Meditation presence
Every morning at 7am I walk to the meditation room/chapel at the end of the guest room corridor in St Saviour’s Priory, my present home. In one corner of the chapel a eucharistic host is contained in a permanently lit tabernacle with an open fretwork cover. Sitting on the floor below is a large icon of Christ. On the wall behind the altar is an austere Christ-crucified – the slender body forming the cross. It is a space where I find presence. I meditate every morning for 30 minutes, aware in turn of my belly and genitals, nourished by goodness; my heart and lungs, enriched by life-giving oxygen, love-rich blood pumped by my heart; my brain, my mind, flowing with wisdom, consciousness, aware in the present moment. Here I am able to focus on real presence, alive and flowing within my being, my body, life in all its fulness that Jesus came that we may have. After meditating I join the sisters Tuesday to Saturday for Holy Communion in the Priory chapel.
Being here has given me the opportunity to visit the churches in this area in an attempt to build up a personal picture of what the Church of England looks like in this area of the Diocese of London. I realised that I need to be more adventurous, less prejudiced about contemporary Church of England culture. I have been exploring by bus and on foot and have now visited, mid-week and in a few cases, on Sundays, thirty three churches.
There are at least five churches in the area that are part of the SAINT group and a number of others that are HTB plants. I’ve worshipped in four of these churches and have been left uncertain as to whether these churches and the forms of worship taking place within them really are recognisably part of the Church of England into which I was baptised and of which I am an ordained priest.
I’ve attended the 5pm event at the SAINT church of St Leonard, Shoreditch, the 9.30 at St John of Hackney, the 9.30 Traditional Service of Holy Communion at St Barnabas Homerton, the 10.00 Sunday Eucharist at St Luke, Hackney and the Eleven at Christ Church Spitalfields which also turned out to be a communion service. I’ve also attended the 10am Eucharist at St Michael and All Angels London Fields. Some of you Thinking Anglican followers would, I suspect, express surprise at the liturgical practices of some of these churches. It seems that anything goes nowadays, and no elements whatsoever of Common Worship need to be included. I’ve appreciated the comments posted on Thinking Anglicans following my previous
I’m carrying a question around with me: are Charismatic Evangelical Anglican churches becoming more welcoming and open to LGBTQIA+ people? My first impressions are that churches that are HTB plants in origin and churches that are members of the comparatively new charismatic evangelical clusters are, contrary to my prejudiced expectations, often quietly open to LGBTQIA+ people. It seems that a significant movement towards a much more open and welcoming attitude to LGBTQIA+ people is occurring within some of the charismatic evangelical groups. This has been reinforced by two friends of mine who have posted about the two Fruitful conferences organised by inclusive charismatic churches. A third conference is planned for 2026.
Maybe after twenty two years of living in the diocese of Salisbury, in a village 5 miles from Devizes on the edge of Salisbury Plain, I’ve become very out of touch with developments in the culture of the Church of England. I have found myself examining my assumptions and prejudices. What, I’ve been asking, is normative about worship in the Church of England today? What kind of faith in God and practice of Christian life is being modelled and taught in these churches. About the only places where the services have been recognisable to my lifetime of involvement with the CofE have been in the chapel at St Saviour’s Priory, Haggerston (and communion there isn’t strictly according to the rubrics) and at the 10am Eucharist at St Michael and All Angels London Fields.
The God I open myself to in silent meditation and presence every morning is centred in seventy-seven years of teaching and experience from Kindergarten Sunday School to the present. It is centred in the life and teaching of Jesus as witnessed in the Gospels, a life encapsulated in John 1.10; “I have come that you may have life, life in all its fullness. I find myself today wondering what the relationship of my understanding of Jesus and the Gospels is with what I’ve experienced in these local churches. The proclamation is often exclusively of St Paul, and I understand why – he exudes enthusiasm and clarity of teaching about human behaviour.
