Presidential Address to Diocesan Synod by the Bishop of Ely
22nd October 2011
There is a great deal which I hope to say about a range of issues which concern our flourishing life as a diocese. It would be absurd not to start with what is occupying all of our minds, hearts and prayers today around the debate and vote on the Draft Legislation to enable the ordination and consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England. What we are doing today is of great significance because we are contributing to the discernment process of the whole Church. I remind us all that we are not voting on whether women can be bishops: the Church has already decided this point in the affirmative.
We are seeking to discern whether this legislation, which is already a compromise, should be supported. If it is passed by us, then we are likely to move to a following motion. What I both expect and commend to you as those who may speak in the debate, as well as those who listen carefully to all the arguments and contributions, is serious and adult listening to one another, properly seeking to persuade but also alert to the impact of what we say on others because the issues are so deeply felt as well as believed. I want no one to leave this hall today feeling that they have been demonised or written out of the book of life. Even when we do not accord integrity to a specific point or argument, we must respect the integrity of the person who makes that argument on whatever side of the debate. I am not going to speak in the debate. I shall vote on the main motion. If we get to the following motion, I shall abstain on the grounds that I am not prepared to vote against a desire for recognition and protection, even if I do not agree with the approach.
-----------------
Many of you will have followed in the press the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to Zimbabwe. In spite of the prophets of doom in the press beforehand, Archbishop Rowan, in company with the other archbishops of the region like Archbishop Thabo of Cape Town, made a real difference to the people of Harare and Manicaland, assuring them of love and solidarity from the wider Church and in the international community. I heard Bishop Chad of Harare speak to the English bishops in September and it was an experience of being in the presence of a living saint. The faith and steadfastness of these fellow Anglicans in the face of state terrorism is inspiring to us.
I have personally witnessed similar faith shown in the lives of our fellow Anglicans in the Sudan through fifty years of civil war and now in the commitment to building a lasting peace and nation-building. I am looking forward to my visit to Vellore in August next year to support our ecumenical link with South India. I do, however, miss our having an African link as a diocese and I intend to explore what we might do about that. Whatever we might do must be based on a church-to-church relationship which celebrates our common faith and desire to learn from one another. There may be development concerns, too, as the existing Ramsey link with Uganda shows; but this flows from the first principle. If we are in a relationship, we wish to serve one another and show solidarity with one another in times of crisis.
This forms the background to our discussion about the Anglican Communion Covenant this afternoon. There is a great debate about the purpose and effectiveness of a covenant; but the bottom line is that we are a communion formed out of the koinonia of the Divine Trinity. It is too big a weight to bear to claim that we are a worldwide unified Church. We are a communion of Anglican churches with different ecclesiologies and cultures. Our diversity is sometimes very uncomfortable and not always predictably. My desire is that we be a communion rather than federation for reasons illustrated by what I have already said, deeply committed to abiding with each other in Christ. We are very privileged to have The Rev’d Dr Sarah Rowland Jones, a Welsh priest working for the Archbishop of Cape Town and who also works on faith and order issues for the Communion here to explain the language and purpose of the Covenant this afternoon.
----------------
While our minds are on the wider world, I should like to commend to your prayers the people of Libya after their liberation, albeit violently, from Colonel Gaddafi. I wish to applaud our government and our armed services for supporting the opposition and I pray that we can support the newly free country to establish itself in peace and justice. We rejoice over the long overdue release of the young Israeli soldier and the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. It is wonderful that so many families have been re-united and that a tentative step towards peace has been made. Nonetheless, the deal does raise a question about the respective value of lives in this situation. I also ask your prayers for Archdeacon Hugh and the party of pilgrims he is serving in Israel/Palestine at the moment. You may have already come across a brochure advertising a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with me in 2013. It is very important for Christians to visit the land of the Holy One, not least to support Palestinian Christians who are suffering acutely, caught in pincers within the political and religious conflict.
In July, Archbishop Rowan and Archbishop Vincent Nicholls started a joint initiative to highlight the needs of Christians in Israel/Palestine and, by implication, the whole Arab world. We have seen the pressure being brought to bear by Moslem extremists upon Coptic Christians in Egypt. Canon Andrew White, Vicar of St George’s Baghdad, was in our region recently telling his audience how vital it is to support Christians in the Near and Middle East. This is the heartland of Early Christianity and we must support our sisters and brothers not only to survive but to thrive in their own homeland. Just the same issues of solidarity apply as in our relationships with threatened Anglicans in Africa. The native Palestinian who is the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Bishop Suheil Dawani, was going to be deprived of his visa to move between Israel and the West Bank and it was only international pressure which prevented this harassment, and one wonders why this could have happened in the first place. It is sad that people will abuse power if they believe we are not watching.
-------------
A situation which I am watching closely nearer to home is the impact of regulations from the Department of Work and Pensions upon those with persistent mental health needs and how they have to report to continue to receive benefits. Where people are seriously mentally ill but striving so hard to stay in their own homes with support, the pressure being imposed is insupportable. The Department of Health has set aside a very welcome sum of £400M for talking therapies for those with mental ill health which seek to build confidence to get into work, but also to access volunteering and further education. This will bring victories for individuals but might yet not get people necessarily off benefits altogether, and certainly not immediately. I trust that the two government departments will look into this urgently and generously.
