As a Christian partly due to my theological beliefs I have
always been on the edge of the Church of England. When I was in my early
20’s I studied at King Alfred’s College now the University of Winchester and
attended my church, All Saints Catherington on a Sunday when I was home for the
weekend. When I rolled up at KAC in 1988 a debate was raging over the
establishment of a gay society in the Students Union with the College being a
Church of England College there was much opposition to the society’s
establishment. On the home front our then vicar Tina Beardsley got up in the
pulpit one Sunday in November 1989 when the church was in the middle of the
Alpha course and informed the congregation that she had realised that God still
loved her even though she was gay. I can only repeat this as I was not present
at the time being on retreat with the college chapel down at Hillfield Friary
the HQ of the Anglican Franciscan movement in Dorset. The house group that I
was in was very sensible and was led by the late Alan Richards who Tina
Beardsley called her “left hand”
after Alan’s sad death in 1991, and made no fuss over this revelation
whatsoever. The late 1980’s was a time of much discussion in the C of E over
the inclusion or rather the exclusion of gay people from the church and the
priesthood and the ordination of women in the church. So between the KAC SU and
my house group I lived in two environments where there was no big issue or big
deal in other members of the church having different sexual orientations and I
had no problem accepting that the church and wider society was made up of
different people with different beliefs and orientations and that all should be
included.
Secondly as someone with a disability I have myself
experienced much discrimination throughout my life and this has also shaped my
attitude to other minority groups in the church and wider society seeking to
understand them and support their cause. I came to know the Rev Peter Owen
Jones through my research into the Gage chapel at St Peter’s church in the
village of Firle, East Sussex. Pete is a very forward thinking person he is not
afraid to explore new ideas and lives on the edge of Christianity interacting
with non-Christian people and beliefs. Knowing Pete Owen Jones has caused much
criticism to be thrown at me by other Theology students at Chichester whose
beliefs range from straight laced high church Anglican for whom there is only
the Book of Common Prayer and no other liturgy to Pentecostal Christians. What
they share in common over this criticism is their view that Pete holds
heretical views and who have labelled me a heretic by my association with him.
I have come to realise that it is these Christians who are
holding the church back. Over the issue of gay marriage they will not budge.
Recently one of the now former Chichester students who is Pentecostal
criticised gay marriage on Facebook and when I asked them what is equality the
reply was that equality for everyone is right but it should not include gay
marriage. On booking my ticket to Greenbelt 2012 I told the curate at my church
a few Sundays ago at coffee after the service that I was going this year and
that the plan was to buy Pete Owen Jones and Diarmaid MacCulloch a drink in the
Jesus Arms after their talks to say thank you for the help that they have given
me with my history dissertation and how the Pentecostals and other students at
Chichester have criticised me for my association with Pete. Her reply was that
they should look at who Jesus kept company with – the down and outs and
unwashed of society but then on informing her about the views that the
Pentecostal student published about gay marriage on Facebook she promptly
changed her tune and informed me that marriage is sacred and only between a man
and a woman. At this year’s Greenbelt Pete’s talk was on “The New Christianity” and in it Pete touched on how the C of E is
fixed on the arguments over the ordination of women, gay clergy and homosexual
sex as “like a record that has got stuck”.
I think that at present we have a canon of equality legislation that has been
cherry picked it is not fully encompassing in equality because it is not
comprehensive it does not fully implement disability rights and excludes full
and equal marriage rights for gay people.
Pete talked about how western Christianity promotes the
individual at the expense of the planet, how he met a group of people in the
Lewes area who believe that humanity now stands at a crossroads as it did 10,000
years ago at the time of the agricultural revolution which like the industrial
revolution after it changed humanity and the planet. Pete drew heavily on
Joanna Macey’s book “Active Hope” which
considers the impact of the damage that man has wrought on the planet and Pete
summed up the three models or groups that Macey argues humans fall into. The
first is the “Business as Usual” model/group
in which continued global economic growth is encouraged and people continue to
be encouraged to consume products on a mass scale where the subplot is the
promotion of finding a partner, having a family and living happily ever after
and where people’s lives are far removed from the ecological catastrophe that
awaits humanity unless it changes its priorities and begins to think about
adopting more ecological friendly policies.
The second model/group is termed “the great unravelling” this model embraces those who hold no hope
for the future, and the third model/group is “the great turning point” where
people do have hope for a future that humanity can change its ways and look
after the planet. Pete asked the audience “Where
are you? Which group are you in?” He rounded off his talk by underlining
his view that Christianity must embrace the natural world and to love your neighbour
means to include the natural world where people will enter paradise by
appreciating the butterflies, birds and natural landscapes of our planet. He
used Jesus’s parable that all of King Solomon’s finery did not compare to the
wild flowers in the fields. That we have to change from the Anthropocentric
structured church that we have which is promoting consumerism and driving us to
the brink of environmental and social meltdown and adopt an ethos that will
save our environment.
