Lecture/MISSION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
My lecture is entitled "The Mission of the Christian Church in a Post-Modern World'. Without the term 'post-modern', the subtitle might seem Conventional enough. "The Mission of the Church in the World" is the title for a lecture which could have been used at almost any point in Christian history. But the addition of the word 'post-modern' suggests that something about the context of our ministry and mission today has changed radically. In this lecture I want to reflect on this change and to suggest some of the challenges that it presents to the Church's on going mission and ministry. What exactly has changed about the world today? The Japanese-English writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, author of 'The Remains of the Day', offers a powerful depiction of recent cultural change - and particularly of the increasing sense of fragmentation and loss of community experienced in many parts of the world today. In his new book, 'The unconsumed', the action takes place in an unnamed central European city. Ryder, the hero of the book, a pianist of international repute, arrives there to give a recital. His visit is eagerly awaited by the local citizenry, who have organised a series of dinners and events to welcome him. Yet Ryder is disconcerted to discover that, wherever he goes, people approach him for favors that he finds it impossible to refuse but has no idea how to grant. He is increasingly troubled too to find that, although he has apparently agreed to a program in the past, he cannot now remember ever having done so. The atmosphere of 'The unconsumed' is that of the schoolchild's nightmare in which you suddenly remember that you should have handed in a massive piece of homework, which will have significant repercussions on your future, but you cannot recall what it is about or when you were asked to do it2E the plot itself centers around the predicament of a city which is in crisis. It focuses on its music. It is a city that has lost its faith in its musicians. In the past, a musician called Mr Christ off had been a hero, but his music is now considered irrelevant to its present needs. Mr. Brodsky, a former conductor of repute, is the city's drunk. The city is afraid of becoming like many other soulless modern cities; its inhabitants wish to restore the sense of 'gemeinschaft' that they feel is being lost. Its leaders believe that meaning can only be restored by restoring faith in music. So, Ryder is seen as a kind of messiah, coming from outside; someone who is able to restore meaning to the city. 'Mr. Ryder, Mr. Ryder', cries an agitated man named Claude at a bizarre meeting with Ryder: 'Is it truly the case that pigmented triads have intrinsic emotional values regardless of context? Do you believe that?' Ryder replies: 'A pigmented triad has no intrinsic emotional properties. In fact, its emotional color can change significantly not only according to context but according to volume. That is my personal opinion'. Claude replies quietly: 'I knew it. I always knew it'. But in the end Ryder has no answers to the problem. The question of meaning remains. All he can offer is his own personal and idiosyncratic opinion. The citizens remain unconsoled. The book is a fascinating reflection on what we now broadly define as 'postmodernism', though that word itself defies any neat categorization. In the novel music has replaced both theology and ideology as ways in which we can understand ourselves and find values to believe in. Indeed the application of the name 'Christ off' to the former musician, who did so much to bring the city into being, is a naked allusion to the position of faith in modern life - a phenomenon of the past with no practical relevance for the present 2E In the short time I have available I cannot begin to describe all the elements included within the term 'postmodernism', but let me just mention three, all of them central to it, which has particular importance as we begin to think about the Church and its role today. i. The collapse of global ideology. In the last ten years we have witnessed the extraordinary collapse of Communism both in Central Europe and in many other parts of the world. China retains its own particular form and we are seeing some kind of revival of it in Russia, but Communism itself has been discredited as a political theory. In many countries where it once ruled Western capitalism has now triumphed, not because people have accepted capitalism as a better ideology, but because it is hoped it will deliver the goods. That same pragmatism is found in different forms in many of our Western democracies, whatever their political color. Likewise the religious quest can often centre in the search for 'what works for me' rather than what is true or false. Admittedly, alongside these we are seeing the growth both of religious extremism, and of nationalism, but as yet no global ideology has appeared to take Communism's place, nor, in a post modernistic framework, is it likely to do so. Sociologists do sometimes talk about the process of globalization, yet even here this is a process rather than an ideology. Globalization is sometimes depicted as the process of 'hamburger-isation'. If you go to almost any major city in the world you will find evidence of it. Even in the medieval high street in Canterbury we have several hamburger take-aways identical to those in cities throughout the world. International trade, enhanced communication and above all the world-wide electronic media feeds the process of globalisation. You can send messages at little cost and almost instantaneously over the internet to the other ends of the earth. You can dial friends directly in many different countries thanks to satellite linkups. You can watch television programmes broadcast live from many different countries. Soon we will also be able to see each other as we talk on the 'phone across the globe; we will be able to order goods from shops anywhere in the world without leaving our homes; and virtual reality will even allow us to look around these shops without ever visiting them. Globalisation hugely increases the forms of international contact that have hitherto been growing slowly through the centuries. Yet it still does not give us all a common ideology. If anything it serves to remind us of just how divided and fragmented we seem to be becoming. ii. The relativising of values. One of the themes I have returned to again and again since becoming Archbishop is my concern about the dangers inherent in the privatisation of morality. A society that loses its commitment to certain core moral values becomes one in which everyone does what is right in their own eyes. And post-modernism rejects absolute ways of speaking of truth. As Professor Lyotard says: 'I define post-modernism as incredulity towards meta-narratives'. This tendency pushes religion out of the public arena into the private domain and, as we are beginning to find out to our cost, such extreme relativism can have disastrous consequences for all of us.
