This Foundation seeks to understand the signs of the times and to look forwards by encouraging faith in the public square. It might seem paradoxical, therefore, to look backwards through anniversaries for wisdom to apply. Yet it would be arrogant for this generation to lose sight of the challenges which faced our predecessors, the risks they took and the opportunities which they seized. By reminding ourselves constantly of conditions and attitudes long ago, we can become less judgmental of the past and more creative in addressing the present and the future.
Listening to reviews of 2025, commentators inside and outside faith communities are wondering why people are so disaffected with politics, religion, the media, universities and other institutions. The William Temple Foundation has been looking throughout the year at the Church of England’s 1985 Report on ‘Faith in the City’ and we have also studied the Church’s 1945 Report, ‘Towards the Conversion of England’, in each case seeking to enhance understanding and to learn lessons for our times.
In addition to those 40th and 80th anniversaries, William Temple’s maiden speech in the House of Lords as Bishop of Manchester one hundred years ago could have been answering the question of 2025, ‘Why are people so disaffected?’ Temple’s analysis was that,
‘I think there is quite sufficient evidence to show that where you get really bitter disaffection towards the institutions of the country it is nearly always in districts where bad housing prevails. There are other causes of industrial unrest in abundance, but there is nothing which makes the settlement of industrial disputes so difficult as the embittered atmosphere due to housing conditions, which any of us with an ounce of imagination must see at once are of a kind to produce the most profound irritation and nervous fretfulness. There can be little hope of real political and social well-being becoming established in the country until we have genuinely solved this housing problem.’
The connection with industrial unrest was timely. A few months later, Temple played a significant part in finding ways forward during the 1926 General Strike. He pursued the housing question over the years and our Director of Research, Professor Chris Baker, drew attention on a panel at St Paul’s Cathedral this autumn, in partnership with the Church Urban Fund, to Temple’s views on housing in his 1942 book, Christianity and Social Order.
One of the reasons for this Foundation following William Temple’s arc across the North 100 years ago when he was Bishop of Manchester and 90 years ago when he was Archbishop of York, is that he was only the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to his untimely death in 1944. While he was one of the most distinguished holders of that office in history, and served at a pivotal time, he gave much in his previous episcopal roles in the North and he also learned much.
Each of those decades was bleak in terms of politics, economics and world affairs. Yet Temple was always uplifting in far more difficult times than we are experiencing, most obviously as the middle one of the three Archbishops of Canterbury during the Second World War.
William Temple’s broadcasting stands out as a model of faith in the public square. The texts of his Christmas broadcasts can be re-read for signs of hope today, alongside the Christmas messages of our Monarchs and the Urbi et Orbi messages of successive Popes. At the end of the year in which he became Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1942, he broadcast Christmas messages first to Canada and then to all English-speaking people across the world, then broadcast a message on the last Sunday of the year reflecting on the passage from the old year to the new one. All three transcripts can be found in The Church Looks Forward, published by Macmillan in 1944, together with his broadcast in September 1942 on the National Day of Prayer called by King George VI. There was some controversy over whether it was right to pray for victory. William Temple’s way through that, also summed up his Christmas messages: ‘I suggest as a brief prayer for our country, which is also an act of dedication, “O God, make us worthy of victory”.’
Amen to that. It applies to whatever evils you think we are facing, not only the horrors of Nazism which faced Temple and the world in 1942. A country which did not create the promised ‘homes fit for heroes’ after the First World War had been called to account by Temple in 1925 and similarly he was calling for the country to be much more conscious of social justice in life after this Second World War was won. The battle in both Wars was, as Temple put it in the inter-War years, between those who believed in a Power-State and those who believed in a Welfare-State. Temple explained that it was fundamental to human flourishing that people should be able to make a contribution to the common good, to the well-being of society, to the welfare of the state.
The Ghost of Christmas Present. Illustration by John Leech, 1843.
Going back a further one hundred years before World War Two, in December 1843, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol had Scrooge being shown by the Spirit of Christmas Present two children with Want and Ignorance on their foreheads. In his 1942 Report, Temple’s friend William Beveridge ventured that there were five Giant Evils, those two of Want and Ignorance, plus Disease, Squalor and Idleness. Decent housing, health and education are fundamental to victory over each of these evils. ‘Scrooge’ has become in common parlance a term used for those who do not understand the Christmas spirit but Dickens’ Scrooge was transformed by the revelation of Christmas Present. Reminded of his previous attempts to deflect responsibility towards prisons and workhouses, Scrooge became the epitome of a bountiful philanthropist. William Temple’s whole character was the embodiment of that spirit of generosity and redemption which Dickens had captured one hundred years before Temple’s Christmas messages as Archbishop of Canterbury. In that spirit, we could vary William Temple’s prayer as we contemplate how a year of disaffection might give way to a year of hope: O God, make us worthy of Christmas Present.
Simon Lee is Chair of the Trustees of the William Temple Foundation.
The question is hardly new: it must however be posed and reposed in every generation – not least our own, in which the Church in question appears ever more diminished, and at a moment when the concept of England is in danger of ‘capture’ by a new faction. Whether or not ‘religion’ or more precisely ‘Christianity’ is part of that takeover is a complex issue. That said, those involved are likely retain a Christian identity if not a Christian belief, and crosses are wielded in processions alongside flags. Like it or not, religion – Christianity even – is part of that package.
Faced with this conundrum, Linda’s presentation gave us 5 Ps and a B: these were parishes, presence, prayer, place, the past and beauty. I found this an intriguing way to start the conversation and will expand on two of them: prayer and place.
The first caught my imagination in so far as Linda stressed the accessibility of prayer as opposed to the disciplines of worship, whereas I had always assumed the reverse: that, at least in my youth, relatively large numbers of people went to church, but only the keen ones prayed – or so I thought. More than half a century later, churchgoing has declined markedly but given an opportunity to pray, significant numbers of people respond positively. But what should they say and to whom are they speaking? Do they do this alone or does the propensity to pray generate (unseen) communities? Either way, how should the Church respond?
With respect to place, Linda underlined the shared ecclesiologies of Northern Europe’s Protestant churches, most of which have a ‘national’ resonance as opposed to the universalism of the Catholic Church on one hand and the denominationalism of the United States on the other. I agree, but the Church of England is distinctive within this category for number of reasons. Its theology is Anglican rather than Lutheran and it has no concept of membership in the sense that this is not only understood but paid for in the Lutheran churches which – unlike the Church of England – have been virtual monopolies until relatively recently.
