lurchersontheedge

Many moons ago, I wrote a piece whilst training for ordination called Vulnerable Foolishness. It was 20000 words long. I was not doing any course. The Queen’s Foundation were very enlightened and allowed me not to pursue an academic qualification, given that I already had a PhD. That said, it meant I just wrote far more than I needed too.

I still think there is much in the work of a 21st Century priest, pastor or evangelist that is quite foolish or more pertinently in common with the Jester. At my best, I am able to speak up on behalf of those who are not listened to. It is about speaking truth to those with power.

I am not sure we are usually good at it, and an example of it not happening occurred during a recent state visit to Britain.

I am a loyal priest within the Church in Wales and have never refused baptism. I have done my best to prepare people well, and sometimes that preparation has gone well, and others it has been a real struggle. There is a real tension between what I think the Church believes about baptism and what those coming for baptism want.

That said, I enjoy baptisms. The picture is not of three I have baptised, but of three who have been to several of the baptisms I have conducted and who regularly help me conduct them: filling the font with water, anointing with oil (alongside me), giving the candle, and persuading people to put monies in the collection plate.

Periodically, I wonder whether we do the right thing by offering stand alone baptisms, and then then are put into the main act of worship which leads to a crescendo of complaints from those who regularly attend who sometimes cannot hear themselves think and misunderstanding from those who do not usually attend. The Church does not have a monopoly on long words, but it has more than its fair share of them, and most of them with quite complex meanings.

I recently asked some parents and godparents about the promises they were about to take and commitments they were about to affirm.

What does it mean to bring a child up to be part of the Christian faith? For none was it about being part of the church. This is a shock to those of us who want to make baptism the entry point to the life of the church community.

The question do you turn to Christ was a puzzle, but the one, ‘do you repent of your sin’ a mystery. What came back the question if you have never done anything wrong? This is simply illustrative of the gulf between Christian theology and what used to be popular Christian culture, which is now perhaps just culture. All of this made me ask why they wanted the babies baptised.

It is the right thing to do, said one, as others nodded. Every single parent and godparent knew someone who came to church, but none of them had invited that person to the baptism.

This particular baptism has happened. It was great. Lots of laughter with people leaving happy to have been in a sacred building. I was even offered a pint at the pub and have received a nice card with the question, ‘did you really mean it when you said you would pray for us?

Yes, I did. I do. I am just also praying I know if and when it might be appropriate to say, no, you might actually want something different to what I, as a priest, can offer.

I think about 18 months after a move is a good time to begin to reflect on what has happened. It is particularly appropriate as this week I have missed Bartley Green in Birmingham as they have celebrated the life of one of their saints. I did not always think he was one mind, but then saints appear in surprising places.

I did not appreciate the seismic shift there is in moving from one nation to another, although I have loved (nearly) every minute of learning the Welsh language and engaging in Welsh culture.

I perhaps did not appreciate just how different the Church in Wales would be from the Church of England. You would be surprised by how I might articulate that.

I was not prepared for how hard it would be to start again, and how achievements elsewhere would count for nothing in a new environment. I will think a fourth time before moving again to a completely new environment.

I was not prepared for breath taking natural beauty of Anglesey nor for rurality of urban Holyhead.

I did not expect to at one and the same time miss England, especially Sheffield where I have not lived for over half my life, or to feel as Welsh.

I did not expect to be as connected with the saints of old and yet feel so different from them. After all what have I got in common with Cybi, a stubborn, prickly man who annoyed people who was defined by his region, in his case Cornwall rather than Yorkshire?

I did expect to work hard, probably not this hard… and I probably expected it to be easier. Wales, I thought, would be easier for the gospel to thrive than in England.

… and I did not expect to feel so rooted and yet rootless….

But I am on the whole glad to be here.

Bendith

I am (quite possibly) an Evangelist.

That in and of itself seems to be a difficult thing to say both within the church and outside today.

I have in my time done street preaching: London, Rotherham, and Newcastle to name three places. I have done door to door visitation (and still love cold calling, although it is easier to do wearing a clerical collar). I like preaching with a view to persuading people to follow Christ more closely. I suppose I have a charism for it, as well as a quiet smile and I hope a willingness to listen.

I simply do not understand those who believe that evangelism has no place, and that somehow the call to follow Christ is one that it is too offensive to utter. I admit that the call offends. It must do. The call to change inevitably means just that.

I have never found though someone who is committed to something else is offended. A devout Muslim or Jew is more likely to take a live and let live approach than be slighted.

I am simply positing some questions. I really would like to know why evangelism which has always been the bedrock of church growth and spirituality is regarded by many as something beyond the pale.

I have been back to Cumbria recently. I was successively Team Vicar and Team Rector there for a while. There were good times and not so good times. To be honest, when I was good, I was very very good, and when I was not…. I was unbearable. I learnt a lot about mainly myself.

Cumbria beauty

What was brilliant about being there was allowing the present to engage with the memories of the past.

