Faith Under Fire

09/01/06

The Telegraph Magazine reported on life for inner city priests - including the Revd Preb Philippa Boardman - on Christmas Eve

To the inner-city vicar, Dibley must seem like another planet. Robert Chessyre meets three who, in the face of violence, urban unrest and poverty, are determined to serve their community

In the dead of night, the Rev Philip Nott and his wife, Ruth, were woken by a resounding crash followed by the ringing of the vicarage burglar alarm. Stumbling downstairs in his pyjamas, Mr Nott was confronted by a man in a hood, his face swaddled in a scarf. Brandishing a knife, the man demanded, ‘Give me the keys to your f***ing car.’ Mr Nott handed them over. With two small daughters in bed upstairs, he was not about to argue. The intruder – desperate for a car to drive off the estate where Mr Nott is the vicar – had smashed his way into the house by throwing a paving-slab through a window. Much later, the Notts were able to laugh at the choice of their ugly (very distinctive) six-seater for his getaway car. One of the reasons they had bought it was that it looked so odd that it would surely never be pinched.

Even such a traumatic incident as that is a far from unusual experience for vicars. Last month the Rev Ian Brady of St Anselm’s Church, Harrow, in north-west London, was seriously injured when he was stabbed on his doorstep. His assailant left the knife embedded in the vicar’s stomach.

Mr Nott, a fit man in his mid-30s, stands well over 6ft tall, but he and his wife – then recently arrived on the estate on the fringe of Nottingham – did ponder long and hard whether they should pack up and quit for the sake of the children. They stayed. And – silver linings and all that – the incident gave credibility in the community to the public-school-educated clergyman. When Mr Nott told his congregation about the family’s ordeal, he discovered that many of them had had similar experiences. ‘It allowed me to walk in the shoes of the local people in a way that most other professionals cannot claim to do.’

I often report from inner-city and out-of-the-way estates, home to the millions of Britons characterised by policymakers as ‘socially excluded’. They are places that almost no one who could choose where to live would select as home. The one exception is often the Church of England vicar. When night falls and professionals who work in such areas – teachers, social workers and others – head for more salubrious neighbourhoods, lights still burn in vicarage windows. And in these areas the vicar’s influence reaches far beyond the usually tiny Sunday congregations. While many faith leaders take responsibility just for their own, a vicar’s writ extends uniquely to all who live within the parish. Vicars remain widely accepted as community leaders. It was the vicar of Soham, Tim Alban Jones, who spoke for that traumatised town after the murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. Yet the Church of England is much mocked – albeit often gently, as in the television series The Vicar of Dibley – as irrelevant and out of touch (only one in 50 people attends regular C of E worship). The prevailing images are rural (rambling roses round vicarage doors); middle class (‘nice’ people at coffee mornings); elderly (a refuge for the bereaved and lonely); or trendy (Trev the Rev in his biking leathers).

I am not a churchgoer, but my experience of the C of E in the darker parts of England has been very different. I reported from a gang-infested south London estate, where at night the elderly cowered behind their doors; where the postman had long ceased delivering; where the dairy employed an armour-plated milkfloat. Here – at extraordinary cost to himself in terms of abuse, assaults and thefts – the vicar kept open house to offer help and comfort to the residents of that harsh environment.

The commitment involves both vicars and their families. Tomorrow, Mr Nott and his family have invited anyone from the congregation who wishes to join the family Christmas meal. He expects several people to take up the offer. When George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said recently that, if churches were shops, many would have been declared bankrupt long ago, writers of letters to the newspapers (not vicars) scrambled for their pens to praise the work of the Church in the inner city.

Broxtowe Estate in north-west Nottingham is not pretty. Home to 6,000 people, it was built after the war to give a fresh start to former slum dwellers. The population is made up of mainly white (an empty house next to an Asian family was firebombed), semi-skilled workers, the now often unemployed heirs to Arthur Seaton, the rebellious factory worker hero of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. The only house departing from the drab architectural template is the vicarage. There are joyriders and vandals (the church has suffered); there are criminal families and, for those who know where to look, drugs; there is a disfiguring rash of litter, and some front gardens are little more than rubbish tips of discarded junk. The new, much-praised Nottingham tram system stops short of Broxtowe, an indication that outlying estates are – in planners’ minds at least – beyond the pale. All that said – and I assured Mr Nott that I would neither knock the estate (it gets, he says, enough put-downs in local papers) nor represent him as a beleaguered saint – there is a fine, semi-wild park on the site of a former colliery (DH Lawrence grew up in nearby Eastwood); many gardens are lovingly tended; there has been none of the gun violence that has made the centre of Nottingham notorious in past months.