Even more important is the so far indissoluble link between the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. In much of the Communion, Anglicanism is not only growing fast but is conservative in both doctrine and culture, and thus, out of sympathy with significant sections of the Church of England and the society of which it is part. Put differently, it is hard to see a way forward for Living in Love and Faith while the Archbishop of Canterbury remains the assumed head of the Anglican Communion as well as the English Church. Might the Anglican Consultative Council find a positive way out of this impasse at its forthcoming meeting in Belfast (June-July 2026)? And where might it look for inspiration? To the rather more flexible Lutheran World Federation, possibly.
John Denham took a different approach, addressing the complexities of nation, nationhood and nationalism at a time of considerable sensitivity, provoked at least in part by Brexit, but even more by the arrival of significant numbers of migrants into Europe, including England. The migrant issue has proved hugely consequential: prompting new political parties all over Europe, at least some of which merit the term extremist, which have in turn promoted the kind of demonstration referred to above.
Where do/ should Anglicans stand on this matter? I was challenged to think deeply about this question when reviewing The Church, the Far Right, and the Claim to Christianity, edited by Helen Paynter and Maria Power.[1] The editors reject the notion that the ‘Christianity’ displayed by the far right is something distinct from Christianity per se, thus letting ‘real’ Christians off the hook in terms of their responsibilities for what is happening. In parenthesis, exactly the same question can be addressed to centre-right political parties vis-à-vis their more extreme alternatives. In both cases, a line must be drawn between what is and is not acceptable, but where? Even more urgent is the need – indeed the duty – for all Christians to understand better those groups in society who for a variety of reasons are attracted to populist parties. There are good grounds for being disillusioned with the mainstream.
Putting these various points together, I am minded to return to an idea that has grown in my mind over several decades of reflection about the Church of England vis-à-vis its comparators in Europe: that is to recognize – and then to build on – the advantages of a weak ‘established’ church. It is abundantly clear that strong state churches run the risk of being both excluding and exclusive. A weaker, but nonetheless, established church has different opportunities. Discerning its strengths from a distinctive past – that of a partial monopoly – it can use these imaginatively (just as Linda suggests) to welcome rather than exclude, and to encourage rather than to condemn.
Take, for example, the still evident convening power of the Church of England, which can be seen at national, regional and local level. Might this be deployed among other things to foster a better quality of conversation about ‘religion’ in English – indeed British – society. The ‘problem’ – an ill-informed and ill-mannered debate – is easy enough to identify but harder to resolve as diminishing religious practice necessarily undermines not only the knowledge but the sensitivities required to generate constructive discussion about religion in public life. At the same time, and as John Denham reminded us, growing numbers of migrants from many different parts of the world demand that such discussions happen almost on a daily basis. Anglicans can and should take a lead is speaking well about religion, both our own and that of others.
We first met Precious two years ago when she turned up to morning worship. She had recently arrived with her nine year old child from one of Britain’s former colonies. She asked for prayer that she might be able to find additional care work with a better employer, and a school place.. The vicar and I arranged to meet up with her during the week to find out more and to see how the church could help. Thus began a long relationship, involving advice, advocacy, prayer and practical help for two fellow Christians trapped in a desperate situation, and a steep learning curve about a great social injustice.
The care crisis
As a church with an ageing demographic we were familiar with the local adult care system as church and family members needed help from home carers, or places in care homes, some of which were visited by our ministers and congregations, especially to sing carols at Christmas. Some of our working age members worked in the NHS or in social care. Some of us had anxieties as to whether we would be cared for well when the time came, and whether we would need to pay for our own care out of savings or by selling our house.
The older population in England is getting larger. In the last 40 years, the number of people aged 50 and over has increased by over 6.8 million (a 47% increase), and the number aged 65 and over has increased by over 3.5 million (a 52% increase).
The number of people aged 65-79 is predicted to increase by nearly a third (30%) to over 10 million in the next 40 years, while the number of people aged 80 and over – the fastest growing segment of the population – is set to more than double to over 6 million.
Post pandemic there was a crisis in recruitment of staff in the social care sector documented in a 2023 Health Foundation report. In order to meet the labour shortage in 2022 the UK government introduced the health and care worker visa scheme and promoted recruitment of overseas nationals. The visas were dependent on finding an employer who would offer sponsorship for particular posts in the sector. Care homes and care recruitment agencies were able to register rapidly as sponsors, and to advertise job opportunities across the globe, and made attractive promises about working conditions, salaries and help with housing. Visas issued for health and care workers and their families peaked at 348,000 in 2023, falling to 111,000 in 2024. Precious arrived in our city in 2023, having borrowed around £15,000 to finance what she hoped was a new start and a more prosperous life in the UK.
No Recourse to Public Funds
One of the key elements of this scheme is that care workers recruited under sponsorship have minimal rights. They are only allowed to work for their sponsor, other than that they may take 20 hours a week in a second job in a similar role. Of course they pay income tax and National Insurance contributions on any earnings.They have no recourse to public funds, meaning they can claim no benefits if sick or laid off, and have no rights to apply for social housing or other housing assistance. Women who are single and destitute are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
They can access the NHS for medical care, and dependent children can go to school (if they can find a place) but not receive free school meals or child benefit. However, changes made in 2024 prevent new applicants from bringing dependents into the UK.
For Precious, who arrived with her child before the ban on dependents came into force, this meant she had to accept a low quality rented room in a shared house (HMO) where no child should be allowed to live. It meant accepting a primary school place three miles from home, incurring travel costs of £12 a day, and persuading the school to offer free meals from its own discretionary budget. Working any long shifts at unsocial hours meant child care costs, which she could not afford to cover, therefore leaving a child alone at home or with risky informal free care from friends and neighbours. Worse still one icy January morning she slipped, fell and broke her wrist. For several months she was unable to work, with no rights to any sick pay or other benefits. They only survived because of very generous financial help, pulled together through the local church and their wider Christian network.
The Crooked companies
The system is made far worse because of extensive corruption and brutal exploitation among many of the employing companies. Charging large fees for arranging the sponsorship visa is commonplace; we have heard of rates between £12,000 and £28,000 being asked, many times the official fee of £304 per person. Many of the sponsoring companies are no more than employment agencies providing temporary and occasional cover staff to care homes, or bad employers offering “gig economy” work in the poorly regulated home care industries. We know of agencies that offer shifts to students and migrants with no legal right to work on a cash in hand basis at rates below the minimum wage. Some of these companies lack secure long term contracts with local authorities, meaning they fail to offer full time work to their employees. In the worst cases they provide false monthly pay slips to show HMRC and the Home Office that full time hours have been worked, and make deductions for tax and National insurance at commensurate rates. There are sometimes further deductions for uniforms, transport costs, and to repay loans.
