This week, the UK Office of Census and Population has announced that for the first time, those identifying as Christians are a minority in this country; 46% put down their religion as Christianity in the 2021 census, compared to 72% in the 2001 census. I suspect I am not alone amongst vicars in being surprised that the figure saying that they are Christian is as high as 46%; it sometimes feels more like 4.6%. The number of people who regularly attend church has certainly been falling for many decades, but I suspect the census is actually showing us that people are now more honest about their spirituality, at least up to a point, by admitting that they have nothing that they want to call a religious faith. 

When we consider what we believe in, be it the God of Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or humanism and power of reason, it is essential that we are honest with ourselves. If the census now reflects that honesty, I welcome it.  But questions remain. What are the values that we really follow? What is it that inspires us, moves us, drives us? My suspicion is that for many of the 46%  who still identify as Christian, the daily inspiration for their lives is not Jesus Christ, although doubtless they have some connection with him. Equally, for the 34% who identify as having no religious faith, there will be a significant number who will recognise something spiritual in their lives, even if they prefer not to call that “God”. That is a decision that I hope I always respect, but my faith is that we cannot shut what I call God out of our existence. What I call the Holy Spirit is active in all lives, calling us to become more fully human, to live richer lives. Perhaps that Holy Spirit is also not to bothered what people chose to call her/him; the Spirit simply wants us to respond. 

The football World Cup is underway; as I write, I am preparing for England’s latest game, against the USA. Earlier today I exchanged emails with a friend in Iran; we collaborate as scientists but share a friendship that is, at least in part, based on football. At its best, sport can bring people together and that often happens with the World Cup.

Of course, this World Cup has particularly issues, around the human rights record of Quatar, the host. It has been criticised for the way it treated migrant workers who built the stadiums, its treatment of women, the gay community and minorities. In turn, the president of FIFA very recently accused western countries of hypocrisy, questioning  their right to criticise. This raises some interesting questions. It is not difficult to find examples of double standards in western countries including our own, where we find ways of side-tracking human rights when we want to deal with a country that has something we want. And of course, historically we may have only recently espoused the rights of groups we now seek to champion in other countries. But does that disqualify us from speaking out?

Jesus strongly condemned the hypocrisy of the religious rulers of his day but at the same time he sided with the marginalised in his society. He taught his followers to show a similar generous love. It seems to me that part of that love is to name injustice and wrong-doing when we see it. It is likely to be a costly love, because inevitably, we ourselves will fall short of the love that Jesus showed; we will be exposed as hypocrites.  But I would rather speak out and be a hypocrite than stay silent and ignore wrong and evil.

I am very grateful to the Rev Ashley Buck, vicar of Cleobury (and a friend of mine since we were both 7!) for allowing me to reproduce his letter from this month’s Kinlet News.

After the dignity of the funeral services for Queen Elizabeth, I write at what may be termed a moment of political confusion. I suppose it could also be said that the confusion has really been in place for some time in our national life. I wish to make no comment about the politics of the present situation, but it has to be understood that the drama of our domestic turmoil is all the more dangerous because it is played out against an international backdrop of triple crises. The war in Ukraine poses extraordinary dangers for the whole of Europe and beyond, it has combined with other factors to create a global economic downturn, and more importantly than any of these things, the environmental and climate emergency is fast approaching a point of no return.

When discussing all this people tend to set out their position in terms of ‘values’. Some will talk about ‘conservative values’ or ‘liberal values’. Our schools are required by law to teach ‘British values’ although I have never yet found out what makes them distinctively British.  And then ‘values’ seem to get lumped together into further things called ‘value systems’. Those who use the term seem also to believe that the sharing of value systems is one of the markers of being one of the many ‘communities’ which are being identified as subsections of society.

It all seems horribly vague and imprecise to me, and desperately susceptible to ‘words meaning what I want them to mean.’ ‘Values’ seem often to be most valuable as weapons to hurl at those with whom we disagree.

Some of us would propose a different way of looking at morality. Instead of a value-based culture could we not ground our ethics on virtues? Virtues are easier to understand and more precise in meaning. Courage is a virtue. Generosity is a virtue. These are good things. Tolerance is taught as a value, but it is fraught with dangers, because it carries within it arguments about how permitting freedom for some may hinder the freedom of others. The current arguments about gender identity fall into this category. So in the place of the value of ‘tolerance’ I would advocate the virtue of ‘kindness’. Other virtues like ‘honesty’ and ‘diligence’ might begin to lead us out of our current mess, who knows?

