A sense of proportion

Get a life, you journalists! I woke this morning to the dulcet tones of our avuncular local archdeacon, "Stormin" Norman Russell, and the dour Scots of Jim Naughtie going on about celibate gay bishops. Naughtie asserted that "those outside it thought the church was 'obsessed' with sex". As Norman fairly commented you won't find sex mentioned in everyone's sermons tomorrow; in fact it will be in very few. We'll be more interested in the fact that Jesus is Light, good news, for all the world, exemplified by the coming of the Magi whom we remember at Epiphany. The church is remarkably unpreoccupied with sex. Naughtie cited the controversy about women bishops to bolster his assertion - failing to see the obvious, that that was not to do with sex but with gender.

The truth is that the chattering classes are obsessed with sex, and love it when they can bring sex and religion into the same news story. Although it is a full-page headline in today's I newspaper, "Church lifts ban on gay bishops", it really is a non-news story in the big scheme of things. Certainly the House of Bishops seem to have issued a strange statement preempting a review set up to examine the issues of having bishops who are in civil partnerships. You can imagine journalists seizing on this juicy worm, can't you, and ringing up the usual suspects like Anglican Backwater and Affirming Stonewallers for predictable quotes - and there you have it: stir together, put out on the internet, and you have an instant no-effort, no-brain story. One more to add to the arsenal of anti-church myths. One does wonder what the bishops thought they were up to - whether they are using the gap between archbishops to rush in a change in policy, which neither the outgoing one nor the in-coming one is enthusiastic about. One wonders who the bishops were who issued the statement, other than the Bishop of Norwich, and one wonders who their PR advisers were. I also wonder whether it is more than a proposal for General Synod to consider at their next meeting, or whether it is the fait accompli that it sounds like.

However, let me not bang on about it, or Mr Naughtie will feel vindicated! Perhaps we Anglicans should follow the Orthodox pattern of permitting clergy to marry but having only celibate bishops.

The poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, when he was guest producer of the Today Programme, made a plea for more good news. He was, sadly, poo-pooed by John Humphris. But I agreed with him, and so let me finish with an article (from 22nd November) which I found today:

10 Great things about the Church of England

The Guardian described the General Synod as “a long and boring suicide note”. But before declaring the Church of England dead, here's a quick review of a few of the things the Church has done, is doing and is planning to do... 
1.    International development
The Church of England continues to be a voice against injustice and for the people around the world living in poverty. They continue to try and influence governments, work with churches here in the UK and overseas and with charities. With seats in the House of Lords, bishops continue to question the government about development, and stand up for the UK’s aid budget. Not to mention the numerous charities that individual Anglican churches are committed to supporting.
2.    Paying a living wage
Yesterday's General Synod voted in favour of ensuring that all church employees are paid a living wage. The living wage is higher than the minimum wage, which at the moment stands at £6.19, outside London. By supporting the living wage, the Church of England is encouraging individual churches, diocese etc. to pay their employees £7.45 around the UK and £8.55 in London.
3.    Women’s rights
The news from the General Synod may have created controversy concerning the role of women in the Church of England, but it was only at the end of October that bishops in the House of Lords were lobbying the government to fulfil its and the UN’s commitment to strive for gender equality around the world and to place women at the centre of international development and the fight against poverty. Historically too, the Church has stood up for women, providing some of the first free schools for girls and supporting Josephine Butler’s campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act.
4.    Education
One in five primary school children are educated by Church of England primary schools, and there are 190 Church of England secondary schools in England. This makes the Church of England the largest provider of schools in the country.
5.    Abolition
In 1807 the Slave Trade Act was passed largely due to the efforts of William Wilberforce, who was supported and backed by John Newton, a Church of England clergyman. But the fight against slavery is something the Church of England has continued to be a part of; as the Church and the individuals within it campaign against human trafficking.
6. Working with other churches
The Church of England is committed to keep working with other churches and promoting church unity. The Council for Christian Unity (CCU) supports both broader dialogue between churches and dialogue at a local level. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has also been involved in supporting the Fresh Expressions movement.
7. Interfaith dialogue
The Church of England is actively involved in trying to promote dialogue between religions. The Springfield Project at St Christopher’s church in Birmingham, for example, is the home of The Feast, a project where young people of Christian and Muslim backgrounds can come together, make friends and discuss their faith. They also run a playgroup for mothers and children called Seedlings which serves their local, multi-cultural community.
8. Youth work
Many individual Anglican churches are involved with youth work. In particular the church runs The Church Lads’ and Church Girls’ Brigade (The Brigade), a youth organisation which welcomes people from all faiths and none. There is also the Church of England Youth Council which meets twice a year and represents the young people in the church, and can send representatives to the General Synod.
9. Reducing their carbon footprint
The Church of England is committed to ‘Shrinking the Footprint’. They are running a series of campaigns to reduce the Church’s carbon footprint by 80 per cent by 2050, and by 42 per cent in 2020.
10. The individuals in the Church
In the words of Justin Welby after the announcement of his upcoming appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury: “The work of the Church of England is not done primarily on television or at Lambeth, but in over 16,000 churches, where hundreds of thousands of people get on with the job they have always done of loving neighbour, loving each other and giving more than 22 million hours of voluntary service outside the church a month. They are the front line, and those who worship in them, lead them, minister in them are the unknown heroes of the Church.” 
(Lauren Belcher, Evangelical Alliance). 