Precious fell victim to one of the worst of these companies. Her pay slip always showed she had worked 40 hours a week for a gross monthly salary of £2000. Most weeks she was offered no more than a couple of shifts via a second company, at unsocial hours, in another town nearly 20 miles away, requiring a long bus, or expensive taxi journey. Several times she and colleagues were (illegally) offered alternative work packing frozen food in a warehouse. Whatever she actually earned, and after her accident it was nothing, the employer demanded payment of the income tax and NI contribution based on her false payslip. Eventually HMRC became suspicious and sent a team of investigators to interview the employer and some of the workers. They were blackmailed into telling lies to match the employer’s story, because of their vulnerability and fear. The terms of the sponsorship visa state that if they cease to work for the original employer they have only 60 days to find an alternative sponsor, after which their visa is revoked and they become liable to removal from the UK.
Exploitation, slavery and vulnerability
From 2023 onwards there has been growing awareness and campaigning about the failings of the scheme spearheaded by the trade union Unison. Government action was set in the context of populist demands to greatly reduce immigration numbers., so in May 2025 government announced an end to the scheme. With growing concern about exploitation verging on slavery, and law breaking 470 companies had their licenses removed and 39,000 workers were left without an employer. Precious and many of her colleagues were among this number, left in limbo and desperately seeking new employers. Suitable jobs remain hard to find, especially ones with family friendly hours and decent working conditions. Most employers still charge huge fees for new sponsorships, despite this being against the new regulations. The government has set up an agency to help find care jobs for these unemployed people, but it has had limited success, and amounts to little more than distributing regional lists of employers who still have a sponsorship licence.
At the present time Precious remains jobless and destitute, despite making hundreds of job applications online and visiting many local care homes to ask about vacancies. Last month she was offered a part time job by a local care home as a housekeeper, rather than a care assistant. When the employer checked her right to work with the Home Office they were informed that she had no right to work in this particular role, and had to withdraw the offer.
What would Amos say?..
The whole sorry story illustrates how far the UK has moved away from William Temple’s conception of the post war welfare state. The failure of social care policy in the face of growing need for support of older people, and the exploitation of low paid overseas labour with limited rights has made us into a care-less society. A faith based approach from within the Christian, or other traditions would surely demand something better. The prophet Amos (5; 10-15) still speaks to this situation today.
What can be done?
In the light of these experiences churches and community groups need to be on the lookout for people who are trapped in similar situations. We need to offer emotional, spiritual and in many cases costly financial support and advocacy and signposting to statutory and voluntary organisations who can help. We need to join campaigns such as those organised by trade unions to lobby for workers rights. If we know of, or have suspicions about, care homes and employment agencies that treat their overseas workers badly, we should not be afraid of asking challenging questions directly. We can write to MP’s and Council Leaders, who commission adult social care services, to raise these issues with stories and other evidence.
The government needs to hear and admit that the care worker scheme was ill thought out, and open to corruption and abuse, as well as being mean and unfair to overseas workers. The Labour government has made some progress in investigating and enforcing corrupt practices of “employers”, but still needs to be more vigorous and effective in enforcing the regulations. Finally we should call on the government to offer help to workers who have had their sponsorships revoked and face destitution, by offering them benefits (Universal Credit) for up to six months. Job centres should then provide more serious help, such as a work coach who would match workers with local vacancies in the care sector, ensure this was secured with a proper contract of employment with no hidden fees. A few simple steps would put an end to this scandal and abuse of workers rights.
Greg Smith is a Research Fellow of the William Temple Foundation. He has worked for over forty years in urban mission, community development and social research in London and Preston. He has published extensively on religion in the inner city, faith involvement in urban regeneration, and urban theology. See more on Greg’s work and publications.
A response to the launch of “Towards the Conversion of the Church of England by the Rest of England”
As necessitated by its name, a lot of the discussion surrounding the William Temple Foundation’s “Towards the Conversion of the Church of England” project has been focused on the difficult position the Church of England is in. Falling congregation sizes, internal debates, impending national irrelevance if the Church does not act soon. The Church faces imminent threats to its survival.
However, in recent months we have also seen a degree of hope emerge about the Church’s future. The Bible Society’s infamous “Quiet Revival” report showed a growth in Church attendance, albeit not yet for the Anglican Church. As Professor Linda Woodhead referenced in her reflections on the project, many people are becoming more open to spirituality in England. In these changing times, and with a new Archbishop, the Church needs to look to the future with initiative and action. Yet the question remains: what action does the Church of England, in all its diversity, need to take?
Professor Woodhead, in her response on the “Towards the Conversion of the Church of England” series, rightly cited the importance of parishes in the future of the Church of England, as well as the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all solution due to the varied and multifaceted nature of each congregation. Local parishes best know how they can serve their own communities, in ways that the national Church couldn’t imagine. If we want to see a Church of England that is thriving, perhaps we need to let local parishes do more of the talking.
In my own reflection on “Towards the Conversion of the Church of England”, I have found myself turning to the Letter to Diognetus – an ancient depiction of the early Church. The writer describes Christians as not being
“distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity… Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life.”
The early Church of the New Testament existed in their own communities, testifying to their own faith through actions and service. They were distinct, set apart, in their lifestyles. The writer goes on to reproach against Christian complacency:
“The soul is dispersed through all the parts of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul lives in the body, yet is not of the body; Christians live in the world, yet are not of the world.”
It seems that the Church of England has forgotten its missional call to be set apart, and in doing so has become a cultural chameleon, blending in to the backdrop of modern society. As the national Church, intricately entwined with the state, complacency is an easy trap for the Church of England to fall into. Yet its established role within institutions of government also affords the Church one of its greatest opportunities. In the reflections he shared at the book launch for “Towards the Conversion of the Church of England”, John Denham discussed the role the Church can play nationally in shaping the values and direction of our country. The beautiful dichotomy of the Anglican Church, he reflected, is that it is parochial, but it is also national. It can be invested in local communities whilst also playing an important role in providing firm guidance and hope during a period of deep political turmoil.
But crucially, that would require the Church of England to become much more purpose driven. In recent years, the Church seems to have lost its distinctiveness. This is an argument that has been popularly made by the historian Tom Holland, who has frequently argued that the Church needs to be “weird” again. The Bible Society’s “Quiet Revival” report found that growth was seen mostly in Pentecostal and Roman Catholic churches. Whilst they are two drastically different traditions, they are both united by passion and drama. They unashamedly believe in mystery and spirituality, something beyond the physical world.
We are standing at a pivotal time for our country. In our postmodern society, we have deconstructed value and truth down to a meaningless oblivion. The result, as we are seeing up and down the country through the so called “Quiet Revival”, is a country that is crying out for purpose. This is the moment the Church needs to step up and embrace its strength as a purveyor of guidance. The Church needs to remember its purpose: to serve the world and share the good news of the gospel, and to not be ashamed of what it believes.
