What is in Kelvin's Head?

Divine Dating – the Mysterious Art of Finding A New Cleric

31/01/2025

How does God speak?

Is it in the words of a CV or by judging the style in which it has been laid out? Would one font convince you to put someone on a shortlist and another make you put the application in the reject pile? Is it through the checking off of tick-boxes on a pre-prepared statement of needs and expectations? Is it likely to be someone who doesn’t surprise you or the person who completely astonishes you? Is it the name murmured on many lips or someone that no-one has ever heard of? Does it come down to the random good (or bad) looks that good (or bad) genes have bestowed? Or are quick judgements made about dress-codes? The colour coding of clerical shirts is one thing, but brown shoes with a black suit… quel horreur!

Most months I get to take part in conversations at one level or another about church appointments. Mostly that is low level stuff where I’ve not got much input, simply hearing about congregations that are becoming vacant and hearing a little about what they are looking for. And then some time later hearing about whom they have appointed. Sometimes there are surprises. Sometimes there are not. Sometimes there’s no appointment to be made.

Currently, the congregation that I serve is looking for a new priest to work alongside us and that heightens one’s ponderings about the whole business considerably.

And of course, just recently, everyone in this diocese has been involved in the business of electing a new bishop. That, somehow, is simultaneously both exactly like the process of finding a new priest and exactly unlike the process of finding a new priest. Looking for a bishop is like looking for a priest but with the process on steroids, ten times the number of people involved and the angst levels rising heavenwards faster than our prayers can keep up.

There are two things that are clear to me about all of this. The first is that everyone involved seems to believe that God too is deeply involved. The second is that almost no-one would be able to give a coherent explanation of how God gets involved.

Here in Scotland, when we are looking for a bishop, we expect all the candidates to express the view that God is calling them to the position that is open but we can’t proceed to an election until we’ve got three candidates. Theologically we behave as though we are looking for at least three candidates, one of whom God is genuinely calling to the post of bishop and the rest of whom, God is completely deluding. Having seen the process from just about every perspective possible, I have to say that I’m completely unconvinced that God is in that business.

As I have listened to all of these processes work themselves out in different dioceses and in different local contexts, I find myself amazed at the sheer variety of reasons that people use to justify the decisions that they make about candidates for different positions.

Sometimes it does feel as though the mental processes involved in making such decisions seem more similar to the way dating apps are used than anything that could be thought of as the deep work of discernment. Swipe left for unsuitable. untenable and unlikely. Swipe right for God’s anointed one.

(I’m still talking about finding clerics at the moment, before anyone points out that searching for God’s anointed is unlikely to find me husband material.)

The truth is though that some of our language about vocations and God’s choices can get in the way. God only ever provided one saviour of the world, after all, and yet many a search committee behaves as though they are still looking for one. We often behave as though we are playing some kind of heavenly inspired dating game.

People do make judgements about vocational appointments at many different levels. Some of those judgements come from a deep consideration of someone’s gifts and skills. However, that sometimes goes alongside much more superficial decision making. I’ve known people change their mind about a candidate for a position simply on the basis that they’ve been there a long time and they just want it to be over so that they can go home.

Notwithstanding all this, there may yet be ways of trying to imagine the Holy Spirit being involved within human processes and the fickle changes and chances of human opinion. The main way that I can conceive of God being involved is to think of the many and various ways in which we make up our minds about clerical appointments all sparking off one another. We conceive of the Holy Spirit being a fire, sometimes a blazing fire. When an appointment is made which seems undoubtedly to fall within the boundaries of divine joy then it is easy for me to imagine all those sparks coming together to blaze as some kind of new holy fire which will bring warmth and excitement and life to all who encounter it.

It often seems to me that those who believe the most in Divine Providence are those who most get themselves tied in theological knots when trying to appoint a priest or a bishop. I’m rather wary of Divine Providence myself and rather hope that God is wary of it as a concept too.

Here at St Mary’s, we’re right in the thick of all this at the moment as we’re advertising for a Vice Provost. It is both exciting and nerve-wracking. Some people think we’re being too specific about some things in the job description and no doubt others think we’re not being specific enough about different things. I’m aware that the request for a video sermon with the application will put off people who might otherwise put in an application, but then we probably are looking for someone for whom using new tools in the Glorious Work fills them with life rather than dread. I’m also aware that we’re looking for someone who will enjoy being in a congregation that is very musical. We’re looking for someone who won’t feel like a fish out of water in a congregation that revels in using music to spread the news that the love of God is real though rather than looking for a Precentor by another name. The job itself is attested by both of those who have held the post before to be one of the most exciting jobs in all of God’s holy church – deep pastoral and theological conversations, often with younger people, are the stuff of life here. Helping to create worship that challenges, comforts, inspires and provokes is at the heart of what we do. And I often think that the congregation is perhaps the most interesting group of people who meet under one roof in all of Scotland. We’re a people who believe in trying to become ever more open, inclusive and welcoming – and if you want to know what I think that means, pick up the phone and give me a call.

