WHEN asked to come to Liverpool to serve temporarily as diocesan Bishop, the Rt Revd Ruth Worsley “basically said no”, but promised that she would think about it.
“I wanted to do it on my terms,” she told the Church Times in an interview after her appointment as Interim Bishop of Liverpool had been announced.
After sleeping on the question, she proposed that, instead of “Acting Bishop”, the job should be more clearly defined as “Interim Bishop”, with a stated duration of at least two years.
“I’m not going to be on loan. I’m going to be there as a fully committed, paid-up player, joining in with all that the diocese is seeking to do,” she said.
Bishop Worsley is well-positioned to discuss the merits of interim episcopal ministry, having previously served as both Acting Bishop of Bath & Wells and Acting Bishop of Coventry.
“I sense a vocation in this,” she said: “a particular ministry for a length of time that is for a particular intervention that needs to be appropriately resourced, supported, and given authority; and that’s what I’m proposing to do.”
Asked what qualities she had that made her well-suited to this kind of ministry, Bishop Worsley recalled the “simpler, humbler, bolder stuff that the Church of England keeps talking about. . . I like to keep it simple. I’m not really there for the status, but I want to be bold in breaking out from the traditional ways of doing things.
“I also think I’m a non-anxious presence: I seem to be able to keep calm where others are flapping. I’m good in a crisis.”
In Liverpool, in the wake of Dr Perumbalath’s resignation, how could reconciliation be effected in a situation in which many were still reeling, and unsure what, or whom, to believe? “I’m brought back to the Cross of Nails and Coventry approach to reconciliation,” Bishop Worsley said, gesturing to her pectoral cross, which is fashioned from silver-plated nails.
The approach, she said, was “not about about trying to pick over what happened, and what went wrong, and who do you believe, but, actually, what does it mean to heal the wounds of the past? We do need to really listen well to one another and hear the damage and hurt that people have.
“This isn’t about trying to convince people to all think alike, or to see it from the same point of view, but to value the fact that we are, in our diversity, part of that whole Church of God, and seek to live that out.”
One of the outstanding questions in the diocese of Liverpool is the future part to be played by the Suffragan Bishop of Warrington, the Rt Revd Bev Mason. Bishop Mason has been away from the diocese for a year and a half. In January, she revealed that she had also made allegations of misconduct against Dr Perumbalath (News, 31 January).
She was “much missed”, Bishop Worsley said, but emphasised that it was up to Bishop Mason whether, and when, she wanted to return to the diocese. “I would hope, both for her sake and ours, that that [decision] will be sooner rather than later,” Bishop Worsley said.
Unlike her previous diocesan posts in Bath & Wells, and Coventry, there is no fallback when the interim post in Liverpool ends. Previously, she has returned to her ministry as Bishop of Taunton; this time, when a permanent bishop is appointed, the see of Wigan will lapse, and Bishop Worsley will potentially be out of a job.
“My husband [who teaches at Trinity, Bristol] and I are taking a huge risk,” she said. “[But] I’m not in this for the security of life in the here and now — I’m in it for the longer term.”
The interim position could, potentially, lead to a permanent one, if the CNC nominated her as the next bishop, and Bishop Worsley has not closed off this possibility. “If it was appropriate, and I felt pulled, and they felt I should be a candidate to be considered, then I would like to be considered,” she said.
She was not considered as a candidate in Coventry, despite spending time as Acting Bishop: a decision that she attributes to church politics.
At a meeting of the House of Bishops in September, Bishop Worsley spoke in favour of changes to the episcopal appointments process, suggesting that the current set-up of the Crown Nominations Commission was proving to be unfair to women.
She spoke then about the experience of women in Afghanistan, whose hard-won freedoms had been reversed by the Taliban’s return to power. “It has caused people to recognise that women’s voices should be able to be heard beyond the walls of their own home. We don’t even allow for those voices to be heard within the walls of our Church,” she said.
At last month’s meeting of the General Synod, proposals put forward by the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, including the removal of the secret ballot in the CNC, were rejected after a heated debate (News, 21 February).
Bishop Worsley described this as a “missed opportunity”. “I think it was unfair to suggest that this was about bishops’ wanting to assert their power,” she said, and expressed disappointment that, from her perspective, the proposals had become “something of a battleground to fight other causes”, in particular Living in Love and Faith (LLF).
Bishop Worsley supported LLF, she said, because it was about “full inclusion”. “Everybody matters: every person has a part to play within the Church of God,” she said; but she expressed concern that this was not working when it came to women’s ministry: despite seeking to “offer flourishing for all”, it had come “at the expense of women”, she said.
