Is Gordon Brown a Christian?

According to Alistair Campbell, New Labour didn't "do God".

But Tony Blair very plainly did (and continues to - let us hope that God is suitably grateful).

Gordon Brown does The Virtues of a Christian Upbringing (ad nauseam). But is that where it stops? Does he also do God?

Whether he is a Christian or not seems a curiously elusive fact. I say "curiously", because whilst Brown goes out of his way to tell that he is a son of the manse, shaped by that background (Christian Socialism, "moral compass", etc., etc., etc.), it is hard to discover what his present relationship is with Christianity. Does he pray? Does he believe the articles of the Faith? Does he go to church either regularly or intermittently?

Does he consider faith (or its loss) a private matter? Or one it is impolitic to reveal?

Is it significant that he draws attention only to those parts of his Christian heritage that no virtuous atheist could object to?

Is it all an exercise in "dog-whistling" - Brown trying to make himself attractive to Christians, whilst not offending non-believers?

Cranmer nods

Archbishop Cranmer (the blogger, not the compiler of the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, &c.) is an interesting character. His concern is the intersection between religion and politics. In religion he is a staunchly protestant, solidly low church Anglican. In politics he is an equally staunch Conservative of a traditional right-wing sort.

Sometimes his commentary is intelligent and perceptive (often when one least expects it to be); at other times, mere empty right-wingery and protestant polemic.

His anti-Catholic prejudices can be virulent, but it is notable that he finds more and more to praise in Benedict XVI. One has a sneaking suspicion that if forced to choose he might prefer his Holiness to any actually-existing protestant church leader.

His Grace has an averagely interesting post this morning, pondering why in a country with an Established Church, its Supreme Governor no longer calls her subjects to prayer, but the President of the United States of America, a country which is notoriously sensitive to the separation of church and state, has no such inhibition.

Sadly, the late Archbishop's enthusiasm for his theme leads him astray, when he alleges that Winston Churchill (the last Prime Minister to advise his monarch to proclaim a national Day of Prayer) was "a sincere, devout, Bible-reading, resurrection-believing Christian."

Would that be the same Winston Churchill who declared that he supported the church, but like a flying buttress - "from the outside"? And who admitted, "I believe death is the end"?

Religious liberals and conervatives: dialogue of the deaf

[The labels "liberal" and "conservative" ("traditional(-ist)" likewise) are of course inadequate, if not pernicious, but labels have their uses and we all know what these ones mean (more or less). It is with this caveat that they are used here.]

It's not exactly an amazing insight to say that in their disagreements (and even in sincere attempts at dialogue) liberal and conservative Christians are usually taking past each other.

It is not, however, so often noted that the problem is exacerbated, if not actually caused, by agreement about first principles, not disagreement.

Almost everyone (liberal or conservative)* would assent to the propositions that Christians should both be faithful to the Gospel and preach that Gospel anew in every age.

But the key question is: What does this mean in practice?

To the conservative, the liberal's concern for preaching the Gospel anew tips over into unfaithfulness.

To the liberal, the conservative's concern for faithfulness ends up killing the Gospel.

The conservative finds it hard to believe that her liberal brother really cares about faithfulness, but it's precisely because he does that the liberal gets mightily offended at the implication that he doesn't.

The liberal finds it hard to believe that his conservative sister really cares about bringing the Gospel to the present age in any useful way, but it's precisely because she does that the conservative gets mightily offended at the implication that she doesn't.

How far is too far? How far is not far enough?

* Naturally there are exceptions at the extremities, and there are, too, some people who for pragmatic reasons are suspicious of perfectly reasonable formulations like these.

As for the gods of the heathen

Meditation on Psalm 115 v.6 - the Psalmist goes to the music hall.

- I say, I say, I say, my idol's got no nose.
- How does he smell?
- Terrible.

A more excellent way

The worst thing about the Church and Managerialism is not that Managerialism doesn't work (tho' it doesn't), nor that it is dehumanising (tho' it is, and it is scandalous that a church should fail to see this). No, the worst thing is that, as Fr Clues implies in his original post, the Church already knows how to order personal and corporate life, but has forgotten this or lost confidence in it.

One need look no further than the Rule of S. Benedict to find the deeply spiritual, but also hard-headed and practical, wisdom necessary for living harmoniously in community - whether that community be a monastery, parish, school or company (or even Diocesan HQ).

On a personal level a Rule of Life presents us with the disciplines of spiritual direction, confession, regular prayer and worship, and the like: the disciplines that we need to flourish (as human beings and as members of a community) by helping align our lives with God's will.

If a church looks to Managerialism for such guidance this is not merely a mistake, but a symptom of profound spiritual crisis.