I’m one of those priests who likes working with colleagues and that’s not true of everyone. But collegiate patterns and styles of working are the stuff of normality in cathedral contexts and I’m glad they are.

Just as people have complicated reasons for assessing whether they would appoint a cleric, so clerics have complicated ways of assessing whether it is for them. More than once I’ve known people say that they would like to come to work here but that they (or more often their partner) can’t cope with the idea of working in Glasgow as it is the Murder Capital of Europe. And the trouble is, no matter how many times I explain that Glasgow has one of the best stories in Europe for turning around knife crime and that we are a long way from deserving that title, they still keep running Taggart on the TV and people find themselves believing it. (It isn’t helped that some of the locations in Taggart were in the leafy West End – ie in and around the cathedral itself). For all its historical grit though, Glasgow goes on being green, gorgeous, gallus and gregarious.

How we make decisions about these things can be deep, trivial, thoughtful, shallow, inspired, sometimes stemming from ignorance. sometimes from knowledge and yes sometimes because our heart simply stirs within us and there’s no other way of describing the work of God.

And so we keep on watching, hoping and praying. Somehow, I think we all believe, God gets on with it.

Just don’t ask me to explain exactly how.

10 responses to “The Church of England and its Bishops”

Joan H Craig

20/11/2012

You put it well, and I agree with all that you say. In one sense it is a very sad day for priests who are women. In another, parity is crucial 🙁

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Patrick Smith

20/11/2012

I am not a regular C of E communicant now but have been so in my life and I unequivocally support the proper human rights entitlement of women to serve equally as Bishops.I think that the women priests appear to have been too inclined, cap in hand, to compromise that would still have deemed women bishops, as second class.This Vote, according to some of their spokespersons was as far as the talented women priests could get, amongst the conservative antis, in the C of E.

Surely,that in our enlightened world men do not hold a monopoly on either the aspiration to achieve good in their work or to eclipse human goodness in prayer,mission and faith in the ranks of the C of E? The Bishops and Clergy have seen that women are now do one third of active work in the C of E but do not have parity at the top table.

Why is it the case that women are ordained in the US and NZ and have served their communities equally, as men, over 20 years? Whereas, in the C of E at home, the vision of the Laity Synod threatens to derrogate the status of women, as if the clock had been turned back into Victorian times and before the Suffragettes had started their quest for universal suffrage and equality in work for women.

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Duncan MacLaren

20/11/2012

Nigel McCulloch said in the debate, “If you wait for the perfect piece of legislation, you’ll be waiting for ever.”
I can understand the principled position that you don’t want to pass flawed and discriminatory legislation: but I can’t help thinking this would be better than acquiescing for another 5 years in an even more discriminatory status quo.
Had women bishops been voted in, they would have had five years to demonstrate practically to their opponents that they were competent, valuable, indispensable, talented and undeniably called leaders in the church. Instead, we now have the task of creating legislation the opponents will like even less (because it won’t make space for their position), and then trying to get it voted through. And five years of practical experience – perhaps the best argument – wasted.
If there were six lay liberals (the margin of votes) who voted ‘no’ on principle this evening, I wonder how long before they will rue the day? Principle is all very well, but possession is nine-tenths of the law. Had women been granted this possession, we could have spent the next five years chasing down the discriminatory clauses: as it is, we are back to square one. Barren theological argument now prevails over the witness and example of flesh and blood women.

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1. kelvin
  
  20/11/2012
  
  I understand that view, Duncan. I’d agree with it if there was any evidence in the last 20 years of anyone either trying or succeeding to eliminate the flying bishops that were created last time around. It is much, much easier to create good legislation than to repeal, tinker and undo bad legislation.
  