The estate is tranquil in the midday sun, as Mr Nott and I take a walk with Tim, a large black dog rescued from a home as insurance against further night intruders. Mr Nott is greeted by passers-by, and stops from time to time for longer vicar chats. He tells people, ‘I am your vicar.’
‘But we don’t go to church,’ they reply.
He repeats, ‘I am your vicar.’

Vicars, he stresses, are there for everyone, not just their congregations. Mr Nott has a much-cherished flock of 20 adults, but also the time and energy for others in the community – assets less available to vicars ministering to the needs of middle-class parishes with large congregations. As an A-level student who had scarcely been north of Watford, Mr Nott went on a ‘Youth for Christ’ summer mission to an estate in Wolverhampton. ‘It completely opened my eyes,’ he says. ‘Parachuted into that very different world, I felt a strong stirring of vocation both to the ordained ministry and to the setting I am in now. It kicked off the latent Christian socialism in me.’

When Mr Nott arrived in February last year, the Broxtowe incumbency had been vacant for more than two years. ‘It can be hard,’ he says, ‘not something everyone can do.’ But such places, he believes, are where the Church should be – bringing the Gospel’s good news to the poor and disenfranchised: ‘I felt I could make an impact.’

His wife, Ruth, a management accountant, has put her career on hold to bring up their daughters and support her husband in the life of the parish. The Friday night before I arrived, there had been
a ring at the vicarage door. Two distressed parishioners wanted to talk about alcohol, domestic violence and mental health problems. Mr Nott sat them down for tea and biscuits, gave them emergency phone numbers to call if necessary, and reassured a frightened woman. The pair left after 45 minutes saying, ‘We knew you would be able to help us, vicar.’

‘Where else,’ Mr Nott asks, ‘do you turn at that time of night?’ Short of a life-or-death issue, other agencies would not have been available until Monday morning. The welfare state goes home for the weekend: the vicar and family stay put. ‘There are aspects of life here that we cannot share – the low literacy, the truancy, the poor diet. My philosophy is to be who I am and not pretend to be from Broxtowe; to be totally for all its people whether they darken the doors of the church or not. I appreciate the effort that just doing the normal things can be for many. These are the “forgotten poor” who struggle with low income, debt, depression.’ His clergyman’s stipend of about £18,000 a year makes him seem rich here.

But vicars are not merely glorified on-the-spot social workers. Against long odds (some local children haven’t the faintest idea who Jesus was), Mr Nott brings an explicitly Christian message. He must do it in terms that are understood and not patronising. He recently conducted a funeral for a youth killed in a car crash. The young man had just been released from prison, and a few of the mourners themselves clearly had dodgy pasts – ‘tasty’ was Mr Nott’s word. The service, attended by 400 people, began with a James Blunt song, You’re Beautiful. Mr Nott made it clear that he is comfortable in the wider world (he has been a prison chaplain and is a football fan, which amazes some locals brought up to believe vicars are remote, austere figures). But he did not duck such issues as ‘repentance’ or ‘judgement’, and took as his text the story of the penitent thief who was crucified alongside Jesus – ‘today you will be with me in paradise’.

‘The congregation was a bit surprised,’ he says, ‘but, because I spoke in the context of humour and reality, they were fine. One person did say, “That was quite scary, vicar.” I asked, “Why?” “Because you looked at me.” ’

Afterwards at the wake Mr Nott had ‘loads of interesting conversations’ with people who would never normally be seen in church. He seizes eagerly every such opportunity to communicate.

The heart of his parish is the Hope Centre, created out of the 50-year-old church (‘St Martha the Housewife’) as a Millennium project. Hundreds pass through the centre – to nursery school, for adult education, to use its cafe. A teacher conducting an adult numeracy class – Broxtowe has one of the lowest levels of basic education in the country – said that he found the church the most pleasant and welcoming of the many places where he taught: ‘There is a friendliness as you walk through the door. This has to be because it is a church.’

