Mulling It Over

Happy Easter! Christos vaskres! Yes, when I started writing this, it was Easter Sunday, the most important day in the Christian Church’s calendar. But which church? Normally Irena and I go to the evangelical church in Veliko Tarnovo. The services are all in Bulgarian, of course, but it is good to be with other Christians.

I was not brought up as a Christian. I don’t remember my mother or Eric, my step-father, ever encouraging me to pray or to read the Bible. I hated going to church at my public school, Lord Wandsworth College, and it was at Oxford that I become a Christian. Although I originally signed up for Classics, I changed to Theology.

So what about our new Archbishop of Canterbury? It is now a few days after Easter. There have been a few pieces in the newspapers and on TV about the new Archbishop. Half of me says, “Hooray! Yes, why not? It is about time we had a lady in Canterbury. After all, we have female airline pilots, lawyers, plumbers, mechanics, soldiers, etc.” I am not against feminism. Women often do some things a lot better than men. (An army officer once told me that female terrorists are more dangerous than their male counterparts.) I think that John Betjeman was probably right: many women are better drivers than men. 

I have always been interested in the Suffragettes. They were amazingly brave ladies who risked everything for women’s rights: assault, injury, arrest and imprisonment. As the divorce laws favoured the husband, a lady whose husband disapproved of her feminist activities might be divorced, so she would probably find herself penniless and never see her children again. 

The new Archbishop seems to be a sweet lady (she used to be a nurse). So why not have a female A. of C.? I suppose it boils down to whether or not you think that being a priest is just the same as any other profession. But if Jesus really had wanted women priests in His Church, then why did He keep rather quiet on this subject? Why were all of the twelve disciples men? St. Peter, St. Paul, Augustine, Origen, Luther and Calvin were all males too. Every book in the Bible was probably written by a man, even the ones in which a woman is the main character (the books of Esther and Ruth in the O.T., in case you were wondering).

Then there is the question of whether having a new lady leader will re-invigorate the Church of England. Or is this a symbol of the C. of E.’s terminal decline? Has the institution that was created by Henry VIII’s need for a divorce become ignored and irrelevant in Britain in the 21^st century, so it really does not make much difference who is the Archbishop? Is the consecration of Sarah Mullally as the successor to St. Augustine (the Canterbury one, not the one from Hippo) simply an exercise in re-arranging the ecclesiastical deckchairs on The Titanic that is the Church of England? I don’t think that the problem of clerical sexual abuse is going to disappear, just because there is a new leader and she happens to be a woman.

All of this is not happening in a vacuum. While some more traditional Anglicans (and Roman Catholics and Orthodox) around the world are horrified by this new development, the more liberal members of the C. of E. are no doubt delighted. And how does the new Archbishop’s appointment change the Church of England’s response to the challenge of Islam?

It must have been about thirty years ago that David Pawson warned that Islam would become the dominant faith in Britain. That prediction (or prophecy) is coming true or maybe it has already become true. While more and more churches are closed down, demolished and turned into another Wetherspoons every year, more and more mosques are being opened. “Mohammed” is the most popular name in the UK for a baby.

John Cleese is not someone you normally associate with any sort of religious belief. The Life of Brian is brilliant: irreverent, witty and surreal. Yes, it is supposed to be about Brian, but of course the film does lampoon religion and some of the silly things that religious people do and say. Therefore it was a bit odd to find Cleese defending Christianity.The Monty Pythonists and the Not the Nine O'Clock News crew regularly made fun of silly vicars, Christian beliefs and the C. of E. in general. Rowan Atkinson has spoken out against the stifling censorship that Islam is introducing, but there is not much point in shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.