{"id":2268,"date":"2018-01-20T11:15:46","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T11:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utusheffield.org.uk\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2018-01-20T14:42:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T14:42:58","slug":"national-report-on-catherals-a-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utusheffield.org.uk\/2018\/01\/20\/national-report-on-catherals-a-response\/","title":{"rendered":"National Report on Cathedrals: A Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cathedrals Working Group has just published its first report<\/a>. As someone with a mixed experience of Cathedral life.<\/p>\n

When I was a curate, I was arrested during a booked event at Gloucester Cathedral. Several friends have been arrested at St Paul\u2019s in London during and after the Occupy movement\u2019s OLSX were evicted from the Cathedral steps.<\/p>\n

These events taught me that their needs to be more theology to guide Cathedral chapters in times of moral crisis.<\/p>\n

The report is relative short, dense, and practical, but it leaves us with one big awkward question.<\/p>\n

The less headline-grabbing but energy-draining issues facing Cathedrals are front and centre of this report and its thoroughness and insights are fantastic.<\/p>\n

But it also reveals a huge and vital gap in our thinking as the Church. Not so much the fault of the report but of the Church\u2019s zeitgeist: amongst all the necessary and long-needed modernisation, where are the wide open spaces that theology should own?<\/p>\n

The Bishop of Stepney is a convert to Cathedrals and the missional and spiritual possibilities they create: \u201c. These amazing places incorporate everything the Church of England aspires to be in its best moments,\u201d he writes (p.3).<\/p>\n

Bishop Adrian Newman is the chair of the Cathedrals working group that published its first report in January 2018. Vivienne Faull, Dean of York is co-Chair<\/p>\n

This has been a huge task to give anyone and they have done well not to be overwhelmed but to come up with a meaningful beginning to an important conversation.<\/p>\n

There are 42 Cathedrals in the Church of England and they are diverse as the parish Churches around them \u2013 rural and urban, wealthy and close to penury, of different sizes.<\/p>\n

Some act as parish churches, others are huge tourist attractions, and some are relatively obscure and under-visited.<\/p>\n

In a time when all the headlines tell us that the Church is in numerical decline it is not enough to proclaim Cathedrals as proof possible of growth.<\/p>\n

This report recognises their outlier status but attempts to look deeper at what does and doesn\u2019t work \u2013 what brings life in a Cathedral and what the elephants in the nave might look like.<\/p>\n

All the elephants in the room are about power and money, of course. And these are named and addressed regularly in the report.<\/p>\n

In the executive summary these internal struggles are addressed constructively: rather than spending too long on the problems they focus on what seems to work: good governance with a clear line of authority.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s helpful that a current Dean and former Dean turned bishop should agree in print that: \u201cAll cathedral clergy and staff will come under the dean\u2019s authority.\u201d (p. 7)<\/p>\n

You might wonder if this is born out of personal experience of frustration at the lack of clarity and the potential for court intrigue in Cathedral life? In fact, the group members have managed to have one to one conversations with nearly every Cathedral Dean in the CofE.<\/p>\n

The number and range of conversations with key stake holders has been impressive considering the time and resources this group had to go on. But this isn\u2019t the only potential arena of conflict: Cathedral and Bishop, Cathedral and Diocese, Cathedral and National Church, Cathedral and State.<\/p>\n

Cathedrals are lightning rods for power battles \u2013 it makes me glad I\u2019m not a Cathedral Dean!<\/p>\n

Despite a brief to focus on governance and leadership \u2013 which is the focus of the report \u2013 there is plenty of space to reflect on ecclesiology, that is, the theology of churches, too.<\/p>\n

They determine that the nature of a Cathedral is as \u201cseat of the bishop,\u201d (17) which is both literal and historically reasonable. The word \u201cCathedral\u201d refers to the bishop\u2019s teaching seat or \u201cCathedra,\u201d and its presence in the building defines the space.<\/p>\n

With help from Durham University\u2019s Simon Oliver, they define Cathedral\u2019s as place intended to gather and unify the Church \u2013 mirroring the vocation of the Bishop.<\/p>\n

However, what seems apparent is that the report writers did not have a lot of published materials giving clear theological reflection and insight to go on.<\/p>\n

The Working Group, recognising that it is clearly not the final word on cathedral ecclesiology, urges cathedrals to work with the national Church, Theological Education Institutions and universities to develop this ecclesiological thinking further. (p. 21)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suspect there are doctoral theses out there that have been published the theology of Cathedrals, but they may never have seen the light of day or made it into many journals. If this is the case, what is the cause?<\/p>\n

Most Cathedrals aren\u2019t short of clergy and lay theologians in their midst but is there a lack of funding an intentionality about theological underpinnings of the vocation \u2018to be a Cathedral\u2019?<\/p>\n

When Occupy London Stock Exchange appeared on the steps of St Paul\u2019s Cathedral over the winter of 2011 \u2013 2012, it is fair to say that the Cathedral chapter were, in almost every conceivable way, unprepared.<\/p>\n

The Bishop of London did not help matters, first urging the occupy movement to bring their \u201cprotest\u201d inside to have a debate. Why would they want to do that and who said this was a protest?<\/p>\n

Then appointing HTB Churchwarden, Ken Costa, who had public labelled Occupy as \u201cna\u00efve\u201d and of \u201clittle consequence\u201d to \u201clisten respectfully to them.<\/p>\n

One can only assume, as I\u2019m sure the people occupying the steps of St Paul\u2019s Cathedral did, that they were being condescended.<\/p>\n

Famously the theological and moral failure of the Cathedral Chapter led to the resignation of the Canon Chancellor and, eventually, to the appointment of a new Dean.<\/p>\n

But what did not happen, was serious theological reflection on the role of the Cathedral in public life and public theology.<\/p>\n

Soon after I was ordained a deacon at Gloucester Cathedral, I was arrested in the cloisters of the same for a \u201cbreach of the peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dean had been hoodwinked by a local group called the \u201cGloucester Prayer Walkers\u201d who booked both the Cathedral and the Chapter house for a prayer meeting and then advertised events with a keynote anti-Semite fundamentalist Christian.<\/p>\n

Most clergy in the diocese were horrified, a local mayor wrote a scathing public letter. I went to see the Dean of the Cathedral to politely and privately ask him to cancel the event. He would not.<\/p>\n

The rest of is history. Except to say that my case to the bishop and to the police, after the event, was that I was not in breach of the Peace of Christ, God\u2019s Shalom of justice and wholeness, but only the Pax Britannia, which is pacification of the people.<\/p>\n

The recommendations of the report seem thorough, systematic, and integrated \u2013 meant to be taken together, rather than selectively.<\/p>\n