For to claim for all citizens a morality which is purely self-referential is to claim a freedom which ends up as being no freedom at all. If there is no point of reference beyond myself or beyond yourself, then reason, justice and law become exploitable by the powerful and the influential and the weak have nothing left to appeal to. If we have no word for sin we shall soon find we have no words left to describe responsibility. As the ancient Roman adage puts it: 'What are laws without morals?' In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor the Pope expressed the sharp dilemma that this causes society today. When morality is privatised, almost the only moral principle that is held in common is that of 'autonomy'. Each and every individual must be free to choose. Each must choose on the basis of his or her individual rational will - that is the secular moral philosopher's dream - without any recourse to tradition or convention. Yet, the Pope rightly points out that many social scientists have been arguing for years that individuals are not free to choose at all - their lives and ideas are thoroughly determined. So we have the extraordinary dilemma in secular culture that individual choice becomes the hallmark of modern (or rather post-modern) morality, yet individual choice is apparently no longer possible. Secular morality demands individual choice, whereas much secular social science apparently denies that it is even possible. All we seem to be left with is a rather bleak and despairing relativism.
Just three weeks ago I initiated a debate in the House of Lords on 'Morality and the Schools' and received enormous publicity in England. People of all faiths and none agreed with my proposition that a society and civilisation simply cannot survive for long without a strong sense of shared values. I argued that the West has found the heart of shared values in the Judeao-Christian ethic which has shaped our culture. The publicity I received and the debate that is still going on suggests that a nerve was touched.Most people need little convincing that when morals becomes a matter of individual choice, civilisation itself is threatened. iii. The loss of hope. In the Litany of the Anglican Communion there is a petition about 'sudden death' and dying unprepared. The inexplicable crash of TWA800 and the loss of over 200 people has brought home to so many of us the uncertainty of life and the fact that, in a world made so apparently safe through modern technology and medicine, there lurks the possibility of being wiped out through chance events. And yet resurrection hope is central to Christian faith and Christian morality.
The history of Christian thought has posited hope in God as pivotal to what it is to be a human being. Death is not the end of life but the door through which life in all its fullness comes to us. How this contrasts with modern assumptions. A tacit atheism prevails. Death is assumed to be the end of life, bleak though that thought is. If we need hope to clutch to our breast at all it will be in such greatly scaled down forms as our longings for family happiness, the next holiday or personal fulfilment. The postmodernist concentration on the here and now renders thoughts of eternity irrelevant. Nothing reflects this loss of hope so much as the exaggerated demands we make upon medicine today. If you talk to almost any doctor you will soon discover about them. In my society, many General Practitioners are bombarded with demands upon their time and the desire for pills for every ill. Once people who felt fed up or mildly depressed, as we all do at times, talked to their neighbors, to their older relatives or even to their parish priest. Today they are much more likely to go to their GP instead. In many cities neighbors no longer talk to each other, families are dispersed and increasingly fragmented, and parish priests are fewer in number. In this post-modern environment of social fragmentation, the GP seems to be the only one left to listen to people's troubles and even to hear their 'confessions'. Yet a busy surgery never was intended to carry such a burden. And many GPs feel thoroughly weighed down by it. All of life's ills at the personal level have apparently become medical ills which can be treated by medical means. On this showing, one would think doctors can cure all ills and even postpone death for ever. But of course they can do no such thing. Only a society that has lost real hope could imagine that they could. Other themes could easily be added to that list, but even this abridged description of what can be included within the term 'postmodernism' carries searching and serious questions for the Churches today. Christian mission and ministry must adjust to a world which is markedly different from the one of even fifty years ago, and finding appropriate forms of presenting the Christian message and living in community must be among our most urgent priorities. However, there is a brighter side that will give us confidence as we seek to find appropriate forms for the Church as we seek to come to terms with these differences. The first comes from the word 'postmodernism' itself. The crisis of 'post modernism' is not as much a crisis for religious faith as it is for modernism. Modernism developed in the optimism generated by the achievements of science and technology. Technology, it was hoped, would supply the answers to humanity's problems. But, despite its undoubted successes, its failures are apparent for all to see.
For instance, despite the arrogance of some of the leading scientific thinkers of the 20th century who believed in the invincibility and transcendence of science over all other forms of knowledge, technology's inability to control the excesses of human greed has become all too apparent. Our increasing realisation of the damage caused by the latter, notably in the destruction of the environment, has, thankfully, resulted in a lessening of that arrogance and the growth of a greater humility, as we realise we are part of a much larger and more complex whole. Another factor to be noticed is that religion is still with us and has persisted much more strongly that people expected. That is true of all the World's religions and is certainly true of Christianity when looked at from a global perspective. Harvey Cox's new book Fire From Heaven makes this point forcibly. As one of the so-called 'secular theologians' of the 60's, he did not expect institutional Christianity to be in any fit state by now2E His book is an admission that he got it wrong. Its analysis of Pentecostalism is an honest recognition that faith is unconquerable and that the Christian faith in particular has astonishing vitality to overcome difficulties and fears. My travels in Africa and the Far East have taken me to areas where Christian Churches are growing very fast indeed, but even here in Britain there are plenty of signs of real life. The myth is still perpetuated that over the last few years the Church has been pretty well marginalised in a society defined as both 'secular' and 'pluralist'. I reject that myth both historically and culturally.
I ask you to bear in mind that in substantial parts of England in the mid-nineteenth century less that one in six of the population went to Church on a given Sunday. That is not so very different from the most recent findings of the 1992-3 statistics that roughly one in seven adults in the UK was a signed up member of a Christian Church. Indeed, let us be cautious of saying that ours is a 'secular' society. That is just as ambiguous as saying that this is a 'Christian' society.
