Month: January 2025

Another day, another story about the Church of England. This time the Bishop of Liverpool has retired, following allegations of sexual harassment of two women, one a bishop. The Bishop of Liverpool denies the allegations; they were apparently investigated by the police and no action was taken and there was no action taken following a Church of England Safeguarding investigation. However, the fact that there was no realistic prospect of a criminal conviction (the police) nor any issue with vulnerable people (safeguarding) does not address whether there were other issues of dubious conduct. This could have been investigated by a disciplinary enquiry following a complaint. It would have allowed all parties to put their cases, both the women and the bishop. One of the women did make such a complaint, but there is a time deadline for reporting such matters. My understanding is that the complaint was made outside of this; the matter seems to have gone to a judge to adjudicate and he ruled that the case could not proceed. In this he was following due legal process, which is necessary to ensure fairness to all parties. Thus we have ended up with the situation where nobody can get satisfaction because every option is flawed. 

It is easy when news stories break to just judge them by the headline and our natural urge is to seek heroes or victims and villains. Sometimes however the truth is more complex; we are faced with situations where whatever is done will be an uncomfortable compromise. In the Twitter/X culture in which we live there is no room for this. We are all the poorer.

Rev David Poyner

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a local resident. She had taken her son into one of our churches. Once there, he just sat, not moving. Eventually he spoke, of how beautiful the place was. He could never remember being in a church before, now he was overwhelmed. Apparently he had no wish to come to a service, but he did want to go into other churches, to sit and be still.

I do not know what words this person would use to describe what he discovered in the church; quite possibly “God” would not be one of them. But in that moment, God connected with him, whatever he thought it was. God does not need a preacher to reach out to his/her people.

Rev David Poyner

Sent to me this week by a colleague: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, which is pretty much everyone, since I’m clearly not you, God. At least not the last time I checked.

And while you’re at it, God, please give me the courage to change what I need to change about myself, which is frankly a lot, since, once again, I’m not you, which means I’m not perfect.

It’s better for me to focus on changing myself than to worry about changing other people, who, as you’ll no doubt remember me saying, I can’t change anyway.

Finally, give me the wisdom to just shut up whenever I think that I’m clearly smarter than everyone else in the room, that no one knows what they’re talking about except me, or that I alone have all the answers.

Basically God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I’m not you.

Amen.

R

“Truth” is much in the news at the moment, particularly as regards the big social media platforms; what is true and who decides that? Sometimes truth is simple to decide, where it hinges on a verifiable fact, but this is not always the case.  There are “moral truths” on which we base society; thus the famous opening lines of the US constitution; “We hold these truths to be self-evident”. This immediately raises questions as to why something is “self-evident”; who decides? Most, if not all, of our self-evident truths are derived from the major world religions. In the West, the concept of human rights ultimately can be traced back to the belief that all are made in the image of God and that give us intrinsic value. As religious beliefs retreat, some are starting to realise that the foundations of our society are being left exposed. This is not an argument for the existence of God, but perhaps it does show why we seem to have evolved to need faith and the problem we have to face if that is abandoned.

Rev David Poyner

It is traditional for any vicar to write something in January about New Year resolutions. Every year I have the same problem, because I have never made a resolution for the New Year; how can I improve on my current state of perfection?…. The truth is that I do not make resolutions because I know that I will never keep them; I have a (partial) grasp of my own limitations. 

One of the mantras in today’s world is about “being the best you can be”. On one level, it is hard to argue with this as an aspiration and it is a line I sometimes use when trying to encourage others. However, like empty New Year resolutions, it can be dangerous, when the person has an unrealistic vision of just what they are capable of being. It needs to be tempered with reality; that sometimes we will fail and we have to accept that some things are beyond us. Perhaps this is where one of the insights of Christianity can help. We believe that in some sense, we are all made in the image of God, God who is perfection. But for a whole range of reasons, that image is marred; as humans, after we are born things will very soon start to go wrong. But we are still loved and cherished by God despite all our failures and imperfections. We cannot always be the best we would like to be, our resolutions are often doomed to fail, but we are all still precious.

Rev David Poyner