We’ve all got them – books that we bought with every good intention, but have never actually read.
As part of the process of retiring, and down-sizing, I have been sorting through my books. Books are the tools of the trade for clergy, and we all end up with far too many of them. One book that has recently found the light of day in my study was bought back in the 80s and has been dutifully carted around from home to home, occupying valuable shelf space, is ‘In Perspective’ by Rosemary Hartill. Back in the 1980s, she was the BBC’s religious affairs correspondent, with a regular slot on Radio 4. The book is a selection of her weekly broadcasts, reflecting on the religious news of the time. Finally, 40 years on, I have read it! And it’s been quite a journey into nostalgia, taking me back to those halcyon days, when I set out as a raw young curate, with optimism, ready to take on all that the Church of England would offer.
It speaks about an Archbishop named Runcie; a government headed by Thatcher, a Liberal leader named Steele who quoted the Magnificat as an example of championing the poor; it even discusses a sermon preached by my College Principal, Ruth Etchells, in which she calls for greater effort from the church to working for spiritual unity in order to present a more effective witness to the watching world; and of course, it says much about a certain Bishop of Durham, and his views on the resurrection.
What has struck me, 40 years on, as I reflect upon the ups and downs of my own ministry, is how familiar and yet how different the world was then. A phrase I learned during seven years of ministry in Thailand was “same same, but different”. That seems to apply to church news only too well. Much of the book seems totally familiar, and could have been written yesterday, whilst, at the same time, it describes a world which seems totally remote from the issues of life in the 2020s. Rosemary Hartill writes about tensions between church and state, the never-ending debates around Christian unity, fears over church decline, liturgical revision, the ethics of human relationships, the question of why God did not heal David Watson. There is much in the world today, and the questions that we grapple with, that haven’t changed much at all.
But whilst there are so many similarities, the world of the 1980s feels so totally different from the world of the 2020s. Back then, the Church of England was anguishing over the remarriage of divorced people. There were the demonstrations at Greenham Common, and CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) was in its heyday. And, of course, there was the continuing debate over the ordination of women. How different the world feels today! Who could have imagined, back in 1985 that by 2023, we would accept not just women priests, but also woman bishops. What would Rosemary Harthill make today about the issue of safeguarding, which has come from nowhere to dominate the agenda within the last 20 years? What about the revelations of sexual abuse within the church, or the ethics of transgenderism? What would she write about Black Lives Matter, or issues of inclusivity? The agenda has undoubtedly changed over the last 40 years, and so often, the church has appeared to be slow to catch up with social change. Would she despair of the church, or still see some hope for its future?
I am left wondering: what is the truth that we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, have to offer to the world?
I have been struck by one of Rosemary Hartill’s observations: “Just because the church has shifted is views on some things is not to say that are no moral absolutes. But it is to say that what has historically been perceived as absolute, has not always in fact been so.”
And that’s the challenge that we face. We know only too well that we live within human society and must address the issues of our contemporary age. But we are called to offer a Christian perspective on the world. The question we must address is: are we thermometers or thermostats? A thermometer tells you the temperature of its immediate environment. It reflects what is there. A thermostat determines the temperature of its environment. Turn it up or down, and it can change the temperature. Jesus himself reminds us that his kingdom is ‘not of the world’ (John 15:19). He talks about being salt, which both preserves and flavours its surroundings. Paul urges us to be transformed, renewed, seeking to live out God’s radically alternative life-agenda.
We live in a rapidly changing world, and the issues that the Church faces will always be changing. I guess that the challenge we face as Christians, now, just as much as in the 1980s, is to distinguish been the moral absolutes – the Christian values which must never be devalued, and the cultural customs and expectations of the world around us in which we are obliged to live out these gospel values. In short, what difference does our Christian discipleship make to our own lives and the ways in which we respond to the world around us. Are we merely thermometers, or are we thermostats?
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