Whitehall farce
OH, JOYOUS Eastertide, with a General Election to follow! In
Westminster and among the political journalists, the adrenalin has
risen, but in my heart there is little but desperate hope that the
next few weeks will flash by, and then we can get back to being a
civilised, rational society on 8 May.
My despair is not because I take politics lightly, but because I
actually care about them. I even belong to a political party, but
between now and polling day all their emails will be deleted on
arrival as certainly as I shall studiously avoid every single
party-political broadcast.
There is something about our election campaigns which is utterly
depressing: the childishness, the playground insults, the
portentous manifestos, the ludicrous promises of so many billions
on this and that in response to yesterday's headlines, the
guarantees, "ring-fencing", and pledges.
TV appearances transform hitherto respectable politicians into
cartoon characters - some Desperate Dan, some the Big Bad Wolf,
some the Pied Piper of Hamelin. What should be a serious democratic
exercise is turned into a Whitehall farce. Still, it's only a
one-act farce. Eastertide will roll into Pentecost, and the
election campaign will be just a weird distraction from
reality.
Behind closed doors
FOR some reason - possibly because the Charity Commissioners
have been looking at their charitable status - The Times
has decided recently to highlight the activities of the Exclusive
Brethren (Media, 27 March). I would
guess that hardly anyone had heard of them before: it is a tiny
sect of about 25,000 members who see themselves as the only true
inheritors of the vision of J. N. Darby. He was an Anglican
clergyman who, nearly 200 years ago, sought to restore the
principles and practice of the first century to the Church of his
day.
His followers became known as the Plymouth Brethren; but,
needless to say, the movement soon split into various conflicting
factions, largely over disputes about the millennium. One of the
factions - the true hard-liners - eventually became known as the
Exclusives, operating a harsh regime of separation from everything
they deemed "worldly", and scrupulously declining to be "unequally
yoked" to unbelievers. The "yoke" included sharing meals, or even a
cup of tea with the rest of us.
Open and shut case
I FIRST encountered them more than 50 years ago, when I married
into a family of "Open" Brethren. They were enthusiastically
interdenominational, and happily welcomed this convinced Anglican
into their midst. I encountered among their ranks, however, a few
refugees from the Exclusives (the movement, small as it is, has a
remarkable aptitude for division). The trouble was that they had
joined an "open" church, but had no understanding of what the word
"open" actually meant.
When they discovered that an Elder's daughter was planning to
marry an Anglican (and, indeed, was to be confirmed), I was several
times subjected to rigorous, critical cross-examination. Was I
aware (for instance) that the word "communion" did not occur in the
New Testament?
My attempted exposition of the meaning of the word
koinonia was met with the accusation that I was using
worldly knowledge (i.e. Greek) to oppose the truth. Even I was left
speechless, however - a rare occurrence - when they assured me that
we were wrong to use the Lord's Prayer because it related to a
"different dispensation".
One of the greatest biblical scholars of the Open Brethren,
Professor F. F. Bruce, once observed that you could divide
Christians into two groups, whatever other labels they had: open
and closed. Closed Christians are concerned to judge the world;
open Christians to redeem it. It seems to me a profound
truth.
Wild at heart
I PREACHED at the thanksgiving service for Hester McLintock, the
wonderful centenarian of Cold Ash parish (Diary, 20
February). A rampant wildlife area was her peculiar legacy to
the churchyard. When, 20 years ago, she first proposed it to the
PCC, there were many doubters. Nevertheless, her persistence won
permission for a small area to be roped off and put under her
supervision.
Strangely, as we noted from the adjoining vicarage windows, this
area appeared to expand miraculously, the churchyard presenting a
more and more unshaven look to visitors. There were a few
complaints, until out of the blue the church won a national award
for preserving rural flora and fauna. Still, today, Hester's patch
stands rugged, scruffy, and bursting with nature's simplest gifts,
all meticulously labelled.
On the edge
THE Bishop of Dorchester, the Rt Revd Colin Fletcher, is now
well into his second stint as Acting Bishop of the vast diocese of
Oxford. In a recent ad clerum, he made a telling point. In
the Church of England, whatever our ecclesiastical structures may
say, the periphery (the parish) is, in fact, the centre.
I had barely finished cheering when I reached a later paragraph,
where I learnt that Oxford needs a new diocesan headquarters.
Accommodating all those advisers, enablers, co-ordinators,
directors, administrators, boards, and societies demands a whole
new building. And so, once again, the centre trumps the
periphery.
School for scandal
A FRIEND was visiting her five-year-old grandchild on a recent
weekend. "What did you do at Sunday school today?" she asked. The
little girl said that they had had a story about a man up a tree
who had been very naughty, but Jesus helped him.
"What had he done that was so naughty?" granny enquired.
"He stole taxis," came the reply.
Canon David Winter is a retired cleric in the diocese of
Oxford, and a former head of religious broadcasting at the
BBC.