President Trump and Bishop Budde
From the Revd Dr Alan Billings
Madam, — The Bishop of Washington’s sermon in the National Cathedral after the Inauguration of President Trump illustrates too well what is wrong with American religion and politics. Religion has become politicised, and politics is too divisive (News, 24 January).
It was discourteous and so counter-productive to speak directly to the President in such a partisan fashion. He has, after all, just won a general election.
There was, however, an important Christian approach to politics which needed setting out. Perhaps the congregation could have been reminded of President Lincoln’s address at his second-term Inauguration after a bitter civil war.
He could have gloried in victory or blamed his opponents for the country’s ills. Instead, he said: “With malice toward none, with charity for all . . . we bind up the nation’s wounds. . .”
People have to be left to work out the political implications of the gospel for themselves.
ALAN BILLINGS
43 Northfield Court
Sheffield S10 1QR
From the Revd Kenneth Cross
Madam, — In the Church of England, we have our troubles. There are enormous difficulties and things that we may be ashamed of.
This week, however, I find myself proud to be part of the same extended spiritual family as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. To speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4.15), to combat derision with respect, fear-mongering with courage, arrogance with humility, and folly with wisdom — these are the characteristics of a true follower of Christ, and of all who seek justice, peace, and compassion. In her sermon, the Bishop embodied all of this and spoke as a prophet.
While President Trump mocked her and rejected her message, I am reminded of Isaiah 55.11: “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.”
The Bishop’s words already are bearing fruit. The faith of many of us is once again restored: evil may triumph for a time, but in the end, love wins. In that light, we will not abandon hope, but continue to work for all that is good in the name of Christ.
KENNETH CROSS
34 Manor Road
Minehead TA24 6EJ
Asylum: the damaging myth of ‘£8 million a day’
From the Revd David Haslam
Madam, — You reported last week Lord Davies repeating in the House of Lords the ongoing government myth that the cost of asylum-seekers in hotels is £8 million a day (News, 24 January). Besides being but a half-truth at best, this repetition is also dangerous. The £8 million is taken largely from the overseas-aid budget (already depleted), and so is not spent outside the UK on the aid projects, many of which serve mainly deprived women and children in Africa and Asia.
Instead, it is spent on wages for hotel and security staff, firms providing services to the hotels, such as food and laundry, and hotel companies’ profits. All these actors in the process pay taxes to the UK Government and spend their income on other services, which also yield taxes and provide employment. Hence, the current system actively benefits the Exchequer rather than the opposite.
The reason that this is dangerous is that the constant repetition of extremely poor economics whips up the anger already felt by some towards asylum-seekers in our country. This is not to disagree with the Bishop of Sheffield when he points to the danger of keeping quite large numbers of asylum-seekers together in easily identified hotels. Nor is it to say that the system should not be speeded up. We have one asylum-seeker in our congregation with a more or less cast-iron case, who has been waiting some 30 months now for a decision.
But the myth of “£8 million a day” continues to be a threat to him, to those in our local hotel, and even to those who have already received their refugee status.
DAVID HASLAM
59 Burford Road
Evesham WR11 3AG
Justin Trudeau’s record as Canadian Premier
From Mr Rupert Shortt
Madam, — The Revd Michael Coren’s generally positive verdict on Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Prime Minister of Canada (Comment, 17 January) lends support to a dubious notion: that so-called progressive politics — including assisted suicide and the legalisation of marijuana — accord readily with a Roman Catholic world-view. This complex topic doesn’t lend itself to a broad brush.
Critics of Mr Trudeau’s record point to an array of policy failings, among them a doubling of national debt, the quadrupling of fatal drug overdoses, a sharp rise in gun crime, and severe government overreach during the pandemic. Assisted suicide — a reform that Fr Coren has changed his mind over (Notebook, 24 January) — has become Canada’s fifth most common cause of death.
After also dealing too sketchily with the possible causes of recent arson attacks on Canadian churches, Fr Coren then raises wider questions about the relation between form and content in Christian messaging. This subject, too, cries out for more nuanced treatment.
Mr Trudeau is heavily associated with the soft tyranny of woke culture which compels submission to its orthodoxies on race, gender, and language. Centrist RCs — let alone conservatives — tend to judge colour-blind and merit-based principles to be far more in keeping with Vatican teaching than the social engineering associated with contemporary “liberalism”. Identity politics can easily foster factionalism and intolerance: the trans-rights v. women’s-rights battle is one obvious example among many.
Finally, Fr Coren considers Christian support for Donald Trump to be bewildering as well as mistaken. I agree on the latter point, but not the former. Kamala Harris offered a policy platform similar to Mr Trudeau’s. But the menu and its accompanying mind-set are now being questioned across the Western world with growing firmness. Multitudes of Christians apparently held their noses and voted Republican last November because of their theological convictions, not in spite of them. The progressive Left must bear its share of the responsibility for the state that we’re now in.
