THE early- to mid-1990s were not an easy time to discern the way forward for the Church of England. The Decade of Evangelism was almost at the halfway point, and yet there was no obvious sign of growth. Synodical provision for women priests had proved divisive.
The success of Chris Brain’s Nine O’clock Service (NOS) in Sheffield came as a breath of fresh air. It was genuinely novel. It was explicitly aimed at young people, nodding to tradition while introducing rave-inspired worship. It was not “Evangelical” in any traditional sense, but, rather, an expression of what became known as “creation spirituality”.
This blended insights from cosmology, ecology, and feminism, and found its most cogent expression in Original Blessing, a book by the American Dominican Matthew Fox. He argued that the doctrine of original sin had distorted Christianity, over-emphasising guilt at the expense of goodness. Fox was expelled from the Dominican Order in 1993 and became an Episcopalian. Original Blessing, meanwhile, became something of a must-read on both sides of the Atlantic. I remember a conversation with an English bishop who said that it had “liberated” him.
As we neared the Millennium, there were many who thought that we needed a new kind of faith, less centred on sin and repentance and more grounded in God-given abundance and human creativity. Creation spirituality seemed to speak to the moment. In 1992, Chris Brain brought his “planetary mass” to the Greenbelt Festival.
The music, video, sexy clothing, and light displays of NOS imitated the long-running TV series Top of the Pops. Mr Brain is quoted as insisting that “You don’t have to leave your bollocks behind” to attend the NOS. With hindsight, it is obvious that the apparent celebration of “the feminine” went along with a pretty dismissive attitude to actual women. As we now know, the black-clad “Lycra lovelies” who pranced about at his services, and were reminiscent of Pan’s People on Top of the Pops, were expected to service him in other ways as well.
When we look at the recent history of sexual abuse in the Church, we should remember that the Christian tradition retains an often curious innocence about male entitlement, which is hinted at in the Garden of Eden story. “The woman tempted me, and I did eat. . .” (Of course I did! What else was I meant to do?)
It is interesting that the only person who had the discerning nose to sniff out what was going on with Chris Brain was the Revd Dr Marilyn Parry, Director of Studies on the Northern Ordination Course. She alone refused to sign off on his rapid advancement from deacon to priest. But, of course, she was ignored. She was only a woman, and the men loved what Mr Brain was achieving. Perhaps it was a mistake to write off the doctrine of original sin.