Today’s regressive crises
My understanding of the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is of course influenced by my culture and the eras through which I’ve lived and also, of course, deeply influenced by contemporary culture and the twenty or more years of regressive values and culture in which we are living. My emotional preconceptions, prejudices and addictions affect the way I react to and interpret the worship I’ve experienced recently. I also bring the priority I give to contemplative spirituality, to body-centred prayerful awareness, to the significance of justice and equality as primary gospel values and the essential awareness of race, gender and sexuality in Christian life and witness. Our planet is living fast into a state of crisis, in which people are becoming increasingly filled with anxiety and insecurity affecting their emotional, mental and physical health and well-being. How, I find myself asking every day, is the worship I’ve experienced in these churches helping people engage actively and creatively with the crisis? Are they giving people the resources to discover within themselves the essence of divine love and presence? Are they helping people deepen and enrich the unconditional, loving presence of God, integral to all life, the life-giving presence in which we are all immersed? Are they introducing people to the resources that enable us to develop a reflective, contemplative pattern of prayer that is able to resource Christian activism and a self-giving life? My resources were absorbed from the church of my childhood, from the culture around me in the diocese of Southwark and from my training and induction into contemplative spirituality at Westcott House. Immersive qualities, theological practice and interior awareness of divine presence are the matrix through which I habitually access my experience of “church” when I’m examining critically “what’s going on”.
Enlightenment values
The journalist Will Hutton wrote an article in the Observer on 31 August asking whether a modern Enlightenment is possible. This is a question that is haunting me as a Christian priest. I believe the Church of England is being affected by the anti-enlightenment movement present in Trump’s USA and other right-wing authoritarian regimes. Hutton says Enlightenment values across the west are today under assault as never before.
“For right-wing populists, the new injunction is to dare to be ignorant and to insist that the best compass for action is to follow your prejudices uninhibitedly. Whatever the evidence, climate change is a hoax, prison only works if punitive, universities are havens for the woke, the mainstream media lies and immigrants are all a threat to women and girls. Autocracy is more effective than democracy. My freedom of speech is to spread these attitudes as facts without constraint.”
These attitudes are not just commonplace across Trump supporters in the USA; they are commonplace among his Christian supporters. Nigel Farage’s Reform, France’s Marine LePen and Hungary’s Viktor Orban unashamedly follow the same Trumpian agenda. “A credulous public [are] deluded into thinking social media carries truths that mainstream politicians and media conspire to disguise,” says Hutton. I see signs of the dismantling and degrading of Enlightenment culture in the new bodies that are coming into being to control the new charismatic evangelical networks. They are highly staffed, richly financed, very controlling and lacking in a democratic relationship with the congregations they run. Services are totally controlled and not spontaneous, despite the attempt to create a spontaneous atmosphere. I asked a priest in one of the SAINT churches what the policy of their church was towards the full inclusion of and equality for gay people. After some hesitation, they said SAINT leaders had been told not to answer questions about LGBTQIA+ people and that I had to put the question to SAINT’s communication officer. There is a controlling force at work in what these churches are doing.
Church of England = evolution or regression?
The Church of England is gradually, or not so gradually, evolving into something significantly different from the Church and the ethos of Christianity I grew up with and was trained to minister in. This is in part due to the natural passage of time. It is also the result of the regressive changes taking place in global cultures and societies, the anti-Enlightenment movement leading to more regressive, controlling, authoritarian political and financial systems. They are having, as I see it, an un-Christlike effect on us. I see signs of this in the churches I visit in this area of the Diocese of London and in the state of the Church of England nationally. It’s extremely hard to map whether the Church is genuinely becoming a safer place for LGBTQIA+ people, let alone whether there might be a genuine movement in the Church to support equal marriage and a change in the marriage Canon.
I ask myself whether I see signs of growth and hopes for Christ-like transformation in the Church, the emerging of a reflective model, rooted in divine presence, radically open, welcoming and inclusive, transforming people’s lives. Asking the question just begs a whole load more of questions.
This blog series is not yet finished – I’m still visiting churches.