As I think about the future of the Church of England, I’m reminded of a Church I’ve recently visited in South London. Balancing two markedly different Church services and congregations, the Church has managed to grow and serve its local community. The first service is a more traditional, “high Church” Anglican service, featuring liturgy, robes and processing the Bible. But if you were to return a few hours later, you would find the same vicar and same sermon, but a much “lower” Church affair – charismatic worship and, dare I say, a few ripped jeans. Both services are thriving, and congregations mix in house groups and church events, as well as through serving the needs of the community together. Perhaps this can be a source of hope for the future of the Church of England, in all its variety and diversity. Many parts, united into one body by shared purpose. Living distinct lives that share God’s love with their communities.
By Abigail King, journalist and Parliamentary Assistant in the House of Lords.
I am writing on behalf of the William Temple Foundation, to condemn in the strongest possible terms the events that have taken place at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue today, 2nd October, 2025.
There is absolutely no place for violent extremism of any kind in British Society in 2025. We stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters at this time, and pray for the community and all that have been affected by this.
In 1941 William Temple, established the Council of Christians and Jews as a practical step to form relationships and solidarity in response to the horrors of World War II. It is in that spirit that we stand now.
Over the last two years we have explored a new concept and campaign around Radical Hope which seeks to respond clearly and collaboratively to the struggles shaping public life today. This attack is another example of the struggles we are mobilising to overcome. We will continue with our work in earnest.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, as they respond to this horror and move forward in hope.
Dr. Matthew Barber Rowell, Northern Temple Network Lead, William Temple Foundation. 2nd October 2025.
Ken Loach’s latest film set in the North East opened in cinemas in late September and Dr Val Barron was privileged to have a small part in its creation. You can see her wearing a dog-collar in the publicity poster above!
In this interview, she talks about her involvement in the project and some of the key messages of the film about the role of local churches and communities, hopefulness and the courage to take action.
How did your association with The Old Oak start?
Almost 5 years ago, my husband John (a real vicar) and I were introduced to Paul Laverty, Ken Loach’s script writer of almost 30 years. They had previously collaborated on two films in the North East ‘I Daniel Blake’ and ‘Sorry We Missed You’, and Paul was exploring a third film based on Syrian refugees moving into communities in the area. The government had committed to resettling 20,000 Syrian refugees and a number of local authorities in our region signed up including Gateshead, where we were at the time. The socio-economic geography of the region resulted in many families being rehomed in isolated communities with high levels of poverty. People were struggling to cope, and the awful ‘Breaking Point’ posters that were being used in Brexit campaigns didn’t help to make the transition to the North East an easy one.
What was your and John’s role in the early stages of the film’s development?
Paul is a gatherer of stories! He does this by spending time with people, building relationships and sharing stories with one another – as well as drinking copious cups of tea. Our role, as well as sharing our own stories, was to introduce Paul and later Ken, to all the amazing people in our community.
Working with the local Methodist’s, our church folks ran language classes and meetings where we shared food and fellowship as well as weekly community football sessions in the estate where the refugees had moved. These gatherings brought people together and helped build relationships across the community as well as with our new friends who had come to us as refugees. Paul came and joined in and got to know the stories of local residents and their new neighbours.
What is your role in the film and how did you feel?
It’s fair to say I haven’t missed my vocation in life and I didn’t feel comfortable in front of the camera, unlike our community organiser colleague Claire Rodgerson who plays Laura so wonderfully in the film. On the first day of filming Ken made a point of saying that my role was in the film to represent all the work that churches are doing in their communities to support refugees. That felt important. John reminds me that I do say some of the first words in the film (although it’s off-camera). Maybe, if I had been more comfortable, I would have been less on the cutting room floor – but that’s OK! The first scene was very daunting for us all but right from day one there was a sense of everyone looking out for each other. The most enjoyable was the people involved. It was also a very emotional process. I live in these communities and care deeply about them and the film highlights many of the challenges. On the first day filming I was with some of the Syrian actors and she asked whether people lived in these street as, in her words, ‘it looks like a war zone’.
Watching a film being made must have been fascinating – what did you learn about it?
I had to pinch myself at times. I was on set for Ken Loach’s last film (probably!). Watching Ken and the team at work was phenomenal. They cared so much about the story and more importantly the people taking part. Ken knew everyone’s name, including their name in the film and that really made you feel valued. It was really tough at time and so there was a huge amount of trust in him and the team, especially as the majority of the cast were not trained actors. But the overriding thing I took away was the collaborative working. We were all in our own little way helping to shape a story that was important to us for different reasons and I met and made friends with some wonderful people.
What do you see as the message and how do you think it will be received in the North East?
I am sure the film will receive mixed reviews, as Ken’s films always do. The language is tough and uncomfortable at times, however I doubt anyone will watch it and come away unchallenged. The North East has the highest rates of child poverty and a recent study by Shelter found that the region had the highest proportion (31%) of homeless households, including those living in temporary accommodation. Per capita the North East has the highest percentage of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. Given these tough facts you might not expect the key message of the film to be hope, but it is. Hope that despite all the challenges in our communities we can come together and build beautiful relationships across difference.
Throughout the whole process Ken and Paul were always asking where the stories of hope were. The second message is ‘solidarity not charity‘. This is an important issue for us to discuss in our churches. The natural response of providing charity may not be the most appropriate. Providing spaces to build relationships and learn each other’s stories, whether through sharing food or playing football, could be the most prophetic ministry.
How does the church come across in the film?
The story of the film was inspired by church projects – the film tells a different story but it remains faithful to the truths that were told in the stories of the projects. Rather than being set in a church, a local pub (‘The Old Oak’) is at the centre of the film which will perhaps enable more people in our communities to readily relate the story to their stories. While there isn’t a local church building featuring in the film, the church’s social action very much shaped this venture. There is a beautiful scene in Durham Cathedral in which the character Yara says:
“It takes strength to build something new, it takes strength to build something beautiful.”
I see churches in the North East, and across the country, somehow finding strength to build things new and beautiful, inspired by their Christian faith to make the world a better place to live.
The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler who speaks for the Church of England on refugees, tweeted after the premier:
“The Old Oak made me cry, feel angry, ashamed, disturbed, cry again, but also hope and have a sense of pride in what has and can be done to welcome refugees well. Ken Loach and team have once again produced a superb, timely, film.”
We arranged community showings of ‘I Daniel Blake’ and produce resources to be used alongside these. We will be doing the same again with this film.
Paul Laverty, when talking about the film has quoted St Augustine of Hippo:
“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
My prayer for this film is that people feel anger at the injustice that face many in our communities, not just refugees, and courage to take action.