Seven parishioners – of all ages – gathered in the vicarage for Bible studies. Christianity here is a commitment far beyond the (sometimes) conventional observance in gentler, more favoured areas. It often takes courage to stand up and be counted among the faithful. Richard Scott, 17, told how – when he had had troubles at home or at school, where he was bullied for his beliefs – St Martha’s had been a second home. ‘They took me in and were here for me.’

TEN DAYS BEFORE I ARRIVED,
the Birmingham area of Lozells was literally ablaze. A false rumour, promoted by pirate radio, had swept the neighbourhood suggesting that a teenage black girl caught shoplifting in nearby Perry Barr had been gang-raped by Asians. A protest march had headed for Lozells (the scene of riots 20 years ago), and a violent confrontation broke out between Afro-Caribbeans and Asians. Cars were burnt, shops attacked, petrol bombs thrown at police; 35 people were seriously injured and a young uninvolved black man was stabbed to death on his way home from the cinema. It was the worst explosion of urban unrest in Britain in recent years.

The day after the riot, while many remained prudently indoors, a tiny woman in a dog collar and a sari took to the streets distributing ‘peace’ candles. For the past nine years, Canon Jemima Prasadam, the 66-year-old vicar of St Paul and St Silas, has walked Lozells’s pavements – she is known as the ‘alternative bobby on the beat’ – befriending people in one of the most varied ethnic neighbourhoods in Britain. In 1987, she was the first ‘black’ (Canon Prasadam uses the term ‘black’ in what she describes as its ‘political’ sense) woman to become a C of E deacon, and she was immediately ordained when that became possible in 1994.

Where Broxtowe is drab and monotone, Lozells is vibrant and kaleidoscopic. Fruit and veg shops scatter their bright colours out on to pavement stalls; sari shop windows showcase dazzling arrays of rainbow fabrics; a Rastafarian grocery sells huge sugarcanes. The pavements teem with shoppers of every race and nationality. There is no shortage of faith here – mosques; gudwaras; black churches; temples. Against such competition, Canon Prasadam’s congregation is as small as Mr Nott’s. But, as someone who stands scarcely 5ft tall, she is a firm believer in quality rather than quantity, and is impatient of those who think that faith can be judged by head counts. She speaks many languages of the sub-continent, and she moves easily and unthreateningly among people of other religions.

Canon Prasadam – as far from the stereotype of the white, male vicar as is possible – is uniquely fitted for Lozells. Her grandfather was a convert (though she doesn’t like the term) from Hinduism, and she arrived in Britain from southern India in 1975. She has three daughters, one of whom is also a clergywoman. When we visited the Sikh Sri Dasmesh Temple, she sat on the floor to pay her respects to the priest, at the same time asserting her Christianity with the sign of the cross; at the Hindu Temple she gave me a rapid tutorial. Both temples loaded her with bags of food for distribution to asylum seekers. We lunched at a black church and at an Afro-Caribbean restaurant, where, until she first went, no lone Asian woman had eaten. We visited a cafe run by Somalis and a Kurdish centre. Relations between religions are delicate, and she must tread carefully. She says, ‘Conversations we believe in: conversions we leave to God.’ Her church caretaker is a Muslim – the caretaker’s husband painted the cross on the church roof – as are several of the children who attend the weekly activities club. Known as ‘Auntie’ Jemima, she grabs every opportunity to talk to people, often catching them at bus stops where – until the bus comes – they are captive audiences. She knows who lives where; their hobbies and their illnesses; which Afro-Caribbean family comes from which island; which Asian family belongs to which community.

During the riot, as cars blazed and petrol bombs arced in the night sky outside her vicarage, she reassured her parishioners by phone. But the next day she held her service outside – her modern church, which replaced two barn-like Victorian buildings, is on the main road – and, with her congregation, greeted passers-by and handed out her peace candles. ‘Ah, Auntie,’ people said, ‘you are here, so it must be all right.’

