What hope for the Church in Wales? (2) Minding the gap

Last week I wrote about alienation as symptomatic of a dysfunctional organisation. Alienation is probably best defined as the fear which generates distrust between individuals and groups, causing them to perceive one another as mutually threatening, even though they may not realise this or admit to it. To feel threatened by others is to feel diminished by them. We feel threatened when we are made to feel exposed and unworthy, or at times less than human, by another person’s attitude, or by another group’s politics.

What happens to the individual is mirrored in the life of the collective. Where one group feels threatened it will instinctively respond to the other in a defensive way. Such a defensive response can translate into aggressive language or behaviour, or into angry withdrawal, thereby creating another layer of fear and distrust. This whole fear syndrome constitutes a cyclic and repetitive pattern found in just about every human social situation, and it is endemic in the life of the Church in Wales, as we saw in last week’s Deanery conference meeting.

The challenge facing the Church lies in interrupting this cycle of fear so that it can be revealed as a deception. We create such a healthy interruption by looking at the unhealthy interruption, or gap, which exists between the way we pray and the way we live our lives. The unhealthy gap, or interruption, exists in both collective and individual contexts. These two sets of human interaction – how we relate to God spiritually and practically and the extent to which we do so as a Church or diocese, as well as in our own personal prayer lives, belong together, of course.  But this is something which we perhaps take for granted without looking at the nuances and overlaps which exist between prayer and getting on with life, including that of managing the life of the Church or diocese. We tend to assume that God is around without actually pausing to connect with him, or maintaining our connection in the difficulties and conflicts which we face as Church in all areas of our common life.

Maintaining the connection, or minding the gap between prayer and life, begins with recognising that we are much in need of love, of being counted as worthy not only by God, but by each other. If we can recognise how much we need each other in this way, we will also find that we are all very much alike, and therefore together.

As someone who has spent much of my life either directly or indirectly in a theatre environment, I have sensed this kind of commonality in the way an audience laughs together. This can happen in the context of preaching too. The preacher and the congregation laugh together at something which emerges in the sermon as absurd or funny, and in a single moment barriers fall. We all hear and understand something new together. Prayer that connects with life often makes itself felt when obstructions to human love are broken down, even if only momentarily, so that we can laugh, or ‘rejoice’ together in this way.

In the life of the Church in Wales, there are a number of fear areas which obstruct the growth of love and which could disappear if we would only let them. There is the fear which comes with years of unquestioning adherence to outdated rules and customs, the latter including the way some clergy dress. These rules and customs alienate us from one another and put many people off coming to church.

There is the fear, especially among clergy (irrespective of gender), of losing power or prestige. This contributes to a fear of change and to a preoccupation with status. There is the visceral fear which many people have of articulate women (and of women in general), and the fear of LGBT people, both of which continue to haunt the Church and compromise its credibility in the world. Both of these can be traced to misguided notions of ritual purity, a partial reading of scripture and, in the case of LGBT people, to lingering but unquestioned social taboos. Taken together, all of these fears have directly contributed to what has come to be known as decline.

All of this suggests that bridging the gap between prayer and life requires that we create new openings for the love of God to flow into our life together. This work begins with every person being prepared to be vulnerable before God with regard to their own particular fears. Only then will it be possible for us to encounter him together as his Church.