From my perspective as an archaeologist and historian I think
that Pete might have been better off providing some examples from world history
where societies have failed due to the way that they over abused the natural
resources around them causing an environmental disaster; for example the people
on Easter Island who deforested the island so severely that no tree was left
standing or the systematic ecological collapse that many academics have
advanced for the cause of the decline of the Maya of the Mayan classic period.
Nevertheless his argument was a passionate one. Concerning western Christianity
he highlighted its anthropocentric structure which promotes the individual and
outlined how the church supports western society and consumerism through this
structure. Consumerism is helping to drive the abuse of natural resources and
the decline of the natural world like
the developments in the intensification in agricultural production terminus
post quem World War II, here Pete cited the decline by 87% of the butterfly
population in the fields around Cheltenham. I think that he could also have
underlined the point that since the Millennium some scientists have called for
a new epoch called the Anthropocene due to the advent of global warming and
other environmental and ecological changes that have happened on earth due to
the activities of man.
What also needs to be considered is that whilst there has
been a rapid increase in the numbers of non-stipendiary ministers in the C of E
due to the ordination of women, the church still has a duty to financially
support its retired clergy who held a stipend and their spouses in their
retirement. Stipendiary clergy often do not own their own homes and live in
church property. The C of E has an infrastructure of social care which includes
support for its retired clergy including care homes and needs capital income to
support this infrastructure let alone income to conserve and protect the fabric
of its historic buildings. At the end of the talk during the questions a member
of the audience pointed out that although Pete had highlighted these issues he
had not put forward any solutions. Any solution to the development of a society
that is not based on mass consumerism and the destruction of our natural world
has to consider how organisations like the C of E are going to fund social care
for its retired members. Pete did attempt to live without money in his series “How to Lead a Simple Life” I know myself
that it is perfectly possible to live without a credit card and debt on just
what money you have coming in perhaps this is the first step to moving away
from a consumer orientated society.
I bumped into Pete later whilst looking for my Renault 5
Henri Tudur II in the car park and he was telling me that in reading my
dissertation he is finding it all very Machiavellian leaving him with questions
about the events that the Gages encountered during the 16th and
early 17th centuries. My recent history dissertation on: “The Gage Family of Firle, East Sussex, c.
1503-1650. Prosopography, Politics, Religion and Recusancy.” has led me to
consider the effects of the persecution of heretics in the 16th and
17th centuries. Sir John Gage KG and his sons Edward and James were involved
in the persecution of the Protestant Sussex martyrs during the persecutions of
the reign of Mary Tudor. The topics covered in my dissertation are to be
expanded and studied in more detail for my planned book on Firle and one issue
that I want to explore more closely is the effect that the persecutions and
burnings had on Sussex society. During the reign of Elizabeth I the Gages were
persecuted heavily for their recusancy and many historians have concluded that
this was due to their central role in the Marian persecutions in Sussex. The
great 19th century Sussex Antiquarian Mark Anthony Lower noted that
“It may be inferred from the statements
of John Foxe that he [Edward Gage]
did this ‘ministerially’; that he showed as I have elsewhere stated much courtesy
to Richard Woodman” and that the
Gages “suffered far more from their
consistency to their own creed than from the Protestants ever suffered from
them” [Mark Anthony Lower: ‘Notes on Old Sussex Families’ Sussex
Archaeological Collections Vol. XXIV 1872; The
Worthies of Sussex 1865]. Lower has been credited with creating the cult of
the Sussex Martyrs in the 19th century.
Coincidentally on Saturday evening BBC Radio 3 had a
programme the “Last Heretic” about
Edward Wrightman who was the last person to be burned at the stake for holding
heretical beliefs in 1612. Diarmaid MacCulloch, (with whom I had a cup of tea
and chat after Pete had to pull out of the planned drink in the Jesus Arms due
to the rescheduling of his Friday talk to Saturday afternoon and our decision
that the Jesus Arms was far too muddy to enjoy a drink there) featured in this
programme. Diarmaid explained why heretics were perceived to be so dangerous to
society due to the view that their heretical beliefs were considered to hurt
society and the fact that they as an individual endured an extremely painful
death through being burnt alive was given no consideration, the emphasis being
on the hurt endured by society from the heresy committed. Diarmaid argued that
it was the untidy nature of Wrightman’s case (he was burnt at the stake twice
recanting his views at the first occasion the flames were extinguished and he
was given a reprieve only to refuse to give a full recantation which led to his
second burning) that put those in authority off the practice of burning
heretics thus leading to Wrightman being the last heretic burned in England.
I will continue to be labelled by others as holding heretical
theological views, but I enjoy life at the edge of the church it is far more
interesting!
Pete Owen Jones talk on “The New Christianity” can be
purchased from the Greenbelt website:
And Diarmaid’s discussion about
the Last Heretic – Edward Wrightman can be heard on BBC iPlayer:
