Future of establishment in England

From Dr Jonathan Chaplin

Madam, — Professor Chris Baker’s appeal (Analysis, 9 January) to the model of “weak establishment” is problematic. The idea, as Professor Grace Davie is quoted as explaining, is of “a partial monopoly” that can be used to include rather than exclude. I am all for inclusion, but what “partial monopoly” actually amounts to is left disappointingly unexplained. When it is held up to scrutiny, it is revealed as anachronistic and illegitimate.

The distinction between “earthed” and “high” establishment, coined by a former Dean of Westminster, Wesley Carr, sheds light on why. Earthed establishment is the organic presence of the Church in parishes, dioceses, chaplaincies, and civic arenas across the nation, and serving all comers. Much of what is commended in Professor Baker’s piece and in the William Temple Foundation report refers to this tier. Here, partial monopoly is simply a legacy of history, not a defence of status.

In contrast, “high establishment” refers to a complex system of legal and political privilege which compromises the credibility of the Church to contribute to an inclusive national identity. Defenders of establishment (strong or weak) routinely avoid naming this reality or acknowledging the symbolic and material burdens on the Church’s mission.

English high establishment is very different from the status of the Church of Scotland. High establishment includes: the Supreme Governorship of the Church by the monarch, tying the Church to the core of the secular State; the unjustifiable restriction of the monarchy to Protestants; the humiliating subordination of church law to parliamentary oversight via the Ecclesiastical Committee (which is currently obstructing the Church’s considered reforms on governance, and members of which are threatening to bully the Church over LLF); the automatic precedence of the Church at national events such as the coronation, which, as became clear at King Charles’s, can never be truly inclusive on account of canon-law constraints, and which amounts to a duty that could never be declined; and the inequitable entitlement of 26 bishops to sit and vote in the nation’s upper legislative chamber.

It is vital to emphasise that almost all the mission opportunities presented by earthed establishment could be retained without any of the features of high establishment. Nor would losing high establishment cause the Church to retreat into insularity or prevent it from retaining a nationwide mission. On the contrary, intentionally renouncing high establishment would send a powerful signal to the nation that the Church was ready to walk inclusivity and not just talk it.

JONATHAN CHAPLIN
Oakington, Cambridgeshire

Further responses on the subject of trans rights

From Prebendary Robert Ward

Madam, — Thank you to Sue Pascoe (Letters, 9 January) for giving voice so clearly and lucidly to issues that I have struggled to put into words since several of your opinion writers towards the end of last year took a series of side swipes against what they referred to as “trans ideology”. The exact meaning of the term was never clear to me. It came, I think, in the wake of criticisms of the BBC by Donald Trump and others.

In forty years of parish ministry, I have been privileged to share deeply from time to time in the struggles of both women and men whose identities have been less easily defined than some of your commentators would allow. The casual and derogatory way in which the most intimate and private lives of a few have been treated is difficult to understand in a Church whose parish churches and cathedrals profess high standards both of inclusivity and in safeguarding. Such treatment based on race or other personal characteristics would rightly be considered reprehensible.

Could I plead for an editorial policy that in future guards against repeating this kind of thing?

ROBERT WARD
Wells, Somerset

Madam, — With regard to the recent discussion about women’s and trans women’s rights, I would like to offer the following personal experience and reflections. I have a close relative who, though born male, identified as a woman in his early teenage years, and was encouraged to express his new identity at school. He was also suffering from autism, not diagnosed at the time.

In response to the inevitable bullying that he then experienced, he committed a serious assault on one of his tormentors, which resulted in a custodial sentence in a secure unit for young offenders. Since he had identified as female, he was housed in a female wing, where he committed further assaults on fellow inmates, fortunately without serious injury, although he is large and well-built. He has since been released under supervision, and has intermittently identified as male or female, seemingly as the mood has taken him.

I can, therefore, well understand the concern expressed by some feminists that there are people who, though born male, identify as female without undergoing any chemical or surgical alteration to their condition, and then insist on a right of access to female facilities. I am aware that a minority of people are born “intersex” or “hermaphrodite”, and that this complicates the issue when considering the vast majority of humans who are born with their biological make-up clearly indicated as male or female; but the existence of this minority should surely not compromise the scientific truth that most people are born one or the other.

Nevertheless, if people are diagnosed as suffering from gender dysmorphia, and then choose to undergo painful and life-altering therapies to help them to “change sex”, as it used to be termed, then they deserve every sympathy and support, subject, perhaps, to restricting them from enjoying unfair advantages in sport, if they have transitioned from male to female.

From a Christian perspective, of course, the issue is a simple one. If someone turns up to your church, however they dress, whatever they look like, whatever pronouns they ask you to use in addressing or referring to them, and however they identify themselves, you must love and respect them as a fellow child of the loving God, who, as one of your correspondents has already indicated, transcends all human limitations of sex and gender.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

Praying in tongues in modern-day churches

 From the Revd Dr Christopher Landau

Madam, — I am happy to reassure Paul Minter (Letters, 2 January) that the gift of tongues is alive and well in many parts of the Church. I frequently meet people who are receiving or rediscovering the gift, as part of a deepening life of prayer.

