Bishops, Wives and Children

Spiritual Capital Across the Generations

Douglas J. Davies, Mathew Guest

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754654858
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317174035
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Christianity as a cultural force, whether rising or falling, has seldom been analysed through the actual processes by which tradition is transmitted, modified, embraced or rejected. This book achieves that end through a study of bishops of the Church of England, their wives and their children, to show how values fostered in the vicarage and palace shape family, work and civic life in a supposedly secular age. Davies and Guest integrate, for the first time, sociological concepts of spiritual capital with anthropological ideas of gift-theory and, alongside theological themes, use these to illuminate how the religious professional functions in mediating tradition and fostering change. Motifs of distant prelates, managerially-minded fathers in God and rebellious clergy children are reconsidered in a critical light as new empirical evidence offers unique insights into how the clergy family functions as an axis of social power in an age incredulous to ecclesiastical hierarchy. Bishops, Wives and Children marks an important advance in the analysis of the spirituality of Catholic, Evangelical and Liberal leaders and their social significance within a distinctive Christian tradition and all it represents in wider British society.

Chapter 1
Religious Leadership in a Changing Society

Introduction

Episcopacy, family, and religious values – at first glance these all seem well known to us, with bishops, their image, as well as that of their wives and children, all holding a place in English cultural life. On further consideration, however, these caricatures transform into a trio of complexity, challenging analysis yet promising distinctive insight into the Church of England and its social world.

Churches exist at different levels and need to be studied as such. Take a senior diocesan bishop of the Church of England in full regalia at great national events compared with the same man, leisure-shirted in retirement, telling the story of his life with all its successes, failures and doubts. On the public stage he stands hierarchically surrounded by clergy: domestically recalling the event, he is accompanied by his wife, surrounded by photographs of their children, now making their own way in the world. As he tells of his life, his wife adds her account of his, of hers, and of their family, and the complexity of religious influence grows. When their children contribute their own memories of the family’s past and their self-reflection on their engagement with contemporary life we begin to see the social, institutional and personal intricacies that this book seeks to explore. It is in its own detailed way a contribution to that ‘general sociology of the problems of transmission in modern societies’ that Danièle Hervièu-Léger sought in her influential reflections on Religion as a Chain of Memory (2000: 176). It is a contribution made possible by the accounts of their lives granted us by a large number of bishops active in the Church of England between 1940 and 2000, and by their wives and children.

We begin by addressing the theoretical context of our study, devoting our first chapter to a discussion of spiritual capital and gift theory before offering a sketch of the cultural and historical contexts in which the bishops, wives and children of our study have functioned as individuals. Chapter 2 focusses specifically on the biographical and ecclesiastical background of our bishops, thus furnishing a picture of the resources from which these men have drawn in constructing their identities as senior churchmen. Chapter 3 addresses the particular challenges these bishops have faced in the latter half of the twentieth century, focussing on issues arising from managerial approaches to leadership and the prominence of the mass media, while Chapter 4 turns to the internal politics of the Church of England itself, in a discussion of the difference between diocesan and suffragan bishops, both in status and experience. In Chapter 5 we turn our attention to the experience of clergy wives through an examination of the lives and roles adopted by the bishops’ wives who took part in our study. Chapter 6 broadens this focus to the domestic context of the clergy family itself, reflecting on the nature of the clergy home as portrayed in accounts offered by our respondents, and drawing inferences about its role as a context for the negotiation of personal values. Chapters 7 and 8 address the concerns of bishops’ sons and daughters within the context of their adult lives, beginning with their religious identities, then turning to their professional and vocational experience. Our focus throughout is on patterns of influence between the generations, and our central aim is to comment on the very process of transmission and value-formation as exemplified in the lives of our respondents, concerns revisited in relation to our theoretical framework in the concluding chapter.

Method and Perspective

In sharp focus, then, the three interrelated aims of this study were to: (a) chart the ministerial development of senior Anglican clergymen; (b) assess how the responsibilities of leadership shape the home life of clergy families, and (c) trace how each of these factors contributed to the developing identities of the sons and daughters of these clergy. Each required the collection and analysis of empirical data and, as our intention was primarily to furnish a sociological study of living individuals, this material was gathered through a social survey and in-depth interviews as described in the Appendix.

