Beloved in Christ,
What does it mean to speak on behalf of the Church? That is a question on which I have been musing over the last three months and with which I have been wrestling with greater urgency in the last three weeks. Two issues in particular demanded a public statement but needed some careful thought.
One was the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am sorry that the statement that we made was offensive to some Methodists and that it caused hurt to some survivors of abuse. The circumstances were, of course, unprecedented. We would not usually comment on the travails of another denomination but concluded that on this occasion it was not appropriate to remain silent. We judged it important to put our concern for the victims of abuse first but we also felt that we could not ignore the Covenant with the Church of England whose 21st anniversary we had marked in Westminster three days prior to the publication of the Makin report. We are bound to our Anglican brothers and sisters and have grown closer over the last decade. Part of that relationship has been and continues to be a commitment to work closely together on safeguarding for the sake of all. I would ask those who do not think we got it right to forgive us; none of us can express perfectly what is in the heart of Methodists at the time of mixed and heightened emotion.
Expressing what the Methodist Church as an whole feels and thinks is bound to be a challenge. The report ‘Speaking for the Methodist Church’ (which the Conference adopted in 2001) is clear that those whose responsibility it is to speak into the public square need to reflect positions the Conference has taken. However, where the issue is not one on which the Conference has pronounced, those making statements need ‘to have their finger on the pulse of the Church’. I am always aware that my sense of how strongly the pulse is beating might not be accurate, which is why it is very rare for a statement to be issued without considerable to- and fro-ing amongst colleagues within and sometimes outside the Team.
There has been to-ing and fro-ing about the other issue - assisted dying. As we finalise this letter, the private member’s bill on the subject will be before the House of Commons. The questions around this are more complicated and we put out a longer statement with links to a suite of resources on the subject. The statement attempts to set out the Methodist Church’s position, noting at the outset that ‘Historically, the Methodist Church has opposed any change in the law on this issue.’
In 1974 the Conference adopted a Statement on Euthanasia. Fifty years is a long time (and it helps to put it in context if we remember that it was only in 1961 that suicide was decriminalised in the UK). In 2015, the Conference was presented with two notices of motion on the issue and decided not to vote on them. The Council, to which the matter was referred, agreed not to revisit the Statement but to direct that more resources be made available to provide a better understanding of the issues involved and the support that can be offered to those facing death. The 1974 Statement, therefore, still stands although, as the Council noted in 2015, ‘there have been considerable medical and societal changes’ in the intervening period. Those 2015 conversations also showed, as the press release indicates, that this is another matter on which Methodists live with contradictory convictions.
As well as signing the media statement on this issue, I also wrote to my MP. I was clear in that letter that I was writing in a personal capacity but I was conscious that I was doing so as a Methodist presbyter. I might not have been speaking on behalf of the Church but I was speaking as someone whose lifetime vocation is to be a representative of the Church. The same must be true every time any of us expresses a view on an issue in a public forum, whether or not we do so (literally or metaphorically) wearing a collar or diaconal cross, and whether the public forum is the readership of a church magazine or those who follow our postings on social media. There is (or there should be) both liberation and constraint in that.
Some ministers have, for various reasons, more of a presence in the public square than others. Those invited to broadcast on radio from time to time will be heard to speak as representatives of the Church. Perhaps even more so, those of our number who have sat in Parliament will do so, whether or not they take a party whip. I have been helped in thinking through this by Lord Leslie Griffiths. Unlike (say) the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Leslie does not speak on behalf of his Church but he always does so as a representative of the Church. It is a context in which, as he notes, there can be no religious justification for a speech of a secular nature, but there is a pastoral justification. The ministry of engagement in the political arena is not merely something that is compatible with his call to be a presbyter: it is core to the vocation (as Leslie puts it) ‘to be a representative of the flock and to care for the flock’. The opportunities for each of us to do that need not be ‘high profile’; carefully to express our understanding of what it means to be Methodist in response to difficult and controversial matters is to open doors to dialogue and to build up the body of Christ.
Coincidentally, I was asked to author the Word in Time notes for the first week in December. The lections are from 1 Samuel, the part of the Deuteronomic History which is dominated by the eponymous last Judge. In some ways, the calling of Samuel was similar to that of the presbyter or deacon in the Methodist Church today. As priest, he represented a religious institution. As prophet, he spoke out of his immediate experience of God’s word. Not for him the perils and privilege of some other (later) prophets of speaking from outside the institution, but rather the perils and privilege of having an established role in a time of rapid societal change. To the people and to the king, his words carried authority from both offices.
With my prayers that you and all who will hear or read your words have a blessed Advent and joyous Christmas,
Yours,
