At the end of August I posted a blog about the survey of churches I was carrying out in the Islington area of East London where I’m temporarily resident at St Saviour’s Priory in Haggerston. Since then I’ve continued to visit churches, both midweek on foot and by bus and on Sundays, attending services, building a personal picture of what the Church of England looks like in this area of the Diocese of London. I have been shocked at what I’ve experienced in some of the churches where I’ve worshipped, SAINT and HTB style churches in particular. What has shocked me?
Attitudes to LGBTQIA+ people
I enjoyed a really good conversation with Steve Opie, the Lead Pastor and Training Incumbent on the SAINT churches 54 strong team, whom I met one Tuesday evening at SAINT St John at Hackney. Being gay wasn’t a problem, he said. There are gay members of these churches. But an elusive dynamic was present in the conversation. I was getting answers to my questions that were skilfully navigating around what I really wanted to know – the truth.
At the 5pm service I attended at SAINT Shoreditch there was a brief opportunity to greet your neighbour. The young black woman next to me said she had been coming for a year. She asked how I came to be there. I swallowed deeply and told her truthfully: I was there because I’m gay and I wondered what the attitude to LGBTQIA+ people was in these congregations. She froze – not something she wanted to talk about at the end of a stressful day working in a psychiatric unit.
Another Sunday I worshipped at another SAINT church in Hackney, a church that is ‘High Church’ in practice with vestments and incense. At the end of the service I met the priest, introduced myself, told her why I was there, and asked what the attitude of the church was to LGBTQIA+ people. She hesitated for a moment, clearly uncomfortable; she told me that this was a question she was unable to answer and that I needed to contact the communications officer at SAINT headquarters and ask them. I made a note to do so and then said, but you are responsible for this congregation; what is your personal attitude towards welcoming LGBTQIA+ people? Another uncomfortable pause. I am unable to answer your question, she said. We (the members of the 54-strong SAINT staff team) have been told not to answer such questions (especially from the media or inquisitive people like me). I decided not to probe any further but I’ve continued to reflect on this exchange along with a number of other experiences I’m about to describe. I’ve talked with a number of friends to check whether my reaction was and is reasonable. Why would the staff team of 54 of an extremely well-funded group of churches have been warned (in advance) not to talk about the SAINT attitude to LGBTQIA+ people? I’ve also wondered why an intelligent ordained priest would allow herself to be gagged by such a ruling. Alarm bells have been ringing ever since. A church that gags people in this way and priests who allow themselves to be gagged are one of the reasons why the scandals of manipulative, abusive behaviour in NOS and Soul Survivor churches went unchecked for years. The culture of secrecy, control and passive conformity to unhealthy, abusive teachings, practices and cultures account for many of the abuse scandals subsequently uncovered in the Church of England. The same conditions still apply. The Safeguarding regime and protocols do not guarantee safety.
Security personnel
I noted in the previous blog that the entrance to SAINT churches and other HTB plants are often protected by security personnel in Hi-Viz jackets when services are in progress. Who needs protecting and why, I’ve been wondering? I had a conversation with the man at the door of SAINT church, St Leonard’s Shoreditch. I asked him, are security guards really necessary? Who or what does the church need protecting from? He said: From the high numbers of rough sleepers and homeless people who gather in Haggerston because of the number of local hostels and homeless projects. They come and urinate against the church and do other inappropriate things. When I asked whether church staff or congregation members were at risk he said that one of the clergy had once been attacked.
I’ve been reading Ken Leech’s book Doing Theology in Altab Ali Park in which he describes the nineties decade when he worked as a community theologian attached to St Botolph’s Aldgate. In the book he references many individual Christians and projects working for justice in the East End. Now, so far as I can discover, there are none. Instead we have churches employing security guards to keep such people out. All of the SAINT and HTB family of churches I visited during the week were locked. Not only were the churches locked but their churchyards were padlocked. These churches minister to people to a God who is only accessible on Sundays. In contrast I praise St George in the East, one of the churches open every day, unguarded. The day I visited a homeless person was sleeping next to the entrance ramp. As I was looking round the church he came in and made a long, very loud phone call on his mobile. In the course of this a young woman came in, sat on the back pew, bowed her head and for ten minutes was deeply still and prayerful.
