A Terminal Uniqueness
A Terminal Uniqueness
The Very Revd Nicholas Papadopulos
‘At twenty-six, I knew that miracles and religious experiences were not real. That prayers did not do a thing. That churches were as useless and beautiful as dinosaur bones. And that the end of life was synonymous with finality: to imagine otherwise was a hopeful and misplaced delusion.
Published earlier this year, Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever details its author’s three-year exploration of Christian faith. She is Lamorna Ash, a journalist surprised by the decision of two university friends to become Christians and train for ordination. She knows nothing of the faith beyond school carol services, and she sets out to discover what it means. She attends courses, goes on retreats, and has conversations with a huge variety of people. She describes what she finds: something more richly textured, more profoundly mysterious, and more hauntingly lovely than she had ever thought possible. By the end of her journey her perspective has shifted, and she writes:
‘I choose to become a Christian with my scepticism about organised religion intact, the way it institutionalizes hierarchical systems of power which are so easily and so often corrupted…I believe I come closest to knowing something of God in my interactions with other people, the people I love, the strangers I meet….it’s my church, in my city, and I want to stay here, where heaven is right in reach’.
Jesus says, ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector’. His narrative gives us a glimpse of who these two men trust and of what they believe. The Pharisee fasts regularly and tithes his income. These are praiseworthy habits, commended by the Hebrew Scriptures. But when the Pharisee prays, he cannot help reminding God of his praiseworthiness. He begins his prayer ‘I thank you that I am not like other people’. He cannot see anything that connects him to the thieves, rogues and adulterers who surround him. He is different from them, set apart from them, better than them. The tax-collector, meanwhile, will not even look up to heaven. He has no illusions about who he is. He beats his breast in contrition and prays just seven words: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. It’s the very thing that the Pharisee cannot see in himself or will not believe about himself. And it is the tax-collector who goes home justified, put right in God’s eyes.
The House of Bishops of our Church has issued a statement which has effectively ended what’s become known in church circles simply as ‘LLF’. Living in Love and Faith began its life more than five years ago, with the publication of a range of Christian teaching about identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage. These resources have been the backdrop to an exhausting series of synodical debates, nationally-convened conversations, and diocesan discussions. Changes to the Church’s life have resulted, modest and humane changes which many of us welcome. For the first time, our Church has published prayers that can be used with same-sex couples after a civil marriage or a civil partnership. Salisbury Cathedral has publicized its willingness to use them. But further developments were also envisaged: the use of these prayers in their own bespoke services, outside existing acts of worship, and the removal of the prohibition on clergy entering same-sex marriages.
The Bishops’ statement has brought this trajectory to a sudden halt. The legal and theological advice that they have received is that further changes will need legislative processes, and that these will not be complete before the end of the current synodical term. The advice has not yet been published and cannot be assessed, although it seems to have arrived very late in the day. What is unarguable is the devastating effect that the Bishops’ decision will have on tens of thousands of faithful Christians. I count myself among them. We had dared to hope that the LLF journey would take us to a place where the structural homophobia of the Church of England might begin to be unpicked, and where the lives and loves of gay Christians might be honoured and treasured in the way that those of their straight sisters and brothers have been for generations. Instead, the statement reads ‘We recognise that, for some, [these decisions] will be difficult and disappointing’. How can that one miserly phrase address the cruel pain and visceral hurt that is being visited on the lives of so many by the abrupt abandonment of the work of five years?
One of our Church’s mission priorities is to become younger and more diverse. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Bishops’ statement is a crushing blow to this ambition. Lamorna Ash chooses to become a Christian despite the institutional hierarchy whose currency is systems of power. But how many of our contemporaries cannot see beyond a hierarchy entirely consumed with its own survival? Lamorna Ash comes closest to knowing God in her interactions with other people, including the people she chooses to love. But how many of our contemporaries will always choose the people they love over and above the religion that perpetually consigns them to the shadows? At the end of her journey Ash is able to write this: ‘I believe that the God of the religion which is my heritage might have come down to Earth as a man 2,000 years ago to walk alongside us and help us with our terrible pain because I can’t think of a more beautiful story for how a god might behave’. I’ve read few summaries of the faith that are better. God came down to Earth to walk alongside us and to help us with our terrible pain. Not to discriminate, to exclude, or to hate.
On her new album another thirty-something, Taylor Swift, sings the beautifully profound line ‘I have been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness’. A terminal uniqueness. The Pharisee certainly believes himself unique, blessed with a special relationship with a God who applauds his righteousness. The Pharisee cannot see that the uniqueness to which he clings is terminal. Believe that you alone are chosen by God; believe that you alone are right; cut yourself off from the remnant of humanity; spend your days extolling your own virtues – and you are living in ignorance of the truth that the tax-collector grasps. Your condition is terminal. You will die.
Saint Paul surely knows this. He writes to Timothy as the end of his own life approaches. He is confident that the Lord will give him a crown of righteousness. ‘…And not only to me’ he writes, ‘but also to all who have longed for his appearing’. Paul knows that uniqueness is terminal. Our Church does not. And it seems to me that the longer our Church goes on using its privileged position to secure exemptions from equality legislation, the longer it goes on denying its clergy and people their civil liberties, the longer it goes on proclaiming a so-called ethical position which is at odds with that of our society at large then the nearer it comes to its own death. ‘We must love another or die’ writes Auden, and he’s right – if we don’t, we will.
God, be merciful to us, for we are sinners.