There are some 6 1/2 million Church members in the UK. Without wanting to be unkind to political parties, I believe that New Labor is delighted to have reached 350,000 members. If, by analogy with Church attendance, we looked at the number of people who actually went regularly to political Party meetings what a tiny group we should find! Indeed, we need to note that wherever we go in the UK the Church in all its variety and forms is there, and is usually strongly there. I need hardly remind you that in addition to that significant figure of 6 1/2 million members there are millions of others who count themselves in the Christian family and are proud to do so. There is much going for us and we need to recognize our strengths thoroughly in order that we may address the problems. Bearing these things in mind then, how should we be shaping the Church to respond to this new environment? The challenge facing us, I suggest, is to rediscover three things - core values, community, and service. Each of these is crucial to a rediscovery of authentic Christianity and each offers an important challenge to a post-modern culture. Let me take each of them in turn: 1. The Church should never be apologetic for bearing witness to eternal truths. Abiding values are fundamental to our relationship to God in Christ. If a post-modern world finds itself increasingly fragmented, without any single ideology held in common and with all values regarded as relative, then the Church has a key role to play in offering a radically different vision. She is called to be apostolic - that is to say, she is summoned to go out and to witness to her relationship to God in Christ. It is from this relationship that we derive our abiding values. I want to return briefly to the challenge of post-modernism to ethical values. Charles Taliaferro in a recent book Consciousness and the Mind of God offers a powerful corrective to the intellectual mind-set which implies that any one who thinks 'freely' and 'rationally', is bound to reject the religious view of the world and, especially, the notion that there is personal God who cares about us.
He writes: 'The radically materialist conception of reality threatens more than theistic religious belief; it also threatens ethics and our very self-image' His contention is that while the private individual is free to accept or reject God and those consequent claims that go along with such belief, we should be aware of the price that society will pay by destroying what is a kind of 'immune-deficiency system' of the body-politic. If intelligence is nothing but the operation of chance-evolved cerebral chemistry, then in rejecting universal values why should we suppose that there are enduring values of any other sort that we should be bound to? I am struck by the similarity between this argument and that of Professor Gillian Rose who died before Christmas. In her moving little biographical book Love's Work she challenges the thinking behind what she calls the 'unrevealed religion' which is so widespread. 'Unrevealed religion' is, in her picturesque phrase, the dependant of her German cousin, 'Enlightenment rationalism'.
What is the nature of 'unrevealed religion'? It is the rejection of commitment to belief. Gillian Rose says: 'It is the very religion that makes us protest: ''But I have no religion'''. Unrevealed religion has hold of us without evidences, natural or supernatural, without any credos or dogmas, liturgies or ceremonies. There is a lot of unrevealed religion about. Does revealed faith offer anything better to us? Both writers undoubtedly think so and challenge a post-modern culture which is founded on unbelief. I believe the Church can back this up with hard evidence. A few years back Leslie Francis researched the link between religious practice and decent values. 30,000 teen-agers between 13-15 were interviewed. The research showed an undeniable connection between belief and behavior. It showed, for example, that only about half as many people with no faith are concerned about poverty in the Third World as compared with practising believers.
Three times as many non-believers feel there is nothing wrong with a minor dishonesty like traveling without a ticket. Perhaps most significantly of all practising believers are almost twice as likely to feel there lives have a sense of purpose. 'Without a clear sense of the purpose of life it is very difficult to see how anyone could have a consistent ethical framework'. [David Hay, the Tablet 3rd Feb. 1996 'Morals and Religion'] It is abundantly clear to me that the Church's witness to abiding values that we have received from scripture is central to our mission in the world. ii. As a Church we need to rediscover the Sacramental nature of Community I read an article in 'The Times' just a short while ago which argued that the future of the Church lay in preaching. It claimed that in a world which voted with its feet, it will be gifted communicators who will fill churches2E Well, I for one am not against preaching. We must encourage those entrusted with the ministry of preaching to be better at it, of course. But I disagree with that answer. Preaching is an element in the life of the Church, not its most important feature. For the Christian, God's call to love is a call set in the context of community. Specifically, it is in worshipping communities that we are nurtured and it is in these communities that we can most fully express our love for God and praise him. Whereas a post-modern world looks ever more fragmented and lonely, the Christian Gospel calls us back into communities in Christ. Here lies the paradox for the Church. Worshipping communities are central to Christianity, yet local Church communities all too frequently fail to live up to their calling to be powerful agents of change and renewal. This is what Dr Alec Vidler wrote long ago: 'Men, at their best, cannot do with the Church as it is, not because it bears witness to the things of which I have just spoken, but precisely because it does not bear a clear and consistent witness to them. Men connect the Church, not with a disturbing and renewing encounter of a Holy God, but as someone has said with: "unattractive services, tedious homilies, the smell of hymn books, the petty round of ecclesiastical functions, the collection bag, an oppression due to the lack of oxygen and memories of Sunday school". (Vidler, "The Christian Faith". SCM 1950, page 72) Well that was Vidler in 1950. Things have improved somewhat since Vidler wrote those words but we cannot disguise the fact that all our Churches face similar problems arising from a fear of change, faithlessness in God's power to direct the future and an inability to seize opportunities to become real centres of community. The answer, I believe, lies in rediscovering the sacramental nature of Apostolic Community. Our church life should be, in its very being, pointing beyond itself to God; and to do that it needs to be visibly present in the communities it serves. Of course, we should recognize that, in fact, our churches are in one sense very visible. You will scarcely find a hamlet or any bustling inner city district which does not have a Christian presence - be that through a church, chapel, meeting hall, gospel hall, or some other place of worship. Amongst these there are splendid examples of churches which are making real contributions to social and community development. Just a few months ago I visited a tough inner city housing estate in the Midlands where the Parish Church is giving an impressive example of care.