Through this material we sought to explore the vocation of these men to the priesthood and their mode of engagement in ministry as well as various issues attending their episcopal elevation. Paralleling this ecclesiastical and social domain lay our interest in their family life. How did a ‘father in God’ treat his own wife and children, and how did a public guardian of the faith hand it on within his own home? And what of the complex roles and career development of their wives and the emergent identities and life-styles of their children? Because these complex questions require appropriate appreciation and analysis we complemented our sociological outlook with selected perspectives from other disciplines including anthropology, psychology and theology. All of this material was pondered with an eye to historical issues surrounding British society in general and the Church of England in particular. Constraints of space demand that while many of these theoretical influences underlie the ongoing argument they are sometimes restricted to footnotes. We have often found our material influencing ongoing modes of analysis as much as our awareness of discrete academic disciplines fostered our initial venture. We approach the church as an institution embedded in English social processes through the individuals whose personal and interpersonal endeavors have given it life. In a complementary fashion we align husbands, wives and children to demonstrate the importance of the family as a base from which most bishops gain additional legitimacy to act in society, to explore the wife’s role in the maintenance of Christian leadership, and to consider how values are transmitted across generations.

Society depends for its flourishing upon the mutual action of individuals as individuals and as members of institutions who embody and enact prime cultural values. Here we are reminded of Georg Simmel’s distinctive sociology, part German idealism, part Protestant self-affirmation before God, in which, as one of his advocates described it, ‘society is the product of human movement towards its Being, towards being who one really is, toward salvation’ (Erickson, 2001: 112). In this process various degrees of individual self-interest need to be negotiated, controlled or curbed, indeed, the history of political thought and social theory is replete with analyses of just how these mixed motives may be best categorized, debated and implemented. Bishops of a state church are one means of bringing such issues to a sharp focus.

Theoretical Approaches

As James Beckford comments, not all ventures in the sociology of religion are concerned with simply identifying causes and effects; sometimes ‘the aim is, rather, to identify a syndrome or a constellation of interrelated elements without any clear assignment of causal priority’ (2005: 126). This reflects our aim in this book – to examine the constellation of factors surrounding Anglican bishops and their families in advancing an exploration of the social expression of Christian identity. Our project concerns the construction of identity among the hierarchy of the church, and the question of how the values and experiences of these men contribute to an embodiment of Christian identity among their wives and children. In this sense it is concerned with a complexity of leadership, with how the influence of church hierarchy is generated and with how it functions. This takes us from the formation of bishops to the dissemination, evolution and embodiment of their values within the lives of their families, as we explore the influence of a clerical household upon professed convictions and lived practices.

The two major theoretical perspectives underlying our analysis are those of spiritual capital and symbolic exchange, notions that require some elaboration since those familiar with one may well be unfamiliar with the other since it is unusual for them to be employed together. Their alignment, however, allows a more penetrating analysis of our material and highlights the complexity of influence as conceived and explored within this book. The first conceives of a resource created, accumulated and deployed in and through social networks whose relationships enable certain people to accumulate various forms of ‘capital’ that can then be deployed for varied purposes. The second approach deals with ideas of symbolic exchange, often described as gift-theory – where ‘gift’ can assume a great variety of forms. Here, too, we are engaged with networks of people, but with a greater emphasis upon the use of resources, whether in the establishment of families or of churches. Given that both ‘capital’ and ‘gift’ theories share an interest in society and the processes by which human relationships are mediated, we are interested in how they complement each other in furthering our knowledge of the complexity of both religious leadership and family life.

