Dr Mallett and WATCH campaign
From the Area Bishop of Croydon
Madam, — I read with concern Canon Tim Pike’s letter (11 April) concerning my engagement with the WATCH conference and its campaign regarding the Five Guiding Principles. I have contacted Fr Tim separately to explore these concerns with him, but I also feel it necessary to clarify that I am neither fronting nor leading the WATCH campaign regarding the Five Guiding Principles.
I do, however, wish to see a review of how the Principles are working in practice for both women and for men of all church traditions — and I feel that, after ten years, there is a good opportunity to do so. While the General Synod established these Principles without an end date, this does not mean that they cannot be re-evaluated; and I believe that it is possible to do so in a measured and thoughtful way.
I did indicate in my speech that I had hoped that the wider society and the Church would become more accepting of women’s equal status, and, sadly, that has not happened. Rather, the evidence of recent years is that, in many ways, society has become more hostile and challenging for women. In the Church, many women — lay and ordained — still encounter difficulties, and resistance to their undertaking the roles and responsibilities to which they have been called and that the Church has explicitly affirmed.
Many female clergy tell me the Principles are not working, and that they do not enable mutual flourishing. If only those who cannot accept the ministry of ordained women are flourishing under these principles, that flourishing cannot by definition be understood as “mutual”. This is why I feel that it is the right time to take a second look at them and explore whether there might be a better way forward for all of us in the Church that we call “home”.
I can assure Fr Tim and others, however, that, whatever happens, I remain committed to upholding the practice and commitments of the Church — which presently include the Five Guiding Principles — and to supporting and enabling the ministry of all in my care, regardless of their theological convictions.
ROSEMARIE MALLETT
Trinity House, 4 Chapel Court
Borough High Street
London SE1 1HW
From Mr Tom Middleton
Madam, — The Revd Martine Oborne, chair of WATCH, appeared on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour on 11 April, and, in her comments on that programme, made a direct link between the existence of the Five Guiding Principles and a poor safeguarding environment.
I cannot be alone in thinking that this is a dangerous statement. At the core of good safeguarding practice is an acknowledgement that risks and infringements can come from a wide variety of sources. This is borne out by the Church’s lamentable track record on safeguarding.
We need to develop a combination of robust processes and healthy communications to create the right safeguarding environment in all parts of the Church. This latest intervention from the chair of WATCH would not seem to be making a positive contribution in either regard.
I am in no way looking to close down discussion on any of these points, but surely we can raise the level of the debate?
TOM MIDDLETON
Director
Forward in Faith
St Andrew Holborn
5 St Andrew Street
London EC4A 3AF
Look out for the dynamics of trust and distrust
From Canon Jonathan Kimber
Madam, — Canon Andrew Lightbown (Letters, 4 April) writes with perceptive wisdom about the importance of rebuilding trust. He describes this as an important issue facing the next Archbishop, and one that demands “a very particular kind of gift”. All this is true and well put.
We may wish to think that the “right” Archbishop could somehow cause trust to be rebuilt, within the Church, and between Church and society. I wonder, however, whether trust is, in fact, one of those qualities that can never be directly caused, certainly in others, and perhaps even to some degree in ourselves. Instead, like such desirables as happiness and sleep, trust, I suspect, arises primarily as a consequence of other dispositions and behaviour — together with, crucially, how we interpret those attributes. Moreover, a full-frontal assault — a directly focused attempt to gain trust or happiness — is typically counter-productive.
This perspective may seem like bad news: no Archbishop — or other person — can make trust grow. But such truthful clarity also liberates us from feeling responsible for how others perceive us, and frees our energy to focus on love and service, truth and grace (which will then give trust the best possible chance).
Importantly, the dynamics are different when it comes to distrust (or mistrust). I can choose not to trust, and I may have a very good chance of causing others not to trust. The late Dan Hardy wrote of the “delicate fabric” of trust, which is much easier to tear than to weave in the first place.
We fallen humans, therefore, might find ourselves tempted to exploit this dynamic in pursuit of perceived short-term political advantage. The consequences of any such weaponisation of distrust, however, are likely to be long-lasting, and injurious to the whole body.