The vicar and his family have had their house burgled over 80 times during the eight years they have been there. But they are still there, loving and caring for their people. It is a tough, seemingly unrewarding place in which to work, and yet the leadership and vision of that couple has provided an impressive Christian witness and led to significant change.
I visited Chicago just two months ago and was greatly impressed by the work of Episcopal Church in a tough part of the city where one black parish priest aided by his dedicated congregation had given dignity back to the people and had provided cheap but affordable housing. In Los Angeles I saw the work of a single priest who had moved into a Mexican area and through love and commitment to frightened and lonely people had provided over forty with education, housing and jobs. Such stories can be multiplied many times over but the other side is depressingly present also. Churches which are shut six days a week; churches which have little ministry to the young or have nothing by way of programs of social care. Such churches are maintaining buildings but have lost a presence; a presence rooted in the sacramental nature of God's action in the world. I do not doubt the enormous challenge facing all our churches these days to respond to the pressing needs all around us. But creating community is what the Church should be especially good at. As the body of Christ our task is to witness consistently to his love for the world shown in Christ.
The Church, therefore, should always aim to be present seven days a week in our communities, reaching out in faith and with hope. That suggests that we must be prepared to look at our resources, not with eyes eager to maintain what we have cherished in the past, but with eyes eager for mission and new opportunities. In saying that I am not advocating a 'root and branch' approach to our institutions or suggesting that what worked in the past will, of necessity, not work any longer. For instance I am still convinced about the power of worship to draw people to God and of effective preaching as a tool for teaching and evangelism. But we must respond to the fact, if indeed it ever was the case, that Church worship and preaching on its own can no longer be treated as the entire arena for mission and service. The mobilization of the whole Church of God for service must, therefore, be a priority for us all. While the Church needs a professional ministry of clergy it must find ways of affirming and valuing the contribution that Christians in the world can bring. If we do not address this and other challenges that are coming our way we may well face the judgement of Prof. Jurgen Moltmann's words: ' 'A church that cannot change becomes a fossil church. It becomes an unimportant sect on the edge of a rapidly changing and progressive society. Men and women run away from such a Church. Only the old, the tired and the resigned retain their membership'. iii. The Church must put service before power and status. So far I have argued that the abiding values generated by Christian faith, and the worshipping communities that carry that faith from one generation to another, both offer powerful correctives to a post-modern culture. A post-modern age tends to regard all values as relative and dismisses communities and the traditions that they embody in the name of individual choice and personal autonomy. In contrast the Christian vision presupposes that we depend upon each other, that we do need communities to sustain us and that Church communities carry core values that abide from one generation to another2E We can now see the importance of the third feature of Christian ministry - that is, service. As Christians it is our privilege to serve others as Christ commanded and taught us to do. In contrast to a world that often seems to have become deeply cynical and to have lost hope, Christian ministry is structured around service in the hope of a more Christ-like world and in the hope of eternal life beyond this world. It is sometimes a consolation to be reminded that God alone is the justification for our ministries whether clerical and lay and that we should not be bound by concepts of success and failure. This does not mean that we should not strive for success but we should not let that tyrant get the dominion over us. Living as we do in a world which seeks results all the time, we may become the victims of guilt and find ourselves living constantly with feelings of failure. Bearing in mind my words about our need to serve God first and foremost, those feelings of failure need also to be challenged by what is already being done by Christians. As far as England is concerned, the Churches are the largest single voluntary group in the UK. Our commitment to people is second to none. But the question still remains of how we may become still more effective in our service in all its myriad forms and take the risks involved? Let me give you an illustration. Some years ago I visited Honolulu briefly. As we walked along the waterfront I saw a sign directing us to the Fr. Damien Museum tucked behind the small Roman Catholic Church. Fr. Damien has always been one of my heroes so I had to call in. I was moved by seeing the small mementoes of that remarkable man's life and being reminded of his courageous story. He had lived among lepers for years but no breakthrough came in his ministry until he contracted leprosy himself. In a Mass one Sunday he said: 'We lepers'.
That was the moment of breakthrough - he was one of them. That evening in our hotel I turned on the TV and found myself looking at a TV evangelist, who later fell from grace, who from his air conditioned studio was earnestly telling his audience of the glories of the Second Coming. The contrast was at once devastating and compelling, for the Gospel only becomes Gospel when it is incarnated in the lives of those who claim to be Christ's followers. Our fellow Christians in many parts of the world know this all too well. My visit last October to the Sudan brought home to me the fact that practical action is not extra to the Gospel but is an integral part of it. One of our bishops was explaining how difficult it is to go into the refugee camps where people have nothing and how helpless he feels when he has nothing to give to them. He said movingly: 'Empty stomachs have no ears'.
The same principle applies in our societies too. It applies to people facing the meaninglessness of long-term unemployment, or experiencing the pain of family break-up and emotional breakdown. The Gospel can only become good news to such people when the Church brings its own life and love alongside its proclamation. This will require us to take risks as we seek ways to look beyond our own survival to practical service in the love of Christ. One interesting question this raises, of course, is the extent to which we can retain our integrity as Christians whilst working alongside those of all faiths and none. Whilst the size of other faith communities in this country is sometimes greatly exaggerated, nevertheless the presence of sizeable minorities of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, as well as Jews, is a feature of life today which did not exist in the time of John Ruskin or Winifred Mercier. Inter-Faith relations have tended to concentrate on such questions as Multi-Faith Worship which, all too often, has become a search for the lowest common denominator that will offend no one present. But in fact such an approach has often caused problems not only within the Christian Community but also in other faith communities as well. In my own contacts with those of other faiths, both in this country and abroad, I am finding greater opportunities for real dialogue where people are clear about what they believe, and are willing to acknowledge genuine differences, whilst at the same time being open to listening to each other and working together over matters of common concern.