The distance between 2009 and now brings a sense of perspective, but friends can help you remember that it was not always as bad as you think, and are a healthy reminder that no matter how difficult something sometimes seems to have been there is usually positive impact.

I am not a person who makes friends easily. I can do acquaintances well, if there is a mutual acceptance that I will try my best to do small talk and that I will usually fail or get distracted in the process.

I have often thought that a good definition of a friend is someone you would die in the trenches for.

I spent time on my visit with two of them. You can go for weeks, months, perhaps years with very little contact… and then you meet up and it is as if you have never parted.. and you are far too gracious to realise that both of you have aged in the time you have been apart.

Friends give life. I need to make more time in the coming months and years to give and receive such life.

These are the notes which I loosely used in my paper at the recent BIAPT Conference. I am submitting a short piece arising out of it to Practical Theology

Croeso i Gweithdy. Welcome to the Workshop

Mae hyn yn fy stori. Dw i’n symud i Bae Treaddur o Birmingham yn mis Chwefror 2014.

This workshop reflects on my move from England to Wales. It is therefore personal – all theological engagement is.

It is an engagement with a continuing journey. Ostensibly, it is about moving from one part of the British Isles to another (I always accepted Britain was bigger than England; coming from the North helps perhaps), but also from one nation to another (I probably did not understand the concept of Wales as a separate nation).

Much more than that it is a narrative that is beginning to unravel what it might be to be Welsh (this by a man who had rarely set foot in Wales, and been to Holyhead once before en route to Ireland) and within that what it might mean to be English (would I use that term to describe myself, I have always defined myself by my regional Yorkshire identity)

It is about doing theology and discovering that what I had presumed had been a shared history is far from that; and perhaps it is not too presumptuous to assume that the much heralded characteristic of English fair play does not appear to have been in evidence with how the English or British establishment had dealt with the people of Wales. It is a theology that begins to feel what it might be like to be the oppressor in the narrative. For someone who tends towards being inclusive in many of the current ecclesiastical and societal debates, it has been at times galling to reflect on the not always positive impact of England upon Wales. There are four contours that have become important in my journey: language, history, Landaff rather than Canterbury, and devolution.

When you are new to a context, you meet lots of people, and also go out of your way to introduce yourself. On one such occasion, I sat with the Head of the local secondary school for the first time. About 20 minutes in, I was struck deeply and profoundly by his words.

‘My Dad was caned at school for speaking Welsh and made to wear the knot. Whenever I meet someone who is from England, I remember that and our history’

I had no idea of that the Westminster government had tried to make English the first language of Wales. I knew nothing about pupils being punished for simply speaking their mother tongue. I knew nothing of what the Headteacher termed ‘our history’

I knew nothing of the so-called Blue Book or Brad y Llyfrau Gleision which the 1847 Government report into State of Education in Wales has become known.

Two quotes illustrate its conclusions

Teach English and bigotry will be banished

The Welsh language is a vast drawback to the Welsh and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. It is not easy to overestimate its evil effect`

Some of the attempts to make English normative were dressed as enabling different choices to be made. In order to improve pupils’ knowledge of the English language, the Welsh education system of the late 19^th century employed the ‘Welsh Not’ or ‘Welsh stick’ as a method of discouraging children from speaking Welsh. This small piece of wood was given in turn to individuals overheard talking Welsh, and whoever was wearing it by the end of the week was often severely punished.

Whilst such practices officially fell away in the early 20^th Century, in parts of Anglesey they continued. Several of my congregation from their late 40s to late 70s recall wistfully Welsh being sidelined in order to enable them to get on.

Coupled with the official and unofficial repression of the language, there has been a continual suspicion and perhaps mockery from across the border.

If an Englishman enters a shop in Welsh-speaking parts of Wales, the locals are likely to switch promptly to speaking Welsh. Thus the Englishman cannot be sure whether they are talking about him

This comment was made in 1994 by the then Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood. In addition, one might reflect on game shows and comedy routines that seem to poke fun at Cymraeg that are acceptable, when perhaps if it was directed at another language, it might be construed as racist.

Ond, Dw i’n dysgu Cymraeg achos i ddangos parch at ddiwylliant Cymru.

Another conversation between a Welsh colleague and me was equally poignant

‘We are a conquered people. Your Castles are still here. We remember, even if you do not’

My immediate response was not did I remember, but how little I knew. Did I know anything about the wars between England and Wales? I knew nothing of the viciousness of Edward I.

Indeed I can recall being given by first tour of Ynys Mon, and the village that is called Niwbwrch or Newborough.  The “new borough” was created when the English king, Edward I, removed local people from Llanfaes in the South East of Anglesey so his builders could get on with the construction of Beaumaris Castle which guards the eastern end of the Menai Strait (Afon Menai) and at the time served to control Gwynedd.

I had no idea of the imposition of English law on Wales. The Act of Union between England and Wales set aside a legal code more ancient that that of Westminster. The Union between the two nations was one between conquered and conqueror in a way that the Union between England and another Celtic nation, Scotland, was not. It is perhaps the keeping of a distinct legal code as well as it different education system that makes Scotland more confident that the stateless nation of Wales.