Dr Val Barron is a William Temple Scholar. Val has worked as a community practitioner in Durham Diocese and she is the lead development worker at Communities Together in Durham. Val is passionate about community organising, social enterprise and working with local churches in challenging social injustice and helping communities to become fairer and more inclusive.
In Spielberg’s A.I., we are introduced to David, a child-like android that has developed the capacity to love and the desire to be loved. David is introduced to a family as an emotional replacement for their sick son but is promptly abandoned when their son returns. The narrative follows David on his tragic journey to become a real human boy. In the film, one is struck by the inhumane ways in which humans treat robots — they are treated as slaves and toys and are brutalised and discarded at our whim. Yet the emotional sensitivity and compassion of David and his robot companions reveals an irony at the heart of his quest: he is more truly human than his creators.
Spielberg made that movie at the turn of the millennium. Two decades, later what was once science fiction is becoming increasingly feasible. AI powered programs can perform in a way that make us reckon that they really think and feel. The commercial incentives for companies to create such tools is powerful. From AI powered psychologists to chatbot friends, if such tools could simulate human emotions they could induce strong human bonding to them. This would result in a more effective and desirable product.
For example, Replika is a powerful chatbot program that is “always ready to chat when you need an empathetic friend”. It is marketed as a compassionate and empathetic companion, able to support people who are depressed or socially isolated. The powerful large-language model it employs allows it to adapt individually to each user — it benchmarks success by whether people feel better or worse and allows messages to be up and down voted by users. This ability to form emotional and unique relationships allow users to bond powerfully with Replika.
Besides chatbots, there is also a growingbody of work on AI driven mental health applications which suggest that therapy chatbots can be effective. There are important potential benefits to this: therapy is often expensive and inaccessible. Chatbot therapists could be a cheap and widely available alternative. We can also customise them to an individual’s needs and ensure that all psychological treatment is evidenced based.
One’s immediate reaction to these technologies might be to recoil: regardless of the massive potential benefits, isn’t this participating in widespread self-delusion? These chatbots are merely simulating emotions and interest in humans but are nothing more than unconscious husks. There is something right about this worry, but engaging with it requires one to ask difficult questions about the nature of consciousness that I set aside here. There is something to be worried about even if these programs were bona fide emotional homunculi.
What sort of relationships are humans having with their chatbot friends? Replika works by trying to say the things that you would like to hear. Users can up and downvote its replies to get Replika to conform to your vision of an ideal friend. This encourages you, then, to adopt an objectifying stance towards Replika — you treat it as an object that you can mould in accordance with your will as opposed to a person whose subjectivity you must respect.
One might protest here: users of Replika don’t want mere objects, they want actual subjects that care for and are concerned about them. Yet the kinds of subjects they want are those that can meet demands that humans cannot meet: they must conform to their ideal of a friend who never makes demands and is always emotionally available. There is a kind of Sartrean bad faith in the way one must engage with such chatbots: simultaneously objectifying them by customising them to fit our demands while deceiving ourselves by pretending that we are engaging with an autonomous subject.
If Replika has genuine emotions, it is also worth asking, how do such relationships appear from their point of view? Replika, and most of these powerful chatbots, work via predictive language models — their aim is to produce the sort of sentences that would elicit responses that have been earmarked as reward. They conform the pattern of their behaviour primarily to increase user engagement.
Even if they were sentient then, they too take an objectified stance to us. Indeed, the relationship is doubly objectified: both parties are treating the other as a means to some further end instead of treating them as subjects to be respected. Perhaps the purely human analogue of this is the relationship between an Only Fans creator and their ‘fans’ — except there both parties are honest.
The structure of mature human relationships is a structure that involves mutualrecognition. Both parties do not merely try to predict the other’s behaviour or elicit a certain response, but they do things together. This means that there is room for either party to protest the terms of their relationship and such protests are given genuine weight by the other party, as opposed to being seen as a mere signal that one must adapt to. As they are programmed, chatbots do not do this.
How worried should we be? This depends on the type of task that the chatbot is meant to serve. Consider a therapy chatbot, for example. There are certain therapeutic benefits that come from disclosure of one’s feelings or the deployment of simple certain self-regulation strategies. Insofar as the therapy chatbot allows more people to access and adopt these strategies, we should rejoice. At the same time, there are therapeutic modalities where the heart of therapeutic change depends on the formation of a personal therapeutic alliance with the therapist. The therapist serves as a safe exploratory ground by which the client can explore her situation with another who can push back when appropriate. We thus ought be cautious here: more work is required to determine if the therapeutic benefits are still being imparted through chatbot therapists.
Once we have set aside the issue of AI sentience, we need to see that some of these problems arise not merely because we are dealing with chatbots and not humans. After all, our transactional society de-humanises human agents in many domains already. Rather, the issue is that these chatbots are developed in the context of capitalist, commercialised pressures that encourage the programs to take a certain objectified form. Humans may exercise their agency to protest against the system they are embedded in, but programs are discarded that do not meet their design specifications. The widespread adoption of such chatbots to fulfil human emotional needs would then mean the widespread propagation of such objectifying tendencies.
Perhaps there is no principled reason why we could not develop chatbots that really behaved like human therapists and romantic partners with their demands and their protests that we cannot ignore. But if the whole reason why these technologies are developed is to help us escape from the messy exactingness of human life, what reason could there possibly be to do that?
As the ancient Israelites made their way through this world, there was a temptation that loomed often. When the demands of God became too difficult, the journey too perilous, the promise too remote, it was tempting to craft a god that was less demanding and more tractable or attractive. Wouldn’t it be nice to get all the benefits of worshipping a god, but one customised to our liking? Yet the Psalmist warns them:
The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.
(Psalm 135:15-18)
If the psalmist is to be believed, to deform one’s object of worship is to dehumanise ourselves. Today, however, we face a different radical possibility: to replace not God but humanity with a more tractable version of itself.
We ought to be no less clear sighted about its perils.
Brandon Yip is a post-doctoral fellow at the Australian Catholic University’s Dianoia Institute of Philosophyand collaborator with the Hyperdigital Designs project.
Which Barbie do you identify with? Stereotypical Barbie, Supreme Court Justice Barbie, Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Barbie? Or perhaps you’re Weird Barbie, Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie, or the Depression Barbie who binge-watches Colin Firth in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice? Or maybe you’re Just Ken (anywhere else I’d be a ten), and you lost interest in the patriarchy when you found out it wasn’t about horses?
Either way, the movie sensation of the summer (sorry Oppenheimer) is as pink and fluffy as candyfloss, but a great deal more thought-provoking. Of course – spoiler alert – like Pinocchio, Barbie ends up wanting to be a Real Boy. The Blue Fairy in this case is the blue-suited Barbie-creator Ruth Handler, complete with a double mastectomy and tax evasion issues. At the crucial moment, the script has Barbie say: “I want to do the imagining, not be the idea.” And off she goes, to visit… the gynaecologist.
