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12th November 2005

May I welcome you to our Synod, which unusually just occupies a Saturday morning, but nevertheless has a significant agenda.

I’m afraid that what’s been occupying much of my agenda during the last week or two, is the nature of the Church, particularly the Church of England, and my responsibilities as a diocesan bishop for its local governance and care. The particular issue facing me has been the likelihood of an illegal ordination if I refused to dissociate myself from, what I knew to be a carefully crafted Pastoral Statement from the House of Bishops on Civil Partnerships.

I decided, in the words of Winston Churchill, “Up with this I cannot put”. A bishop from whatever church, ordaining in one of our diocesan parish churches, without permission is schism, and as I wrote to the clergy, “We don’t do schism in the the Diocese of Southwark.”

Why not? Well lets go back to our roots, and Anglican roots run deep: in the Bible; in the early Fathers; in the Celtic Mission; in English Catholicism - particularly the Benedictine tradition; in the Reformers – Wycliffe, Tyndale, Cranmer; in the Anglican divines like Richard Hooker; in the various movements of the Spirit, the Evangelical Reformers, the Oxford Movement, the Liberal Social Gospel.

And behind each of these various traditions and movements there have been visionary individuals. Bishop Westcott when consulted about the formation of a new religious community at the end of the nineteenth century said, “we want a discipline which will combine the sovereignty of Anthony, the social devotion of Benedict, the humble love of Francis, the matchless energy of the Jesuits.” We still need that combination of Christian discipleship.

Our Anglican roots have supported and nourished a particular expression of Christian and Church life summarized like this by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher:

The Anglican tradition has its strong Catholic element which emphasises the historic continuity and organised life of the church as the applied channel of divine grace through creed, ministry and sacraments. It has its strong evangelical element which emphasises Gospel before Church, personal conversion before corporate expression of it, spiritual immediacy, the direct response to the Holy Spirit wherever He may breathe. It has a third strong element, not easy to give a name to, which acts as a watchdog of both traditions and which brings into our tradition a special element of intellectual integrity, of sobriety and moderation of judgement and of moral earnestness.

This may be expressed in rather dated language, but it points to the strands of Christian experience to be found in the Diocese of Southwark - Catholic focus upon holiness of worship, Liberal passion for social justice, Charismatic dynamic of the experience of God, Evangelical commitment to listen to God through scripture and to witness to Jesus Christ in the world.

And ours is a living tradition of faith & practice, sitting beneath the authority of scripture, yet believing that God is active in our world & has words for us to discern there also.

Ours is a living tradition where scholarship & discussion are taken seriously, but where faith & practice aren’t simply formed in the university seminar room or the synod debating chamber, but are also shaped by the community of faithful women & men as they gather together for worship & prayer in their parish church and then engage in building the common good in their community.

Of course we are just as often a community of disagreement as agreement, and authority is dispersed and difficult to focus. The Church of England hasn’t received an infallible bible, church, pope, archbishop, bishop, vicar, Lambeth Conference, Archbishops’ Council, General or Diocesan Synod, churchwarden or PCC. Authority is various and varied but this doesn’t mean that there’s no guidance, no core of truth, nor that any belief or behaviour goes. No we are part of a living tradition of faith whose certainties are shaped & become real to us as we gather together as the body of Christ yes, in synod and chapter, but far more importantly as we gather around the altar of Christ in worship and prayer, and then give our hearts & minds to his service in the service of a wounded world.

And there are direct connections between what we do here in synod and what we do as worshipping Christians in our parish churches. We have a very good example of this in our present painful scenario. At our last Synod, after a good debate, we passed a set of Diocesan guidelines for church planting, the first diocese to do so. Now the given reason for last week’s illegal ordination at Surbiton was my refusing to dissociate myself from the Statement on Civil Partnerships, but a sub theme, well picked over in the Church of England Newspaper was my alleged refusal to ordain two of the three men involved.

And I did so refuse, until the pattern of church planting emanating from Dundonald fell within the proper pattern of Christian neighbourliness well expressed in our recent guidelines. That’s not because I don’t want to see the church grow, or new Christians be brought to the Lord. I long for this, and rejoice at the many examples of church growth which we see around the diocese. But what I can’t have is the witness of faithful clergy and congregations, undermined by a church congregation planted within their parish against their wishes and will. Some plants from Dundonald have done this in the past, and we have a new example in Dulwich at the present time, when a Non-Stipendiary priest from the Diocese of London is leading a congregation without any authority from me, and against the expressed wishes of the local vicar. This is not church growth, it’s unAnglican anarchy.

And this is not some old fashioned dispute between strands of churchmanship in the Church. On the contrary, the clergy who have protested to me most vehemently about a Dundonald type plant in their parish have been hard-working Evangelical parish priests, and indeed yesterday when I was preparing this address, what should come winging through the ether than an e-mail which reads, 'As Evangelical clergy within the diocese of Southwark, we wanted to write in support of you in the face of the challenge to your Episcopal authority caused by the irregular ordination at Christ Church Surbiton'. It’s signed by some thirty six parish clergy.

Of course I appreciate this support coming from those who work tirelessly to bring the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ to new generations, but our agenda today is a signal to us not to get things out of proportion.

Church order and governance matters, but only because they free the Church to be active and effective in its core work of worship and prayer, witness and service. The presentations from the Lent Call recipients will remind us of this core work both here and around the globe. Then the briefing from Christopher Jones on Mental Health will challenge us to serve even better those poor wounded souls, battered in mind and often excluded from normal life. Our chaplaincies offer wise professional care whilst our parish churches have a good record of providing a welcome to such folk, and can be a bridge between the institutional care of a hospital and life in the community.

There’s a new Harry Potter Movie about to come to our cinema screens. I’m sure that in the last few years, many of you have become familiar with the Harry Potter stories, tales of a boy growing up at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, learning – well, yes, learning magic but more importantly, learning to know himself for the wizard that he is.

Harry has to know what are his gifts and what his challenges, what he should do with them and how he can be useful for good. Sometimes when I’m walking into church behind the church wardens with their staves of office, and holding my own staff, my crosier, I’m reminded of an older magician than Harry Potter – Shakespeare’s Prospero.

Prospero is a scary figure who through his magic binds the spirits of the island he lives on to serve him. And serve him they do. Through them he drives his enemies this way and that by magic and music, visions and voices. They become disorientated and terrified. Prospero is powerful, tyrannical, and cruel but in the end he resolves to find a better way, relying not on magic but on his own innate self. Here is what he says:

When I have requir’d some heavenly music […]
I’ll break my staff
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.

And he goes on to say,

Now my charms are all o’erthrown
And what strength I have’s my own

Many people suffering mental illness are driven this way and that by visions and voices and the world can be a terrifying place until healing and wholeness are restored through medical skill, drug care and therapy. Then they find their own inner strength their own inner self. Hospital chaplains, parish priests have their own part to play in that human journey, and not just with those who are mentally ill.

It’s knowledge of ourselves that is the gift of God to all of us in good or poor mental health. It is because God knows us completely that he has compassion on us, pities us, loves us. He knows us as we really are – and he knows how we could really be. He knows that we have, a golden person inside, a generous, rigorous, genuine person trying to get out. And God loves us for that person he knows we have it in us to be, as well as for the rather less noble people we often are.

In our squabbles and disagreements, debates and dramas let’s not lose sight of that person in ourselves and others. We may not do schism in the Diocese of Southwark, but we do do worship and prayer, witness and service. Let’s resolve to do them even better.