------------
The clergy mailing this month is the content of my address during the final Eucharist of the recent clergy conference. It is quite long and fairly wide-ranging as I seek to pull together some themes and threads from what I have been hearing and saying since I arrived. You can find the address on the diocesan website – or will do from Monday.
Obviously, my conference address is not the last word. We shall soon be launching a Council for Mission and a Council for Ministry, in keeping with planning done before I arrived and developed since. I am going to appoint a full time Director of Mission during 2012, matching a single Director of Ministry and Training. The DDO will be based in Cambridge at St Bene’ts, which will highlight our commitment to promote vocations among all ages, but not least the young. We are also going to be appointing a new full time Communications Officer to carry forward effective diocesan communications through website and new media, serving more effective internal communications and developing our profile in the wider community.
Having new councils and officers, made up of engaged and passionate people, means that fresh initiatives and new insights will be brought forward. Just as important, I shall want them to stick at what we have already committed ourselves to in renewed mission action planning and on-going pastoral planning. It is very important that we do not lose sight of our ambition to be self-sustaining, contributing and investing when we consider the best use of our resources into the future and the need to be able to pay for our kingdom ambitions. At the beginning of the afternoon, Bishop David will introduce the latest video I have made with others on Mission Action Planning; and he will tell people how they can access the latest one and others I have made so far this year on DVD as well as U-Tube.
What concerns me most, however, is that we work together on articulating our culture and values as the followers of the Risen Christ in this Galilee so that any initiative for further flourishing coheres with what the Holy Spirit has revealed and is uncovering for us. This is a work in progress. Through Lent and if necessary into Eastertide all members of the Bishop’s Staff will be available to chapters, other groups of clergy and lay ministers, parishes and chaplaincies to to seek in prayer and conversation to discern what we most want to express together about the fundamentals of our common life. Ahead of this, I shall be working with colleagues to pull together a document describing where we are and suggesting some of the language and pictures we could use to illustrate our kingdom ambitions. My hope is that we shall have then shared ownership and participation in a clear, sustainable and renewable vision for the years ahead.
----------
For your prayers, I can tell you that the appointing group for the next Dean of Ely begins its deliberations at Bishop’s House on 2nd November when we shall sort out all the paperwork following various consultations and submissions. The advert will be out ready for short listing in mid-January and interviews at the beginning of February. The committee members are: Lord Wilson, the former Cabinet Secretary and Master of Emmanuel (Independent Chair), The Bishop, Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham (External Dean), Simon Kershaw (Bishop’s Council nominee), Archdeacon Hugh McCurdy (College of Canons’ nominee), Sir Paul Britton, the Prime Minister’s Appointments Adviser and Caroline Boddington, the Archbishops’ Appointments Adviser. I am personally sad to have seen Michael Chandler retire so soon after my arrival. He has been a great support and friend in these early months. Nonetheless, I am confident that God is going to send us a new friend as well as senior colleague through this process of discernment. In the meantime, the Cathedral is in the good hands of the Chapter, with David Pritchard as Acting Dean.
At the conference I also declared my intention to make all Self-Supporting Ministers who have completed their curacies to be no longer permanent assistant clergy but Associate Priests. There will be two dates next summer and autumn at which they will be re-licensed. Many SSM clergy are more experienced in ministry than their stipendiary colleagues. Moving them out of tutelage is overdue.
I can also reveal that I have appointed eight new honorary canons, who are Fiona Windsor (Team Rector of the Papworth Team and Chair of the Clergy Conference Planning Group, Nick Moir (Vicar of St Andrew’s Chesterton and Rural Dean of Cambridge North), Andrew Norman (Principal of Ridley Theological College), Professor Sarah Coakley (Norris Hulse Professor of Theology in Cambridge), David Evans (Vicar of Hilgay and Rural Dean of Fincham and Feltwell), Tim Alban Jones (Vicar of Soham and Rural Dean of Fordham and Quy), Philipa King (Team Rector of the Ascension, Cambridge) and Matthew Bradbury (Vicar of Wisbech St mary and Rural Dean of Wisbech Lynn Marshland). I have extended the number of lay canons from three to ten, and the new ones are Hugh Duberly (Lord Lieutenant and Chair of the DBF), Janet Perrett, (Lay Chair of the Diocesan Synod and Lay Chair of St Neots Deanery) Graham Shorter (Diocesan Secretary), John Harrison (the Cathedral Administrator), Sue Freestone (Head of the King’s School, Ely), Professor David Ford (Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge) and Kate Aylmer (LLM at St John’s Hills Road, Cambridge and Diocesan Vocations Adviser).
I am also glad to announce that we have created an additional category of ‘Etheldreda Canon’ to involve presbyters of sister churches more closely in our life. The first two are The Reverend Paul Hills, the Regional Baptist Minister and a member of the Cathedral Council, and The Reverend Professor David Thomson, a URC minister and renowned ecumenist. He has also agreed to be my Ecumenical Adviser for the next three years. It seemed good to me and my immediate colleagues that my Adviser might not be an Anglican.
------------------
I have found myself in a very welcoming and positive community of clergy and parishes. We have a lot to be thankful for. I was told by friends who knew the diocese that I was very fortunate to be coming. I now know that my friends were quite right. You know how keen I am on prayer and parties. I have enjoyed both with many of you already. Long may that continue. Amen.
Bishop Stephen Conway, Bishop of Ely.