Happy New Year!

"I grow old, I grow old; I shall wear my trousers rolled" - or something like that. Woken up by loud bangs and flashes overhead at midnight, I was overcome with ennui and even forgot to wish Jane a happy 2013. "What a peculiar way for a cash-strapped world to mark a non-event!" I thought. After all, it happens every year; it's only one more click on the digital clock, or one more tick on an analogue dial.

Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Moscow, Dubai, London, Edinburgh, New York and many more cities round the globe all seem vie with each other in producing the most spectacular 15 minutes of sound and fury signifying... what? Even in Pyongyang and Rangoon they've adopted the fizz-bang marking of the year's transition. Symbolically, Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire saw 60 killed and 200 injured in a stampede at  a fireworks display last night. What a waste of life in a country struggling to recover from a civil war in 2011! Altogether what a night of wasted resources - all for a transitory feel-good factor, leaving behind a few photos and many hang-overs! I know, I grow old.

Don't get me wrong! I like celebrations. I approve of them. I think they should be lavish. After all, the waiting Father killed the fatted calf for his waster of a returning son. I just wonder what the New Year extravaganza is all about. That's all. But it doesn't stop me modestly wishing you a peace-filled 2013.

Farewell

Dear Friends

Blogging has recently been distracting me from my main occupation which is trying to write a book. So I've decided to stop writing blogs until the New Year (at least) - unless of course I am desperately provoked! You see with my less than nimble fingers it is a slow business, physically, typing. I don't imagine I'll be greatly missed, but of course I'll miss the sound of my own voice. I have to say I've noticed a tendency to get rather bah-humbuggy developing, which may be seasonal, but isn't very attractive or edifying.

So I'm taking a vow of abstinence. And hopefully the world will be a merrier place. I'll just leave you as an Advent / Christmas present a new song I've recently come across - which I really like (forgiving the grammatically jarring "you and I" - Back in your box, Ebenezer Scrooge! - ), as I say "Au revoir." I hope you enjoy it.

Click here: "The angels knew" Nick and Becky Drake

God bless us all.

Michael

Predictably bonkers

Oh no, not again! First Dilnot. Now Leveson. Faced with a crisis, whether the cost of social care or the collapse of trust in journalism, David Cameron sets up a commission or an enquiry, under distinguished and extremely intelligent experts, who spend many months of intensive work of evidence-gathering and deliberation. They then come up with long reports with workable conclusions.