I think, for instance, of the willingness of the Chief Rabbi to work with his fellow presidents in the Council of Christians and Jews or the joint relief work of Christians and Muslims, partly sponsored by Christian Aid, going on in Bosnia and particularly Sarajevo. Nearer to home, the Inner Cities Religious Council promotes practical interfaith collaboration to help regenerate the life of depressed urban areas. From joint action grows, as we have learnt in ecumenical relationships, a respect for each other, and it is of enormous importance for the world that that kind of respect should grow and that divisions, built on a lack of knowledge and, at times, mutual distrust, should not allowed to be fostered. As Christians in this country we need, therefore, to be in the forefront of listening to and working with those of other faiths, and encouraging similar respect to be shown to our fellow believers in countries where they are very much in a minority. One way, of course, in which we are bound together is in our belief that the material is not all there is to life. We live in what often appears to be a cynical world in which all motives are questioned and everyone is suspected of having a price. 'How much will it cost?' has replaced the question of value: 'Will it make me a better person?' And yet we should not easily give in to the view that nothing but cynicism prevails and that as a society we know the price of everything but the value of nothing. There is a deep longing on the part of so many people. Many younger people especially are looking for meaning and hope. They want to know what it is to be truly human and they are prepared to search hard to discover the answer. They are also the first to spot hypocrisy. Such questions are Christian questions. They are Gospel questions. I left that moving meeting asking: 'Have we in the Church in our teaching and preaching neglected the power at the heart of our faith to change people's lives and especially our own? It is true that organized religion no longer occupies the place in national life that it enjoyed even fifty years ago. It has been pushed off the front pages by political questions and issues. But before we fall into despair we should be in no doubt that the stuff of religion is still there in the longing of us all to be whole, to be better, to be more human, to be fulfilled. As Carl Jung said so long ago: 'Only religion gives life the over-riding value to which all others are subservient, and on which a life of meaning depends'. I firmly believe that in a world where there is no agreement about shared values, and where a culture of contempt so often holds sway, the Church's mission will be found to be increasingly relevant and important. When such affirmation is lived out we may well find the Church able to speak authentically in a way that up to now she has been unable to do. And in all that we have to offer we should not be uncomfortable in living with mystery.
The Church's task is not always to provide answers but to point in a direction. Perhaps no book has a finer ending that Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus: 'he comes to us as One unknown without a name, as of old, by the lakeside he came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me' and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfil for our time and, as in an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is'.
For to claim for all citizens a morality which is purely self-referential is to claim a freedom which ends up as being no freedom at all. If there is no point of reference beyond myself or beyond yourself, then reason, justice and law become exploitable by the powerful and the influential and the weak have nothing left to appeal to. If we have no word for sin we shall soon find we have no words left to describe responsibility. As the ancient Roman adage puts it: 'What are laws without morals?' In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor the Pope expressed the sharp dilemma that this causes society today. When morality is privatised, almost the only moral principle that is held in common is that of 'autonomy'. Each and every individual must be free to choose. Each must choose on the basis of his or her individual rational will - that is the secular moral philosopher's dream - without any recourse to tradition or convention. Yet, the Pope rightly points out that many social scientists have been arguing for years that individuals are not free to choose at all - their lives and ideas are thoroughly determined. So we have the extraordinary dilemma in secular culture that individual choice becomes the hallmark of modern (or rather post-modern) morality, yet individual choice is apparently no longer possible. Secular morality demands individual choice, whereas much secular social science apparently denies that it is even possible. All we seem to be left with is a rather bleak and despairing relativism.
Just three weeks ago I initiated a debate in the House of Lords on 'Morality and the Schools' and received enormous publicity in England. People of all faiths and none agreed with my proposition that a society and civilisation simply cannot survive for long without a strong sense of shared values. I argued that the West has found the heart of shared values in the Judeao-Christian ethic which has shaped our culture. The publicity I received and the debate that is still going on suggests that a nerve was touched.Most people need little convincing that when morals becomes a matter of individual choice, civilisation itself is threatened. iii. The loss of hope. In the Litany of the Anglican Communion there is a petition about 'sudden death' and dying unprepared. The inexplicable crash of TWA800 and the loss of over 200 people has brought home to so many of us the uncertainty of life and the fact that, in a world made so apparently safe through modern technology and medicine, there lurks the possibility of being wiped out through chance events. And yet resurrection hope is central to Christian faith and Christian morality.