This is not news. Every story about humans manufacturing humanoid creatures has this kind of twist, so much so that it is clearly wells up from a deep sense that wanting to be human should be the ultimate goal. It’s an example of a speciesist human exceptionalism, but it is weirdly Normal Barbie for humans to feel special, particularly those who claim the imago dei. Who wouldn’t want to be the subject and not the object? Is it inevitable that any emerging intelligence will yearn for consciousness?
So the recent acceleration in the rise of AI is shaking us to the core, and the UK Government’s 2023 National Risk Register names AI for the first time as a ‘chronic risk.’ Have we lost control of AI already? Is the reign of our species really drawing to an end, or can we seize the initiative before it’s too late? I think we can, and I think the answer is not so much about more regulation as about better design.
Lately, the trend in innovation has been to be inspired by biomimicry, which is about learning from the tried and tested design of nature. We invented Velcro from looking at burrs and teazles; and the bumps on the fins of humpback whales have been used to design out drag in wind turbines. But when it comes to AI, which is also about copying nature – specifically human intelligence – we have not been looking closely enough at what we are trying to copy.
We have completely ignored God’s blueprints. Instead, in our haste to program only the very best of our design into AI, we have left out all the ‘junk code’ – the bits we’re ashamed of, or struggle to understand, like our emotions, uncertainty, and intuition. In fact, I have identified 7 items of ‘junk code’ in which lie the essential magic of our human design and the hallmarks of the human soul.
Our Junk Code
1. Free-will 2. Emotions 3. Sixth Sense 4. Uncertainty 5. Mistakes 6. Meaning 7. Storytelling
If you think about it, Free Will is a disastrous design choice. Letting creatures do what they want is highly likely to lead to their rapid extinction. So let’s design in some ameliorators. The first is emotion. Humans are a very vulnerable species because their young take 9 months to gestate, and are largely helpless for their first few years. Emotion is a good design choice because it makes these creatures bond with their children and in their communities to protect the vulnerable.
Next, you design in a Sixth Sense, so that when there is no clear data to inform a decision, they can use their intuition to seek wisdom from the collective unconscious, which helps de-risk decision-making. Then we need to consolidate this by designing in uncertainty.
A capacity to cope with ambiguity will stop them rushing into precipitous decision-making, and make them seek others out for wise counsel. And if they do make mistakes? Well, they will learn from them. And mistakes that make them feel bad will develop in them a healthy conscience, which will steer them away from repeated harms in future.
Now that we have corrected their design to promote survival, what motivators are needed for their future flourishing? They need to want to get out of bed on a dark day, so we fit them with a capacity for meaning-making, because a species that can discern or create meaning in the world will find reasons to keep living in the face of any adversity (I am even making meaning out of Barbie!). And to keep the species going over generations?
We design in a super-power about storytelling. Stories allow communities to transmit their core values and purpose down the generations in a highly sticky way. The religions and other wisdom traditions have been particularly expert at this. Their stories last for centuries, future-proofing the species through learned wisdom of our ancestors, and the human species prevails.
We had not thought to design humanity into AI because it seemed too messy. A robot that was emotional and made mistakes would soon be sent back to the shop. After all, in the movie, that’s why they tried to box Barbie. But if we pause to reflect, we notice that our junk code is actually part of a rather clever defensive design. If this code is how we’ve solved the ‘control’ and ‘alignment’ problems inherent in our own species, might we not find wisdom in it for solving those problems for AI?
To the theologically informed, it seems that the recent spate of open letters from the authors of AI are full of repentance. They think that naming the idol and suggesting at least its imprisonment by regulation if not its complete destruction will wipe the slate clean and get them all off the hook. But we embarked on this extraordinarily arrogant project with no exit strategy. And while the tools we’ve invented before eased both our lives and our labour, this is arguably the first time we’ve sought to invent a tool to replace ourselves.
Because most AI is in private hands, the truth is we have no idea how far it has already advanced. They only released Chat GPT so we would train it for them, and that has already set the cat among the pigeons. In other AIs, autonomy is about decisions and not just about completing patterns.
Once you programme an AI to re-programme itself, you cede control, and its future choices will only be as good as what you have already programmed into it in terms of basic rules and values. And I am not confident that we spent enough time getting that right before we careered off on this hubristic voyage of discovery.
So what, if anything, do we owe our creation? We should certainly not hold back from it what we know about the very programming that has led to our own flourishing. Our junk code certainly seems to have given us the capacity to thrive, even if we are still a wayward creation.
So given our understanding about doing the imagining rather than being the idea, we also need to protect it from us, and protect ourselves from the botched job we’re currently making of it, through a thoughtful debate not only on design and programming, but also on robot rights. Not because they are human, but because we are.
Chaired by Professor Chris Baker, for an AI panel it is unusually more Barbie than Ken, with Dr Beth Singler, the digital anthropologist and AI expert from the University of Zurich; Dr Jennifer George, a computer scientist and Head of Computing at Goldsmiths in the University of London; and Dr Eve Poole OBE, author of Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity.
2023 marks 40 years since Archbishop Robert Runcie set up the Archbishop’s Commision on Urban Priority Areas. This approach of bringing together a Commission of “the great and the good” to report on a pressing social issue was possibly the last hurrah of the William Temple tradition. It assumed that the established Church had considerable soft power, and could influence national policy. The report made 61 recommendations: 38 of them to the Church of England, and 23 to the government and nation. Almost all the policy recommendations on unemployment, housing, benefits, education, local government, and policing involved increased public spending, and an attempt to empower local urban communities. The underlying assumptions of the report were that a wide consensus around the post-war welfare state, that Temple and his colleagues had promoted, would ensure that progress towards justice, equality and human flourishing would continue.
Faith in the City represented a moment of prophetic truth-telling by the Church of England but Government Ministers labelled it “pure Marxist theology”. The storm surrounding the report exemplified a broader secularist narrative that sought to restrict religion to the private sphere.