JONATHAN KIMBER
King’s College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
Israel, the Palestinians, and a language debate
From Mr Nigel Edward-Few
Madam, — During the 30-odd visits that I have made to Israel and the Occupied Territories, firstly as CEO of Biblelands/Embrace the Middle East and then as a trustee of Action around Bethlehem Children with Disability (ABCD) and supporter of the Spafford Centre, I both saw and experienced at first hand the vicious brutality of the Israeli authorities and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), shown even to a group of visiting pilgrims which I co-led.
I now understand that the rehabilitation centres in the camps that I helped to set up as a trustee of ABCD have now been destroyed. I saw the vast expansion of illegal settlements and met children who had been abused and severely disabled by members of the IDF. The Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza that we supported has, to all intents, been destroyed.
When will we, here in the UK, stop supplying arms and stop supporting this fascist apartheid Israeli government and push for action called for by the innumerable UN resolutions against it?
At the very least, such meaningful action, not just words, should be instigated to release our Christian brothers and sisters and the vast majority of peace-loving Muslim friends from the tyranny they face.
NIGEL EDWARD-FEW
5 Rose Drive
Chesham HP5 1R
From Basma Chitham
Madam, — While Gaza and Gazans burn alive, starve, and are denied their essential needs, we here in England are fighting about the translation of the word Yahud in a BBC documentary (Comment, 28 March; Letter, 11 April). Whose army is inflicting all sort of unimaginable suffering to the Palestinians in Gaza? Who has just bombed Al-Ahli (Anglican) hospital? Who has caused patients with amputated limbs to flee for their lives? What should we call them? Are we so scared to point the finger and call them who they are? To the extent that maybe we should call them “those who can’t be named”?
For a Palestinian child who is terrorised by what is happening around him, does the fact that he calls them Jews cancel the fact of what they are doing? For him, they are simply Jews. All these smokescreens are there to distract us from what is really happening right now in Gaza. There are no Israeli Palestinians in the government. It is a brutal Jewish army led by a ruthless Jewish government, terrorising and killing a multitude of civilians in Gaz, aided by American might and our own Government’s cowardice in not calling what is happening genocide.
BASMA CHITHAM
(A Palestinian Christian)
The Vicarage, Kents Lane
Standon SG11 1PJ
From the Revd Martin Jewitt
Madam, — Paul Vallely (Comment, 28 March) and Naomi Gryn (Letters, 11 April) make several useful points about how collective nouns such as “Jews”, “Israelis”, etc. are used in different ways. Ms Gryn refers to the derogatory references to “the Jews” in the New Testament, reminding us of the shameful truth of how this has been used in the persecution of Jewish people for centuries.
The New Testament writers, mostly Jewish, were using the term generically to mean the Jewish officials of the time. In the same way, we might talk of bad treatment of colonial subjects by “the British”, meaning the colonial authorities rather than every British citizen.
So the context always needs to be explained so that this phrase “the Jews” is never used to excuse anti-Semitism again. And it is imperative that Christian preachers always make sure that such explanation is given when quoting the persecution of Jesus or his followers by sections of the Jewish community at the time.
MARTIN JEWITT
12 Abbott Road
Folkestone
Kent CT20 1NG
Leicester’s finances
From Mr Stephen Billyeald
Madam, — The Leicester Diocesan Secretary (Letters, 11 April) assures us that the diocesan “conference centre generates an income for the diocese”; but he fails to point out that it also incurs significant costs, which have led to net losses over the past two years of more than £1.1 million.
Furthermore, the 2023 Leicester Diocesan Board of Finance accounts show that St Martins Lodge and New Street property were bought and refurbished in 2015 at a cost of £4.5 million and was valued at December 2023 at just £2.2 million — a 59-per-cent write-down of £2.3 million.
It is perfectly reasonable that your correspondents should be concerned that such financial mismanagement might lie behind the devastating cuts in clergy numbers across the diocese and has led to the deeply unpopular “minster communities”.
I would also point out that Leicester’s ratio of stipendiary clergy to diocesan staff of 2:1 does not compare well with its neighbours of Coventry and Ely, which are closer to 3:1; perhaps this justifies a description of “bloated”.
