In the three weeks since my hip replacement operation and the two weeks I’ve been living at St Saviour’s Priory, Haggerston, I’ve been reading feminist theology in the Sister’s excellent library in the hope of working out what the most important thing is that I want to communicate in this first blog I’ve written for some time. Well, here are my Thursday morning thoughts.
The Christian Church in general and the Church of England in particular is not manifesting, to my way of thinking, a healthy, creative, Christ-centred vision of God – a vision rooted in the teaching and life and wisdom of Jesus and of those men and women he invited to follow him and share his journey and who responded to his invitation. Some of them caught the vision and became more deeply aware of what he was about, what his invitation implied, what the teaching required and responded to him and lived it out and began to embody it for themselves.
At the same time, there were many who, in an all too human way resisted or misunderstood the challenging essence of his teaching. This resulted in a various corruptions and distortions of the vision of God centred in Jesus. As the movement grew and expanded, a male take-over developed, sectarian, Pauline, that inevitably led within a century to the formation of an institutional, hierarchical, male dominated (for 2,000 years) institution that developed some very bad ideas about God and Jesus, bad habits and practices, addictions to dogmas, doctrines, traditions, theologies, biblical literalisms and fundamentalism that achieved great missionary success and resulted in schisms, religious wars, abuse, intolerance and prejudices.
The CofE today in London
Living in Haggerston Priory for three weeks in total, now, I have begun to formulate an impression of today’s CofE culture. The six members of the community living here model a life rooted in worship, the daily offices, prayer, language, images and actions that are rooted in a deeply thoughtful, conscious, reflective understanding of the essence of the Gospel – of the unadulterated life and teaching of Jesus (insofar as that is possible to discern).
Last Sunday I worshipped at St James’s Piccadilly, celebrating their patronal festival. I was God-smacked! It was alive, reflective, imaginative, energised, a congregation deeply committed and enthused.
Wandering around, I’ve visited other churches. The nearest is St Chad’s, a Tractarian Victorian building, firmly locked, depressing from the outside, open only 3 times a week for mass, a Society church. At the end of the 26 bus route is St Mary at Eton, Hackney Wick. I chanced upon it one Sunday morning. The building is impressive and beautifully maintained. Twenty people were gathered, women in ministry. Another weekday morning I visited Christ Church, Spitalfields, one of my favourite buildings, rescued from decay two decades ago. It stood lifeless, gates firmly chained and padlocked, open on Sundays only, for HTB-style worship events. The bus passes Shoreditch church, similarly padlocked and inaccessible. An HTB takeover is taking place in the East End, once the flourishing heartland of Anglo-Catholic vision and outreach. HTB has become the dominant ethos, numerically and financially successful churches with access to huge financial resources, supported by the hierarchy with a declining number of Anglo-Catholic shrines supported by Victorian ritual preservation societies, adored by a niche community.
All these church buildings and congregations, variously thriving and dying, exist in the midst of buzzing, diverse, multi-cultural, mobile-phone centred, grossly unequal financial centres and poverty-stricken communities.
Jesus’ essence
The essence of Jesus’ teaching and vision, the awareness of God’s unconditional, infinite love, was “evolved”, “adapted”, “corrupted”, following his death. By the time Paul appeared on the scene and started writing letters, circa 40-60 CE, and well before the Gospels and Acts were written, circa 60-100 CE, let alone before Councils of the Church and Constantine’s revolution corrupted the essence almost irrevocably.
The foundations of today’s varieties of Christian life, teaching, worship theology and practice are largely unthinkingly and unreflectively based on “what works”, what achieves growth and success in mission and evangelism within a very limited framework. Church planting is in vogue. Others are focused on special interest groups: the Prayer Book Society, Common Worship addicts, justice and equality groups for women, people of colour, people with disabilities, full inclusion.
My Convictions
I am a person of conviction. At the age of eleven, nearly twelve, I was convicted by certain truths that I still hold to be core: (1) I am a gay man and I am drawn by desire for intimacy and relationships with other men; (2) God is not prejudiced, abusive or homophobic and loves me as a gay man; (3) God creates and loves the cosmos and infuses creation with unconditional, infinite, intimate love, goodness, wisdom, justice and energy.
I have never stopped interrogating my own thoughts, assessing what is going on in the Christian Church today as viewed through the prism of Jesus. I find myself despairing at the inadequacy of the multiple brands of Christian life and practice to dig more deeply through the layers of accumulated traditions and teachings corrupting the essence of divine love to be found in the pearl of great price.