Letters to the Editor

Reasons to keep faculty jurisdiction

From the Revd Deiniol Heywood

Madam, — Alan Currer argues for transferring “responsibility for changes [to church buildings] from chancellors advised by diocesan advisory committees (DACs) to local planning authorities (LPAs)” (Comment, 21 March). He is tilting at the wrong windmill, and his plan would be a disaster for churches. It would achieve the opposite of his hopes.

What makes changes to church buildings difficult is not DACs, faculties, and chancellors, but the legislation around listed-building consent. The Church of England is allowed to run its own planning system through the ecclesiastical exemption precisely because it is understood that churches have a purpose beyond their heritage value and need to change and develop to fulfil that purpose. Thus harm (to use the technical phrase) to listed buildings can be justified under the ecclesiastical exemption.

The Church is required to operate a system with the same level of rigour as the secular planning system and is nervous of losing the exemption if it can’t demonstrate that. If it were to lose the exemption, church work would fall to the LPAs, and the mission and purpose of the Church would carry far less weight than it does now.

Having done significant work to a listed Victorian church (faculty jurisdiction) and the listed Victorian church hall next door (LPAs), I found both systems infuriating. Ultimately, the church was a success and the hall a botch. The DAC worked with us (for free) to achieve a vision. The LA Heritage Officer’s whims were fiat, expensive, and cared only for preserving heritage of dubious virtue.

DACs and churches are both under-resourced when it comes to planning and listed-building-consent legislation. Both do the best they can with their resources. Next time you go the loo in an expensively restored hotel or restaurant, think of the huge amount of money and professional time that went in to navigating the planning system, far beyond the reach of any church. Next time you go to the loo in a church, give thanks to the DAC.

DEINIOL HEYWOOD
(Member of Oxford DAC)
134 Wycombe Road
Prestwood HP16 OHJ

Troubles of Nicaraguan Church and State

From Mr John Preston

Madam, — The reporting of “severe” restrictions on Christians in Nicaragua (News, 14 March) is at odds with the actual experience of Christians in the country, where I live. For a start, church attendance here is high — the most recent figures from Pew Research suggest that 55 per cent of Nicaraguans say that they go to church at least weekly, one of the highest levels in Latin America. My wife attends an Evangelical church and has no problem at all in exercising her religious freedom.

The article says that there are government restrictions on churches, but fails to explain why. In 2018, there was a violent attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, which had only recently been re-elected with an increased majority. The violence was — sadly — encouraged by many Catholic churches. Several churches were used to store supplies for the uprising, even including weapons.

In Masaya, where I live, two incidents stand out. On 13 June, a friend, Reynaldo Urbina, who is a guard at the municipal depot, was kidnapped and tortured by government opponents. He was then taken to a priest’s house, where he was tied up and held captive in the priest’s presence. The torture has left him permanently disabled.

On 15 July, Gabriel Vado, a police officer, was tortured and killed by violent opposition activists. A priest attempted to dissuade his attackers from publicising what they were doing on social media, because it would harm the opposition, while another priest later attempted to hide the police officer’s burnt corpse.

Thankfully, Nicaragua has now been at peace for several years, but it is hardly surprising that there are some restrictions, especially on some Catholic churches, to prevent the violence from recurring. The events also accelerated the trend for Nicaraguans to shift their allegiance away from the Catholic Church towards Protestant ones.

It is very misleading to say that “intimidation” of Christians is the norm: it certainly isn’t.

JOHN PERRY
Apartado Postal 218
Masaya, Nicaragua

Pregnant — with feminist and womanist ideas

From Professor Susannah Cornwall

Madam, — The Revd Dr Cally Hammond is confused by the differentiation between “feminist” and “womanist” as used by contributors (of whom I was one) to Karen O’Donnell and Claire Williams’s book Pregnancy and Birth: Feminist theological conceptions (Books, 21 March).

Womanist theologies arose in the 1980s among Black women in the United States dismayed that mainstream White feminists had not reflected sufficiently on their own racial prejudices. Womanists held that White women had too often purported to be able to speak for all women without taking account of the ways in which gender, race, and ethnicity intersected.

Womanist theologians are inspired by the novelist Alice Walker, who described African American mothers chastising their teenage daughters for “acting womanish”: in other words, seeking to know more than others deemed them ready to know, or being precocious, too big for their boots. Here, to be “womanish” is contrasted not with being a man, but with being a little girl.

Womanist theologians and others, following Walker, have sought to claim positively this capacity among women of colour to ask awkward questions and show up others’ lack of consciousness of racial and class oppression.

In a book highlighting increased maternal and infant mortality in people of colour, and the gaps in extant theologies that have meant an under-examination of experiences of all pregnant and birthing people, the appeal to womanist as well as feminist theologies is pertinent.

