A Meddlesome Priest

“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” are words which Henry II is alleged to have used in reference to Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. They may well be words that have sprung to the mind of the present Archbishop of Canterbury as he contemplates the role that Lord Carey of Clifton, his predecessor as Archbishop, has been orchestrating for himself in the Anglican Communion. Everyone is aware of the precarious position that Archbishop Rowan Williams is in as he tries to hold the Anglican Church together in it's struggle to resolve enormous internal tensions. His leadership has been consistently undermined by Lord Carey, who in his retirement has been offering comfort and support to dissatisfied evangelical Anglicans. Many conservative American Anglicans, openly disparaging the efforts of Rowan Williams, fete Carey’s visits as if he were still the Archbishop.

Lord Carey’s leadership as Archbishop helped create the turmoil that has engulfed the Communion. It was for example, his personal intervention during the last Lambeth conference that helped engineer the resolution on human sexuality that has split the Church. His appointment to Canterbury from being Bishop of Bath and Wells was unanticipated, and rumour at the time had it that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, when handed the traditional list of two names, was so ideologically opposed to the first and obvious name, allegedly that of the then Archbishop of York, that she plumped for Carey. The new Primate, a novice to the international politics of the Anglican Communion, set about promoting his evangelical agenda which included his over-hyped announcement of a Decade of Evangelism. Far from revitalising the Church of England’s fortunes, this mammoth effort saw membership of the Church fall below 1 million for the first time. It also spawned an air of conspiracy amongst the bureaucrats of Church House who would publicly proclaim the decade to be a success despite their private knowledge that it was a singular failure.

When the time came for Archbishop Carey to retire, he did this less than gracefully with the press highlighting his attempts to manipulate the situation to ensure that his successor was someone of whom he approved and who would build upon his evangelical legacy. The one person he didn’t want to succeed him appears to have been Rowan Williams, a hero of the liberal wing of the Church. Again the press suggested that there was a feud between the two men, dating from Carey’s blocking of a proposal that Williams, at the time Bishop of a Welsh Diocese, should be translated to the English diocese of Southwark.

In his retirement, Carey has consistently proclaimed his ministry to be that of a reconciler. His actions say otherwise. Some will excuse those actions as being naive. But it is difficult to believe that a person who has held such an important and demanding post as Archbishop for such a period of time, did not developed a certain sophistication when it comes to Church politics. The consequences of his behaviour will not have gone unconsidered. So we must assume his actions to have been deliberate. Amongst the many examples of his meddling, several stand out.

Firstly there was his widely reported lecture at a College in Rome in 2004. Speaking it is to be noted on the eve of a seminar of Christian and Muslim scholars in New York led by Rowan Williams, he launched what the Telegraph called “a trenchant attack on Islamic culture saying it was authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving”. He went on to criticise not only suicide bombers, but the absence of democracy in Islamic countries, and also suggested that Muslim faith and culture had contributed little of major significance to world culture for centuries. The timing of his lecture speaks for itself, and the thought that this intervention was intended to be a form of reconciliation defeats the imagination.

A year later The Telegraph openly voiced criticism of Lord Carey’s behaviour. An article on May 30th begins: “Lord Carey of Clifton seems unaware of the convention that former archbishops of Canterbury do not implicitly criticise their successors or interfere in ecclesiastical affairs. Either that, or he has decided to ignore it”. The particular reference is to a sermon Lord Carey preached in London in which he argued that the Church of England should appoint bishops who have worked ‘at the coalface’ (presumably like he himself had done in Durham), rather than those who have spent most of their lives as academics (which is in fact the case for Rowan Williams). The article goes on to criticise Carey for his perception of himself as “the Church’s Henry Kissenger, attending the Davos World Economic Forum and advising multinational corporations on ethical business practice”. It concludes by noting that in his retirement David Hope, Archbishop of York, has returned to the role of a full-time parish priest, and recommends that Lord Carey if he feels so strongly about ‘the coalface’ should similarly return to ‘digging’ rather than ‘stirring’.

A final example is but one of the many instances in which Carey has on his US tours aligned himself with self-styled ‘Orthodox’ Anglicanism as opposed to what they refer to as ‘Revisionist’ Anglicans. In March 2006 he wrote a letter endorsing a questionnaire seeking to revisit the issues of the election of a gay bishop and the advocacy of same-sex unions sent out by an Orthodox group to the US House of Bishops. Virtue Online, which purports to be the voice of Anglican Orthodoxy, reported that Carey “commended this initiative of concerned lay Episcopalians who wish their church to remain faithful to Orthodox Christianity”. Carey is entitled to his views, but seems oblivious to the boundaries he is traversing, and to the fact that his American followers increasingly regard him as an alternative centre of unity for the Anglican Communion.

This week’s religious news in the UK press has focussed upon a letter initiated by a friend of mine, the Revd David Wood who is a priest in the Australian diocese of Perth and to which clergy around the world, myself included, have become signatories. It is an open letter to Lord Carey asking him to observe the conventions of being a retired Archbishop and to stop interfering in the affairs of the Anglican Communion. Responding in a radio interview Lord Carey claimed that his actions have been misunderstood and that the signatories of the letter should have first approached him to establish the facts of the matter. But the facts are that he has clearly and deliberately set out his stall in opposition to Rowan Williams and expresses no apology for doing so. In the interview he urged the signatories of the open letter to reflect and repent, exactly what the open letter is urging him to do. Meanwhile he continues to serve unapologetically as an advocate for those determined to create division within the Church, all the while proclaiming himself to be engaging in a ministry of reconciliation.

Memories of Cuba

In this year which marks the eightieth birthday of two world leaders: the British Monarch and Fidel Castro, I chanced upon an article by Richard Gott, author of Cuba: A New History. Gott argues that the legacy of Castro’s revolution depends upon its constant reinvention and paints a picture of a man cast not so much in the mould of an ideologically driven communist bureaucrat, but in that of a leader who has been able both to accommodate and promote change. Castro’s political life was launched when as a middle-class law student he became president of Havana University’s student union. He would subsequently become first a revolutionary guerrilla with the dream of creating a new society, and after the revolution had succeeded and the USA had placed Cuba under an economic embargo through which it hoped to strangle the country into submission, he retrospectively adopted a Marxist-Leninist stance which endeared him to the Soviet Union and ensured a basic level of economic survival. Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and some extremely difficult economic times, with Cuba’s economy today recovering, he still describes himself as essentially a socialist and even as a green campaigner. His revolution, constantly innovative, serves as a model for other poor Latin American countries and as testimony to the inability of its USA neighbour, a mere ninety miles away, despite being the most powerful country in the world, to consign Castro and his revolution to oblivion.

The article reminded me of my own visit to Cuba in November 1979 as a participant in a World Council of Churches’ consultation “Education for Development: Action for Justice”. In those days one of the two air routes into Cuba was via Mexico City, and because of a national strike by airport workers, I had to spend a few days in that city waiting for flights to resume. One of the guests at the hotel was an American who had arrived in a big black limousine accompanied by several bodyguards in black suits and sunshades and a bevy of beautiful young women. I imagine he was a mafia boss, and when one evening I was invited to join him at the bar and told him I was en route for Cuba he became practically apoplectic and raved on about ‘those commie sons of bitches’. He told me however, that he had been speaking to Washington that very week, and that the American administration had assured him it already had boys working in Cuba to engineer the collapse of the Cuban regime and that the country ‘would go democratic before the year’s end’. He clearly hankered after pre-revolutionary Cuba which had become under mafia domination a centre of widespread and often illegal business in drugs, booze, money-laundering, gambling and prostitution. One of the worst examples of American imperialist sentiments, the country was awash with money going into the pockets of a few while the majority of the indigenous population lived in poverty.

I won’t pretend that Cuba in 1979 was a paradise on earth, but compared with other Third World countries I and my colleagues at the consultation were familiar with, Cuba had made extraordinary progress in terms of providing for its citizens’ basic needs in social housing, superb medical and hospital facilities and schools. For the week prior to our actual meeting we were guests of the government and travelled to a range of these projects, as well as to cooperative sugar farms and cattle ranches. And we met with various community organizations charged with the responsibility of defending the revolution. While we didn’t actually meet Fidel Castro himself, we did have meetings with the Minister for Higher Education and with the Secretary for Religious Affairs. In a country whose revolutionary achievements were constantly under attack from its powerful neighbour, we were conscious of the propaganda battle being waged both by Cuba and the USA. The important thing was we were conscious of it!

When on my return to New Zealand I was asked what had most impressed me about Cuba, amongst the many good things I had seen one struck me particularly. That was the way in which an adult literacy project had been launched and staffed from within the churches – Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican (The Roman Catholic church was still at that time involved in its ridiculous charade of being persecuted by the State and driven into silence). With seventy-five percent of the Cuban peasantry illiterate, volunteers from the churches, most of them young people, went out into the countryside to share the lives of the poor, and to teach them to read and write. To this day UNESCO rates this as one of the most effective literacy campaigns ever to have been conducted. The real significance for me lies not in its measurable success, but in the way that these churches understood that the revolution was initiating positive changes for the Cuban people and they wanted to make a significant contribution towards the revolution rather than to be perceived as resisting it.

In two very important ways my visit to Cuba has had a profound impact upon my life. The first relates to my political analysis. My experience in education for development had made me acutely aware of the way in which market-driven capitalism with its ‘trickle-down’ theory was a major obstacle to development. But I voiced also lots of questions about the way that the Cuban revolution was being institutionalised and how, following institutionalisation, the almost missionary fervour of the revolution could be maintained. Cuban ideologues were clearly uncomfortable with my persistent questioning and it all came to a head when one Cuban official told me: ‘You have as many questions to voice about socialism as you do about capitalism. You are an obstacle to the Marxist-Leninist revolution. You are an anarchist’. My initial reaction was one of bemusement, but I subsequently thought that if that is how people see me, I’d better find out more about this anarchism. I embarked upon a programme of reading, and quickly discovered strands of anarchism which had developed in Christian thought and practice from the Middle Ages onwards and which continue now to inform my political perspective.

Secondly, when worshipping in Cuban churches I became acutely aware of the way in which sermons were couched within what I perceived to be Marxist categories and constructs. Was this not a form of political domestication of the Gospel? It was only upon my return home, when I began analysing sermons there more consciously that I became aware that in my culture, the Gospel had equally been taken captive by capitalism. Thus began a period of study, reflection and teaching which continues to this day.

That uniquely Latin-American forms of socialism are alive and well today can be gauged by the level of hysteria that emanates from President Bush and his cronies. Having singularly failed to discredit Castro and the Cuban revolution, America views the growing current leftist mood in Latin–American politics with alarm. And Fidel is for Latin Americans as Richard Gott puts it, ‘one of their most popular and respected and figureheads, recognised by new generations as one of the great figures of the twentieth century’. Happy birthday Fidel .

The Rehabilitation of Judas

I’ve always had rather a soft spot for Judas Iscariot. Given that Jesus had indicated that he was travelling up to Jerusalem where he would be betrayed and, having reached the city, making it clear that the betrayer would be one of his trusted inner circle, the Bible account suggests that the betrayal of Jesus was an essential element in God’s master plan for the salvation of the world. It seems rather ungracious of the Church to have vilified Judas for his pivotal role in the drama of the Passion down through the centuries. Had Judas not fulfilled the role prophesied for him, we might still be awaiting salvation!

The Bible attributes the basest of motives to Judas. On the one hand we are told that the Devil had put it into his heart to betray Jesus, and on the other much is made of his initial acceptance and later rejection of the blood money, those infamous thirty pieces of silver. When I studied theology in the revolutionary days of the 1960’s some biblical scholars were arguing that Judas’s real motives may have been entirely honourable in that he was a member of the revolutionary Zealot movement, which wanted to see the end of Roman occupation. Judas wanted to crystallise the revolutionary moment by provoking the arrest and trial of Jesus whom he regarded as King of the Jews and the focal point for Jewish resistance to the Roman state. That seemed an entirely feasible argument in those days when the politicisation of Christianity into anti Viet Nam war and pro Civil Rights movement stances prompted a radical re-examination of scripture.

It seemed appropriate that during Holy Week when the events of the final week of Jesus’s life are dramatically re-enacted in the Church’s liturgies, that Judas Iscariot should feature in the media headlines. This time it was because of the publication of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, an ancient text which purports to give Judas’s side of the story. The history of the discovery of the papyrus, the damage it suffered and its patient reconstruction, reads like a mystery story. Scholars date it to the third century, although because it is mentioned by Irenaeus in 180 AD it must have been written prior to that and its suggested date is between AD130 and 170. This restored version is assumed to be a third century Coptic copy of the original work.

The discovery of new Gospels, albeit fragmentary, is not unusual. Scholars suggest that there are some fifty works which purport to be Gospels, and that 21 of these can be dated to the first and second centuries. Some works that have been cited by others seem to have totally disappeared. The Gospels of the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus are cases in point. But others have been reconstructed so that we now have substantial parts of, for example, the Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Judas Iscariot.

If there are so many Gospels around, why does the Bible contain only the four familiar ones? The history of the early years of Christianity is characterised by debates and contestations over what could and could not be defined as orthodox Christian beliefs and doctrines, with the losers of these debates being declared heretical and excluded from the Christian community. One of the key tests of orthodoxy was to do with the writings about Jesus and the early Church which could be regarded as authentic. Various councils of the Church like that in Rome in 382, Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397 and 419, reached decisions on which documents would thenceforth be regarded as comprising the canon of Scripture, and which were unacceptable. Among the criteria used for reaching that decision were whether the book had been prepared by an Apostle or under the direction of an Apostle, whether the book was recognised and used by the Church, and whether the doctrine it embraced tallied with that of books already regarded as authentic. On the basis of these kinds of criteria there was no chance that declared heretical writings could be recognised as being within the canon.

One of the heresies proponents of Christian orthodoxy were determined to reject was that of Gnosticism which laid claim to special or secret knowledge to which the adherent had access. The combination of Gnostic and Christian belief proved to be a heady mix, which the defenders of orthodoxy were determined to marginalize. And one of the tactics in achieving this was to ensure that Gnostic influenced writings like the Gospels of Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot would never be regarded as part of the canon. Despite this defeat, these extra-canonical books are still valuable insofar as they represent an alternative voice within the early Christian communities.

The Gospel of Judas Iscariot portrays him as a hero. Far from being the rejected disciple, he is the most trusted of the disciples to whom Jesus has alone given the inner secrets about the nature of the Kingdom. And far from betraying Jesus, Judas does exactly what Jesus expects of him. Jesus tells him that he will exceed all of the other disciples “for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me”. The Gospel suggests that by assisting Jesus to rid himself of his physical flesh, Judas becomes the instrument through which Jesus’s true spiritual self is liberated. And though he comes to an ignominious end, Judas’s role has been to sacrifice himself for his master. As Jesus puts it, “you will be cursed by the other generations – yet you will come to rule over them”.

It is amazing that Gnostic texts like these continue to pose an enormous threat to Christian orthodoxy. Orthodox Anglicans sent Bishop John Pritchard of Jarrow out to bat for them. “This document”, he said, “is an interesting piece of evidence about how one part of the early Church, in all its diversity, tried to understand Judas’s treachery, but it isn’t going to tell us anything more about either Judas or Jesus”. His sub-text appears to be that Christian orthodoxy must remain impervious to the challenge of diverse understandings.

The Vatican rolled out the biggest gun of them all, no less a personage than the Holy Father himself, both in his present role and his former, a noted proponent of orthodoxy. Preaching on Good Friday in the Basilica of St John Lateran, the Pope was clearly arguing against any rehabilitation of Judas. Reasserting the orthodox view, the Pope pictured Judas as a greedy liar whose lies had thrust his life into a downward spiral, and said of him “He became hardened, incapable of conversion, of the trusting return of the prodigal son, and threw away his ruined life”.

I’m suspicious of those who insist on defending orthodoxy at all costs. It seems to me that most of the problems facing both political and religious establishments these days derive from their commitment to the non-negotiability of orthodoxy. A good draught of heresy – religious, economic or political – is an excellent and necessary tonic for the closed mind.

The Power of Prayer

I was reminded this week of Laurie Brown, who held the distinction of serving as Professor of Psychology at three Antipodean universities, and who in retirement became a teaching colleague and a delightfully entertaining friend in Oxford. A practicing Anglican he was primarily interested in the psychology of religion and wrote many books on the subject. I recall attending a lecture he gave on the psychology of prayer in which he examined a particular controlled experiment in which the researchers appeared to have discovered that prayer in certain circumstances is indeed efficacious. I also remember that he supervised the dissertation of a student in our Theology department who was the doctor for the Bahamas’ Olympic Team. This student argued in a most convincing way that pre-event prayers enabled his athletes to achieve much higher performances in their chosen discipline. So for fifteen years now my understanding of the outcomes of prayer has been heavily influenced by the notion that even science, that old adversary of theology, provided a degree of evidence of the power of prayer.

Yet I retain a certain personal ambivalence about the subject. On the one hand my experience as a priest has taught me that when it comes to prayer there are some mysteries which I am unable to explain rationally to people. I think of the occasions in my South London parish when people felt their home was possessed by the spirit of a departed family member, and how I was just as surprised and at a loss for an explanation as the family was when the Church’s prayers of exorcism were instantly and permanently effective. Of course I could offer the Church’s theological explanations as to the nature of spirits, why they sometimes become earthbound and how the rites of the Church enable them to make the transition to their intended abode. But I can’t begin to provide a scientific account of how that process works. The same can be said for my brief experience as a hospital chaplain, subsequently confirmed by many priest friends, of the efficacy of the rite of anointing the sick with holy oil with on occasion, apparently miraculous reversals of disease which the medical profession is unable to explain. Here again one can provide a theological explanation but not one to always satisfy the scientific mind.

On the other hand, there are forms of prayer, which I simply cannot abide. I’m referring to that free and informal style of intercessory prayer which involves continual use of the word ‘just’, as in ‘Lord, we just want to thank you, and we just want to bring before you. . .’. Some forms of this prayer involve a lengthy description of the state of God’s universe presumably predicated upon the belief that God has ceased to be omniscient and is no longer aware of what is happening in the world. Other expressions seem to have the objective of self-glorification with the ardent disciple earnestly impressing his or her personal piety upon the rest of the group. And at its worst it becomes a vehicle for sanctified gossip as in ‘Lord, we just want you to be with Tom and Mary whose marriage is breaking down’. For three years I was pastor for an ecumenical congregation greatly given to this means of communicating confidential information about other people, and I came to regard this mode of praying as an abuse of trust and at times, the victimization of persons.

This week one of my mature students, himself a priest, recounted a story about being in a clergy meeting where this style of prayer was being used and where it quickly became obvious that every member of the group was expected to contribute. There was no escape. So when his turn arrived he began as was expected, ‘Dear Lord, we just thank you for bringing us together this morning, and just bless you for all your gifts to us. We just thank you for giving us Jesus, and we just thank you too for his mother Mary’. Here he paused for breath and continued, ‘in honour of whom we say together, Hail Mary full of grace . . .’ as he launched into that time-honoured prayer which is a feature of catholic worship but anathema to many of an evangelical disposition. The serious point to this story is that it addresses what we might call a culture of prayer which is imposed upon all irrespective of one’s personal understanding or preferences. Of course it could be argued that most public prayer can be construed in the same way, although at least in most forms of liturgical prayer one is not being coerced into participating.

How effective then is prayer? People were shocked when a priest I know said that to his knowledge not a single intercessory prayer of his has yet been answered. In the church’s daily offices for example, I pray daily for peace, but all the evidence shows that the world is a less peaceable place now than when I began seriously praying fifty years ago. It’s got worse, not better. On the other hand there is a good deal of reputable scientific evidence affirming the power of personal prayer, those habits of mindfulness, of meditation or contemplation, and the use of spiritual exercises, in establishing a real sense of personal peace and equilibrium.

Scientific examination of the efficacy of intercessory prayer, praying for others, hit the news this week and prompted this reflection when the results of the largest ever study into the relationship between prayer and health were reported. This research suggests that rather than improving the condition of those who are ill, prayer may instead make them worse. The decade-long study in the USA, where, let me remind you, two thirds of the population claims to pray regularly, discovered that patients undergoing heart surgery did no better when prayed for by a group of people unknown to them than those who were in receipt of no prayers at all. On the other hand almost sixty percent of people told they were being regularly prayed for developed complications. One of the possible factors in this scenario may be, as one of the researchers explained, the impact upon a person about to undergo major surgery of being told they were being prayed for. This may have had the effect of reinforcing in the patient a sense that their condition was dire, and thus raising anxiety levels, which hindered their recovery processes.

As might be expected where matters of faith are concerned, religious groups quickly attacked the findings on the grounds that science is incapable of illuminating questions of personal religious faith. And of course some scientists weighed in as well arguing that the study trivialises religion, which seems to me to be more a faith statement than a scientific statement, and claiming that the research has to be suspect because the experiment did not trace and measure the amount of prayer the 1800 patients ‘received’, which is very much an argument from science.

That this piece of scientific research will not be the final word on the efficacy of prayer, we can be sure. Meanwhile I wonder whether intercessory prayer, like cigarettes, should now convey the warning that it may be a danger to health?