Then in Parliament the Prime Minister makes polite noises about the reports as he presents his verdict. But when it comes down to the nub of the matter he weaves and ducks. What a shame! In the case of Dilnot, the Government has been dithering about the limit of contribution towards social care that people should be expected to make. The suspicion of course is that HMG wants to set it higher than Dilnot's recommendation, to reduce its own perfectly affordable input. The effect of that would of course be to penalise those with modest savings, as they'd lose a larger proportion than those with fat-cat pensions.

And now with Leveson the plan is to present a bill to Parliament which, as the Culture Minister, Maria Miller, admitted to John Humphris on the Today programme, is designed to prove Lord Leveson's proposal unworkable. Unsurprisingly virtually all today's newspapers have been rubbishing the report. When you come to think of it, that's a pretty strong recommendation for it. They don't want to see their licence to kill reputations, privacy and even worse curtailed - and that is what they fear a more independent effective regulatory body might do. In Parliament time and again we heard the old canard that Lord Leveson was proposing state regulation of the press, the myth which that same press is very busy promulgating. It is clear that he is not. He is proposing that someone guards those who are keeping an eye on the guardians of our freedom.

Lady Helena Kennedy QC, the great champion of free speech, compared the Prime Minister's rejection of Leveson's central recommendation to a genuine Whitehall memo that followed the last enquiry into press standards by Sir David Calcutt 20 years ago. "We know we're not going to do anything. We can't say we're not going to do anything, so we have to say something that covers up the fact that we're not going to do anything." As she said, it could have been a line out of Yes, Minister. The tragic thing is that "not anything" means nothing for people like the Dowlers and the McCanns. David Cameron assured such victims that he would ensure the implementation of Lord Leveson's proposals "unless they were completely bonkers". Apparently he reckons they are. Most of us know they're not, and wonder whether our politicians have learned anything from the past few years.

Why the picture at the top of this piece? Well, you know what they say about kicking things into the long grass... One way we can try to prevent this happening to the Leveson report is signing the petition launched today by Gerry McCann and Chris Jefferies, the traduced teacher from Bristol:   http://hackinginquiry.org/petition/.

Reflections in the light of day

© National Geographic

The Church of God usually deals with a rather long time-frame. Last week the Church of England met the temporality of politics in which "a week is a long time", including a number of politicians pontificating (an activity usually reserved for popes) about its affairs and issuing thinly veiled threats against it in view of its recent inexplicable entry into madness, as its failure to agree about women bishops was regarded. Even the Prime Minister upbraided it to get "with the programme" - though I wonder whether he had actually read, let alone understood, the Draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure [item 501] - or if 99% of the MPs had for that matter. (I'm sure he'd have approved to the reference to civil partners in it, if he had.) It must be frustrating for governments, once they have devolved powers to a body, to find them being used in an uncongenial way. But, as the saying goes, as you make your bed, so you must lie on it.

However there you go. The media, including the blogosphere, have had a field day. Even my small last piece had an extraordinary circulation, which I am at a bit of a loss to account for. It seems it may have provided first aid for some of the women, not least priests, who were reeling from the blow that Tuesday had inflicted. It was, I must say, a long week for me, and though I longed to move on I kept chewing the matter and the debate over. This post might, I think, be an attempt to find some sort of resolution in my own mind, so that tomorrow I can back to business as normal.

I was surprised to find that my disappointment over the vote was not shared by everyone. I think at least one of our local clergy thought the measure was not sufficiently clearly defined, and therefore didn't offer enough protection for conscientious objectors. Perhaps if the Code of Practice which every diocesan bishop would have been required to draw up to “respect” the sincere requests of parishes and vicars who found themselves unable to accept the ministry of a woman bishop had been clarified beforehand (or at least the minimum requirements of a code) rather than the simple obligation to have a code, some of the fears might have been allayed. My listening to the debate, however, revealed that a lot of the argument was about the principle (or doctrine) of women in church leadership, which had already been agreed upon, rather than about the practicality of safeguarding the "traditionalists". I do understand that in fact producing specific safeguards is easier proposed than achieved. A previous attempt was felt to create second-class female bishops. 

