Fifth Anniversary

31/05/2011 By 7 Comments

Well, today is the Feast of the Visitation and that means that it is also the anniversary of my becoming the Provost and Rector at St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow. I remember my installation service with great fondness. It was wonderful service liturgically and the shape of things to come.

Does it feel like a long time? Well, not particularly. I stopped being called the New Provost about 2 years in and time has just passed by since then.

It is my view that St Mary’s had an unsustainable stipendiary staffing level when I came here and this year we’ve managed to do something concrete about that and appoint a Vice Provost. In some ways, that is the most significant thing that has been achieved since I came to Glasgow.

There has been a lot of razzmatazz on the way, of course, for both brouhaha and razzmatazz are handmaids of the gospel and tools of the kingdom.

One significant thing that I said when I came was that there was going to be a moratorium – not the kind of moratorium which bishops and archbishops impose (which is not a moratorium in any case but a ban). Very early on, I stood in the pulpit and announced that there would be no big building project for my first five years in post. It was my view that the congregation needed a bit of time to relax and enjoy the building rather than seeing it as a constant, never-ending project. I’m convinced that was the right thing to do. I note that the time of that moratorium is now passed.

Does that mean that all of a sudden I have grand plans? Does that meant that the appeal for the Kelvin Holdsworth Memorial Gilded Spire is now launched?

Actually, it doesn’t. I’ve no great plan to go on with, except to encourage the congregation to keep doing the things we are good at and get better at doing the things we can get better at. Oh, and to stop worrying too much about the things we don’t happen to be good at, and there are, no doubt, one or two of them.

Have I enjoyed my first five years. Well, yes I have, though the personal toll of working in a relatively big and complex religious institution that is understaffed is huge and I wouldn’t particularly like to go through those five years again. However, we are in good heart and the good times, are just around the corner.

There is a wonderful excitement around at St Mary’s which is infectious. Someone said to me that there was a sense of that excitement which came over in the Radio 4 broadcast recently and that made me very pleased, for it is the kind of thing that you cannot script. It is either there or it isn’t.

As I look back over those five years, I am pleased at the journey made. But anniversaries are times for thinking about the future as well as about the past, and when I think about St Mary’s today, it will not be the past that I dwell on but what is to come.

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Colin Slee’s J’accuse

26/05/2011 By 19 Comments

My goodness, it has been a busy week for those concerned over the issue of gay leaders in the churches.

Monday saw the Church of Scotland making its welcome but tentative steps forward. Today it is the leaking from beyond the grave of an astonishing memorandum from the late Colin Slee, recently Dean of Southwark.

The C of S came out of Monday with its integrity very much intact. Indeed, there was a great deal of dignity, tact and care on display for all the world to see. However, the C of E does not come out of today’s revelations with nearly so much distinction. Just the opposite in fact and the two archbishops seem to have sunk even lower in their own mire than hitherto seemed possible.

Here’s today’s story – and it is a great coup for Andrew Brown at the Guardian. The Guardian did not cover itself with glory in covering the C of S on Monday, but today’s revelations are fairly significant.

The story comes from a leaked memo which was written by Colin Slee before he recently died. In an astonishing j’accuse from beyond the grave, his bitter disappointment in his near ecclesiastical neighbour along the Thames, Rowan Williams is laid bare. It is a description of hideous bad behaviour as a new bishop was chosen for the Diocese of Southwark last year. There were stories in the press at the time suggesting that Jeffrey John’s name was considered but rejected. The leaked memo (which has a kind of a gothic intensity to it) appears to show just how desperate the Archbishops in England were not to have either a gay man (Jeffrey John) or someone who had been married to a divorcee (Nicholas Holtham) as the new Bishop of Southwark.

Reading through Andrew Brown’s report of Archbishop Rowan and Archbishop John Sentamu’s behaviour one can but wonder what the American Church is to make of all this. Or any of us outside England for that matter. The Archbishop has interfered in the appointment processes of Anglican bishops far across the world and far beyond the bounds of any jurisdiction that he possesses. He has misused bonds of affection. It feels as though he has betrayed those who once would have been his greatest defenders.

Whilst good people have been made to abide by discriminatory “moratoria” against the nomination of gay candidates for the Episcopate, Rowan Williams appears to behave in his own processes in ways that are being described as those of the bully. Heaven knows, the American church followed due process in electing their bishops. Don’t they have a right to think that those in the Church of England will try to do the same?

Of course, this leak is one bit of paper amongst many. No doubt there will be others who may see things differently and from a more nuanced perspective. Let them speak and say their piece. Part of the problem in all this is the selection of bishops behind closed doors.

Notwithstanding that, I know that Colin Slee was a good man. His words from beyond the grave point towards an increasing feeling that there  is a strong odour surrounding Rowan Williams’s ministry as Archbishop of Canterbury. And it is not the odour of righteousness.


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