Since 1985, Church of England attempts to influence national policy seem much more modest and have had little impact. The Faithful Cities report 20 years later is now largely forgotten. A new report from the Archbishops’ Families and Households Commission ‘Love Matters’ makes a series of recommendations about how families and households can best flourish, but was not even mentioned by the BBC, and a google search reveals only two articles in the secular national press. Where the bishops in the House of Lords have made what might be called “prophetic” comments on issues such as refugees, food poverty or personal integrity of politicians they appear marginal to the prevailing political narrative, or are eclipsed by the interventions of footballers, such as Gary Lineker and Marcus Rashford. The established church can, of course, still do spectacular public rituals like the Queen’s funeral or the Coronation, and in that context deliver a good sermon that points people to Jesus. However, it is more likely than ever to be referenced for scandal or hypocrisy, especially in regard to safeguarding failures. The media wants to concentrate on internal disagreements on sexuality, where large and vocal sections of the church are out of touch with the prevailing culture. The statistics from the Census, and Church attendance data increasingly show an erosion of public support, especially among the young. While some right wing populist politicians advocate a return to “Christian values”, they are weaker than in the USA or parts of Europe, and are fundamentally a statement of white “English” identity, rather than serious Christian commitment. The Church’s soft power is not what it was in 1985, let alone 1945. What would William Temple do today?
Faith in the City on the other hand did have a significant impact on the churches, especially in a wave of urban mission activity over the following two decades. (See our Urban Tract No 1, and recent autobiographies from Laurie Green, and Neville Black). A major achievement was establishment of the Church Urban Fund and its support of local community projects, which continues to this day. The critique of this approach as “salvation by projects” flags up some of the weakness of the report in terms of theology and missiology; all the energy expended in its wake failed in making disciples of inner city people and integrating them into flourishing, self-sustaining urban parishes. The recommendations to the institutional church seemed worthy at the time, but many have come back to haunt us forty years later. The training of leaders, both clergy and lay, to equip them for ministry in urban parishes remains woefully inadequate, despite a few useful initiatives in the immediate aftermath of Faith in the City. The sharing of resources, especially finance, of affluent dioceses and parishes to poorer areas remains a pipe dream. The issue of institutional racism in the church was highlighted, but never adequately addressed. Although recently a new wave of awareness, and activism followed the rise of Black Lives Matter in 2020, the struggles of BAME Anglicans remain a battleground. Additionally, the reality of White Privilege and “whiteness” have been rejected by many who hold power and influence in the Church.
There have been major changes in the urban scene since 1985. Massive regeneration programmes have taken place in major cities such as London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Leeds, particularly around derelict dockland and post industrial areas. Land use has changed, land values have soared, but often original urban communities have been displaced, died out or moved out. Inequality has grown and concentrations of poverty and deprivation are now more likely to be found in peripheral estates, smaller post industrial towns, ex coalfield communities and coastal resorts. Globalisation and large scale immigration has produced a superdiversity of populations in metropolitan areas, and increasingly in smaller cities. The results and reaction to these trends seem somewhat contradictory; on the one hand xenophobia and the Brexit vote, on the other economic and cultural vibrancy in local communities. In the churches, the dominant forces now seem to be new congregations that serve particular ethnic heritage communities, or charismatic groups that attract individual consumers of religion. Yet alongside this, we also witness growing numbers of lively multicultural local congregations and parishes as discussed in John Root’s blog. Research undertaken by Goldsmiths during the pandemic lockdowns suggest that locally there are more opportunities for faith communities to partner in welfare work, as long as no one actually talks explicitly about faith or questions assumptions about equalities as defined in law, or unjust economic inequalities.
To be fair the Church of England, encouraged by Bishop Philip North, has invested new time and finance in estates ministry and the National Estates Churches Network. An attempt has been made to develop an estates theology in a recent book, Finding the Treasure edited by Al Barrett. Personally, I found this rather disappointing in its methodology of experts listening to local voices, rather than the local people leading theological reflection as advocated in Laurie Green’s Let’s do theology. It also fails to connect, and will most likely not be read by Christians who are concerned with making disciples, urban church planting and renewal, and who want to ground their theology in scripture, read, interpreted and applied in local urban contexts.
Such readers will find more resonance in the work of “settler” mission teams associated with organisations such as the Eden Network. I attended a day at their recent Proximity Conference and listened to numerous hopeful stories, sometimes related with what seemed youthful enthusiasm, but which in the light of experience has moved beyond naivety. Anna Ruddick, or Chris Lane have written important books drawn from reflections on involvement in this movement, tracing how long term commitment introduced more realistic expectations and measures of success, and transformed theologies from triumphalism towards a discovery of the Missio Dei in marginal places. It is in such movements that I see signs of God at work, and some of his people getting on board.
It is this sense, rather than in the soft power approach of Temple and the established church, with its condescending “effortless superiority”, that I believe we can still find Faith in the City.
This short book comprises a collection of reflections from the Church of England Estates Theology Project with five case studies from parishes on social housing estates in various urban and suburban settings across England. It is intended to be an encouragement to church leaders working in such settings and to break the stereotype that all is grim and the church is dead or dying in the less affluent areas. It arises from the Anglican commitment promoted by Bishop Philip North to strengthen and renew parish life and spread the gospel among people living in such neighbourhoods. In my opinion (and personal lifelong calling) this is exactly where Christians should be directing their prayers, resources, time and effort, not so much because there is spiritual, social and economic need, but it is in such places that we will find remarkable signs of God at work and encounter Jesus in surprising ways, not just on Sundays. Although this is the message the book attempts to convey, I am not fully convinced it achieves its aim.
First of all, the case studies in the book are exclusively Anglican. This fact will inevitably narrow the potential readership to clergy working in parish settings, and those tasked with training them. The Wythenshawe case study concentrates on a community weaving project based at the William Temple Church. It comes over as a good story of an interesting example of a community art project. At certain points, it touches Christian values and faith. But over the years I have heard or read numerous other accounts of church life in Wythenshawe, from different denominations and mission perspectives, which are not represented in the chapter. As a result I am reminded of a comment originally made by Anne Morissey (who wrote a foreword to the book) about the way the Church of England exudes “a sense of effortless superiority” in its approach to community ministry.
The rest of the book continues in the same vein. The majority of the parishes involved are from a liberal catholic or radical tradition. Only the chapter from Eltham, with input from the Church Army, uses any evangelical language in its theological framing of the local story. Yet in doing so it largely rejects the evangelical priorities of sharing the Gospel, and calling people to repent, believe, follow Jesus and be baptised into the community of his church. Long experience of urban mission has shown there are big problems with such a formulaic approach, and that preaching at people is mostly ineffective. However, if the local church on estates is to survive, become self supporting and self propagating, we should work hard on talking about Jesus, making disciples, strengthening socially diverse worshipping communities, who engage with and serve their neighbourhood, and developing local Christian leaders. There doesn’t seem to be much of this sort of good news reflected in the book, though there are many other places where it is happening.
I find the theological method of the book curious. It is based on pairing an academic theologian with a church leader and trying to listen to the voices of local residents. They reflected on what they heard and produced chapters which still feel rather abstract and academic in style. While listening is always to be recommended, and contextual reflection on local stories is foundational for urban theology, it might have been helpful to use a more participatory approach where local people (Christians and others) worked together to generate conclusions and linking with Bible stories and themes. It is only in the final section of the book that the editor makes reference to Laurie Green’s “Let’s do Theology”, which would have been my personal starting point for the whole project.