STEPHEN BILLYEALD
16 Briars Close
Pangbourne RG8 7LH
Balance of continuing ministerial development
From Mr Alan Stanley
Madam, — I am just starting my regular safeguarding training, which is spread over two online sessions with written work in preparation and evaluation. This has caused me to reflect on the difference between the requirements for continuing professional development (CPD) in my former profession, dentistry, and for me now as a licensed lay minister in both parish ministry and chaplaincy.
Why, I wonder, does the Church place such a high priority on its ministers’ safeguarding training while seemingly neglecting other key areas of ministerial CPD? In dentistry, there is a requirement for dentists to complete 100 hours of verifiable CPD over a five-year cycle. The General Dental Council sets clear outcomes for this CPD and has three highly recommended and five recommended topics for dentists to keep themselves updated about. Two of the eight topics relate to safeguarding.
In the light of the discussions about the qualities needed for the next Archbishop of Canterbury, and the seemingly impossible workload of clergy in Leicester and Wigan, it would be very illuminating to hear through your pages what “highly recommended” topics your readers feel could form part of CPD (CMD) for ordained and lay ministers, and whether, like safeguarding training, this should be a requirement for holding a bishop’s licence to minster.
ALAN STANLEY
Apple Acre, 2 Rein Court
Aberford, Leeds LS25 3BS
White for Passiontide
From the Revd Peter Paine
Madam, — Poet’s Corner consistently provides a happy ending to my weekly reading of the Church Times. The 4 April edition was no exception, as the coincidence of April and poetry reminded me of A. E. Housman’s beautiful poem “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”. This year, the cherry blossom has come a week earlier than last, and, Easter being so late, the trees here will no longer be “Wearing white for Eastertide”.
PETER PAINE
Beachway House, 27 Stratford Close
Southport PR8 2RT
Pensions Board approaches about early retirement
Madam, — I have recently become aware that clergy colleagues who have had to take an early retirement are being contacted by the Pensions Board in such a way that the word “pension” seems to be being redefined as conditional. That is, it is presented as if it is reconceived as a benefit rather than a pension.
This is particularly troubling because, by and large, those who have retired through ill-health are people living with long-term disabilities that prevent their doing regular full-time work — doing, in fact, the work that they loved and were called to, recognised at their ordination.
Currently, such people in the wider population, as well as our colleagues, are being made to feel very vulnerable and anxious because of the Government and popular media rhetoric around disability. So, having seen a letter from the Pensions Board about reviewing an early-retirement pension, I am concerned that the letter from the Board seemed to echo that rhetoric. If one has accompanied parishioners, relatives, or friends through the process of appeals related to disability benefits, it is readily understandable that the Board’s raising of the spectre of a similar set of hoops for someone to jump through is a daunting and dispiriting prospect.
Either the pension is a pension — a sum given at a rate related to defined service — or we should be told clearly, on entry, that it is conditional, and under what conditions the conditionality holds.
While I understand that a pension granted for early retirement might need to be stopped if the person subsequently became able to hold a full-time post after all, there is a worrying intimation of conditionality in reviewing a pension to ascertain that it is “being paid at the right level”. The implication here is that it would be stopped or reduced. Since the rate of payment is curtailed by years of service, it is unlikely that this is hinting that the payment could be increased towards national minimum stipend. The “right level” is surely the level of the pension for the years of service, as defined?
This will never be enough to live on without benefits or PIP, and the approach by the Pensions Board sets in motion the prospect of a carousel of adjustments of conditional benefits which could take months to resolve and, in the mean time, plunge someone into poverty, besides exposing them to the prospect of being refused help that would compensate for the adjusted pension.
I am willing to be contacted c/o the Church Times (email only) by genuine enquirers who might be willing to help to address this constructively.
NAME & ADDRESS SUPPLIED
Actors and Gospels
From Mr Robert Chamberlain
Madam, — After reading the wonderful and warm-hearted article by Bishop James Jones (Features, 11 April), I wondered whether, in 2025, Joe Lycett or Alan Carr, for example, would be asked to read Bible stories.
As a user of the parabolic filmstrip stories such as Number One produced by Scripture Union in the 1970s, I wonder whether there are similar imaginative media presentations of Gospel themes available today.
ROGER CHAMBERLAIN
22 Hanbury Croft
Birmingham B27 6RX
