June 1997

Parish Profile

St Stephen's Lewisham

What Father says goes, according to Mary Draper. Eighty next year, her late husband was at one time Conservative mayor of Lewisham (not a position with comparable privileges).

Mrs Draper has been attending St Stephen's, Lewisham since 1945. In the 1930s she went to school at St Mary's, Wantage, and when she first arrived at St Stephen's, she remembers the self-selecting congregation hailed from as far away as Croydon.

In those days the practice was Anglican Missal. It remains about as high Anglo-Catholic as it is possible to go, though there was a wobbly decade after 1956 when Bishop Mervyn Stockwood appointed Robert Dampier to the living with a moderating agenda. That led to a fair haemorrhage of the more rigid Anglo-Catholics in the congregation to St Magnus the Martyr across the river by London Bridge. British religious life has long been consumerist - all about decamping, selecting your parish, choosing your bishop, opting for a dissenting church. Strange how the free but decreasing market in religion makes for such destructive fissiparous passions in the divine comedy.

Fr Geoffrey Kirk introduced the Roman rite when he arrived in 1983. Now, at the appropriate point in the prayer of consecration, the congregation pray for Pope John Paul and for Bishop John (ie Broadhurst of Fulham, the episcopal visitor who has oversight here under the so-called London plan). Mrs Draper says she would be straight off to join the Roman Catholics if a woman priest ever put her nose round the door at St Stephen's: and "if she wasn't so lazy and old", she'd probably have gone over to Rome on the issue already. Neither Fr Kirk, nor his assistant priest Fr Francis Gardom, an old Etonian who is one of the more individual clergy in a Diocese not short of clerical characters, consider themselves to be in communion with the Diocesan team of Bishops. Kirk devotes a third of his time to Forward in Faith, Cost of Conscience (which he created single-handed in the early 1980s) and church politics. But alternative oversight is working very nicely from the point of view of St Stephen's. The parish (electoral role 95) was recently re-assessed under the Fairer Shares deal and saw its quota reduced to £17,000 - manageable in comparative comfort.

Pentecost 1996
The Bishop of Aipo longo celebrates at St Stephen's

St Stephen's is a fine Gilbert Scott edifice, consecrated in 1865 and paid for by the Rev. Russell Davies who had been dissatisfied with the degree of Tractarian fervour at St Margaret's, Lee. The neighbouring Clergy House (designed for celibates) is very impressive, and superbly furnished and decorated by Fr Kirk, its basement now supplying space for toilet and kitchen facilities to a range of prefabricated parish rooms that run alongside the small well maintained vicarage garden east of the church.

Russell Davies's money ran out before the planned spire went up. But the interior of the church, despite losing much fine Clayton & Bell glass in the war, remains inviting and dignified. There is an attractive Lady Chapel on the south side of the chancel, where the sacrament is reserved. Spacious and modern liturgical arrangements around the westward-facing main altar have been carefully laid out by Fr Kirk. The building, however, faces major structural problems. The parish AGM was told that the beautiful glass at the East End (with solid deep reds and blues) will need to be removed until the subsidence has been sorted out. Otherwise it might be blown out and shattered any night in a high wind.

Along with the Papal mention, the main Sunday Mass at 10am is very similar to what most Anglo-Catholic churches in the London Diocese (but few in Southwark) now offer. Women do not serve in the sanctuary. Incense is always used. But the emphasis of the church, as the congregation almost all agree, is on preaching and the Bible - in a fairly fundamentalist vein. The clergy are almost universally liked and respected. Most people would concur with Mary Draper's comment: "I was brought up in the old Anglo-Catholic way, where you didn't argue with the priest." But nobody would accuse either Kirk or Gardom of suppressing argument. The latter has long been running a twice-monthly smallscale house-group called the 'Aquinas Ward'. Members have to speak to a subject of their choice for two minutes, to help the less articulate acquire confidence holding forth in public. Neither Kirk nor Gardom wishes to silence people. They just want to enlist them on the right side. As Gardom says, "I'm somebody who's in the business of trying to correct error when I see it."

The children's Choir at Parish Mass

The 10am Mass (average turn-out around 60) is a real community event, with a strong social tinge afterwards, though the more conservative members disapprove of the way the kiss of peace goes on for five minutes sometimes. Yet the parish lacks many of the communication aids (such as a parish magazine) that a comparably committed and well-run evangelical set-up would offer. Evensong and Benediction, and the 8am Low Mass are not well attended. But Holy Week is a big draw. The healthy life of the parish shows in the well-attended Harvest Supper, and the regular boot-type sales outside the front of the church, exploiting its central Lewisham position to raise money for charity. There is a weekly distribution of food and gifts to the homeless and down-and-out. Parish members are encouraged to lay tins and useful items before a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For Mrs Draper "the way that Father has managed to get all the West Indians and Africans into the church and supporting it" is one of the great achievements - though Fr Michael Wright, the previous vicar's, background in the Bahamas and general racial sympathy laid the groundwork.

