Newsletter.pdf

You're warmly invited to IC's fifth birthday celebrations on 4th October - flyer below and further details in Dates for your Diary,  also below.   A chance to give thanks for all the work of the last five years and look forward to the next three.  It would be great to have a gathering of the clans  to reflect on Lambeth and plan for the future - to re-contact with old friends and make new ones.   Children are especially welcome - activities will be provided.  Please let us know if you're able to come for catering purposes by clicking on contact us

5th_Birthday.pdf

Women Bishops

Do you know how your Bishop voted in the Synod debate on Women Bishops? If he (he will be a he, we thank God for the days that are coming when we’ll have to write ‘he/she’) voted in favour write and support him. Please encourage your bishop to keep strong in the face of a highly vocal opposition. If he voted against encourage him (politely!) to rethink! Don’t forget Rowan abstained, if you think he should be leading us from the front on this issue, write and tell him!

Bishops in Favour (in alphabetical order):

Ian Brackley, Pete Broadbent, Tom Butler, Graham Dow, John Gladwin, Jonathan Gledhill, Christopher Herbert, Mike Hill, Christopher Hill, John Inge, David James, Graham James, James Jones, Stephen Lowe, Nigel Mc Culloch, John Packer, Michael Perham, Stephen Platten, Peter Price, Anthony Priddis, John Pritchard, Alastair Redfern, John Saxbee, John Sentamu, Kenneth Stevenson, Nigel Stock, Martin Wharton, & Trevor Willmott.

Bishops Against:

Richard Chartres, John Goddard, John Hind, Martyn Jarrett, Michael Langrish, Michael Nazir-Ali, Nicholas Reade, Geoffrey Rowell, Michael Acott-Joynt, David Urquart, Stephen Venner, Tom Wright

Bishops Recorded Abstentions:

Rowan Williams

Wed 24th September Southwark Cathedral Library - 6.30pm - 9.00pm An Introduction to Inclusive Church - Giles Goddard and Clare Herbert - with guest speakers Rosemary Lain-Priestley and Christina Rees - developing the theme of the roles of women in Church and Society - with the state of play re Women in the Episcopate in the C. of E.

 

You are warmly invited to celebrate our Fifth Birthday at a special Eucharist and lunch - on Saturday 4th October at 10.30 a.m. – 2.30 p.m. - at St Mary’s Church, Putney High St, London SW15 1SN - President – Revd Jenny Thomas, Chair, Association of Black Clergy - Preacher – Canon Giles Goddard, Chair, Inclusive Church - All are very welcome; activities will be provided for children - The Eucharist will be followed by a short workshop “Life after Lambeth” - to review the Lambeth Conference, launch “IC TOMORROW” - our strategy for the next three years and develop our plans for this year. COST £10 including lunch. £5 concessions (payable on the door). Children (under 16) free. To book please email office@inclusivechurch.net or ring 07762 373 674

 

Thursday 4th December - Inclusive Church Seminar and Supper at Gloucester Cathedral - an evening introducing ourselves and our work emphasising the Broad and Inclusive Tradition of Anglicanism.

 

Saturday February 7th - Day Conference with Workshops - "The Challenge of Inclusive Language - its Breadth and its Importance” London venue, times t.b.a.

An extract of Clare Herbert’s talk to the Southwark Chapter of SCP

Tuesday 8th September 2008

 

So what did Inclusive Church actually do before and during Lambeth 08?

Giles Goddard, Brenda Harrison and I, along with other trustees of Inclusive Church worked in monthly evening meetings and telephone conference calls with a wide network of progressive groups, including groups from the US, Nigeria and Canada, for a whole year before Lambeth kicked off! From this networking sprang a daily newspaper “The Lambeth Witness”, a logo, a strap-line, a Communications Centre, a daily prayer and social life for all volunteers while we were there.

Bearing Fruits:

This work bore three particular fruits – we were able to work and witness in a supportive way which had been unknown among progressive groups at previous conferences. (It is difficult to believe now, but twenty years ago women protesters were not even permitted on to campus! While ten years ago, the LGBT groups were not working sufficiently closely to unite to manage the awful onslaught on their Christian integrity that they experienced.) We were able to quickly provide an “Alongside at Lambeth” series of daily Bible Studies and Talks for volunteers when it suddenly looked as if many might have little to do and go home uninspired and disillusioned. And we were able to create together – everything from evening meals to The PCN/IC book “Together in Hope” (which you can buy for £5 from the IC office).

Working together with our Differences:

There were also strains experienced in working in this way. It is not always easy to be a multi-issue group working alongside single-issue protest groups, nor is it always simple for single-issue groups to get on well with each other! But we made the massive attempt to do so and in so doing learnt at first hand what must be some of the strains involved in bringing together the Lambeth Conference Bishops and their spouses! Perish the thought of having to try to organise that across such fault lines and cracks and with such slim resources! And again Inclusive Church has learnt more of its own identity – to be partner not umbrella while recognising that one of the most important aspects of our work is to gather groups together who might not otherwise do so.

Press Focus:

That emphasis on variety was threatened by the main Press interest being in the work and witness of Bishop Gene. Understandably IC’s support of his presence, and of the vitally important Listening Process, meant that sometimes we too came across as a single-issue group. But perhaps that sense of compromise is inevitable and important to accept when we are in fact supporting LGBT issues and protest groups as our sisters and brothers.