The history of Christian thought has posited hope in God as pivotal to what it is to be a human being. Death is not the end of life but the door through which life in all its fullness comes to us. How this contrasts with modern assumptions. A tacit atheism prevails. Death is assumed to be the end of life, bleak though that thought is. If we need hope to clutch to our breast at all it will be in such greatly scaled down forms as our longings for family happiness, the next holiday or personal fulfilment. The postmodernist concentration on the here and now renders thoughts of eternity irrelevant. Nothing reflects this loss of hope so much as the exaggerated demands we make upon medicine today. If you talk to almost any doctor you will soon discover about them. In my society, many General Practitioners are bombarded with demands upon their time and the desire for pills for every ill. Once people who felt fed up or mildly depressed, as we all do at times, talked to their neighbors, to their older relatives or even to their parish priest. Today they are much more likely to go to their GP instead. In many cities neighbors no longer talk to each other, families are dispersed and increasingly fragmented, and parish priests are fewer in number. In this post-modern environment of social fragmentation, the GP seems to be the only one left to listen to people's troubles and even to hear their 'confessions'. Yet a busy surgery never was intended to carry such a burden. And many GPs feel thoroughly weighed down by it. All of life's ills at the personal level have apparently become medical ills which can be treated by medical means. On this showing, one would think doctors can cure all ills and even postpone death for ever. But of course they can do no such thing. Only a society that has lost real hope could imagine that they could. Other themes could easily be added to that list, but even this abridged description of what can be included within the term 'postmodernism' carries searching and serious questions for the Churches today. Christian mission and ministry must adjust to a world which is markedly different from the one of even fifty years ago, and finding appropriate forms of presenting the Christian message and living in community must be among our most urgent priorities. However, there is a brighter side that will give us confidence as we seek to find appropriate forms for the Church as we seek to come to terms with these differences. The first comes from the word 'postmodernism' itself. The crisis of 'post modernism' is not as much a crisis for religious faith as it is for modernism. Modernism developed in the optimism generated by the achievements of science and technology. Technology, it was hoped, would supply the answers to humanity's problems. But, despite its undoubted successes, its failures are apparent for all to see.
For instance, despite the arrogance of some of the leading scientific thinkers of the 20th century who believed in the invincibility and transcendence of science over all other forms of knowledge, technology's inability to control the excesses of human greed has become all too apparent. Our increasing realisation of the damage caused by the latter, notably in the destruction of the environment, has, thankfully, resulted in a lessening of that arrogance and the growth of a greater humility, as we realise we are part of a much larger and more complex whole. Another factor to be noticed is that religion is still with us and has persisted much more strongly that people expected. That is true of all the World's religions and is certainly true of Christianity when looked at from a global perspective. Harvey Cox's new book Fire From Heaven makes this point forcibly. As one of the so-called 'secular theologians' of the 60's, he did not expect institutional Christianity to be in any fit state by now2E His book is an admission that he got it wrong. Its analysis of Pentecostalism is an honest recognition that faith is unconquerable and that the Christian faith in particular has astonishing vitality to overcome difficulties and fears. My travels in Africa and the Far East have taken me to areas where Christian Churches are growing very fast indeed, but even here in Britain there are plenty of signs of real life. The myth is still perpetuated that over the last few years the Church has been pretty well marginalised in a society defined as both 'secular' and 'pluralist'. I reject that myth both historically and culturally.
I ask you to bear in mind that in substantial parts of England in the mid-nineteenth century less that one in six of the population went to Church on a given Sunday. That is not so very different from the most recent findings of the 1992-3 statistics that roughly one in seven adults in the UK was a signed up member of a Christian Church. Indeed, let us be cautious of saying that ours is a 'secular' society. That is just as ambiguous as saying that this is a 'Christian' society.
There are some 6 1/2 million Church members in the UK. Without wanting to be unkind to political parties, I believe that New Labor is delighted to have reached 350,000 members. If, by analogy with Church attendance, we looked at the number of people who actually went regularly to political Party meetings what a tiny group we should find! Indeed, we need to note that wherever we go in the UK the Church in all its variety and forms is there, and is usually strongly there. I need hardly remind you that in addition to that significant figure of 6 1/2 million members there are millions of others who count themselves in the Christian family and are proud to do so. There is much going for us and we need to recognize our strengths thoroughly in order that we may address the problems. Bearing these things in mind then, how should we be shaping the Church to respond to this new environment? The challenge facing us, I suggest, is to rediscover three things - core values, community, and service. Each of these is crucial to a rediscovery of authentic Christianity and each offers an important challenge to a post-modern culture. Let me take each of them in turn: 1. The Church should never be apologetic for bearing witness to eternal truths. Abiding values are fundamental to our relationship to God in Christ. If a post-modern world finds itself increasingly fragmented, without any single ideology held in common and with all values regarded as relative, then the Church has a key role to play in offering a radically different vision. She is called to be apostolic - that is to say, she is summoned to go out and to witness to her relationship to God in Christ. It is from this relationship that we derive our abiding values. I want to return briefly to the challenge of post-modernism to ethical values. Charles Taliaferro in a recent book Consciousness and the Mind of God offers a powerful corrective to the intellectual mind-set which implies that any one who thinks 'freely' and 'rationally', is bound to reject the religious view of the world and, especially, the notion that there is personal God who cares about us.
He writes: 'The radically materialist conception of reality threatens more than theistic religious belief; it also threatens ethics and our very self-image' His contention is that while the private individual is free to accept or reject God and those consequent claims that go along with such belief, we should be aware of the price that society will pay by destroying what is a kind of 'immune-deficiency system' of the body-politic. If intelligence is nothing but the operation of chance-evolved cerebral chemistry, then in rejecting universal values why should we suppose that there are enduring values of any other sort that we should be bound to? I am struck by the similarity between this argument and that of Professor Gillian Rose who died before Christmas. In her moving little biographical book Love's Work she challenges the thinking behind what she calls the 'unrevealed religion' which is so widespread. 'Unrevealed religion' is, in her picturesque phrase, the dependant of her German cousin, 'Enlightenment rationalism'.
What is the nature of 'unrevealed religion'? It is the rejection of commitment to belief. Gillian Rose says: 'It is the very religion that makes us protest: ''But I have no religion'''. Unrevealed religion has hold of us without evidences, natural or supernatural, without any credos or dogmas, liturgies or ceremonies. There is a lot of unrevealed religion about. Does revealed faith offer anything better to us? Both writers undoubtedly think so and challenge a post-modern culture which is founded on unbelief. I believe the Church can back this up with hard evidence. A few years back Leslie Francis researched the link between religious practice and decent values. 30,000 teen-agers between 13-15 were interviewed. The research showed an undeniable connection between belief and behavior. It showed, for example, that only about half as many people with no faith are concerned about poverty in the Third World as compared with practising believers.