One hour thirty minute services by the clock
Another Sunday I worshipped at St John at Hackney, the primary SAINT church. The sound volume was so intolerably loud that after 45 minutes I decided I could bear it no more and rose to leave. Turning to the back of the church I discovered that the worship song words were being projected onto the back wall, visible to the leaders on the platform. Not only were the words being projected – there was also a digital clock and timer showing how far in advance or in arrears from the scheduled 90 minute timing they were. Whoa, I thought. Isn’t the whole point of charismatic worship that it’s a spontaneous experience, responding to the Holy Spirit and the effect of the divine presence on the congregation? Nope! The worship is very specifically prepared, choreographed, timed and controlled in advance. Nothing spontaneous. Ruled by the clock. Totally reliant on computer technology. I discussed my experience with two very good conservative evangelical friends, both ordained. One knew about the clock and the timed services; the other was shocked.
Holy Communion Liturgy
I attended what turned out to be a communion service at Christ Church Spitalfields. It was a timed, standard hour and a half service with platform-led sung praise and a sermon followed by more praise. On the screens came an announcement. “If you wish your children to receive communion please collect them from the crypt now, it will begin in five minutes” thus saith the digital clock). A table was placed at the front of the congregation with bowls of broken bread and a number of chalices. At the appointed time, the leader read St Paul’s account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, 1 Cor. 11.23-26, then the narrative from Matthew 26.26-29, then invited the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer and then, with instructions about who was invited to receive and how, we were invited to come forward. Following this, the service continued with more praise and an altar call. No material from the Common Worship order for Communion was used or was the order followed.
In three other churches, two of them SAINT congregations, one evangelical in origin, one high church, all using Common Worship texts and a set form of service, the priest presiding in each case seemed to have received no training whatsoever in the actions appropriate to presiding at a celebration of Holy Communion. I’ve asked these clergy, ordained in the last two decades, what training they received in the conduct of worship and the celebration of communion. In each case the answer was, effectively, none. There are some colleges and possibly some non-residential courses where such training is given, but in general the CofE seems to be indifferent to eucharistic practice, theology and meaning today. Bishops are either unaware of what is going on or indifferent to the inadequate conduct of the clergy they ordain and licence.
Back at St Saviour’s Priory I checked what books on liturgy were available in the library. There are a dozen including two copies of Dom Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy published in 1945. I have my own copy in store. It’s a book I took to be essential reading for anyone training to be ordained in the Church of England but the clergy I spoke to had never heard of it. Among the other library books are Bread of the World by John Hadley and Creating Uncommon Worship by Richard Giles, a companion volume to Re-Pitching the Tent. All these books, and more, understand that the Christian Church has, throughout its history, lived with a communion liturgy that follows a shape and includes elements that are fundamental to the action, following Jesus’ instruction to do this “in remembrance of” him (Luke). Communion has a fourfold action – taking, giving thanks, breaking and sharing. The congregation are not passive participants in this action but are actively involved. The movements for reform of the liturgy in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, both in the shape of the text and the shape of buildings and liturgical space, set out to recover elements lost from the Reformation onwards, restoring dynamic structure and energy to Christian’s gathering to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Mass. Not all Church of England priests are being trained today in the theological and practical fundamentals of eucharistic worship. Bishops are indifferent to this loss, presumably because the successful growing of churches and the successful increase of income that is achieved by the HTB/SAINT model now being heavily promoted and funded by the institutional church and routed via the Church Revitalisation Trust matters more than anything else. It is increasingly far removed from the vision of those people who introduced me to Christian fundamentals in the 1950s and 60s and whose vision, theology, teaching and practice inspired in the 70s, 80s and into the 90s. They laid the foundations of my understanding of Christian life, practice and theology that was and is fundamental to my formation and faith.
The church in general and the bishops in particular need to wake up to the damage and corruption of Christian essences that are being eroded by focusing on ideas that are infected by the inadequate theology and teaching received by ordinands and others in churches funded by the Church Revitalisation Trust, teachings and practices that are potentially abusive, toxic and un-Christian. Amongst other developments, Holy Communion is being reduced to a casual, sacred-lite, spiritually superficial, theologically vapid, innocuous repetition of New Testament texts, thus totally lacking the dynamic, transformative, imaginative energy that is the essence of following Jesus on the road to Calvary, Crucifixion and Resurrection. Family friendly, Gen-Z comforting worship is the product of the day, but it is grossly inadequate to the transformative power of the Christian calling to follow Jesus in practice and teaching towards the essence of life in all its fullness.