The secretary-general of the UN has recently spoken bluntly about our progress to limit the effects of climate change to an increase of “just” 1.5C. We are not remotely on track for that; realistically the climate is likely to increase by twice that amount; as he put it, we are firmly on a road to hell. Many years ago, when global warming was just appearing on the agenda, an acquaintance of mine, a professional geologist, wrote about how this could turn into another “geological” event like the ice ages or the events that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs; the planet would survive, but it would become a different place which would just have to adjust to. A number of individuals and groups are now thinking about just what that could mean. Perhaps it will not happen; I certainly do not think the worse-case scenario is certain, but I would agree it is a scenario we now need to think about.

Religious faith helps us to think about the unthinkable; we are called to consider hard questions of life and death, hope and despair. Thus religious leaders should be able to contribute to this debate. The story of the Bible is, at least in part, about finding hope and life in the face of setbacks and disasters. It is not that God will magically remove all difficulties; in the current case that there will be a miraculous reset of global carbon dioxide levels. God gives us freedom to make our own choices, for good or ill. Instead, our faith is based on “God with us”, that whatever problems we may cause for ourselves, through accident of nature or our own stupidity, God will always be with us (yes, I know I said this last week as well, but some truths bear repeating…). If we do end up at the far end of the road to climate hell, in the worse-case scenario, God will still be with us. That is the ground for our hope.

Hard on All Souls and All Saints, those most Christian of festivals, comes Remembrance Day. The timing is a coincidence, Remembrance Sunday is the Sunday nearest to the Armistice on the 11^th of November that marked the end of the First World War; this turned into Remembrance Sunday after the Second World War. The events of this day, the poppies, the two minute silence, the words “they shall not grow old…” are all strictly secular; many war memorials are set apart from churches. We sometimes offer prayers as part of the act of remembrance, but in our benefice, two of these acts will be led by lay members of the churches; a development I fully support.  

It seems to me that it is no bad thing that the church, at least the organised church, does not grab the limelight in remembrance services. We honour all the fallen; non-Christians, those of no faith and it is hardly respectful to them not to acknowledge this. Whilst I will be saying prayers in Highley, I do not expect those who do not share my faith to join me. A message from the Bible and of 2000 years of history after the death and resurrection of Jesus, is that God will not force himself on anyone. Instead, God does something far more important; God is with us, loving and reaching out to us, whatever we may think or do. God was alongside those who fought in the two world wars, he is alongside those who currently serve, he is alongside those who are involved in current conflicts. And he is alongside all those who remember, whether a vicar is present or not, whether they are at a war memorial or not. 

The coming week is when in the Christian Church we remember All Saints and All Souls; if you like the heroes of faith and the rest of us, although that is not a distinction I suspect the writers of the New or perhaps the Old Testament would have been entirely comfortable with. Regardless of this, in our benefice and in many other churches, we will recall those who have died, especially those in the last 12 months. Hard on this, in two weeks time we recall those who have fallen in war, especially members of our armed forces. 

As many will know, my own father died in August, so I will have a particular interest in remembering the deceased this time round. It takes time to come to terms with loss; for some it can be a very long process. But, for many reasons it is something we have to go through. As I have entered into that process, I have been deeply struck by some words of my spiritual director, a person I regularly visit to help me look into my own soul. She commented that we need to eventually say goodbye to the dead so that we can then start to say hello again to them. By that she meant that by acknowledging that the deceased are no longer physically present, we can than enter into a new relationship with them based on our memories and acknowledging the ways in which they have moulded us. My All Souls’ project is to make a frame for a picture of Dad to put in the workshop where he used to work and where I now enjoy his tools and the skills he taught me. It is my way of acknowledging that new relationship we now have, and the union that we still enjoy as members of the body of Christ, living and departed. 

Hello everyone,

I have just spoken to Nigel Oliver our lengthsman.