Another of my reflections was regret that we would have been even further out of step with the most ancient churches, like the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, who of course have only male priests. One of the clearest demands Jesus made of his followers was that they should be "one", i.e. unified; and one of the scandalous results of either outcome would be to deepen divisions in what likes to be regarded as the Christian Church. Of course, it may be too that those who long for another Council to continue Vatican 2's work may in time be rewarded and the Catholic Church may change.

A friendly theologian came to lunch on Saturday and I blithely expected him to confirm my half-baked impressions. Sadly he was more cautious about my interpretations of the evidence! He pointed out that actually there's a lot about submitting in the New Testament, such as submitting to the authorities, children submitting to parents, wives to their husbands - "and each submitting to the other," I pointed out. "Indeed," he agreed urbanely! - and even the Son submitting to his Father. There was, he reckoned, a structure of authority within Creation, reflecting the Trinity. I may not have got it exactly right, as by now my carefully constructed universe was rocking! Reflecting on it later, it occurred to me that there's an essential difference between voluntary submission and institutionalised submission. There's a world of difference between saying, "Choose to submit yourselves..." and "You have to submit...". In fact, submission is of its very nature a voluntary attitude. And to be blunt, it seems to me to be a precarious business to argue from the nature of the Trinity, which to me at least it is an incomprehensible mystery. 

He also took me to task over the meaning of the word, head (kephalé), the part of the anatomy, when I argued that we overlay it with meanings of superiority, such as head honcho, head teacher, head man. The Bible, said I, places the will and the centre of motivation lower down the body than the head. "Hmm," he said sceptically. And Jane told me to smile and stop giving him indigestion!

Afterwards I reflected, "What has all that to do with leadership in the Church?" After all, doesn't the Church have a very different view of authority, although you might not think it with all the medieval paraphernalia of power, from chunky rings and princely robes to "enthronement"? How I long, by the way, for a bishop to say, "It shall not be so with me. I know it will at first be a shock to you, but I am not going to go in procession with my outriders"! Our model of authority is Christ, the slave on his knees serving, not lauding it. And don't we see women exercising the spiritual and natural gifts, including leadership, throughout the New Testament church, including apostleship and eldership? In fact, it seems to me we make these terms too technical and too restricted. After all, they are trying to describe functions in a new sort of body which has never existed before with the limited palette of the language of a patriarchal society. This is the new Temple. "This is what is happening, some hosting, some prophesying, some teaching, some leading, some healing etc etc." All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. And it may be, may it not, that he empowers a woman with oversight (episkopé)? 

It struck me that he was quite Elizabethan in his emphasis on the importance of hierarchical stability  - but then so was my revered Shakespeare. The enormity of Macbeth's crime is that he has murdered the King. 

"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope

The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence

The life o' the building!" It is a return to chaos (confusion) or anarchy. And that is most to be feared. Yet it also occurs to me that the great conservative evangelical of the 17th century, another of my great Englishmen, who uttered one of my all-time favourite sayings, "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken", was not afraid to contemplate the unthinkable for the sake of justice. We may think history proved him mistaken, but actually parliamentary democracy owes Oliver Cromwell a great deal.

St Mary Magdalene Church, Bruges

To give him his due, I’ve painted our divergence in rather starker terms than he would recognise. I don’t think he’d be troubled by women bishops…. But I think he didn’t want me to write off those with different views from mine too dismissively. It’s possible that he (or I) may be mistaken – but, of course, I'm still sure I’m right! I return to the radical nature of Jesus' mission. In Tom Wright's words, "The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going. Unlike the ambiguous 'progress' of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise — especially the promise of transformed gender roles.... The promise of new creation, symbolised by the role of Mary Magdalene in the Easter stories, is the reality." 

