The Bishop of London's address to clergy |
Speaking to clergy from the East End and City of London at St Catherine's College on the 11th September, 2001, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, said, "The context for the Cardinal's comment is of course the culture war which has been raging in Britain for some decades."
In one corner is the Consensus Culture which had its final flowering in the fifties. The foundations of the Welfare State had been laid and although Churchill came to power at the beginning of the decade there was no real attempt to turn the clock back. There was a firm sense of right and wrong, an uncritical celebration of the British story and confidence in the rightness of British values which had won through the war against all the odds. On newly available TV the nation watched the Coronation and looked forward to the creation of a New Elizabethan Age. There was a strong sense of national identity expressed in huge numbers of street parties and the universal distribution of commemorative mugs. At the same time there was minor religious revival and modest pastoral diligence reaped a harvest in bulging Sunday Schools and large numbers of ordinands.
It was an extraordinary period in the history of our turbulent country which has been misleadingly regarded as the norm, not least by a couple of generations of church leaders.
In the other corner, looking somewhat ironically at the Consensus Culture, stands the Sensitive Self.
The Sensitive Self has many obvious virtues. It seeks to have inclusive attitudes especially perhaps towards those who were marginalised by the Consensus Culture. The Sensitive Self regards tolerance as the supreme virtue and is deeply suspicious of any claims to know the truth. Most of the great debates about the good life, values and ultimate questions about the why whence and whither of human life on this planet and whether God exists or not have been emptied into the realm of private opinion where what counts is sincerity. The Sensitive Self has its theological supporters who can point with some justice to the fruits of certainty and powerful religious institutions in crusades and the Grand Inquisitor.
You might give these two tendencies a colour code, blues versus greens, as long as one realises that this culture war cuts across contemporary party political divisions in ways which baffles the voters. Some of the most convinced blues take the Labour whip in Parliament and there is a powerful green tendency in the Tory party.
The Greens of the Sensitive Self tendency have actually been the Establishment for about a quarter century where it counts in the teaching and in the media. This fact, however, has been concealed by the Green stance of ironic detachment from long established institutions.
It should be obvious that Blues and Greens need one another. No society can cohere without a foundation of norms, stable relationships and community symbols. If we want purposeful and sustainable change and not just a maelstrom then we need the foundation of confidence which comes from continuities and common memories. But in such a society there has to be constant vigilance to ensure that minorities are not made victims and that the authorities do not insulate themselves from criticism.
If however the Sensitive Self programme [and this is the danger now] manages to establish itself as the only perspective then the result is consumerist chaos.
We are now at a point when we need to go beyond both the false alternatives of Green and Blue. Naturally, as you can understand, the colour that appeals to me as a designation for this new synthesis is purple.
We have to understand where we are. Some people are full of grief for the world we are losing and in some cases have already lost. I have sympathy with this sense that much that was noble and beautiful is passing away.
Other people insist that deconstruction is still the latest and indeed the last word and that all truths are relative, always of course excepting that one. This tide is still running and animates parts of the new Establishment.
One reaction to this situation which is not peculiar to our own country is a lurch to the pre-rational and to the literal in religion. The new credulity is an outrage both to spiritual wisdom and to scientific rationality. I enjoyed a story in The Economist recently. As we all know the astrological predictions are very popular columns in the most popular newspapers. It was the misfortune of one of these papers one morning that its resident astrologer did not turn up. They pressed a somewhat elderly and cynical hack into the service and he, to relieve his boredom wrote under one sun sign - "all the ills of yesteryear will be as nothing to what will befall you today". The switch board was jammed with panicking readers and the hack was sacked.
At the same time, world-wide and certainly in America there is a new literalism in religion and religious institutions and convictions are more salient for good or very often for ill. Religion mixed with nationalism is a terrible cocktail and even European states, as we have seen in the Balkans, are not immune from it.
But if we know where we are and resist the temptation to revert to the pre-rational or to literalism in religion I believe that this is a time of challenge but also of opportunity for the Church.
As we resist both the new Establishment and any nostalgia cult, we shall draw fire but I believe we shall be responding to the Spirit inspired search for a new holism and a sense of the interdependence of the world in which we live which lies beyond both the limited certainties of the old Consensus Culture and the deconstructionist enthusiasm of the Sensitive Self.
This path which involves the Church recovering her nerve and putting first things first. It involves very hard work not to revert to the pre-rational and to move forward without denigrating all that has been achieved, by the astonishing technological achievements and social transformations of the past century.
Now however we need to transcend both Blue and Green to re-animate the principles and truths which really do integrate and unify and generate a non exclusive confidence and joy in life. Above all we have to see that our flourishing as human beings has everything to do with our relationships with God, with nature, with one another and with ourselves.
Paradoxically our pre-occupation with individual autonomy seems to have diminished our sense of the sacred gift of life which is menaced at both ends of the life cycle.
Any sustained relationship implies the making and keeping of vows and promises and as we build a civilisation of trustful interdependence. In particular this means honouring marriage and friendship and stable family life which despite our failures offers the optimal conditions for educating the next generation in a capacity for trust and trustworthiness .
Then there has to be a scrupulous respect for the word at a time when there are so many beguiling images in circulation. If our words are not heartfelt and precise then we are poisoning the wells of civilisation.
We have to relearn that wisdom and meaning come with a progressive diminution of egotism and the discovery that serving others is the road to freedom and fulfilment. The more you let go of self the more you grow in soul. You cannot live in this way by mere wishful thinking there has to be spiritual practice with just and generous living.
Some of the most popular TV series at present are concerned with makeovers and instant transformations. Changing Rooms and Groundforce will deliver a new image in the space of a single programme. Public figures are also intensely concerned with image and employ spin doctors to make them "accessible and cuddly". Many in London think for obvious reasons that I should employ one.
Likewise there is a great preoccupation with the image of the church and the idea that if you change the look of the thing, the church will become popular again. People, it is said, are put off by anything that is difficult to grasp at first hearing. That is condescending if you like. We are misled by people who are experts on making an immediate impact but do not have the experience of being charged with the responsibility for the memory of a community over generations.
If we are Christians, we are called to the Christ-like character, something deep and slowly formed by the action of the Spirit of God, through prayer and worship. We are not invited to acquire a Christian image, mere gloss or veneer. Of course we must learn to use the new means of communication and not spend all our resources on communicating as the Tudors did. There is nothing holy about muddled or naff communication. But the Church is concerned with depth not decor. In the end we trust in God and in his capacity to invite people to recognise the still small voice which follows on the great tempest.