RUPERT SHORTT
St Edmund’s College
Cambridge CB3 0BN
From the Revd Fergus Butler Gallie
Madam, — I read the Revd Michael Corey’s piece on Justin Trudeau with interest. The phrase that kept coming to mind, however, was the one from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics which is translated as “One swallow doesn’t make a spring.”
While we might rightly laud Mr Trudeau’s welcome of the stranger, it seems to me to be a straw-clutching exercise of the first order to imagine that he will be remembered by history for anything other than his manifest personal arrogance and his regime’s wicked hassling of the poor, sick, and disabled into the horrors of assisted death.
FERGUS BUTLER GALLIE
The Vicarage, Church Lane
Charlbury, Oxon OX7 3PX
Clergy employment status and CDM legal costs
From the Revd Nicholas Henshall
Madam, — Recent articles and correspondence have addressed a range of issues around the clergy becoming employees. Personally, and professionally, I am delighted that this is becoming a serious discussion.
My experience over nearly 40 years of stipendiary ministry, serving six different churches in five very different dioceses, has led me to see employed status as certainly the least bad option in relation to clergy accountability and support. I have also worked for a large public-sector organisation and as a volunteer in a major national charity. The contrast between those experiences and my experience as a priest is simple and clear: in both those other contexts, there has been proper accountability and reliable support.
In both, I would typically meet my supervisor weekly; would have regular review and training (including access to external professional mentoring), and regular professional appraisal, as an important and welcome development tool. None of these have been part of my experience as a priest, except when I have chosen to pay from my own resources for professional mentoring.
Having moved as much as I have, I have seen one big contrast in the way in which every diocese, almost wilfully, does things differently. So ministerial development review (MDR) is different in every diocese. In one diocese, there is real investment in mentoring and development: in the next, nothing at all. In one diocese, a senior priest boasts that they haven’t had an MDR for more than a decade.
In another diocese, I see my area bishop on a regular basis. In the next, I don’t meet a member of the senior staff for several years. In one diocese, there is a welcome emphasis on investing in the outcomes of appraisal. In another, a priest can go without any continuing professional development at all for 20 years, and without anyone noticing. One diocese recognises that there is a really acute crisis among “early-career” clergy and puts in significant resources to support. In another, this is labelled as “too difficult”, with predictable results.
Finally, in this litany, when things go wrong, in many contexts, the first person a parish priest is going to ring these days is not their bishop, but their union rep, or other external support. Although I regret that this should be so, I am delighted that these agencies exist and have been helpful to many clergy.
Of course, employee status will not and cannot address all these issues effectively. But I would strongly suggest from my experience and that of many colleagues that the Church itself is currently not capable of delivering the kind of culture change that is necessary.
Employee status might not be perfect, but it could potentially begin to help us to access the accountability and support that are appropriate to the expectations laid on us as parish priests.
NICHOLAS HENSHALL
The Vicarage, The Close
Groombridge TN3 9SE
From the Revd Neil Robbie
Madam, — There is an established principle in law that a defendant found not guilty in a court of law does not need to pay legal costs. Many of the clergy who had to respond to complaints made against them under the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) had to employ the services of a lawyer. Only 19.6 per cent of CDM cases between 2010 and 2023 resulted in a penalty. Many clergy were cleared, but only after suffering substantial legal fees.
The General Synod, meeting in February, will vote on the approval of replacement legislation for the discredited and failed CDM process. It is my hope that the Church will also seek to address the historic injustice against those who had to pay legal fees to defend themselves against complaints that were false.
NEIL ROBBIE
Holy Trinity Vicarage
1 Burlington Road
West Bromwich B70 6LF
The Crusades didn’t appear out of nowhere
From Victoria Howard
Madam, — Paul Vallely (Comment, 17 January) falls into the often trumpeted lazy and unresearched position of holding up the Crusades as the start of “the long European historical and ideological anti-Islamic legacy”. He seems to forget the earlier history, that Jerusalem was largely Christian for several centuries under the Byzantine Empire until the Muslim conquest of 637/38.
Islam spread throughout the Middle East by the sword, financial inducements, and clever negotiation. More than 400 years later, the Christian Crusaders tried to reconquer what they considered to be theirs. One of the root causes is thought to be the hindering of Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Ultimately the Crusaders failed.
VICTORIA HOWARD
Address supplied (Cornwall)
Cupitt’s reflective life
From Canon Stephen Mitchell
Madam, — After the broadcast of The Sea of Faith, neither the Church nor the academic world offered the Revd Don Cupitt preferment, about which he never complained. He never had the title “Professor” (News, 24 January), but continued to write, teach, and inspire. During the writing of more than 50 books, most after those to which Canon Tilby refers (Comment, same issue), he developed his ideas, changed his mind, contradicted himself, and often reflected on what he had written. To dismiss such a lifetime’s work with “refreshing, but wrong” fails to sum up the article, which was much more nuanced in its appraisal.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
Co-founder, Sea of Faith Network
93 Bantocks Road
Great Waldingfield
Sudbury CO10 0XT