Leadership in the Church for a People of Hope

Mervyn Davies, Graham Dodds

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780567014078
• eBook ISBN: 9780567647856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

An introduction to leadership in the church from a practical and theological point of view, for existing practitioners, lay people as well as those preparing for ministry.

Chapter 1

CHURCH AND SOCIETY: THE STATE WE’RE IN

In 1996 a very readable and controversial book about the British economy was re-published in paperback form entitled The State We’re In by Will Hutton, then editor of The Observer.[1] In it, Hutton sought to give an analysis of the state of the economy and argued that British society was fracturing, investment was too low and that our democratic systems were suffering from structural deformations that have profoundly negative effects on decision making. He tried to show how deep-seated in British history and culture these problems are and that therefore this makes them all the more difficult to eradicate. He argued forcefully against the view that the UK had little to learn from other parts of the world, challenged some of the accepted wisdom about capitalism, e.g. that it is only successful on the basis of individualistic and competitive strategies rather than collaboration and consensus, and tried to set out what he considered were the principles upon which true wealth creation can take place. We need, he suggested, thinking in the long term, engaging in the right kind of investment, and having appropriate and dynamic forms of decision making and proper accountability. Britain, he argued, suffers from short-termism and ways of thinking that seem to imply that our institutions are in no need of change and somehow set in concrete. He maintained that we need to move to what he calls ‘relational capitalism’.[2]

Events towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium seemed to prove him right, as the major world economies in 2008–09 went into one of the severest recessions for many years, which was widely blamed on recklessness and greed in the financial sector and, even more importantly, to the loss of any real sense of morality in the market economy. This was followed by revelations in 2009 about the abuse of the payment for expenses system by MPs that led to a sense of moral outrage that rocked the nation. Then there were allegations of phone tapping and of dubious practices by the press. The search for people and institutions to blame for the ills of society seems to show no sign of ending. These events led Lord Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth to ask:

The big question is: how do we learn to be moral again? Markets were made to serve us; we were not made to serve markets. Economics needs ethics. Markets do not survive by market forces alone. They depend on respect for the people affected by our decisions. Lose that and we lose not just money but something more significant still: freedom, trust and decency, the things that have a value, not a price.[3]

Inevitably, Hutton’s book aroused a good deal of debate because it challenged a number of cherished assumptions as he tried to discern what the underlying trends may be and to find positive ways forward. Events since have made this challenge all the more urgent, as critics sought to analyze the causes of a financial failure that may have consequences for our society for decades to come and which can now be seen, by hindsight, to be but symptoms of a more widespread malaise. What may be hopeful about this is a growing recognition that this raises questions about public and private morality, responsibility and leadership as well as human error. The Church, of course, is part of this context and affected by it as it considers its future. If, through its members and as an institution, it has to recognize that it is part of the problem, it needs to consider how it may contribute to the solution and form leaders who can help this to happen.

Lord Sacks had reflected on this in his address to the 2008 Lambeth Conference in calling for a renewal of the sense of covenant by which he meant, among other things, bonds of reciprocity, trust and cooperation, a bedrock found in religion:

What then happens to a society when religion wanes and there is nothing covenantal to take its place? Relationships break down. Marriages grow weak. Families become fragile. Communities atrophy. And the result is that people feel vulnerable and alone. If they turn these feelings outward, the result is often anger turning to violence. If they turn them inward, the result is depression, stress related syndromes, eating disorders and drug and alcohol abuse. Either way there is spiritual poverty in the midst of material affluence. It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly, gradually and inexorably. Societies, without covenants and the institutions needed to sustain them, disintegrate.[4]

Areas of concern

In 1985, the Church of England published its searching report on Urban Priority Areas Faith in the City – A Call for Action by Church and Nation[5] which called attention to a pervasive situation of poverty and powerlessness in Britain’s cities, which challenged both Church and government to have faith in our cities to remedy endemic problems that had already been identified in the 1960s. While much has been achieved since then, the conclusion that in any analysis of our society deep questions will arise about the nature and purpose of the Church and the meaning of the Christian Gospel[6] remains as true today as it did then.

Education dominated much of the political discussions of the late twentieth century and well into the first decade of the twenty-first. The government of the day became increasingly prescriptive about what should be taught and how. Discussion of the philosophy of education virtually ceased in all PGCE (post graduate certificate in education) courses and there was little reflection also by the churches as to the theological basis for education. In higher education, theology and religious studies departments were increasingly under pressure with some closing. This was significant for church-based education at all levels, which seemed confused not only about what the difference that makes the difference is, but what kind of moral and spiritual leadership was needed in these institutions. The Church itself seemed to make little impact on educational thinking at national level either. If it is religion that gives meaning to the whole of life, has the Church been too timid in contributing to national discussions about the way in which lives are to be shaped in the future?

The Children’s Society’s A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age[7] repays careful thought by Church leaders. While there is much to celebrate in today’s achievements of children, it says, there is also considerable cause for unease. Changes in work patterns, in parenting, the social and political landscape, outside influences on the lives of children, examination and testing pressures and a widening poverty gap are some of the many causes of concern as we learn that young people appear to be more anxious and troubled than in the past. How much of this is due to a dysfunctional society, to confusion about values and to a weaker sense of moral values and of community? How much of this is due to what many commentators are now arguing is an unhealthy obsession with the individual and his/her achievement at the expense of any concept of society or of belonging to it? The evidence gathered seems to support the connection.

If reflection is needed to be done about how we view society, the economy and public life, there is surely a need to do a similar exercise about the Church which is, arguably, facing one of the most significant crises in its two thousand-year history. To do so is to raise profound issues not just about how and where to direct its energies or manage ever scarcer resources, but about its own self-understanding as an institution within society. Has the Church allowed itself to be marginalized, failing in its prophetic role, thus contributing to the moral vacuum in public life highlighted by the Chief Rabbi? For Christians, the state we are in is a theological question, not just a functional one. It raises issues of leadership and success may need to be judged by a range of criteria, some of which may seem strange to a secular organization, although others may well be similar also.

How are we to describe the state we are in? How far is the Church the victim of pressures and tensions over which it has little control? Can it be said that the Church has been the architect of many of its problems through failures in leadership? In what sense can the hand of God be discerned in all this? What ways forward are open to the Church and how might these be turned into realizable strategies? These are but a few of the questions that might be asked. In the history of Israel, God seemed to allow people to be visited with calamity or disaster when they failed to live according to the Covenant, but how far is that a helpful interpretation? Isn’t it always true that the People of God is not faithful enough, so how far does that illuminate the understanding of the situation now? Is it better to say that what is happening is some kind of indication of the movement of the Spirit in which God is saying ‘I want it done differently’?

There is a danger in going exclusively for such explanations without appreciating the many other variables that need to be taken into account and therefore it can lead to responding in ways that simply ignore the context in which we live or facts that we find uncomfortable. The other variables will include sociological, political, historical and cultural changes in our society. It needs to be remembered, too, that such exclusively scriptural interpretations of events have, in the past, led to the justification of many dubious enterprises done in the name of God in which success can be seen as a sign of God’s favour. Nevertheless it remains central to the Christian understanding of things that Jesus promised that the Spirit of truth would be with his followers to guide them.[8] It is therefore not a question of preferring one way of understanding the situation to all the others, but keeping a range of interpretations in proper tension with each other.

Modernity, postmodernity and the Augustinian option

Much has been written about the impact of modernity and postmodernity on society and, by extension on Christianity itself, in its various forms. These terms are not precise but what is clear is that challenges to the Church’s position and to clerical control from alternative sources of knowledge; the social changes consequent upon the Industrial Revolution including the shift from villages to towns; alternative accounts of what it is to be human from the social sciences; the rise of democratic institutions as well as increasing individualism, have all challenged the position of the Church and many of the assumptions under which it operated. Arguably these and many other changes that have accelerated over the past two hundred years or so, have sapped the feeling of confidence that the Church once had. It raises in an acute form the question as to how the Church should relate to the world around it, when it is rapidly losing control of the agenda.