Fr Jones's post yesterday (already referenced in a quite different connexion) eloquently describes what must be done:

The Church must be renewed from the depths of its Scriptural and credal base, it must be rich in sacramental life, it must be human and and humane, capable of negotiation and able to survive with minimum life support facilities. It must be disciplined but tinged with an anarchic anti-authoritianarianism, it must be able to inspire loyalty and despise fanaticism, it must, it really must reflect the weeping and the joyful meal sharing of Jesus it must have a panache that comes from a realistic and humble understanding of its own inadequacy, it it must be with and for God's own people and not a bureaucracy of self perpetuating organisational mechanisms.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

Fr T.E. Jones reflected on secularisation in a post yesterday on the admirable S. Peter's London Docks (Peterite) blog:

[...] the last decade has seen a growth in secularisation that has put Christianity on the margins of national life. In spite of excellent (heroic?) efforts of many laity and clergy at local levels, in ecclesial bodies of every sort, the impact overall has been negated by the dominance of an elite of power-brokers who wish no good to the Church. [...] "Life", said John Lennon, 'Is what happens while you are planning your future'. Just so, as the Church planned (a decade of Evangelism!) a national mood changed and we (bless) hardly noticed.

Ironically, the very same afternoon Ruth Gledhill on her Articles of Faith blog at the Times reported Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society bemoaning the desecularisation of society:

But this creep of religion into the workplace has been coming for several years. I spent most of my working life toiling in hospitals and social services. I didn't go to work in the expectation that I would be required to observe someone else's "faith", for most of those years. I was happy for them to have it if it was useful to them, but I was also happy for them to keep it to themselves, as I was happy to keep my lack of faith private.

Of course there are ways in which both complaints can be true, but it's striking how the cries of secularisation and desecularisation mirror each other (neither Fr Jones nor Mr Sanderson are untypical). In modern Britain both believers and non-believers feel under threat.

Performance Appraisal in the Church of England

The Church of England has an unfortunate habit of uncritically adopting yesterday's management practices.

In some cases they are completely discredited and in the process of being abandoned. Sadly this is not yet so for the monster that is Performance Appraisal: it is is far too well entrenched in both private and public sector to be hunted from the field just yet, but it is still a very bad idea and the church has now enthusiastically incorporated it into clerical life under the name "Ministerial Review".

Fr David Clues offers an excellent critique in a post on his blog Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Fr Clues perhaps does not realise how right he is. I could go on at length, but everything that needs to be said has already been said eloquently by John Seddon in his book Freedom from Command and Control, pp.122-123. (Seddon is the only author on the subject of "management" worth reading. He is a maverick, but his views are based on solid evidence and his methods get real results. Perhaps I should rephrase that: he is seen as a maverick because his views are based on evidence and get real results. This is highly eccentric in the field of management, where the mainstream authors are little better than charlatans.)

Thus speaks Seddon:

I began to wonder about appraisal quite early in my career. I noticed it was something that was revamped and relaunched from time to time - a tell-tale sign of problems. If I asked what the issue was, people would tell me managers were not doing their workers' appraisals. It occurred to me that perhaps managers didn't like doing them. Perhaps they saw them as of no value. Sometimes I was told that the reason managers were not fulfilling their duty to develop people was a lack of know-how. So the answer was more appraisal training for managers. I continued to harbour my doubts.

We see other remedies. Self-appraisal. Let the subordinate drive the process - that might get them to do it. Change the forms, include 360-degree feedback. But what we rarely see is questioning of the very value of the exercise. The truth is that appraisal leaves people bitter, bruised, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some severely depressed. Talk to teachers who have been through an inspection. Without prompting, many describe the feeling of emptiness when it is all over. So much work goes into preparing for inspection and the inspection process itself. The inspector has a specification to which he works, and any disagreements about variations from the norm as defined by the specification will lead to a more difficult relationship. Talk to people in organisations who have been through appraisal. They tell you how they waited for the 'bad news'. It is psychological torture. In the perennially reinvented courses on how to do an appraisal, managers are told how to deliver bad news - there will always be bad news, since the whole idea is to hold the individual accountable. Some organisations compound the problem by insisting employees are ranked in a normal distribution - you can't have all 'A's; you have to have proportions of each group, including, therefore, some losers. The emotional pain caused by appraisals is incredible, particularly when money is tied to the rating. For substantial periods everyone's emotional energy is consumed by something that is flawed and counterproductive.

I was asked to write an article exposing the problems with performance appraisal for a Sunday newspaper. I submitted my first draft and the editor suggested I should provide balance by talking about what to do instead. My response was that you don't need to find an alternative to doing a bad thing - you should just stop it. He said: 'Ring your friends in Japan and find out what they do.' So I did. I asked: 'What do you do about performance appraisal?' The reply was: 'What is that?' I explained. Japanese people tend to be too polite to laugh.

Seddon and his Japanese friends of course are quite right, the editor quite wrong, but as the economist, Thomas Sowell, points out “No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?”

The Church of England, in predictably ovine fashion, has drunk the management Kool Aid. The daft thing is that there never was any need to. If it is absurd not to know what to "replace" the fire with, it is even more absurd deliberately to set your own house on fire, just because that's what everyone else has already done to theirs. This is exactly what the church has done with Ministerial Review.

Lord, have mercy.