WHY continue as a member of the Church of England? After 30 years of priesthood, it is a question that I’ve never asked myself before. How to commend the Church of England to others? That’s a question, increasingly a challenge, that I’ve lived with.
How to stay loyal to its episcopate, its social action, worship, and witness — now? Now, in the midst of what feels like a purging, as if the Church had taken a large dose of an extremely strong laxative? I am reminded of something that someone once said: that the Church of England functions best when it knows itself to be the drains and sewers of society. What is there to commend, when you’re wallowing in stuff that stinks?
My experience of senior leadership was seven years as a dean, and that was enough to know how hard it is to hold power with gentleness and carefulness, diligence and patience. I was left with a profound sense of my own vulnerability and fallibility; I made mistakes, got defensive, and spent too much time on my high horse. I have reflected since on how leadership needs humility to be alongside others, and also the courage to stand firm, against the tide; how the greatest sin may be one of omission: to fail or misjudge a situation or person, to give the benefit of the doubt, and then suffer the benefit of hindsight.
It is hard to hold responsibility well, managing both power and vulnerability, in service, not as a possession; to honour entirely the intense trauma carried by victims of abuse; to be squeaky clean oneself in terms of past and present conduct, not to live in fear that any misdemeanour will be found out and tried by social media, for you will be guilty until proved innocent, which will never happen, as there will always be doubt, once an allegation is made; and to understand the complexities of human relationships and intimacy.
I remember, for instance, when I was visiting Tanzania, one of that country’s priests walked down the road for a good while, simply holding my hand. It felt odd; for that would never happen in the UK. But it was an appropriate expression of friendship in that context. We need to hold on to such innocent touch alongside the horrible, sick abuse of the deliberate and cruel invasion of someone who cannot defend themselves, coercive control, and physical violence — which leave lasting trauma, horrible memories and insomnia, lives wrecked.
So, of course, we need good practices and procedures, and senior leaders who are passionate that the Church is safe for all. They have my admiration and support, all who hold public office and know that power is not a possession, but a service. But vulnerability is not a possession, either. Whatever your role or path in life, we are all both vulnerable and powerful at the same time. We need a theology of power which recognises this rather than the us-and-them, master-and-slave, have-and-have-not othering that can dominate our thinking.
SO, WHY stay in the Church of England? Because it is infinitely more than its powerful and vulnerable members. It is the body of Christ, the means of God’s grace, and, as such, offers humanity — whether members or not — a gracious landscape of forgiveness, peace, love, and hope. It is not merely an institution that is always in need of reform, though it is that, of course; and it is certainly not a set of systems or leaders that can be cleared out and replaced with others, new and bright and perfect.
Utopianism does not work, because it does not understand what it means to be human — always powerful, always vulnerable, just like the Church: always full of stuff that stinks. Each of us — in our power and vulnerability — has sinned, most grievously.
But the Church has the redeeming grace of God at its heart: grace received through Word and Sacrament, every time we gather with other sinful folk, to worship God. Then we enter a graceful, spacious landscape, where each of us finds a place to be and to flourish as we turn towards the light of Christ. Whatever we’ve done, or failed to do, or had done to us, we are in it together, with those we have harmed and those who have harmed us. They may be way over there, with their backs to us, but they are there. We cannot eject them, throw them out, discard them. Thank God we don’t have to forgive them either, if we can’t. We don’t have to face them, or deal with them any more than we are able.
We are able, though, in the grace of God, to ensure that they don’t dominate our hearts and minds, camping in our heads, simply prolonging the trauma. In God’s broad hinterland of forgiveness, we can be free of them and the abuse, and let them go; for God’s grace is kind in the landscape of our faith.
The extraordinary power of God is the power of forgiveness: a power that we share in, to enable us to love our neighbours, both those we choose and those we don’t. Forgiveness is not something that we do, in some transactional way; for that can be impossible. Forgiveness always belongs with God. It is something that God does, and we share in, as we are able, as servants of God’s grace, both powerful and vulnerable in that grace, just as Jesus Christ was.
WE NEED what Luther once called “a living, daring confidence in God’s grace”. That is what keeps me in the Church of England. And I hope that the Church will find a living, daring, confident voice again — to speak into the immense and existential threats that face us: threats to our liberal constitutionalism from populism and autocracy, threats of AI, and threats of climate catastrophe, for example.
Perhaps the magnitude of these threats is why we are so focused on safeguarding, in the false hope that we can fix it, with ever more transparent procedures and people. Safeguarding is important, but it will never be perfect. We will always need God’s forgiveness, whoever we are — to enter, every day, every Sunday, into God’s landscape of grace, where both our power and vulnerability enable us to love our neighbour, and to be for society what is required of us: servants of the common good.
The Very Revd Dr Frances Ward is a licensed theologian in the diocese of Carlisle and has recently completed doctoral research on Edmund Burke. She is a former Dean of St Edmundsbury.