The church is opposite Lewisham railway station on the (now pedestrianised and diverted) High Street. The bulk of the local population is from the ethnic minorities who moved in on this part of Lewisham in a big way 30 years ago. Both Fr Kirk and Fr Gardom tend to assume that the West Indian element in their flock were paid-up Anglo-Catholics before they migrated. But one of the most extended local families, the Chambers, who account for about 14 church members, were more Methodist or Seventh Day Adventist than specifically Anglican. They have few reservations about the campaigning posture of their clergy. They just aren't ecclesiastically political. Convinced by the vicar's position they go along with it. They would probably find it hard (as I do) to understand Fr Gardom's line - that the fight against women priests is a re-run of Athanasius versus the Arian heresy, the male priesthood being in some mysterious way reflective of the consubstantial divinity of Christ. On the last Sunday in April, the front page of the Forward in Faith mass sheet at St Stephen's focused on Athanasius and the triumph of orthodoxy.

Paul Chambers, now 42, is one of that eponymous family, who has become a committed supporter of St Stephen's. That is because his brother went to the church school in the parish and because he likes the building and the warm friendly atmosphere of the congregation and because his parents had become regulars. "I didn't give any serious consideration to whether there should be women priests. Probably I don't feel it's correct. I've never given church politics serious thought. It's somewhere where we can meet once a week. I used to read the Old Testament a lot. What I like to do is to get things clearer in my head." Mr Chambers is now a cab driver, and confirms that cabbies are not a notably progressive group on racial issues. At St Stephen's he says he has never experienced any reserve on the part of the white members of the congregation. "They're glad to see a congregation, rather than no congregation. Fr Kirk's certainly happy to have whoever is there. None of us go because it's right wing, or against women. We go to worship God and take the sacrament, all together. It's a kind of training ground where you can get used to living with other people, where you all come together as a community on equal terms." He recognises that there has been a certain falling away by white members over the last few years, probably (he suspects) people becoming Roman Catholics over the women's ordination issue.

Mrs Gretel Chambers, now retired from being a nursing auxiliary, underlines how Geoffrey Kirk's presentation of the faith has worked for her: "I think I've found reality here - the real meaning of life. I have more understanding, the way things are laid out for us quite simply but plain to our understanding. I just attend and listen". She recalls there was a big discussion in her family over whether there should only be men ministers in the church, or women too - "but I was strictly against it. I shouldn't think a woman should be offering the eucharist at all". However, Beverley Fear, treasurer of the PCC, has a much more relaxed view of recent controversies. She works as a litigation solicitor in the City now, and came to St Stephen's 13 years ago when she was a student at Goldsmith's College nearby. Her background was West country Anglican middle-of-the-road. What draws her to St Stephen's is not its hard line but its parochial warmth: "I started being prejudiced against it and coughing when the thurifer came near, but then I succumbed to it - and realised that what mattered was not the show but what lay behind it. It is one of the friendliest parishes I've come across, even if they don't know you well". She thinks it quite weird that the people in such a Catholic parish know their Bibles so thoroughly: "they really try to live it".

But, like many of the congregation, she has no time for Catholic "privileges" such as private confession. She's never felt the slightest pressure from the clergy to go to confession. She did it once but, "It was a very silly thing to do and I'll certainly not do it again. If I want to talk a problem out, I'd rather have a few drinks and go through things with a friend". St Stephen's, however, is not a club of friends, she says, but a Christian community. Her impression is of considerable continuity in the make-up of the parish. Those who dominated her sense of the place originally are still around. It's important for her that fellow parishioners include people she admires and respects. After she'd been away from the parish for five years studying, it was very reassuring that certain "core faces came up and greeted me".

On the way to Catford and Bromley further down the High Street is Fr David Garlick's St Mary's, Lewisham Parish Church, also Anglo-Catholic and negative on women priests, but of a more overtly Anglican type (ASB Rite A). The Sunday of Ascensiontide Bishop Broadhurst came to baptise and confirm there, and the church with a heavily West Indian congregation included all of St Stephen's and a select element from St Peter's, Streatham - supporting their respective candidates. Half the St Peter's people present would have no problem with women priests, but were there to express solidarity. However important the women issue may be, the work of the church must be carried on as openly and positively as possible. Geoffrey Kirk is a forceful campaigner with a telling line in repartee. But he is quite laid back when dealing with opponents. In a way he seems almost schizophrenic about church politics - simultaneously deadly serious and able to see the joke about the possible vanity of such seriousness. Keble College, Oxford (the patrons of St Stephen's), Mirfield, St Aidan's Leeds, St John the Divine Kennington - Fr Kirk's background is very identifying. But he's entitled to say, "I hope I'm neither pompous nor ambitious."

The Offertory at Parish Mass

St Stephen's is a beacon perhaps rather by accident, not least because of the lengthy non-stipendiary commitment to the parish by Fr Gardom, reaching back to the 1960s. Kirk and Gardom are very different animals, but (against all the predictions when Kirk arrived) combine powerfully. As Fr Kirk puts it - "the parish would have died completely had it not been for the influx of West Indians who were fond of that Darke in F Anglican tradition". This development is a success for the Church of England, as is St Stephen's commitment to feeding 40 down and out men a week, and its support of what was an Elfriede Rathbone charity shop in the high street , giving valuable work experience and promoting basic literacy, numeracy and handcraft skills for up to 80 trainees who otherwise would not be catered for anywhere in the area. St Stephen's, Lewisham, may be an awkward case in a liberal Diocese. It's also something of a test case.

Tom Sutcliffe

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