Spiritual Capital and the Influence of Religion

Throughout the twentieth century sociological studies of religion have emphasized issues concerning the influence of religious phenomena. The dominant secularization thesis resulted in numerous attempts to measure the extent to which religion remains a socially significant force in contemporary life, asking whether religion still influences how people conduct their lives as professionals, educators, citizens, parents, and individuals seeking meaning in the world. Various conclusions have been drawn, from the negative arguments of the hard-line secularization theorists, who see religion rapidly disappearing from the public, followed by the private, sphere (Bruce, 2002), to those who see religion evolving in dialogue with cultural change, becoming less institutional, less fixed, more deregulated, but not necessarily less important as a consequence (Davie, 1994; Lyon, 2000). Historians have adopted a more mixed approach, acutely aware of detailed cultural differences (McLeod, 2003: 1–26). While all are concerned at some significant level with the capacity of religion, in whatever form, to shape people’s lives, the actual influence of religion within social life remains woefully under-theorized, not least in the sociology of religion. Few venture any detailed account of how religion might shape identity over time, and, by logical extension, of how it might function as an intergenerational phenomenon. Many have attempted to measure religious commitment over time, and some have attempted to use survey data to gauge the effectiveness of religious socialization, as with Robin Gill’s excellent work on Sunday School attendance and its potential effect on the future low profile of the religious belief of the nation (Gill, 1999: 290). Still, little has been written on exactly how religious values function: how they emerge, evolve, achieve meaning, develop, thrive and decay.

James Beckford’s work on the changing status of religion in advanced industrial societies offers one means of rectifying this tendency, notably his claim that one major change in recent decades charts how ‘religious symbols and meanings have floated free from their origins in religious traditions and organizations’ so as to become available for ‘appropriation by non-religious agencies’. This prompted him to suggest that it is useful to ‘think of religion less as a social institution and more of a cultural resource susceptible to many different uses’ (2001: 233; our emphasis). His innovative analysis has been used to explain and develop understandings of contemporary religious change, from the exploratory impermanence of what some call the ‘New Age’, and what Colin Campbell (1972) has called the ‘cultic milieu’, to the Anglican context in which churchgoers adopt changing habits of congregational involvement according to how experiences offered by specific churches resource their Christian identities. Here religion functions as a resource, to be mobilized and deployed by individuals in accordance with their needs. For our purposes, Beckford’s analysis offers a way into the problem of religious influence because it provides a means of talking about what is inherited, nurtured, transmitted, accepted or rejected. By re-conceiving of religion as a cultural resource, we become more sensitive to its potential as a fluid and shared phenomenon rather than as an established institution or creedal scheme. And yet Beckford only takes us so far, leaving us with the desire to develop the ‘resource’ theme further, specifically in terms of ‘spiritual capital’.

The notion of ‘spiritual capital’ is complex and builds on a tradition that can be traced back at least as far as Karl Marx’s argument that economic capital be seen not just as a commodity but also as a social relation. This conceives of capital in terms of a process of exchange between social agents, an exchange that extends well beyond the economic. Capital may, for example, appear as a mobile human resource embracing social relationships, education, political acumen or symbolic prestige. All refer to resources that may be acquired and then deployed in order to achieve some individual or group advantage.

More recently James Coleman has discussed the achievement of goals by virtue of the possession of various social resources – ‘social capital’ – taking the form of social relations between persons and including the notion of trust and reciprocal obligations (1990: 302). One feature of this perspective lies in consequences that are often byproducts rather than intended goals, and offers one way of viewing social class, as ongoing social relations and engagement in institutions produce an accumulated social capital. An Oxbridge education or theological college training may, for example, yield many subsequent consequences for ecclesiastical preferment. One valuable feature of Coleman’s account lies in his claim that social capital is inalienable, being something that is not easily exchanged, a feature developed below (Coleman, 1990: 315).

The most well-known and topical example of capital theory is found in Robert Putnam’s ground-breaking volume Bowling Alone (2000) which refers to North America’s declining levels of ‘social capital’ within the context of a debate about the breakdown in community. For Putnam, ‘social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them’ (Putnam, 2000: 19). Social capital is the ‘connective tissue’ that holds society together, so that when individualism becomes a dominant influence, and people act alone rather than as part of an integrated collective, there is a serious breakdown in social cohesion.