So then I went to church on Sunday morning and, I assume, joined with tens of thousands of others in confessing, 

“Most merciful God,

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed.

We have not loved you with our whole heart.

We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.

In your mercy, forgive what we have been,

help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be;

that we may do justly, love mercy,

and walk humbly with you, our God,”

which seemed very apt in the light of the previous week's emotions.

There was time before lunch to watch BBC's The Big Questions with Nicky Campbell - which I confess to not having watched right through before. It happened to be on... Women Bishops. (How grateful the BBC must have been to have a home news story which took the spotlight off itself!) I'm not sure how many of the participants in the debate were in a state of grace at the beginning, but it didn't take a minute for the gloves to come off in one corner at least. 

My friend Sally Hitchiner was in one of the front rows and was admirably restrained, even when invited to speak. Like me she was very disappointed by the vote, and she was hurt by some of the other participants' doubting of her priesthood. I have to say in terms of graciousness the antis (i.e. anti the measure) won the debate. I understand how hurt the pros were. But, as Sally demonstrated, you didn't need to be full of bile and insult to make your point. You didn't, Rev Pitcher, have to go red and wag your finger at those who disagreed with you. It wasn't necessary to tell the rather nice, articulate Zoe Ham that she was a misogynist. She clearly wasn't. As for the Speaker's Chaplain slagging off the other side as Biblically illiterate, that was simply rude and untrue. If I'd been a disinterested spectator, the fury of the pro-women troika on that side of the studio would have had two effects: one, to make me doubt the validity of their argument; and two, to put me off the Christian message of love. It was Marshall McLuhan who said, "The medium is the message." If you appear to hate your fellow-Christians who differ from you, what's your good news mean? It will, I thought, take a more skilled mediator than Peter Hitchens to bring this issue to a satisfactory resolution. Fortunately, in Justin Welby we have just such a man, perhaps with Sally Hitchiner to advise him!

It will too take all his leadership skills to repair the damage, not to the Church's image - because that doesn't matter -, but to its witness to both the love and the justice of God. It would be worse than sad if Parliament took it into its muddled head to tell the Church - or any other faith group - how to organise its affairs. It is equally sad that, as it stands, the Church's prophetic voice has been compromised by not having its own house in order.

I trust and pray that the issue will be visited again soon and an arrangement which accommodates all consciences is arrived at. I hope we will stop labelling each other and be one. Maybe something better will emerge from all this travail. Impossible? Well, it won't be long before we hear again the familiar story of ultimate encouragement, which starts with a faithful unassuming woman and includes the statement, "For nothing will be impossible with God," and includes Mary's great song of faith and freedom, the Magnificat, 

BBC The Nativity

"And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty."

Amen – or do I mean Ah... men :-( ? Sisters, don't lose hope.

Women bishops - apology

Last night I thought it might have been a mistake to listen to the afternoon live stream of the Church of England General Synod's debate about the ordination of women bishops, since whenever I woke - which was quite often - my mind was mulling it all over. I was glad I'd listened to it, even the peculiar analogy of vegetarians (anti-women-bishops) invited/forced to eat a full turkey (pro-women-bishops) roast, because it was clear that despite the illogicalities it was still a debate about sincerely held convictions about women and authority. I found myself surprisingly upset. So I resolved to write a letter today to my women friends who are also priests and were most immediately injured by the marginal defeat, but it also extends to all who feel that they have been discriminated against by a church they love.

19 Churchward Close
Grove
Oxfordshire
21st November 2012

Dear Sisters

I am deeply and truly sorry that you were so grievously hurt yesterday.

I have to confess that not so long ago I would have been among 45 clergy voting against the women bishops' measure yesterday and I might well have used sermons to say why. About twelve years ago, when the possibility was beginning to be mooted, I remember being asked over lunch at Lee Abbey what I thought about women being bishops and answering that I was against it and wouldn't serve under one. I have repented since.

Four things convinced me that I was wrong. The first was the succession of women in training for ordination at Wycliffe Hall who came on attachment or to preach in our parish. I'm not making comparisons! We had good male ordinands, of course, but it struck me that to be a female ordinand you had to be outstanding. I can remember them all and they were all inspiring. It's not that they set out to change my mind, but merely that they themselves set me thinking and reassessing my previous view of what the Bible said.

Secondly, I had had no time for those who explained away the "plain meaning of Scripture". For me the Bible was, and remains, true and the ultimate authority. So I didn't approve of attempts to wriggle out of its difficult teachings. However I have come to see that the original context is crucial both to our understanding and the application of the Bible. (I have a feeling this is known as hermeneutics.) I didn't find any idea of gender hierarchy at creation in Genesis; it seemed to be introduced as a consequence of the fall. I found that Jesus came to reverse the effects of the Fall and bring in the Kingdom of God:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour”. This accorded with the radical way that Jesus interacted with women, overturning the oppression to which they had been subjected - so that the first response of faith to his incarnation was by a woman, the Virgin Mary, (a contrast to Zechariah the priest); the first Gentile apostle/evangelist was the Samaritan woman; he commended Mary of Bethany for sitting as a disciple at a rabbi's feet; he entrusted the good news of his resurrection to Mary Magdalene; and one could go on. He utterly reversed the accepted subordinate role of women. (See Tom Wright's article: Women Bishops: It's about the Bible, not fake ideas of progress - http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=759.)

This seemed to me to set the context for interpreting the few difficult passages in the epistles. One had to conclude either that they were contradicting Jesus' teaching and example, or that they were addressing particular church situations - such as the morally confused Corinthians or the Ephesian church in the shadow of the great Artemis. I found that some "plain meanings" (such as authentein - have authority over) were not plain at all. I discovered that understanding the current social conditions threw quite a different light on passages I'd regarded with 20th-century eyes. I noticed examples of women in church leadership in Paul's epistles (like Romans 16), and wondered whether my astigmatism had been merely physical.

The sort of process I went through was well described in a sermon preached in the USA by a pastor named Rich Nathan in a series, "Myths that Christians believe", entitled Women can't serve as senior pastors, can they? (He's not an Anglican, but he is what we'd call an evangelical.)

Then thirdly last summer I heard two brilliant talks given by Charlotte Gambill, Senior Associate Pastor at the Life Church, Bradford, and by Danielle Strickland, a Major in the Salvation Army. And it struck me how gifted they clearly were as teachers; in fact I found them the most challenging and illuminating speakers of the week. How perverse, I thought, to deny their gifts to the whole church! It's surely not what God intended for the gifts he provides to build up his Church. These were not, of course, the first women I'd come across in the Church who clearly had gifts of teaching and leading. I've mentioned the ordinands. There was one member of our church who had clear gifts of preaching, teaching and applying the Bible. She wasn't ordained but was given authorisation by our enlightened bishop to preach. Sadly when I left the church was denied the benefit of her gifting. 

I found in the summer a book by Danielle Strickland, The Liberating Truth - How Jesus empowers women - which Jane subsequently gave me for my birthday. She argues that we exploit or discriminate against women is a justice issue, and since the Church is in the business of standing for justice it should set its own house in order by following Jesus' radical approach.

Fourthly, I have often reflected on the empirical fact that the best of the five secondary headteachers under whom I taught were both women. I had no problem working for them. They exercised their authority well. I respected them - but, if I had been consistent in believing that women should not have authority over men, I shouldn't have. I would however been blind and blindly prejudiced not to acknowledge they were good leaders of men and women. They had the qualities and giftings that made them the best people for the job. That was what mattered. Why should not everyone in the Church too have their gifts and calling recognised and used irrespective of gender?