SUSANNAH CORNWALL
Professor of Constructive Theologies
Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology
University of Exeter
Amory Building, Rennes Drive
Exeter EX4 4RJ

‘Compassionate orthodoxy’ lacks compassion

From the Revd Dr Charlie Bell

Madam, — Another week, another “winsome” attempt by those opposed to LGBTQIA affirmation to demand no change, frustrate the will of the General Synod, and do so smiling (the Revd Dr Christopher Landau’s article, Comment, 14 March). “We need a two-thirds majority” is a tired and unconvincing battle cry (and, of course, factually untrue) — and, if there was such a majority, who in their right mind thinks that the ranks of “conservatives” would give up the fight? Pull the other one.

The problem, of course, is that “compassionate orthodoxy”, which amounts to nothing more than “no change” with not even crumbs under the table, fails to engage with reality. At present, same-sex marriage remains an absolute impediment to ordination, and the LGBTQIA people coming to us for services of blessings are not just “covenanted friends” — unless we really have bought into the modern idea that friends have sex with one another.

Of course, nobody proposing “compassionate orthodoxy” is willing to answer the simple question “Should people in same-sex marriages divorce?” Their refusal to do so is not winsome: it is cowardly. There is little compassionate in such an approach.

CHARLIE BELL
Official Fellow in Medicine and Public Theology
Girton College
Cambridge CB3 0JG

Pension issue for those clergy working part-time

From the Revd Anne-Marie Naylor

Madam, — I would like to add a further grievance to the litany of injustices around clergy pensions (Letters, 28 February, 7, 14, and 21 March): that of the treatment of clergy in part-time posts. Last year, I was forced to take a part-time post, in order to help with the care of frail parents. I now work on 4.5 days a week, which is 75 per cent of full time. I receive only half a stipend, however; so this has halved the pension that I am accruing. When I am able to return to full-time work, I doubt that I would be able to find a 1.5-days-per-week post offering me 50-per-cent stipend plus pension.

Part-time clergy are treated inconsistently and unfairly across the Church, in ways that would be completely unacceptable in secular employment. The whole system of clergy pay has been allowed to continue unchallenged for far too long. You are right that this issue is not going away.

ANNE-MARIE NAYLOR
St Thomas’s Vicarage
33 Abbot’s Grange
Chester CH2 1AJ

Financial control should revert to parishes

From the Revd Roger Knight

Madam, — The declaration by the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Jonathan Gibbs, to the diocesan synod that the assets controlled by the Church Commissioners ought to be devolved to the dioceses (News, 21 March) is welcome, but it does not go far enough. As far as possible, the control of the Church’s assets should be in the hands of the parishes. Most of the funds controlled by the Commissioners were originally supplied to support the parishes. It is in the parishes that the pastoral, evangelistic, and transformative work of the Church is carried out. The financial future of the Church of England depends very largely on current giving in the parishes.

ROGER KNIGHT
5 May Street, Cuxton
Rochester
Kent ME2 1LR

Congregations and buildings in central Chatham

From Mr John G. Ellis

Madam, — Your reference to St John’s, Chatham (News, 21 March), is somewhat curious. If by “St John’s” you mean the congregation, it is not correct to say that it “closed for about 25 years”. In fact, for two decades, the former St John’s congregation formed part of a local ecumenical partnership (LEP) with the United Reformed Church, using the extensive URC premises near by. More recently, the diocese of Rochester withdrew its support from the LEP and sought to establish a new Anglican congregation. With a huge investment of money and leadership, this project has indeed proved fruitful.

If by “St John’s” you mean the building, it is not correct to say that it is now open. For a protracted period, it has been closed for its multi-million-pound refurbishment. Meanwhile, the Anglican congregation is back using the URC premises as the base for a range of outreach activities, and worships there with the former LEP congregation on Sunday mornings as one body in Christ. These joint services are joyful, energetic, attractive, and growing.

When the St John’s building is ready to be used for worship again, it will not have space to accommodate all the valuable activities now based in the URC building. The URC looks forward to exploring creatively with the diocese how the dynamism of the existing happy, united congregation can best deploy all the physical plant in the centre of Chatham for Christ’s mission.

JOHN G. ELLIS
Area Leader for Kent and East Sussex, United Reformed Church
24 Shrublands Court
Mill Crescent
Tonbridge TN9 1PH

From the Warden of Cranmer Hall, Durham

Madam, — Jonathan Ralph worries that multiple versions of the Lord’s Prayer create discordance (Letters, 21 March). For several years, our practice in College worship has been to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the version or language that comes most naturally to each person. This has required us to cultivate a prayerful sensitivity to one another, especially at those points when the wording or rhythm differs between Prayer Book, traditional, and modern versions.

Where members of the community have a different native tongue (in recent years, this has included French, German, Portuguese, Rus­sian, Dutch, and Shona), we have been blessed with a glimpse of the worship of heaven.

NICK MOORE
Cranmer Hall, St John’s College
3 South Bailey, Durham DH1 3RJ