Presidential Address to Portsmouth Diocesan Synod
The Rt Revd Christopher Foster, Bishop of Portsmouth
Saturday 29 March 2014
OscarWilde once famously said, “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” If that’s the case, then the Church of England faced the worst case scenario in the wake of the recent General Synod decision to accelerate the process for women to be bishops. Almost nothing was said – we barely made it into the subsidiary headlines on the BBC. It’s a far cry from the front page news and the national 'scandal' that accompanied the decision not to proceed with legislation last time round.
For Wilde, all publicity was good publicity; there was no such thing as bad press.
But that’s an idea that many of us in the church would find quite difficult. We’ve had plenty of terrible publicity in recent years and indeed in recent weeks, thanks to high profile child protection cases, our public disagreements on women’s ordained ministry and of course gay marriage.It is easy for us to become so fearful of bad publicity, as an institution, that we become defensively preoccupied with managing media crises and how best to limit damage in presenting ourselves in the public eye.
So it’s easy to forget how joyfully, openly and freely communicative God is. Right from the beginning, delighting as the earth and the sea and the heavens took shape, God looked at each creation in turn and pronounced it good. Then, as Adam was invited to name everything he saw, the human power of speech grew with the arrival of each new wonder. With the power of the word came the capacity for God to communicate with his people, and for us to communicate with God. And God tried every means available to get through to us down the millennia, speaking through prophets, through stone tablets, through manna in the wilderness and a whole host of signs and wonders. The writer of the letter to Hebrews puts it beautifully in the passage usually read at Christmas: ‘Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and varied ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.’ So finally the Word became flesh, and God used the body of his Son as his ultimate communicative tool, his word, proclaiming his love in the vulnerable body of the newborn baby, in the powerful bodily touch of the healer, in torn flesh on the cross, and in the wonder of a body newly resurrected.
Communication, for God, is a joy – a compulsion, even. It’s impossible to imagine a God who shuts himself away in the heavens, and decides it’s just too much hassle to reach out and share his love and his delight in the world. God is incorrigibly communicative.
So too for us as Christians, communication isn’t an add-on to our faith or our role in church. It gets to the very heart of who we are and what we believe. And just as God communicates through human flesh, so for us how we communicate is part and parcel of the message we convey. The experts say that 80% of communication is non verbal. It happens through our bodies, through our way of being and speaking as we debate and wrestle with the challenges of our day, through our unspoken gestures and habits. Communication is about the how as well as the what; yes, style as well as substance, and in this we take our lead from a God who did not simply tell us of his love but showed it in Jesus Christ.
That being the case, it’s vital that, whether we’re sharing our views on the hot topics of the day, or conveying practical information about service times and office hours in our local parish church,how wecommunicate speaks volumes about us. It will, in an instant, tell the person we encounter whether we respect them or not, whether we are safe and credible, whether we are open to listening and being changed by the insights they might bring us. The manner of our presence can inflame or calm, excite or embarrass, open up whole worlds of new possibility or close down the potential for relationship.
This is something that I’m afraid bishops up and down the country have been reminded of to our cost in these last few weeks. Most of you will be aware that the bishops recently published a Pastoral Letter on the subject of human sexuality. This has caused considerable hurt and dismay across the church and beyond, in part of course because of its content, but much more than that, because of its tone and its manner of publication. As one who was part of the vote that put that statement in the public domain, I acknowledge my role in the hurt caused. We got our come-uppance of course. In common with bishops around the country I have received over a hundred emails and letters from around the country – some moving and heartfelt but some, I have to say, so vicious in their tone and language as totally to undermine the godly intentions of those who wrote them. But the letter that achieved most in changing the tone of the conversation was one line long, and it was sent to all Church of England bishops. In one sentence it thanked us most sincerely for our recent Pastoral Statement. Enclosed with it was a sweet: a humbug.
Tone, style, humour… the form of communication we adopt is a crucial part of the message. The witty protest encapsulated in that humbug forced me and my Episcopal colleagues to laugh at ourselves. And although it did no more to solve the theological and pastoral issues at stake than the angrily entrenched missives we continue to receive, it did restore the lightness of touch and the sense of goodwill that is so crucial to our engagement with one another as we wrestle, in love, with genuinely complex and difficult questions.
But of course gimmicks alone aren’t enough either. Ultimatelyfor our communication to carry weight, it must be proclaimed through the way we live our lives. This is surely a given in a faith that proclaims that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But it troubles me that as a church we sometimes fall short in communicating through our practice.
You will remember that in my Presidential Address in June I drew attention to the opportunities for Christian involvement in food and basics banks, housing shelters and especially in credit unions. I said then, “This morning I invite you seriously to consider how as individual Christians, as parishes, as Christians or Churches Together groups, we can make a difference.” In my November address I returned briefly to this topic, which had by then been picked up energetically by the Archbishop of Canterbury. All good words, and I am grateful to so many of you for responding so positively to what I had to say.But I wonder, having agreed with my words, have you, like me,joinedyourlocal credit union and are you saving, if you can, with them? If, for instance, you save in an ISA, and in particular if you are looking forward to the benefit of being able to save more tax free in that way from later in the year, what has prevented you from saving at least something in a credit union? If you and I are to give substance to what we, certainly I, say about loan sharks, payday lenders and affordable borrowing in our society, then we need to be doing as well as saying.
If you have not joined a credit union then you are not alone. Recent published research, based on a small sample, reports that churchgoers are in principle largely positive about credit unions; and I sense from our last Synod presentation, so are we. Despite this, however, the vast majority of those who attend church are not currently members. If you are one of them I urge you, please, to think again. The research shows that the primary barrier to joining is that churchgoers think they have no need to join. But on what basis are our decisions as followers of Jesus based on meeting our individual wants or needs or interests? I urge you to join, if you haven't, not because it is directly for your personal benefit but because a strong credit union benefits many people less well resourced than us and also because we contribute to a more ethical, inclusive and people-centred financial system.
How we communicate and what we communicate are inseparable from one another. God communicates, we communicate, through our bodies, through our actions, through every aspect of our lives.So this afternoon, as we revisit the question of women bishops, I know you willbear in mind that the way you communicate your views will significantly affect the message that your hearers receive. And this morning, Itrust that you willengage seriously with the sessions on the crucial and, I’d go so far as to say, thesacredart of communication.Whether the medium is a church notice board or a website, your silent presence at a bedside or your very vocal presence on the radio or in the pulpit; whether you are a confident public minister or a parent sharing the good news with your children at home, for the sake of the Gospel, communicate love; communicate lovingly.