The Second Vatican Council thought it had the answer to this question, recognizing as it did, that the Church needed dialogue with the contemporary world. The Pastoral Constitution on The Church in the Modern World, known as Gaudium et Spes spoke of the role of the Church as a kind of leaven or soul of society bringing about change from within and went on confidently to describe all the ways in which it saw the potential for a mutual relationship with the society in which the Church was.[9] This was warmly welcomed and a real change from the fortress model of Church that had preceded the Council. Experience, perhaps must now make us temper that optimism and evaluate how much this can really be said to be a reality in twenty-first-century Europe, which has seen a marked decline in churchgoing that can be traced back at least to the 1960s, going hand in hand with increased affluence, disengagement from traditional organizations including trade unionism but especially visible in the growth of the more transient house church and charismatic movements.

Much of traditional Christianity now seems to be typified by polarities: a loss of confidence in denominational structures but the growth of small groups or very individual forms of spirituality, ecclesially unconnected; the confidently optimistic view of the world of much post 1960s liberal theology contrasted with the emphasis on sinfulness and pessimism about humanity of the more conservative Evangelicals; the open and more relaxed style of worship that came out of the Second Vatican Council is opposed by the traditionalists who would see a return to Tridentine liturgy as vital to the renewal of the Church, are examples. If there is disagreement about the nature of the problem, there is certainly no agreement as to its resolution.

Adrian Hastings in his seminal work A History of English Christianity 1920–1990 sums it up:

Seen in retrospect the 1950s seem almost like a golden age of King Solomon, the sixties an era of moral prophecy of a fairly Pelagian sort. The period in which we have arrived is quite other, an age of apocalyptic, of doom watch, in which the tragedies of an anguished world become just too many to cope with, yet in which there is the strongest feeling that there may still be worse to come.[10]

Hastings goes on to argue that there are three possible responses to this view. The first is to simply despair of the kingdom and of any ultimate meaning in the world or in history and argues that many Christians in the 1980s in effect adopted this position. The second is retreat into a privately religious, sacral sphere, abandoning the struggle for the secular state as irremediably corrupt and this, too, he says has been seen to be attractive by many Christians. The last position, he says, is that of Augustine in The City of God, which is to take the long view of a Christian belief in the ultimate redeemability of things, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary. Rather fewer, he suggests, seem to want to adopt this view.[11] What sort of leadership is required for this?

If the first position is to throw in the towel, the second is an attempt to live by two moralities; one private (religious) the other public (secular), the third position is to elect to be in the world but not of it, which is the most difficult of all to occupy, requiring the Church to be a people of hope and subject to tension.

This might seem an overly pessimistic perspective with not enough emphasis on the many oases of Christian vitality that can be found, but we have to remember that the twentieth century in particular must rank as the most violent and destructive in human history and the twenty-first century, with its phenomenon of ideological terrorism, seems to be continuing the trend, although many positive things can and should be said in favour of what has been achieved. We should also have a sense of history; it seems often to be the case that when the situation of the Church seems most critical, new life and vitality comes, but not without some prophetic discernment of what our response should be to initiatives that may not be from ourselves.

Secularism and the New Atheism

If Hastings is right, then it may be that what the Church has to do is not just take the long view, but try to view its situation more as an opportunity to recover its Gospel role than an insuperable problem from which it must try and recover as best it can. At first, the grounds for optimism may not seem good, as we face what appears to be the inexorable march of secularism. Wilson in his important work Religion in Sociological Perspective[12] provides us with a useful definition of this phenomenon, which can be summarized as follows:

• The sequestration by political powers of the property and facilities of religious agencies.
• The shift from religious to secular control; of the various activities and functions of religion.
• The decline in the proportion of time, resources and energy given to religion.
• The decay of religious institutions.
• The supplanting of religious precepts by demands that accord with strictly technical criteria.
• The gradual replacement of a specifically religious consciousness by an empirical rational and instrumental orientation.
• The abandonment of mythical, poetic and artistic interpretations of nature and society in favour of matter-of-fact description.[13]

All this leads to a privatization of values and beliefs. Another way of describing this is provided by Steve Bruce[14] who sees it manifested in a decline of the importance of religion in such areas as the state and the economy, the fall in the social standing of religious roles and institutions and a decline in the extent to which people engage in religious practice. Some would argue that this has left a ...

Table of contents

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX – MODELS OF THE CHURCH (ADAPTED FROM DULLES MODELS OF THE CHURCH)
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• NOTES