As she and I walked the streets, the aftermath of the riot still crackled like sheet lightning. Police in day-glo jackets stood on corners (chatty as police always are when on community-reassurance duties); shop windows were still smashed or boarded; at dusk, young men moved warily in the shadows. Over sweet tea in front rooms, rumours of fresh trouble – happily unfulfilled – did the rounds. Canon Prasadam and fellow faith leaders were convinced that the damage to community relations would be swiftly repaired. ‘God restores people and places even though we repeatedly make mistakes,’ she said with sincere optimism.

We met city staff responsible for community regeneration. Paulette Gyles-Reid, a senior administrator, said, ‘Jemima doesn’t get set back by the knocks. While other groups are at loggerheads, she constantly reaffirms the neighbourhood. She is the mother of the community.’ In a place where, numerically, the Church of England is almost non-existent, that is some pat on the back.

WHEN THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,
Dr Rowan Williams, visited St Paul’s Church, Bow, in east London, he told parishioners, ‘This is the future of the Church.’ Yet, nine years earlier, it had seemed probable that the then boarded-up 1878 building would be converted into flats (‘the Church of England are good asset-strippers,’ said the Rev Philippa Boardman, the vicar of St Paul’s with St Mark’s), and that the minute congregation would have to continue to worship in a modern church which most of them disliked. Today St Paul’s is one of the most exciting buildings in Bow, with a congregation growing by leaps and bounds.

It took a succession of four architects (the first said that the building would never ‘live’ again), £3 million (mainly Lottery money), extraordinary vision, and – on the part of Miss Boardman – the kind of sustained faith that the Bible assures us can move mountains. Like the Hope Centre at Broxtowe, St Paul’s has given new heart to its community. An invisible steel shell was inserted inside the cavernous building to support two internal floors, containing a gym, treatment rooms, an art studio, and a gallery cum cinema. A lift whisks people (heavenwards, they joke) to the top. On the ground floor there is a cafe, meeting-rooms and a space that can be screened off from the body of the church. Here pensioners enjoy tea dances, children have karate lessons, and elderly men attend a ‘Geezers’ Group’.

These are activities that, in theory, could be organised anywhere. But they need the right space (Bow is short of public halls), and the converted church is a massive asset to both congregation and neighbourhood. The day of that tea dance Miss Boardman had been to the Mansion House to receive an award for the church conversion from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. This is EastEnders territory – pubs, caffs, markets, tower blocks, even ‘Noted Eel and Pie’ shops – noisy and (on the surface) cheerful and friendly, but, with fear of crime and drugs, not always an easy place to live or share community life. With her drive and warmth – as we walked about, every second person, it seemed, stopped to chat – Miss Boardman would have increased her congregation in any circumstances, but the revitalised church is a huge bonus. Several people said they would not have started, or resumed, going to services in the modern church – now a thriving nursery school.

Miss Boardman inherited a congregation of 20; today’s figure is close to 100. Like Mr Nott and Canon Prasadam (who had to have the vicarage sign removed and a security system installed after someone tried to force his way into her home), Miss Boardman pays a heavy price for ministering to the inner city. In another parish she was shot at and received death threats. At Bow she has been dogged by a stalker and, from time to time, she receives hate mail. I joined her pastoral rounds, meeting a grandmother who now comes to church after not having been since Sunday school, a glamorous 22-year-old nursery school teacher of Ghanaian descent, a young couple with two children who went to church to get their children baptised and stayed, five women (four of whom are attending confirmation classes) nicknamed the ‘merry widows’, who meet daily at a cafe in the Roman Road market, and an elderly, very devout, Nigerian woman.

The congregation is a disparate group, and Miss Boardman must play the ringmaster, overcoming cultural differences and creating a community that sustains its members way beyond their Sunday observances. The young couple said St Paul’s had enabled them to befriend a wide cross-section of neighbours whom they would never, in other circumstances, even have met. Another church member hailed a cab just as a group of youths wearing hoodies walked past. ‘Look at them,’ the cabbie said sourly, ‘just out to make trouble.’ ‘Hi guys,’ his passenger called, waving cheerily to the young men – who are regular attenders at St Paul’s.

I asked members of the congregations at each parish what life would be like without their churches and vicars. All were visibly appalled at the idea – the merry widows of Bow nearly dropped their tea cups. Then one said quietly, ‘Let’s just say that, whenever Philippa isn’t here, life just isn’t the same.’ 