For Putnam, if economic capital refers to money, and human capital to properties of individuals, social capital refers to the connections that exist between individuals, to significant social relationships that allow certain things to be achieved that would not otherwise be achievable. In this sense ‘capital’ is conceived as an empowering resource that may be harnessed in the service of individual advancement or for the collective good, issues that help furnish the moral frame within which Putnam’s work is set. A further and cognate development is that of ‘cultural capital’, a notion that has been used to refer to skills and knowledge, acquired through education of some kind, which can be used to acquire jobs, money and status, as portrayed in the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977). He has done most to develop this term through his writings on how social inequalities of power are sustained through the education system. According to Bourdieu, particular social classes tend to acquire the cultural dispositions required to excel in the academic world because they possess the appropriate cultural capital, that is, forms of speech and modes of behavior instilled through what he calls ‘familiarization’. In simple terms, members of the privileged classes learn how to behave in ways that are associated with intellectual prowess, status and respectability from their parents and through their upbringing, what sociologists call ‘socialization’. Academic merit is accorded in a way that favors these forms of behavior and thereby sustains an unfair advantage of the privileged over the less wealthy or working class (Bourdieu, 1977: 495). With Monique de Saint Martin he has also developed this theme in relation to Catholic Bishops in France. In an important and subtle study they show how an appearance of unity of purpose and mode of life develops amongst such senior clergy for whom the unity of the Church is of paramount concern, irrespective of their social or educational background (Bourdieu and de Saint Martin, 1982). Their suggestive treatment of celibacy notes its potential consequences for the organization of the Catholic Church as well as for the clerical presentation of self and invites a useful comparison with the married clergy of the Church of England.¹ Influenced by Bourdieu, but deployed within British social class contexts, Basil Bernstein’s seminal studies also demonstrated the close connection between the cultural resources of the family transmitted as styles or ‘codes’ of communication and wider educational opportunities or limitations.²

If economic capital refers to money, social capital to human relationships, and cultural capital to skills and knowledge, what of ‘spiritual capital’? Does it refer to a special kind of knowledge, relationship or individual resource? Here Bourdieu is instructive for within his diverse range of publications lies a handful of articles on religion developing what he calls ‘religious capital’. This he associates with various other forms of power, and demonstrates a sensitivity to the ways in which religious groups borrow from other sources of capital – economic, social or symbolic, for example – in order to advance their goals, not to mention the ways in which secular institutions adopt religious symbols and connections in order to nurture a more morally respectable image. In this sense, religious capital is embedded in a complex matrix of power that effectively blurs the boundaries between religious and non-religious forms of legitimation; some might argue that the established status of the Church of England provides us with a striking contemporary example, with its presence in the House of Lords, liturgical deference to the monarchy and historical privileges related to its status as the ‘state church’. But Bourdieu takes his argument further, describing what he sees as distinctive about ‘religious capital’, that is, the ‘goods of salvation’, which are most obviously the sacraments, but they may also refer to a form of recognized membership of a church. In the widest sense, the goods of salvation – that which is constitutive of religious capital - are the resources deemed by a religious tradition to be requisite to salvation. These might be ritualized practices, bodies of doctrine or access to sacred spaces, but most importantly for Bourdieu, they are under the control of religious specialists, who only understand and thereby control religious capital because they have been privy to what he calls ‘knowledgeable mastery’, that is, specialist training and initiation into the priesthood. Hence, for Bourdieu, religious capital signifies the power differential between official religious specialists and those they purport to serve; it expresses the spiritual dependency of the lay upon the priesthood.

Given our interest in senior clergymen, Bourdieu’s discu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Plates
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Religious Leadership in a Changing Society
• 2 Bishop and Church: Changing Times and Institutions
• 3 Changing Persons, Changing Roles
• 4 Suffragan and Diocesan Bishops
• 5 The Place of Clergy Wives: A ‘Shared Ministry’?
• 6 Growing Up Clerical
• 7 Clergy Children and Religious Identity
• 8 Clergy Children, Work and Professional Identity
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix: The Clergy and British Society, 1940–2000: The Study
• Bibliography
• Index