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2. Augur Pearce
  
  21/11/2012
  
  As I see it part of the problem was the large number of Synod members who wanted to see women bishops but thought that unity was more important than principle, and were therefore prepared to compromise. The ideal scenario would not have been rejection of the Measure, but an amendment to get rid of the discriminatory clauses. That wasn’t possible because the ‘unity party’ (for want of a better name) would have allied with the fundamentalists to defeat it. I hope that those who made up this ‘unity party’ will now realise the time for compromise is past and support legislation which, as you say, the opponents will like even less because it wonâ€™t make space for their position. I believe such legislation would pass, but would lead the fundamentalists to dissent from the C of E and form their own conventicles (as many have done before them, for better reasons). There would then be some hope of the General Synod addressing other equality issues, such as marriage…
  
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Tim

20/11/2012

Could it be said that it spent too long cooking?

The impression I get is that the SEC was quite decisive in dealing with the Covenant earlier.
What I’ve seen with the CoE looks like internalized via-media meeting a half-open door – and no wonder some people use the word “irrelevant”. As such, I’m wondering if it shouldn’t have simply been “women bishops, yes or no?” a while ago and then there wouldn’t have been such clumsy inaccuracy of reporting, at least…

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Ritualist Robert

21/11/2012

I have to say, regretfully, that I am relieved it didn’t pass because, imho, it allowed for far too many ‘provisions’ for so-called traditionalists. Their arguments seem to be based on one of the most vile theological concepts ever invented – ‘taint’ – though, of course, nobody admits to it. I understand the Evangelicals’ objections (though I disagree with them), but I am flummoxed by things like the ‘traditionalist’ catholics’ demand for ‘flying bishops’ (a concept which fails any test for catholicity) and attacks the very basis of Anglican Church structure and order – that of a bishop acting as the Ordinary in his/her diocese. Choosing one’s bishop based on whether one likes their theological outlook is quite a novelty, but it’s one that the so-called traditionalists insist on being allowed. Moreover, to claim to be catholic surely means to support the Church. When the Church of England ordained women for the first time surely it was up to those catholics who disagreed to either (a) conform their minds to the mind of the Church – surely the duty of anyone who calls themselves catholic – or (b) to have enough integrity to part with the Church and find another spiritual home.

Instead we have so-called traditionalists promoting what are essentially congregationalist novelties whilst claiming – falsely, I believe – to be catholics, all the while arguing for a distinctly non-catholic version of the Church.

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Justin Reynolds

22/11/2012

If politics is ‘the art of the possible’ then surely all liberals should have backed the measure, whatever its flaws. The notion that one day we will all be marching hand in hand towards the sunlit progressive uplands is somewhat fantastic, I think.

Everyone who joins the C of E, or indeed the SEC, knows what kind of church it is: essentially progressive (as witnessed by the Synod vote) but with significant minorities opposed to change. And it isn’t like a political party where arguments are conducted in the field of political philosophy and politics with a realistic hope that the mind of the party might change decisively over time in one direction or other. In the case of the church disputes are necessarily more intransigent, concerned with the interpretation of revelation and long standing traditions. These disagreements take decades, indeed centuries, to resolve, in so far as they can be resolved at all.

Perhaps those who can’t live with compromise, be they conservative or liberal, should consider whether they are actually in the right denomination at all, rather than hoping that one day – sooner rather than later – everyone will agree with them. It’s often noted that conservatives can go Orthodox or Roman Catholic, as indeed some have. It’s less often suggested that liberals might consider Unitarianism or Quakerism. I say that as a liberal who has at various times wavered between those two – and others – and Episcopalianism. I’ve ended up as an Episcopalian, but I did so knowing full well the intractable nature of the disagreements besetting the denomination, and that I had to live with them or simply go elsewhere. It seems to me that Christians are far too sentimental and attached to particular denominations.

Also, with respect Rowan Williams’ tenure can hardly be seen as an ‘abject failure’. Everyone knew he believed in conciliation and compromise when he was selected. His liberalism on a number of issues only formed a component of his theology. And his intellectual contribution over the past decade to British national life has been significant, particularly in regard to political and economic issues. His archepiscopate has gone some way towards restoring Anglicanism’s intellectual credibility: witness the tributes from secular as well as religious quarters on news of his retirement.

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Seph

22/11/2012

Apparently Diana Johnson MP (Lab., Hull North) is planning to bring a ten-minute rule bill in the new year which will include a clause calling for women bishops. Parliament could succeed here where General Synod failed.

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Rosie Bates

02/12/2012

Check out Bristol Diocese action re Vote of No Confidence in Synod! How lovely on the mountains are the feet of Him who brings Good News! Hope the rest take note and follow a fine example. Hope in this Advent message. Bishop Mike was an Area Bishop in Oxford Diocese and likely to be very clued up to certain of their Synod Reps games which cannot be stopped before July without reform or, at the very least, tough love.

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