The Rev John McLuckie is about to return to Scotland following several years working in England. In this guest post he reflects on his experience of the Church of England. Do feel free to respond to what John has written below in the comments and check out his blog at http://justluckie.typepad.com
On the weekend of the celebrations to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee, I decided that I wasn’t in the mood for the kind of civic religion I knew I would find in my local Church of England parish so I went to our local Quaker meeting instead. I enjoyed it so much that I have been going there regularly ever since. I enjoy the silence and the gently mystical instincts of Friends, but also their testimony to simplicity, equality and peacemaking. As an Anglican priest, this seems like a slightly irresponsible thing to do, but I think that this choice says a lot about how I perceive the differences between the context and ethos of the church in which I was ordained – the Scottish Episcopal Church – and the one I currently belong to – the Church of England.
In fact, I don’t work for the Church of England but for the NHS as a chaplain in a specialist cancer hospital. I recognise that this is a privileged position in at least two ways: firstly I feel privileged to work in a place where I can explore matters of the spirit with people who would not normally have anything to do with a church, including people of other world faiths; secondly, I am, in part, able to occupy this position by virtue of the privileged relationship with the state enjoyed by the Church of England. I have no doubt that this relationship is changing, but am not skilled in the arts of predicting the future so would not dare to hazard a guess as to how it will look in a generation’s time. What is clear to me is that the C of E takes its public role very seriously and I deeply respect the skill and intelligence with which so many of its members, lay and ordained, interact with society at all its levels, civic, cultural and communal. However, it is also clear to me that the C of E is not alone in this commitment, even if it does sometimes imagine that it is. The truth is that there is another story about the place of Christian faith in English life and culture and my sojourn with the Society of Friends gives a clue about it.
The ecology English Christianity is remarkable and unique in European terms. Ever since the religious and intellectual battles of the17th century, England has been a place of unparalleled religious pluralism. The Quakers, Baptists, Jews, Presbyterians and Unitarians I come across as I visit patients on the wards all owe their safe place in English society to the turbulent events of that century and, in the two that followed, Methodists, Salvationists, Hindus, Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses all added their distinctive voices to this peculiar ecosystem. And all of that is before we get to the multi-cultural diversity of the 20th and 21st centuries. The expression of ‘dissent’ was, therefore, firmly planted in English society in the wake of the Civil War and that ‘dissent’ was largely forged over against the established Church of England. To this day, some English Christians will describe themselves as belonging to a ‘’free’ or ‘’non-conformist’ church and I think their presence has made England one of the most successfully culturally diverse societies in Europe today. I do not for a moment underestimate the strains on that diversity, but it is impossible to live in a city like London without being regularly caught up in its glorious and vibrant complexity.
Because I have a mischievous streak, I often remind people that I am a ‘’non-conformist Anglican’ in the sense that I was ordained in a church that deliberately removed itself from alignment with the ruling authorities. Of course, I recognise that this is slightly disingenuous, because those early non-juring Episcopalians had every intention of recovering a position like that occupied by the Church of England. But I am only being slightly disingenuous because the fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has been free of ties with the state for well over 300 years.
I feel very much at home among the dissenters. I enjoy the freedom to be contradictory and find a kind of maturity in the necessity of making one’s own way in the world. At the same time, I respect and value the C of E’s commitment to keeping faith in the public realm. When it is busy with its all-consuming internal battles, it might be salutary for it to remind itself that it is strongest when it is looking outward and stronger still when it recognises the others who are doing just that.
When I return to Scotland next week, I will appreciate being home among non-conformist Anglicans. I will take with me a new-found love for English diversity and dissent and a deeper appreciation of the very difficult, if profoundly anachronistic, place held in English society by its established church. But I might leave behind a little card for my coreligionists. It will be an invitation which reads: ‘Come and make your home among the dissenters. You might find a new, freer voice with which to speak wisdom in the heart of this gloriously diverse society.’
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