
theme, and justice too long delayed is justice denied. There are
issues to be faced in the life of church and society which engender
a proper sense of urgency, a proper impatience and certainly an
appropriate refusal to be deterred by processes, and indeed
structures, that interpose themselves between the sickness and its
remedy, the vision and its realisation. In some of the most
controversial issues facing the Anglican Communion there is without
doubt an impatience with the difficulty of change where change is
what is needed to secure justice; that argument for speed needs
surely to be taken with the utmost seriousness.
Structures of Just Patience
Yet from all sides come reflections that in the search for a
just and sustainable world patience will also have a necessary
place. If we are to have I have need of you structures to
replace those of disdain we shall have to allow time. We shall have
to create authorities not to decide outcomes - which they
are likely to do with all the disdain of the authority structures
they replace - but to decide processes of consultation and audit
the voices that have been excluded from the discussion. There must
be a structure of audited esteem that considers which are the
voices that need to be heard in relation to any particular decision
of significance, and checks whether they have been given proper
weight. We require not some super authority in the Church of
England or for that matter in the Anglican Communion that takes
away autonomy, but one that can properly demand reconsideration,
and above all inclusion in the process of discernment. It will, as
processes of discernment often must, weigh risks and balance
considerations.
The range of issues which we shall need to consider in the
decisions we have to take grows larger all the time: sustainability
and climate change, the relations between the generations and
between homo sapiens and the other creatures that inhabit
the earth, unity between the different parts of the Christian
family, and proper consideration for those of other faiths. These
and many more will come to seem naturally parts of any
responsible moral decision-making, and cannot be included
without patience and a constant revisiting of the question whether
our structures communicate esteem or disdain. It was a source of
limited encouragement that among at least the majority of those
organisations who were disappointed with the decision of the EIAG
was positive feedback about many aspects of the process: structures
of esteem can be achieved. We need them badly in a situation where
some considerations, notably monetary and security considerations,
have come to outweigh all others, with all the structures of
disdain that have resulted, to the point that in society at large
the short-circuiting of due process has come to be equated with
common sense.
Structures of esteem might have some equivalence to judicial
review, though I am not proposing that kind of tribunal. Such
structures will only emerge if there is recognition that what we
have now condemns some voices to being disregarded, and therefore
some issues to be ignored. There will be costs in changing that,
but the costs of no change are considerable also. My guess is that
if we could discuss the creation of structures of esteem based on
powers of delay and review we might well achieve agreement more
quickly than if we try to achieve new structures of decision.
Certainly in society at large that is more than ever needed if the
pressure for urgency is not to lead to the recapitulation of some
of the most terrible excesses to which Lord Steyn referred and
which there are still enough of us to remember.
From disdain to worship
Throughout this lecture I have illustrated rather than defined
'disdain'. I wish to draw these comments to a close by reflecting
on that particular expression as it has emerged in these remarks,
and why it is that St Paul is so clear that it represents a way of
being that is fundamentally inimical to the life of
discipleship and therefore ultimately to all human flourishing.
Disdain is etymologically linked to dignity and therefore to
worth. I have no need of you represents the statement of
your not having worth for me. As such the word resides at one end
of a linguistic spectrum, at the other end of which is the
declaration of worth which we call ' worship'. Where disdain
denies, worship ascribes. When it comes to 'worth' the life of
discipleship is about the movement from denial to ascription.
For St Paul this movement is rooted in the cross, the event in
which Christ was declared to be the one of whom we had no need and
so has become the one to whom ultimate worth is to be ascribed. In
the terms which this lecture has attempted to address, the one who
became the recipient of the decisions of others became thereby the
one to whom all authority is now conveyed. By that process infinite
worth was conveyed to humankind, and especially to the disdained
among them.
The search for the redemption of structures of disdain, the
redemption of the structures engendered by the unfettered rule of
fear and money, is rooted in a fundamental conviction: that in
Christ God conferred upon humankind not just the challenge but also
the dignity, the worth, of his eternal 'I have need of you.' As a
result we are not free - simply not free - to conduct our lives on
any other basis than that of being those upon whom has been
conferred a worth we did not have, set among fellow human beings
who share that worth with us, and whose worth we therefore cannot
deny; the guarding of that worth is our primary fiduciary duty,
that with which God has entrusted us.
Gore put it trenchantly in the Bampton Lectures he delivered
just two years before he became a Canon of Westminster; if
disciples protest that they had lived by Christian faith...
... but of course in our business we did as every
one else did: we sold in the dearest and bought in the cheapest
market: we did not, of course we did not, any other consideration,
when we were investing our money, except whether the investments
were safe: we never imagined we could love our neighbours as
ourselves in the competition of business...
they must expect to hear the rejoinder, 'Did I not bid thee seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness'.
[11]
Gore has no illusions about the
radical nature of the change that is needed, but at the same time
he is clear about the promise that awaits a Church that embraces
it:
He will touch your sufferings and your labours
with the glory of His sympathy; He will deepen your hopes for
yourselves and others with the security of an eternal prospect. At
the last He will purify and perfect and welcome you. Only do not
make the fatal mistake of imagining that your life is Christian
anyhow, or that it can be Christian by any other process than by
your deliberate and courageous acceptance of the law of Christ,
because you desire to be his disciple.12
Such is the promise to a Church which, being structured for
worship, allows no part of its life to be structured for
disdain.
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