Three times as many non-believers feel there is nothing wrong with a minor dishonesty like traveling without a ticket. Perhaps most significantly of all practising believers are almost twice as likely to feel there lives have a sense of purpose. 'Without a clear sense of the purpose of life it is very difficult to see how anyone could have a consistent ethical framework'. [David Hay, the Tablet 3rd Feb. 1996 'Morals and Religion'] It is abundantly clear to me that the Church's witness to abiding values that we have received from scripture is central to our mission in the world. ii. As a Church we need to rediscover the Sacramental nature of Community I read an article in 'The Times' just a short while ago which argued that the future of the Church lay in preaching. It claimed that in a world which voted with its feet, it will be gifted communicators who will fill churches2E Well, I for one am not against preaching. We must encourage those entrusted with the ministry of preaching to be better at it, of course. But I disagree with that answer. Preaching is an element in the life of the Church, not its most important feature. For the Christian, God's call to love is a call set in the context of community. Specifically, it is in worshipping communities that we are nurtured and it is in these communities that we can most fully express our love for God and praise him. Whereas a post-modern world looks ever more fragmented and lonely, the Christian Gospel calls us back into communities in Christ. Here lies the paradox for the Church. Worshipping communities are central to Christianity, yet local Church communities all too frequently fail to live up to their calling to be powerful agents of change and renewal. This is what Dr Alec Vidler wrote long ago: 'Men, at their best, cannot do with the Church as it is, not because it bears witness to the things of which I have just spoken, but precisely because it does not bear a clear and consistent witness to them. Men connect the Church, not with a disturbing and renewing encounter of a Holy God, but as someone has said with: "unattractive services, tedious homilies, the smell of hymn books, the petty round of ecclesiastical functions, the collection bag, an oppression due to the lack of oxygen and memories of Sunday school". (Vidler, "The Christian Faith". SCM 1950, page 72) Well that was Vidler in 1950. Things have improved somewhat since Vidler wrote those words but we cannot disguise the fact that all our Churches face similar problems arising from a fear of change, faithlessness in God's power to direct the future and an inability to seize opportunities to become real centres of community. The answer, I believe, lies in rediscovering the sacramental nature of Apostolic Community. Our church life should be, in its very being, pointing beyond itself to God; and to do that it needs to be visibly present in the communities it serves. Of course, we should recognize that, in fact, our churches are in one sense very visible. You will scarcely find a hamlet or any bustling inner city district which does not have a Christian presence - be that through a church, chapel, meeting hall, gospel hall, or some other place of worship. Amongst these there are splendid examples of churches which are making real contributions to social and community development. Just a few months ago I visited a tough inner city housing estate in the Midlands where the Parish Church is giving an impressive example of care.
The vicar and his family have had their house burgled over 80 times during the eight years they have been there. But they are still there, loving and caring for their people. It is a tough, seemingly unrewarding place in which to work, and yet the leadership and vision of that couple has provided an impressive Christian witness and led to significant change.
I visited Chicago just two months ago and was greatly impressed by the work of Episcopal Church in a tough part of the city where one black parish priest aided by his dedicated congregation had given dignity back to the people and had provided cheap but affordable housing. In Los Angeles I saw the work of a single priest who had moved into a Mexican area and through love and commitment to frightened and lonely people had provided over forty with education, housing and jobs. Such stories can be multiplied many times over but the other side is depressingly present also. Churches which are shut six days a week; churches which have little ministry to the young or have nothing by way of programs of social care. Such churches are maintaining buildings but have lost a presence; a presence rooted in the sacramental nature of God's action in the world. I do not doubt the enormous challenge facing all our churches these days to respond to the pressing needs all around us. But creating community is what the Church should be especially good at. As the body of Christ our task is to witness consistently to his love for the world shown in Christ.
The Church, therefore, should always aim to be present seven days a week in our communities, reaching out in faith and with hope. That suggests that we must be prepared to look at our resources, not with eyes eager to maintain what we have cherished in the past, but with eyes eager for mission and new opportunities. In saying that I am not advocating a 'root and branch' approach to our institutions or suggesting that what worked in the past will, of necessity, not work any longer. For instance I am still convinced about the power of worship to draw people to God and of effective preaching as a tool for teaching and evangelism. But we must respond to the fact, if indeed it ever was the case, that Church worship and preaching on its own can no longer be treated as the entire arena for mission and service. The mobilization of the whole Church of God for service must, therefore, be a priority for us all. While the Church needs a professional ministry of clergy it must find ways of affirming and valuing the contribution that Christians in the world can bring. If we do not address this and other challenges that are coming our way we may well face the judgement of Prof. Jurgen Moltmann's words: ' 'A church that cannot change becomes a fossil church. It becomes an unimportant sect on the edge of a rapidly changing and progressive society. Men and women run away from such a Church. Only the old, the tired and the resigned retain their membership'. iii. The Church must put service before power and status. So far I have argued that the abiding values generated by Christian faith, and the worshipping communities that carry that faith from one generation to another, both offer powerful correctives to a post-modern culture. A post-modern age tends to regard all values as relative and dismisses communities and the traditions that they embody in the name of individual choice and personal autonomy. In contrast the Christian vision presupposes that we depend upon each other, that we do need communities to sustain us and that Church communities carry core values that abide from one generation to another2E We can now see the importance of the third feature of Christian ministry - that is, service. As Christians it is our privilege to serve others as Christ commanded and taught us to do. In contrast to a world that often seems to have become deeply cynical and to have lost hope, Christian ministry is structured around service in the hope of a more Christ-like world and in the hope of eternal life beyond this world. It is sometimes a consolation to be reminded that God alone is the justification for our ministries whether clerical and lay and that we should not be bound by concepts of success and failure. This does not mean that we should not strive for success but we should not let that tyrant get the dominion over us. Living as we do in a world which seeks results all the time, we may become the victims of guilt and find ourselves living constantly with feelings of failure. Bearing in mind my words about our need to serve God first and foremost, those feelings of failure need also to be challenged by what is already being done by Christians. As far as England is concerned, the Churches are the largest single voluntary group in the UK. Our commitment to people is second to none. But the question still remains of how we may become still more effective in our service in all its myriad forms and take the risks involved? Let me give you an illustration. Some years ago I visited Honolulu briefly. As we walked along the waterfront I saw a sign directing us to the Fr. Damien Museum tucked behind the small Roman Catholic Church. Fr. Damien has always been one of my heroes so I had to call in. I was moved by seeing the small mementoes of that remarkable man's life and being reminded of his courageous story. He had lived among lepers for years but no breakthrough came in his ministry until he contracted leprosy himself. In a Mass one Sunday he said: 'We lepers'.