I explained that the PC are hoping to look at formalising his employment and draw up a contract of employment for both his benefit and ours. This being necessary to show that we are being prudent in the use of public money to fund his employment which forms a significant proportion of the parish’s annual expenditure. I also explained that we would need to apply for the EMA shortly.

Before any of this is completed I enquired about his intentions to continue beyond March 2023 as he did indicate this might not be the case in previous conversations we have had. He is undecided but I think this depends upon how he is treated.

With regard to planning his work he described his annual routine and the need for flexibility regarding the completion of his hours. Both of these points seem reasonable. He prioritises certain locations that are known trouble spots throughout the year. In the Spring for example when strimming he will litter pick and in the Autumn leaf clearing and unblocking drains is a priority. Road signs will be cleaned during winter months. After heavy rain and storms he will deal with the consequences as situations dictate.

He is frustrated that things that he has highlighted as requiring attention in his worksheets have not been acted upon in the past. I agreed that this was not acceptable and we  could deal with this.

I asked what he would be looking for if he were to continue and he said that giving GPS details at work sites and taking photos would not work. I gather that this is something that has been asked of him in other situations. He said he needs flexibility to allocate his limited time.

The principle of decentralisation of this service which is, as I understand, the purpose of the EMG commendable. I also got the impression that Nigel has used his local knowledge and experience for many years to provide what he believes to be a good service and this has not always been appreciated or recognised. With closer communication I get the impression that his productivity may well improve in the future.

He asked me if I would like to join him to see what he does and I agreed, he seemed pleased and we will arrange to do this in the new year. I thanked him for his work.

Overall it was a positive conversation and I can see the merits of this service / cost to the parish.

I am distributing this summary now while it is fresh in my mind and hopefully will help our debate at the next meeting. I also attach a report that you may find interesting. It uses the lengthsman services in Billingsley and neighbouring parishes as a case study; Eileen was instrumental in establishing this arrangement.

Bye for now,

October and November seem to be months for remembering; we have Remembrance Sunday and Bonfire night; in the church’s calendar we have All Saints and All Souls, somehow transformed in modern culture into Halloween. Perhaps that is why, 35 years ago, October was designated “Black History Month”. This is not something that I have ever considered very carefully; in my own explorations of local history, black history really seems to have begun in the 2^nd World War, with the arrival of a black refugee from Liverpool and a black service battalion of US troops at Kinlet. At the end of war, it seems to have quickly become just a memory; the Windrush generation did not make for the communities of the Severn Valley Benefice. Highley when I grew up was entirely white; I only encountered ethnic diversity in trips to Dudley. That was my background. 

We are moulded by our background, often in ways we do not realise. It is only fairly recently in my life I have become properly aware of “subconscious bias”; the assumptions that we make that we never even think about. It comes from our own histories but is also how we evolved; we instinctively trust people “like us” on the grounds that they are more likely to be friendly. Indeed, 100,000 years ago this was probably a good survival strategy. Today it is much less helpful, however we might try rationalise it. Subconscious bias goes far beyond skin colour; it is everything from how another person speaks to how they dress. Jesus has something to say about not judging people by outward appearances. Perhaps just thinking about the term “Black History month” and how we react to it, is spiritual self-examination. 

At the October Evening Service in Billingsley, the talk was given by Jane Peeler, a Reader from the Bridgnorth group of parishes and also an Anna Chaplain. Anna Chaplains minister to the spiritual needs of the elderly; a lot of their work is with individuals with various memory problems. Sometimes dementia leaves the sufferer in a very dark place but this is not always the case. Jane told of one of the people she visits who has severe memory loss, but when asked when he was most happy, after a long pause, he replied “right now”.  

We often hear the phrase “living in the moment”. It can be trite; an attempt to distract from deep seated worries which may be very real and which will not go away. These do have to be faced. But in other contexts it takes on a different meaning. For Jane, the lesson was to give her friend her undivided attention at that instant, to share in his happiness as much as she could. Jesus also addressed this when he spoke about how we cannot add anything to our lives by worrying about the future. His point was that ultimately we can only trust to God; however difficult it is in the moment, however unreal it may seem at the time, the love of God is the only certainty that we have. Anna Chaplains are sustained by their trust in the unbreakable love of God and through this, they reach out to those they visit to help them find contentment and live fully in the moment.