At our ReSource conference in Telford last November, the Revd Dr Helen Collins (Vice-Principal of Trinity College, Bristol) gave a keynote address on the renewal of spiritual gifts, and how that relates to questions of “quiet revival”, using tongues as her main example.

I am reminded of what the chaplain at Cuddesdon in my time used to say about this particular gift: “Use it or lose it.”

CHRISTOPHER LANDAU
Director of ReSource
Telford, Shropshire

From David Healey

Madam, — There was a Baptist church in my home town, of energetic Charismatic persuasion, which most weeks had singing in tongues about 20 minutes into its 6.30 evening service. Once the minister and his spouse (who led worship) moved on to another church, it stopped.

DAVID HEALEY
Edinburgh

Spiritual care as missing link in general practice

From Annie Jefferies

Madam, — I read with positive interest the article by Ishbel Orla Whitehead (Comment, 9 January) on GPs and spiritual care. I am the Anna Chaplaincy co-ordinator for the diocese of Exeter. After five years of the development of the Anna Chaplains ministry across Devon, some local Anna Chaplain teams are now beginning to receive referrals from social prescribers in general practice who are becoming informed about other, and sometimes more appropriate, options for patient referral.

Having spoken to several GPs, I am clear that there are older people who continually ask for GP appointments as they are isolated, lonely, and often depressed at home and have nowhere else to go for support and conversation. In some instances, these people have been churchgoers, who can no longer physically attend church services, or they are people who have retired to Devon and have no links with any particular church.

The spiritual support and gentle friendship offered by parish-linked Anna Chaplains can be of great benefit to older people, whether they live at home or in residential care, and could be explored by GPs and social prescribers in their localities. Anna Chaplaincy ministry is part of the Bible Reading Fellowship, if readers want to search for it online. I am certain that the SHARP training would be a useful adjunct for volunteer pastoral-care workers in churches.

ANNIE JEFFERIES
Lamerton, Devon

Moved by baptism story

From the Revd Derek McLean

Madam, — The Revd Simon Biddlestone (Faith, 9 January) brought tears to my eyes. I recognise the situation that he describes with his wonderful daughter Mira.

Rachel, our youngest child, was born with profound disabilities, but she brought immense joy and a deeper understanding of what it means to be humans in the image of God. She, too, was a wheelchair-user, who frequently needed a feeding tube. I have no doubt that Mira is as much a blessing to her church fellowship as Rachel is to ours.

Each time I re-read Simon’s description of Mira receiving communion wine through her feeding tube brings back those tears of joy. Sometimes, it is such tiny changes that we need to make, to encounter Christ’s presence afresh.

Sadly, like Simon, we never took Rachel to church when we weren’t at home: much too complicated.

DEREK McLEAN
Oadby, Leicestershire

Good relations between Christians and Muslims

From Canon Andrew Lightbown

Madam, — Serving as an interfaith officer, and a member of the Interfaith Council of Wales, is one of the absolute privileges of my ministry; and so I read Canon Angela Tilby’s “Muslims can be a source of blessing” (Comment, 9 January) with considerable interest. I appreciated much of what Canon Tilby had to say, but was left feeling that I wished that she had pushed her argument further.

My own experience is that our Muslim friends are already a source of rich blessing, and that as Christians we have an ethical obligation to model a way of relating which helps such people, who are a public prey to the wilful spread of misinformation, to overcome suspicion and fear.

Explicit acts of friendship and solidarity are surely vital and urgent expressions of Christian mission and evangelism; for there can be little doubt that to be poor, Muslim, and living in an urban context is to be victimised by the unjust structures of society which Anglicans, at least theoretically, are committed to transforming.

Finally, every morning, Anglicans pray the Benedictus, which includes the plea that “we might be free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous before him all the days of our life.” My instinct is that, if we are to pray this with only ourselves and other Christians in mind, then we fail, at first base, the test of what it means to be holy and righteous. As Christians, we need actively to seek and pray for the welfare of all our fellow citizens (cf. Jeremiah 29.7); for then, and only then, can they become a source of reciprocal blessing.

ANDREW LIGHTBOWN
Ecumenical and Interfaith Officer, diocese of Monmouth
Newport

From Mr Christopher Rigg

Madam, — Through the remarkable vagaries of a solar calendar and a lunar calendar, the periods of fasting in Christianity and Islam coincide this year: Lent and Ramadan both begin on 18 February.

I hope that there are occasions for open doors between our two world religions.

CHRISTOPHER RIGG
Bennekom, The Netherlands

The Editor reserves the right to edit letters.