What counterbalanced the sense of our being solely another LGBT protest group was the variety and strength of volunteer support on our stall in the Marketplace and the content of our main events. Our stall design was a knockout, simple but clear, and the 40 volunteers magnificent at engaging with both Bishops and their spouses. Our thanks go to volunteers who brought fresh energy and insights in the days they spent with us

Breaking Bread Together:

We held a large Eucharist, helped by folk from Southwark Cathedral, with Archbishop Carlos Touche Porter celebrating and Canon Lucy Winkett preaching (and Martin Gwilliams doing a beautiful power point presentation across the back wall of the auditorium) Reactions to this Eucharist were extremely mixed – some found it awesome, quiet, reflective, challenging, a spiritual resource. Others found a lack of explicitly inclusive language in our liturgy very painful to bear. The challenges remain to improve our inclusive language in liturgy while owning and living in our Common Worship tradition, and to find good ways of talking theologically about the challenge of living inclusion.

Learning Together:

Both Richard Burridge and Nomfundo Walasa took our work into those places we need to reach. Richard helped us explore ways forward to basing an inclusive ethic on the words and work of Jesus Christ as seen in the Gospels and the life of the infant Church. Nomfundo spoke of living that ethic in all its complexity in the context of South Africa, and enabled others to speak from their own experience. For me one of the most important moments came when a person from the developing world beseeched us to pay some sacrifice as a gay- friendly rich western Church wanting to belong with our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia. After a silence an IC trustee spoke most movingly of the sacrifice gay and lesbian people are already paying in the West by simply describing, from his experience as a priest, the funeral of a gay man who had taken his own life. We had entered a dialogue of richness and complexity – we had entered the world of mutual understanding with no easy solutions. In our two events IC had entered the work we need now to continue.

The Conference:

But what of what was going on in the Conference itself?

The Conference felt quiet, private, disturbed and disturbing in the middle when some Indaba groups were having a hard time, and then resolved at the end, NOT having agreed with each other, but having HEARD one another, perhaps for the first time; and wanting a process where this deep listening to each others real humanity, real mission, real needs, would go on. And that certainly happened in the equally important spouses conference as well as among the bishops.

Two Threats:

The threats to this successful work continuing seemed to be two fold:

Firstly we need to ask how would GAFCON now fit in?

Second, a Covenant Design Group wanting a very different process – quicker, slicker, more based on rules and guidelines which would be overly hastily formulated so resulting in chaos breaking out again soon because simply covered over

Enduring Witness:

That is what I have understood so far and I guess I would sum up IC’s role in all this as being a witness to the powerful love of God in all sorts of people who feel themselves excluded yet who are capable of lively witness and leadership within the Church. We also bear witness to finding inclusion difficult to live and having “way to go” yet…

 

We asked Clare what brought her to the place where she is today, devoting her time and energy to campaigning for an Inclusive Church. Here is her reply:

Some of you who knew me in my previous life must be wondering why I left St Anne’s Soho and the safety and glamour of an incumbency in the West End after 9 years to pursue this role with Inclusive Church!

In my role as Area Dean of Women I had been involved in discussions about the importance of women in the Episcopate. But I had also known within myself, and other women coming to me for counselling and spiritual direction, all sorts of questions about work-life balance, the specific contribution of the female to society, and how we are going to form “person shaped roles” for lay people, deacons, priests, and bishops – both male and female - within the Church of England over these next decades.

I wanted space to think about this and to meet other people involved in the same discussion.

I had experienced for myself in Soho extremely difficult areas of pastoral care with regard to the gay and transgendered life. It had become no longer possible for me to countenance the Church suggesting that we do not need to talk openly and clearly about being gay. Also the wider Church did not seem to believe that people in difficulties, perhaps particularly young people, needed role models in the gay world who put together gay with striving to be holy.

My ministry in Soho, particularly the vast amount of physical and psychological damage which resulted from the Admiral Duncan bombing, was like a sort of baptism into the call to think and speak about these issues. Old Compton Street’s high camp disguises much depression as well as fun – something I discovered in the aftermath of the Duncan bombing. Depression is commonplace, caused often by not being permitted to be “ordinary and gay”. The Church is failing to understand the link between its own disowning of gay and lesbian people as holy and the low self-esteem which may invite depression and oppression in the LGTB world.

I realised that I had reached the end of the line in using a parish priest’s role as a platform for such thinking. The parish church is there for all and in my view the parish priest must remain called to reach out to all. I had just started to find my own interests “getting in the way” and needing more space for reflection. So the role of Coordinator to Inclusive Church in its Lambeth year came like a gift. I had always felt a bit “left out of Lambeth” – here was my chance to put that right.

 

We still need your inclusive prayers/liturgies/sermons/study groups/school assemblies. There is a great deal of exciting work going on all over the country (and indeed the world), and we can achieve even more if we pull together and share resources. We would like to gather resources on our web page and perhaps in future publications, and by submitting anything you grant us permission to reprint it in any format. You will always be credited for your work (if you wish) but we will not be able to pay you (all money from any publications will be used to fund our further work).

We’d also like to produce a booklet ‘100 Steps to a More Inclusive Church’ with ideas for breathing inclusive life into Parishes. (Not just inclusive language Bibles/Hymn books – lets get creative…). But we need your help! (Otherwise it will be called ’37 steps to an inclusive church.)

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