Another strand to this narrative is the move from one Anglican Province to another, from the Church of England to the Eglwys Yng Nghymru. Like the majority of Anglican provinces, the Church in Wales is not established. Moreover, it is a popular maxim that church of the Werin Gymreig (Welsh Folk) was very much a nonconformist church, forged by a history of being Christian dissenters. This is only partially true. No doubt the Church of England in Wales did at times represent an English Chaplaincy abroad, and its Oxbridge educated bishops and clergy appeared to be aloof from the working communities of Wales; and, yet the suggestion that the working folk chose the Capel rather than the Eglwys as their spiritual home needs to be carefully and patiently re-evaluated. Notwithstanding this, it does appear to be true that the Chapel was Welsh speaking and by and large Church, English.

The Disestablishment and disendowment of the Welsh Church through the Welsh Churches Act in 1914, coming into effect in 1920 was the result of a very lengthy campaign by nonconformist church leaders and politicians alike, with Gladstone reputed to have declared that his aim was to rid Wales of the foreign Church. Neither Church nor Chapel leaders covered themselves in glory during the campaign that led to disestablishment. Church leaders seeming to want to make a connection between themselves and the ancient Celtic Church, and at the same time noncomformists seemingly wishing to disembowel as well as disestablish and disendow the Church of England in Wales. Much energy on both sides was put into this debate, when just a decade after 1904 Christianity in Wales was beginning to decline.

There is one other contour that is important for setting the context in which theology is done. In 1999, a measure of devolution came to the Wales by the slimmest of margins. In the referendum held on that day Wales voted by Yes 50.3% / No 49.7%) in favour of a degree of self government, realised in the Welsh National Assembly. There does appear to be a measure of increasing self-confidence in the nation. Whether the bitter cuts of austerity which are destined to hit Wales will strangle this fragile confidence remains to be seen. Wales is defining itself.

Where Wales might once have found its identity in Christian belief, this is no longer the case. Wales like the other nations of the British Isles is increasingly secular, and the stories of Celtic saints that shaped the nation or of the 18^th and 19^th Century non-conformity, and even of the Roberts revival hold comparatively little sway. Non-conformist divines may have seen similarities between Israel and Wales in terms, yet such concepts would be alien to most families living and working within Wales.

Politicians of all hues cite inclusiveness as one of the features of the modern Wales. This begs the question how can you hold together those who are first language Welsh, English incomers, and Welsh people who will only use English to the name but a few groups.

Wales has much in common with its Celtic sibling, Scotland, and yet politically there are significant differences. Plaid Cymru is not yet the Party of Wales in the broadest sense. Labour or Llafur still holds a dominant sway, and the rise of UKIP cannot solely be put down to the English incomers. In my town of Holyhead, where poverty is as deep and marked as some parts of Liverpool and Manchester, voters tune in all too easily to its message.

How then does one do theology within these contours: lines on a constantly changing map? Indeed part of doing theology within the Church in Wales, is simply introducing regular worshippers to the changes that have taken place.

One of the first steps to take when doing theology in Wales is to note not only the bi-lingual nature of the nation, but also the cultural context is so very different to that of its next door neighbour’s.

I have to accept that my Englishness can be a barrier, not being English itself, but how the English State has effortlessly acted in a colonising manner to Wales, sometimes with benevolence, but often not.

Theology within such a context is, for me, tentative and always provisional. It helps that I am learning Welsh.

Bi-lingualism though within the context of capel and Eglwys is not primarily to do with which language is used, rather it is about understanding, and perhaps recalibrating the place of faith communities within Wales. The halcyon days of revival, renewal and centrality have disappeared, and Christian faith communities encompassed more than established church and conformists. Other faith groups flourish. Densil Morgan notes that ‘Evangelism divorced from radical and wholehearted social responsibility will fail, and deserve to fail’. Dare I add that evangelism for the purposes of recruitment and retention of either church or chapel should also deserve to fail? This though is a concern both within the Church in Wales and traditional nonconformist chapels; the depth of our decline means there is a temptation just to put the proverbial bottoms of not very comfortable seating arrangements.

The commitment to the common good should see local church congregations and faith groups at the forefront of finding answers to the question what does it mean to be Welsh in a 21^st century context. An English incomer might raise his eyebrows at the notion that was seemingly widespread of Wales or the Welsh as a religious nation or holy remnant. If this was truly the case, it has gone now.

Wales and Welshness has been defined by its relationship with its neighbour. This English priest is committed to enabling in some small way Wales to step out of its neighbour’s shadow. True it sometimes does, particularly when playing sport against England. But this stepping out needs to become more routine. I would argue that a greater appreciation of the history of the two nations from both sides would help. The continued renewal of Welsh will underpin such self-confidence, but must be done in a way that does not exclude. I might suggest that this redefinition will need, perhaps even demand a greater degree of devolved government, and in time, independence as Wales shares its passions, history, culture and indeed faith in the family of nations.