Daniel French

Regardless of whether Sarah Mullally was our preferred choice for the new Archbishop of Canterbury, we should wish her well in her appointment. I hesitate to say ‘congratulate’, as this role is not a career prize but a demanding ministry of service. An archbishop should emulate Christ, who came not to be served but to serve. It is hard to live this way, especially under media scrutiny, doing a job so busy. In a few months, Canterbury will enthrone its new successor to Saint Augustine. I have mixed feelings about these inauguration and enthronement services.

Calling God ‘Father’ may be ‘problematic’, pronounced the Archbishop of York at Friday’s formal opening of the General Synod. Watching the live stream, I did a double take and had to rewind a few seconds to play it back. Did he really just say this? Archbishop Stephen Cottrell explained his reasoning: ‘For all of us who have laboured too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life…’ Who is the ‘us’ here? Is it too personal to ask what in Cottrell’s history has been oppressive? Can he really claim to have laboured under the patriarchy? The calculation is that there needs to be a revolution so that the unchurched masses, especially the young, will flock back But more importantly, do we really need a gender-neutral makeover of our sacred liturgy?

Something has gone badly wrong with the Established Church when it appears more indignant at the breaking of social distance rules than the ruining of two marriages by the same politician. On Sunday’s GB News morning show even the unflappable Nigel Farage was unusually wide eyed when the Bishop of Manchester, Rt Rev David Walker, remarked of the now disgraced Matt Hancock: ‘So, I think I’m more worried about the fact that he failed to keep social distancing than I am about the fact that here is a middle-aged bloke having a bit of a fling.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?

The Church of England has once again misunderstood the mood of the nation. Guidance published this week urges the country’s 12,500 parishes and 42 cathedrals to address, search out, assess and remove offensive artefacts of ‘contested heritage’. The framework follows the call by Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, for a review of church statues. Of course racism must be taken seriously, but I doubt I was the only cleric who, upon hearing this development, let out a loud groan. The edict is both a concession to advocates of divisive identity politics and a distraction from the more pressing issues on which the church should be focused.

A year of living through a pandemic has taken its toll on the best of us. Vicars like me are no exception.  As a healthy and normally upbeat 52-year-old, this feeling of gloom is frighteningly new. Anecdotal stories from clergy friends tell a similar story to my own: the urge is to curl up and mask the misery with binge marathons of Netflix box sets. But this brings only short-term relief. A cursory look at social media posts show that a good number of vicars are struggling to keep it together.  The pressures on vicars come from every quarter. Some vicars have been landed with the impossible task of maintaining empty churches as elderly volunteers withdraw to shield or isolate.

The first rule of preaching is not to be preachy – and it’s here that the Vicar of Dibley slips up in lecturing her parishioners on Black Lives Matter in an episode broadcast last night. When I am training curates, I show them Alan Bennett’s skit ‘Take a pew’ from Beyond the Fringe (1961), where a clergyman’s painful attempts at being hip are sunk by the rising of his sing-songy parsonical voice. Dawn French’s character would have been wise to watch too. The normally inoffensive sitcom, which is being broadcast this Christmas in a series of ten minute specials, features the TV vicar ‘taking the knee’. Surely this year, more than ever, we could have done without sermonising like this in a sitcom.

To imagine that the Church of England could contemplate effectively cancelling Christmas may sound like the stuff of Dickensian melodrama or scripted out of the Grinch. Of course, not even the Pope has the power to erase the 25 December. But this year's church celebrations could be so muted that Christmas effectively becomes a minor feast. Just as exhausted people need their spirits lifted, toning down Christmas could be the final straw. Oliver Cromwell would be delighted. None of this might seem plausible, of course, until you consider the heavy handedness of church authorities during the initial lockdown. Parish churches were closed, even for private prayer, and vicars were banned from entering.

‘The invasion of ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’, screamed the headline on the Mail Online above a report of how Salcombe’s mayor had blasted ‘disrespectful tourists for failing to socially distance’. As the local vicar, I find myself hearing the consternation from all sides: tourists who don’t recognise themselves as ‘invaders’; shopkeepers and pub owners who rely on tourists for their livelihoods; and locals who are welcoming (or not) these people arriving for their summer holidays. This week’s heatwave has only heightened tensions and added to the influx of people arriving here. Roads are gridlocked, beaches packed and narrow streets filled with holidaymakers.

Coronavirus and the fallout from it could have been a chance for the Church of England to talk about the grand vision of Christian hope and mortality. The Bible warns us of plagues and pestilence. It tells us that we live in a broken world. It makes it clear this pandemic is far from unprecedented. Yet it also has a message of good news. Instead, too many of the Church’s senior figures have ditched this vision, choosing rather to scare us or play politics when it comes to coronavirus. This missed opportunity, sadly predictable, uncovers a deeper Anglican crisis than push button issues like gay bishops, transgender liturgies, or declining congregations. Ultimately it stems from a lack of confidence among bishops and theologians when it comes to the supernatural.