Listen / Read
JJ exceeded himself today. I’m a little overwhelmed, actually. I really don’t understand how the Bishop of Liverpool could think it acceptable to exploit the emotional gravity of a child’s death to propagandise a political agenda. What an unconscionable thing to do.
I’m not flabbergasted, I’m not outraged, I’m not incensed, I’m just quietly appalled. I have complained to the BBC (it’s the first time I’ve actually done that for a specific reading) and will let you know what they say.
What the Bishop failed to do was root his reading in his religion’s theology, or offer spiritual insight of some kind or other. It was essentially a party political broadcast for his politically vested organisation.
After invoking the memory of a young boy’s tragic death, he went about listing the different points of contact the Anglican Church had with the boy’s family and the wider community, and then described it as a tapestry of life. But it wasn’t that, because a tapestry is a combination of things. The Bishop simply picked out his own crew. What about the paramedics, doctors, nurses, police officers, coroners, funeral directors, lawyers for the prosecution? What about family liaison officers and grief counsellors? What about the love and support of family and friends? That’s what I call a tapestry. The Bishop of Liverpool just gave the credit for all their efforts to nine vicars.
The Church of England is not the Church for England, because England is full of all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs and none. Mainly none. It cannot be for all people. Do Muslims or Catholics or Jews or Hindus receive such a tapestried presence from Anglican clergy? No, they receive whatever they will from representatives of their respective faith communities. Do atheists receive such a tapestried presence from Anglican clergy? No, they are very well served by the above mentioned public servants, who are there for the whole community. And they don’t take credit for the hard work and dedication of others.
Religious communities make the presence of religious organisations economically viable by supporting places of worship and the clerics who maintain them. Without the elevated status the established Church of England enjoys, other Christian denominations maintain a presence in a range of communities. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh (Buddhist, Pagan, Spiritualist, Jain, Zoroastrian, Christadelphian and on it goes) communities all come together to worship and seek guidance as they will. None of them seek it with Anglican priests, as the Church of England does not represent their beliefs.
My area (consistently Labour voting since 1935) is a 15 minute walk from the centre of a post-industrial city, but only a couple of minutes on foot will take me to a bank, a post office, a school, a pub and a GP. I suspect the Bishop may be guilty of hyperbole. Either that or they’ve all disappeared here. And every Saturday and Sunday morning I hear the healthy bells of the Roman Catholic church across the road. They are especially proud of their “parish covenant with the Poor, with its commitment to justice and peace through wealth-sharing”. How they mange to make a covenant with the poor and sharing the wealth economically viable without being established, I do not know. Anyone would have thought they’d have gone the way of the banks, post offices, schools, pubs and GPs by now. Wait a minute, they have. They’ve gone nowhere. Maybe it’s just the CoE that would retreat to the leafy suburbs when the going got disestablished.
The Church of England doesn’t sustain communities. Communities are sustained by the truly diverse tapesty of people who live and work in them. All of them. The Bishop suggests that the very continuance of communities depends on the “quiet and unassuming ways of the Church for England”. What he has actually done is loudly assume that the Church of England makes the world go round. And though money isn’t doing that any more, this isn’t about cash either. It’s about status. The Church of England doesn’t receive direct funding from the government, they get most of it from donations. This isn’t about economic viability, it’s about being THE church of England. It’s about ego; the kind of ego one must have to invoke the emotional trauma of a child’s death to defend vested political interests and take credit for the courageous efforts of an entire community.