King’s Speech and right to protest
From Symon Hill
Sir, — While there was much in the recent King’s Speech to be welcomed, other events in the same week highlighted a worrying omission from the new government’s programme. Labour have given no indication that they will repeal the previous government’s legislation attacking rights to peaceful protest.
On the day of the King’s Speech, police arrested a group of customers in a café because they were making plans for a peaceful protest over arms sales to Israel. The following day, five Just Stop Oil members were sentenced to between four and five years each for planning a protest on the M25. The judge had prevented them from presenting relevant evidence about climate change to the jury.
While I do not agree with all Just Stop Oil’s tactics or attitudes, I find it frightening that people can be imprisoned in the UK for longer than many sexual offenders and other violent criminals for planning to take part in non-violent direct action.
This has been made possible by legislation such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I was one of the first people to be arrested under that Act, when I expressed my opposition to the monarchy during a royal proclamation in Oxford in September 2022 (at least, the police told me that I had been arrested under that Act, although they later contradicted themselves).
It is not necessary to note the high number of clergy involved in Just Stop Oil to realise that any Christian, indeed any person who values human dignity, should be worried by legislative attacks on the right to peaceful protest. This is an issue of religious liberty, given that such protests are often prompted by religious and conscientious convictions.
It is vital that the new Government face pressure to repeal its predecessor’s chilling attacks on peaceful political activity — or, before long, we could arrive in a situation in which any of us could face imprisonment for acting on our consciences.
SYMON HILL
Aston University
Birmingham B4 7ET
Military metaphor more apt than ‘whale’ one
From Mr Robert McNeil-Wilson
Sir, — Defeatism and decline are two of the greatest threats to the Church of England. The Revd Al Barrett’s piece “The C of E should scale down its ambitions” (Comment, 19 July) was the first advocacy that I have seen for their adoption as a strategy.
When he paused in his analogy of the Church with a beached whale’s carcass to write of those who were “committed to digging their heels in and ‘saving the parish’”, to whom was he referring?
Was it the thousands of churchwardens and active members of congregations and PCCs who work resiliently to raise their parish share, keep their churches open and operational, the overloaded priests in multi-parish benefices, the Readers and retired clergy who lead so much parish worship, and the many hundreds of volunteers who go into our parish schools to bring children to faith and help to make our Church younger?
Was it the General Synod, which debated and carried GS 2314, “Revitalising the Parish for Mission”? In so doing, last July, the Synod welcomed the emphasis of the Church’s Vision and Strategy on the revitalisation of the parish for mission and its “recognition that the vitality of parishes is essential for the delivery of all of the bold outcomes envisioned by the Church of England’s vision and strategy for the 2020s”. In that same debate, I offered a more positive and “Church Militant” analogy than a dead whale.
As a former infantry soldier, I spoke of the exciting possibilities on our front line, of “new-start-ups and parishes working together to grow our Church and its mixed ecology. Like the cavalry and infantry in action, both can take ground, but only the infantry can hold that ground. The parish system is our infantry.”
Like the infantry, it is digging its heels in.
ROBERT McNEIL-WILSON
General Synod member for Gloucester diocese since 2021
The Granary, Main Street
Willersey, Broadway WR12 7PJ
From Richard Myers
Sir, — I am sympathetic to the general tenor of the Revd Al Barrett’s article, but I am uneasy with the accusatory tone in the view that “the Church has been utterly complicit in this corruption — since at least the late Roman Empire — in its attempts to ‘scale up’, institutionalise . . .” (quotation from Ivan Illich).
Isn’t the Acts of the Apostles about scaling up and institutionalising? If the argument is that that was small-scale, and that overreaching comes later, could someone please point me to an analysis that shows the distinction, and excuse my ignorance?
I wonder whether it is that easy to know when you are overreaching: William Blake writes that “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
RICHARD MYERS
11 Hillside Lane
Farnham GU9 0LB
Reconsider the clergy-remuneration package
From the Rt Revd Dr Nigel Peyton
Sir, — The clergy-stipends debate in the General Synod (News, 12 July) revisits concerns dating back to the egalitarian purpose of the Church Commissioners to augment the stipends of poorer clergy, and to the watershed Paul report of 1964.
Subsequently, Generosity and Sacrifice: The report of the Clergy Stipends Review Group (2001) proposed that a parish incumbent’s remuneration (stipend and housing) should be equivalent to 80 per cent of the starting salary of the head teacher at a large primary school. In Lincoln, such a salary is currently c.£70k). The report’s questionable discount is explained as “sufficient weight to the sacrificial element of the vocation to the ordained ministry” (page 45).