That was the moment of breakthrough - he was one of them. That evening in our hotel I turned on the TV and found myself looking at a TV evangelist, who later fell from grace, who from his air conditioned studio was earnestly telling his audience of the glories of the Second Coming. The contrast was at once devastating and compelling, for the Gospel only becomes Gospel when it is incarnated in the lives of those who claim to be Christ's followers. Our fellow Christians in many parts of the world know this all too well. My visit last October to the Sudan brought home to me the fact that practical action is not extra to the Gospel but is an integral part of it. One of our bishops was explaining how difficult it is to go into the refugee camps where people have nothing and how helpless he feels when he has nothing to give to them. He said movingly: 'Empty stomachs have no ears'.
The same principle applies in our societies too. It applies to people facing the meaninglessness of long-term unemployment, or experiencing the pain of family break-up and emotional breakdown. The Gospel can only become good news to such people when the Church brings its own life and love alongside its proclamation. This will require us to take risks as we seek ways to look beyond our own survival to practical service in the love of Christ. One interesting question this raises, of course, is the extent to which we can retain our integrity as Christians whilst working alongside those of all faiths and none. Whilst the size of other faith communities in this country is sometimes greatly exaggerated, nevertheless the presence of sizeable minorities of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, as well as Jews, is a feature of life today which did not exist in the time of John Ruskin or Winifred Mercier. Inter-Faith relations have tended to concentrate on such questions as Multi-Faith Worship which, all too often, has become a search for the lowest common denominator that will offend no one present. But in fact such an approach has often caused problems not only within the Christian Community but also in other faith communities as well. In my own contacts with those of other faiths, both in this country and abroad, I am finding greater opportunities for real dialogue where people are clear about what they believe, and are willing to acknowledge genuine differences, whilst at the same time being open to listening to each other and working together over matters of common concern.
I think, for instance, of the willingness of the Chief Rabbi to work with his fellow presidents in the Council of Christians and Jews or the joint relief work of Christians and Muslims, partly sponsored by Christian Aid, going on in Bosnia and particularly Sarajevo. Nearer to home, the Inner Cities Religious Council promotes practical interfaith collaboration to help regenerate the life of depressed urban areas. From joint action grows, as we have learnt in ecumenical relationships, a respect for each other, and it is of enormous importance for the world that that kind of respect should grow and that divisions, built on a lack of knowledge and, at times, mutual distrust, should not allowed to be fostered. As Christians in this country we need, therefore, to be in the forefront of listening to and working with those of other faiths, and encouraging similar respect to be shown to our fellow believers in countries where they are very much in a minority. One way, of course, in which we are bound together is in our belief that the material is not all there is to life. We live in what often appears to be a cynical world in which all motives are questioned and everyone is suspected of having a price. 'How much will it cost?' has replaced the question of value: 'Will it make me a better person?' And yet we should not easily give in to the view that nothing but cynicism prevails and that as a society we know the price of everything but the value of nothing. There is a deep longing on the part of so many people. Many younger people especially are looking for meaning and hope. They want to know what it is to be truly human and they are prepared to search hard to discover the answer. They are also the first to spot hypocrisy. Such questions are Christian questions. They are Gospel questions. I left that moving meeting asking: 'Have we in the Church in our teaching and preaching neglected the power at the heart of our faith to change people's lives and especially our own? It is true that organized religion no longer occupies the place in national life that it enjoyed even fifty years ago. It has been pushed off the front pages by political questions and issues. But before we fall into despair we should be in no doubt that the stuff of religion is still there in the longing of us all to be whole, to be better, to be more human, to be fulfilled. As Carl Jung said so long ago: 'Only religion gives life the over-riding value to which all others are subservient, and on which a life of meaning depends'. I firmly believe that in a world where there is no agreement about shared values, and where a culture of contempt so often holds sway, the Church's mission will be found to be increasingly relevant and important. When such affirmation is lived out we may well find the Church able to speak authentically in a way that up to now she has been unable to do. And in all that we have to offer we should not be uncomfortable in living with mystery.
The Church's task is not always to provide answers but to point in a direction. Perhaps no book has a finer ending that Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus: 'he comes to us as One unknown without a name, as of old, by the lakeside he came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me' and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfil for our time and, as in an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is'.
