What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Bishop of St Davids and the Archbishop of Canterbury

19/06/2021

The Rt Rev Dr Joanna Penberthy is the 129th Bishop of St Davids. In tweets that came to light recently, she exhibited an antipathy to members of the Conservative Party which did not sit well with her position. “Never, never, never trust a Tory” is not what people expect to see a bishop tweeting.

Once these tweets came to light, there was a considerable brouhaha which seemed to die down when she apologised and deleted her twitter account.

Now, I happen to think that Bishop Joanna’s tweets were not compatible with her role. I work in a congregation which has political activists in it from time to time of all persuasions and I have had no trouble working and worshipping with them all. I think that she was right to apologise and to make sure that the tweets in question were removed from view.

One does not need to go very far to realise that I do not have much truck with the policies of the Conservative Party. I have, after all, stood against Tory candidates in several elections. I am fairly obviously of the view that engagement with public political discourse is appropriate (if indeed not sometimes necessary) for those who hold prominent positions within the churches. As it happens, I am now a floating voter and not a member of a political party though I do strongly encourage others who are members of political parties to engage fully with them.

One of my frustrations about the manner in which Bishop Joanna has expressed herself is that she will now find it very difficult to comment negatively on that which should legitimately be criticised about government policy.

Policy is the key to the nature of appropriate political discourse I think. For my money, it is generally fair enough to criticise policy and generally not OK to criticise someone’s personality or core identity.

So, for example, my view is that it is legitimate to criticise this government’s manufactured hostile environment towards refugees (and now, it seems, all those trying to settle in this country). That policy is cruel. I would go so far as to say it is unchristian. Indeed, I have gone so far as to say such things, from the pulpit, in the newspapers and online.

I have little doubt that Bishop Joanna would agree with me. However, she is now so far on the back-foot that she will struggle to be able to articulate any coherent opposition to wicked government policies for a very long time.

Bishop Joanna did get it wrong. However, she did apologise and sought to make amends. Though I think it will be hard for her to do so, I hope that she is back on social media soon and that she will be able to make her points in ways that hit home and which do not lead to her being silenced.

Now, all this would have been fading away, had not the Archbishop of Canterbury interfered in the matter. It is reported today that he has written to the Secretary of State for Wales expressing the view that he was “truly sorry” for Bishop Joanna’s comments.

This has now led, very rightly, to outrage being expressed online about the Archbishop of Canterbury interfering in a matter about which he has no jurisdiction. He has no business apologising for what bishops in Wales say in public.

Apart from anything else, no archbishop is going to survive the mental gymnastics required if they hold themselves responsible for what every bishop in the Anglican world thinks or says.

The complaint will now be made by some that people are focussing on Archbishop Justin’s comments and forgetting about the “offence” of Bishop Joanna’s comments.

And that is, quite rightly, exactly what people are doing.

Bishop Joanna and the Archbishop of Canterbury have both made statements which are incompatible with their office.

Bishop Joanna has apologised and those who do have jurisdiction in this matter seem to think that her apology is sincere. Her twitter sins should be forgiven. Archbishop Justin has not apologised for his comments.

The more he intervenes in the running of other provinces, the more difficult his job becomes.

The Archbishop of Canterbury hath, as the badge says, no jurisdiction in this Realm of Scotland. The Archbishop of Canterbury hath no jurisdiction in this matter in the Realm of Wales either.

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
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Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply