From Professor Richard Bauckham
Sir, - The series of articles by Professor Linda Woodhead (Church
Health Check, 31 January, and 7 and 14 February) is
invaluable for the information that she draws from her surveys. But
her value-judgements and recommendations are strongly affected by
her understanding of what the Church essentially is. It seems
important to highlight this, because her view is certainly not
uncontroversial.
Professor Woodhead evidently works with a notion of the Church
as essentially a national institution (with the clergy as
institutional officials) that exists to perform certain functions
for society as a whole. So she considers baptisms, weddings, and
funerals "the Church's core business".
A Church without congregations (which she imagines for the sake
of argument) would apparently still be a Church. The people who
really matter are the clergy, and a wide range of people who do not
attend worship, but value the institution for all sorts of reasons,
such as the part that it plays in conserving heritage. Committed
believers and regular worshippers seem to be almost a liability,
because they may distract the institution from meeting those
expectations.
This view of the Church is in part sociological (it is very
important to Professor Woodhead that the Church be what
sociologists define as a "Church" rather than a "sect"), and in
part an attempt to hold on to some remnants of a traditional
Anglican vision of the Church - those that still linger in society
as a whole when most people no longer attend worship or even care
much about the Church at all. But a Church whose core business is
baptisms, weddings, and funerals is actually very different from
the traditional Anglican vision of a Church whose core business was
the worship of God and the proclamation of the gospel.
Professor Woodhead's approach is one way of responding to the
demise of Christendom. Another is to recognise that the Church is
the people of God whose identity lies in their commitment to Jesus
Christ (which is what their baptism entails). It is the community
of those who worship him together and dedicate themselves to living
for him both in their life together as a community and in their
life of witness and service in the world. Of course, the Church
needs leadership, and it must, by its very nature, be orientated
outwards to the rest of society. But what it is is the people of
God.
These are theological issues that really matter if we are to
know how to make use of all the excellent material that the
Church Times is currently providing in its Church Health
Check.
RICHARD BAUCKHAM
11 Archway Court
Cambridge CB3 9LW
From Miss Prudence Dailey
Sir, - In arguing that the General Synod is "clumsy,
dysfunctional, and dangerous", the Revd Philip North (Church Health Check, 7
February) appears to have misunderstood its purpose.
He bemoans the fact that the General Synod spends so much of its
time concentrating on the internal minutiae of church governance;
but it is the governing body of the Church of England, and church
governance is its core purpose. The Synod is at its worst when
making grandiose pronouncements on matters on which it has neither
influence nor expertise, such as international conflict, welfare
reform, or climate change: we kid ourselves that the world at large
is hanging on our every word, whereas in fact the best we can hope
for, if we are lucky, is a couple of column-inches of inaccurate
reporting in the secular press. Of course, such issues are of great
concern to Christians and to the Church, but the General Synod is
not the Church, and would do well to remember it.
Mr North is clearly impatient with the decentralised and
sometimes untidy inherited structures of the Church, which allow
space for diversity and individuality, and in many of their
manifestations continue to weave the Established Church into the
historic fabric of our national life. Instead, he seems to long for
a centralised command-and-control system presided over by a kindof
episcopal Politburo, riding roughshod over the parish clergy, who
in turn ride roughshod over the laity.
It does not seem to have occurred to him that, when people are
resistant to change that is being urged on them from above, there
can sometimes be very good reasons why such changes should be
resisted. And, when change is needed, the way to deal with
resistance at local level is through patience, magnanimity, and
relationship-building, however frustrating that may at times
be.
The great value of the Synod's quasi-parliamentary process,which
Mr North also deplores, is that it gives the Synod real teeth,
making it possible for the representatives of the clergy and laity
to have a substantive influence on the outcome of debates, to the
extent even of defeating the "Establishment" agenda on occasion.
Anyone seeking to imagine what the General Synod might look like
without such procedures might contemplate the average diocesan
synod, where the appearance of consensus is achieved throughwhat is
in effect a talking-shop, leaving little room for dissent to have
any practical effect on decisions.
Mr North is quite right that the Church faces an impending
crisis in an increasingly secular world, but it stretches credulity
to claim that reform of the processes of the General Synod could be
part of the solution.
PRUDENCE DAILEY
Member of General Synod
9 Spring Lane
Littlemore
Oxford OX3 9EW
From the Revd Mark Bailey
Sir, - Professor Linda Woodhead's piece "Not enough boots on the
ground" (Church Health Check, 7
February) highlights a concern felt for some time by a number
of us working in diocesan counselling services: the number of
clergy leaving the profession.
The fact that this number now exceeds those retiring emphasises
the need for more research in order to understand this trend.
Questions need to be asked about how many leave after a "failed
curacy"; how many leave as a result of stress-related illness; and,
perhaps most importantly, which dioceses are "losing" the most.
MARK BAILEY
The Rectory, 6 Green Close
South Wonston
Winchester
SO21 3EE
From the Revd Keith Denerley
Sir, - Among Dave Walker's five dozen or so fun icons of church
activities on the cover of the Church Times (14 February),
I looked in vain for altar, chalice, or paten.
How easy it is to forget that the Church's chief end is to
"offer up spiritual sacrifices" in the sheer joy of worship!
KEITH DENERLEY
1 The Pales
English Bicknor
Glos. GL16 7PQ