Obviously those aren't the only reasons which have led to my change of mind. There are the many friends, real and virtual, whom I've made who are clearly gifted priests, teachers and leaders of churches. There's your weariness of feeling unrecognised and undervalued, which is our collective sin against you. There is the burning conviction that a church which institutionalises discrimination has no moral ground to speak against injustice elsewhere. There is St Paul's ringing charter, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

I was once proud of the label "conservative evangelical" as that's what I considered myself, as my father was before me. However having heard it yesterday cheerfully used as a justification of inequality I don't want it. I still believe in the unique truth and authority of Scripture, but I don't believe yesterday's vote was faithful to the living Word to whom the written word bears witness. 

One of you wrote, after the debate and vote: "I am gutted, and off to put my son to bed..... and then contemplate how I stay in a Church which feels that no amount of provision can protect people from the 'taint' that my ministry and authority means...". I want to say that most of us do not see the taint, and that we welcome your Christ-like ministry. Please enrich the church by your continued presence.

I hope, wounded though you have been, you find it in your hearts to say, "Father, forgive them...." And I, for my part, pledge myself to pray and work for the Kingdom to come for you - soon.

Your brother in Christ

Michael

PS For those Anglicans who are grieving and depressed by yesterday's vote, here's a quote from the admirable Marijke Hoek of the Evangelical Alliance: "Christian organisations are full of subtle dynamics that undermine and derogate women's development, but if you dive under the radar and follow God's stream, it circumvents the whole lot of them. Ultimately character is what honours God. 'The Way of Jesus … is a way of bringing the kingdom of Love to the reality of this present moment, through the Way we travel, through the Way we are, and through the Way we are with God'. (Peterson)". You're not the only ones!

12 Steps in the Middle East

In 1966 - I remember the year because we were in Istanbul when England won the football World Cup - our family travelled overland in a black Ford Consul 375 to Jordan and Israel. Then the city of Jerusalem was divided between the two countries, and you had to cross, one way only, through the Mandelbaum Gate - which meant, incidentally, that we had to leave behind my brother, who'd just returned from Iran, in hospital to return on recovery with our mother by air. We met Arabs and Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians. Unhampered by official guides, we were free to go where we would.

Then less than a year later came the Six Day War, an extraordinary military success for Israel against the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, probably not best understood from Wikipedia, which resulted in a vast expansion of Israeli-held territory. I relate my '66 experiences not to qualify me as expert, but rather to explain my interest in that region and explain my lack of clarity about it. It seems to me that anyone who pretends fully to understand the rights and wrongs or to know the answer to the Israeli/Palestinian problem is deluded. Today the Archbishop Cranmer blog fired a broadside at the prevalent liberal orthodox view in Rich powerful Jews annihilate poor innocent Palestinians. And I have to agree that it apparently takes a well-directed Israeli drone attack on the top Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jamari (I can't remember whether we are supposed to regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation or not at present. It's certainly intent on destroying the nation state of Israel), to remind the BBC and other news organisations of the 800 missiles and mortars launched from Gaza this year into Israel. So I take Cranmer's point.

Clearly war will not prove to be the solution to the intractable problem. The Arab states' unwillingness to acknowledge Israel's right to exist and Israel's stubborn determination to exist seem to create a formula for perpetual conflict. It would take a massive amount of international repentance (including by the UK - for its [mis]handling of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, for instance) to form any foundation for peace negotiations.

However I suspect the only hope for the parties apparently addicted to violence (including us) is the recognition of their need for a "greater Power" and something like Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practise these principles in all our affairs.

For "alcohol", read violence, and for "alcoholics" read warmongers. And the whole document makes great sense in this context. The Middle East is indeed "unmanageable" and does need a greater Power to restore "sanity".

The beauty of this part of the world is haunting - and so is its pain. Ironic, isn't it, that in five weeks' time millions worldwide will be singing about a future "when peace shall over all the world / its ancient splendours fling" remembering events in this region over two thousand years ago? We should pray that it might be so.