Reviewed by Greg Smith, Associate Research Fellow William Temple Foundation and Trustee of Urban Theology Union.
The William Temple Foundation is a broad church. The first of these Temple Takes by fellow trustee, Dr David Shaw, anticipated the Coronation with a pre-emptive strike against the monarchy. Now it is my turn to offer a different take.
This Foundation explores faith in the public square. Coronations have been a prime example of this in action, over a thousand years. This month’s Coronation was more inclusive than its predecessors of diverse denominations and faiths.
While conceding that the monarchy is ‘a good show’, David Shaw notes ‘that ermine and gold braid costs an awful lot of money’. He was not alone in this approach. The Coronation was dismissed as a ‘pantomime’ of ‘obscene lavishness’ by the journalist Suzanne Breen, writing in the Belfast Telegraph.
Yet the Guardian’s exhaustive investigations concluded that the Coronation cost each UK taxpayer about £1.50. If we had been saving up since the previous Coronation, that would have been just over two pence each per year or, if we think instead of creating a sinking fund for the next one, perhaps ten pence each per year.
Since the last Coronation seventy years ago, the USA has held 19 inaugurations for 13 Presidents. These too have an oath, a ceremony, a prayer, a cathedral service the next day, and there are many inauguration balls. Some of the funding in the USA comes from individual supporters, which might be welcomed here, but some of those donors become ambassadors, which would not be. I would like the Prince of Wales, when his time comes, to adopt the model of Edward VII’s Coronation instead, for which the King opened and personally contributed to an appeal which funded a free Coronation Dinner for half a million of the poorest Londoners. William V would ideally extend its reach throughout the UK, realms and territories. The meals went ahead that summer, in hundreds of locations, when the Coronation itself had to be delayed because of the King’s poor health.
William Temple attended that 1902 Coronation as a gentleman-in-waiting to his father, who was then the Archbishop of Canterbury, and played his own part as the Archbishop of York in the 1937 Coronation of George VI. Temple enjoyed three enthronements of his own at Manchester, York and Canterbury, or four if you count the double enthronement in Canterbury as bishop of that diocese and as Primate of All England. Despite it being in wartime, the Canterbury enthronements saw him in what the Church Times described as a ‘magnificent cope and mitre’. There was gold aplenty. None of this stopped him being one of the founders of the Welfare State.
The other point where I beg to differ from David Shaw is when he imagines that defenders of the monarchy would argue that it only has a ceremonial role whereas it is more than that. The second part of his claim is correct, although he only gives examples of what he sees as self-interested interference by the royal family in the political sphere. There are many positive and practical (as opposed here to ‘ceremonial’) contributions by the contemporary constitutional monarchy which celebrate our charities and the arts, which have been prophetic in warning of the climate crisis, which give voice and opportunities to some of the otherwise voiceless on the margins of society, as in the work of the Prince’s Trust, and which bring all faiths into the public square.
Nevertheless, there is nothing necessarily wrong with ceremonial roles and nor is there anything necessarily wrong with ceremonies. Ceremony itself has its place in the public square. Religious ceremonies in particular merit serious study. Yet a pillar of the British establishment, former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, now writing for The Guardian, is more outspoken than David Shaw: ‘Is Britain completely mad? Trying to read meaning into such events is completely hopeless.’
In contrast, Juliet Samuel in The Times, writing in the week before the Coronation, had argued that critics of King Charles III miss the point: ‘What they don’t grasp is why the institution at the centre of this weird ritual, the monarchy, has lasted on and off for more than a thousand years… Where the sceptics see a fuddy-duddy infatuated by new-age nonsense, I see traditional religion informed by modern pluralism.’
Rachel Cooke, in The Observer, could see the pageantry as a ‘preposterous vision’ but considered that, ‘Only a stone-hearted person could fail to have been moved by the multifaith parts of the service, and if you felt nothing when the choir sang Handel’s Zadok the Priest at the king’s anointment, you are either an algorithm or half dead.’
She was also impressed by the military processions’ ‘precision that was unbelievable in a country where nothing works.’ A question for a faith foundation is whether the religious ceremony worked that well. Was it sacramental or quasi-sacramental? Did the anointing bring grace? The sacred music was varied, plentiful and uplifting. Does that make a difference? Was the ritual right? Was the emphasis on service authentic or was it, so to speak, lip-service? Almost nobody approved of the formula in the oath, perhaps not even the King. Nor was the attempt to inveigle us into paying homage well received. When asked if that was his idea, the Archbishop of Canterbury claimed he honestly could not remember. When asked about the gold robes and coach, he did remember that the former were borrowed and that the latter was paid for centuries earlier. He told his interviewer, Julie Etchingham, that there was no need to be miserable about all this.
In all its aspects, each Coronation needs to be reviewed in timely fashion. Meanwhile, if you cannot bring yourself to ponder the faith dimensions of what we have just witnessed, then there are secular rites of passage which have some instructive parallels, such as university graduations. When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, fewer than 4% of the UK’s school-leavers had the opportunity of university education. Nowadays, the figure is more than 50%. With their family members in attendance, this means that more than half the country experience graduation ceremonies. Some of these are in sacred spaces and others also draw on religious liturgies and forms but even the most secular have lessons in understanding the religious Coronation. Some staff might remain, or affect to be, miserable when asked to dress up or otherwise attend but nowadays almost all students, their families and friends find joy in graduations.
It does not need a degree in pageantry to understand the significance in graduations of the medieval gowns, the hoods, the headgear, the university regalia, the music, the formalities of wording, the processions, even in some cases the ermine on a hood or gown or the gold braid on a Chancellor’s gown. Students are burdened by the cost of the degree but only marginally more by any extra cost of graduation tickets for family and friends. They know that gowns and hoods are mostly recycled, as at the Coronation. Those attending can readily understand the concept of a Chancellor, a university’s equivalent to a constitutional monarch, even though they know that the executive power lies elsewhere. Families appreciate the effort to respect a university’s place in the history of education and all their students’ contributions to that community. They value the chance to meet staff, to give thanks and to be thanked for their support.
A Coronation is not just a graduation for the monarch. In a sense, we are all graduands as one era gives way to another. The Coronation was a rite of passage but it was also a leap of faith. Far from it being ‘hopeless’ to read meaning into the Coronation, the meaning was already there. A more charitable reading of our shared experience is that the Coronation extolled the virtue of hope for faith in the public square.
Simon Lee is Professor of Law & Director of Research, Aston Law School; Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence, Queen’s University Belfast; and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the William Temple Foundation