My research into the sacrificial character of the priesthood — Managing Clergy Lives: Obedience, sacrifice, intimacy (Bloomsbury) (News, 3 May 2013; Books, 17 April 2014) — suggests that, while priests embrace occupational sacrifices, the remuneration package particularly worries households with meagre additional income, especially about retirement. I suggest that “accumulative opportunity cost” aptly describes the spiritual and economic complexities: a desire for appropriate material and emotional recognition for lifelong vocational labour. Increased attention to clergy well-being is, therefore, most welcome.
The current National Benchmark Stipend is £30,638. The Archbishops’ Council’s Central Stipends Authority Report (2023) (page 7), however, presents the total clergy-remuneration package — stipend, housing and associated costs, wider benefits and defined-benefit non-contributory pension — as worth an average of £55k across regional cost-of-living differences.
Might clergy simply prefer the cash and choice? Already today, more clergy are salaried employees living in their own accommodation. Contractual arrangements are replacing covenant relationships, which, together with extended pastoral geography, means that we are, sadly, losing the link between parson and place.
Clergy are modest, undemanding, and particularly mindful of the thousands of undervalued and underpaid workers in our nation. Parish giving and ministry affordability are harsh realities in every diocesan strategic review, as here in Lincoln. The chair of the Archbishops’ Council Finance Committee says there is no “magic wand” to fix things.
Nevertheless, over my ministry years, I have reflected theologically on the value of clergy and suggest that they are an investment in the Kingdom, not a cost to the organisation. As such, they should be “esteemed very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thessalonians 5.13).
NIGEL PEYTON
8 Bishops Place, Welton
Lincoln LN2 3FR
Suspicions that LLF lies behind Ely deadlock
From the Revd James Shakespeare
Sir, — I am deeply disappointed in the outcome of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) process (News, 19 July), and hold all involved in my prayers. But, on the ground here in Ely, I see not a diocese in decline, but a diocese with many shoots of growth, excellent clergy, inspiring theological institutions, many great church schools, and served by a brilliant and dedicated Acting Bishop and diocesan team.
In the South Cambridge deanery, for example, where I minister, I see churches who work together respectfully, to build up the Body of Christ and serve the communities in which we are set. Ely diocese is not riven with conflict, although it has a healthy diversity, demographically, culturally, and theologically, and, of course, there are some tensions, as in any other C of E diocese.
Suspicions will be aroused about whether the outcome of this CNC relates to ongoing divisions over Living in Love and Faith. As your reporter suggests, the Ely outcome could have implications for the wider Church of England, as did Carlisle in 2023.
I would like to argue that we must all be reconciled, not just in Ely diocese, but across the wider C of E, looking to Christ, and outwardly in mission and service, to the needs of our torn and conflict-weary world.
Whether we are conservative or liberal on human sexuality, let us look not to our own needs or self-interests, but to the poor, the hungry, the marginalised, and confused seekers.
JAMES SHAKESPEARE
St John’s Vicarage
9 Luard Road
Cambridge CB2 8PJ
From the Revd Dr Ian Paul
Sir, — Anthony Archer’s letter (19 July) illustrates perfectly the impact that the LLF process is having on the Church at every level. The idea that the CNC members he disagrees with exercised no discernment is a cheap insult. And, unless someone in CNC has leaked information, he can have no idea of the dynamics.
Should, for example, the appointment of someone eminently suitable have been blocked by liberal members who refused to compromise, Mr Archer would not know. Because of confidentiality, the members of the CNC can neither correct him nor defend themselves.
But this is the toxic consequence of the LLF process, and the way in which the House of Bishops has conducted it — secrecy, anger, power struggles, and insults. It is this process, not CNC, that should be suspended.
IAN PAUL
102 Cator Lane, Chilwell
Nottingham NG9 4BB
Tired Magdalene trope
From Canon Gary O’Neill
Sir, — How long will careless writers stir the embers of centuries-old misogynistic tropes? There is no biblical evidence that implies that St Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Even though the Ven. Peter Townley acknowledges this in his article (Faith, 19 July), the damage has already been done by his earlier comment about the “tart with a heart”.
While it is both legitimate and illuminating to survey the manner in which writers, preachers, and, especially, painters have represented Mary Magdalene, any conversation must, sadly, shout from the rooftops what the Bible tells us about her. The Bible does not say that she was a prostitute.
GARY O’NEILL
10 Neston Close, Helsby
Frodsham WA6 0FH
Don’t blame St Ignatius
From Prebendary Norman Wallwork
Sir, — The Bishop of Blackburn, in addressing the General Synod, is right to challenge the work ethic of “to toil and not to seek for rest” (“Support for end of six-day week”, Synod, 12 July). But he need not lay the blame at the feet of Ignatius of Loyola. A number of Jesuit scholars, not least the late Fr Joseph Munitiz of Campion Hall, have established that the Prayer of St Ignatius cannot be traced beyond a French book of Ignatian devotions by Xavier de Franciosi, published in 1897.
NORMAN WALLWORK
Brookside Lodge
Three Horse Shoes
Cowley, Exeter EX5 5EU