However, membership of the House of Bishops was a major commitment. I disapproved of clergy isolating themselves from the wider Church by not attending Synods and diocesan events, and had expressed myself forcefully on that point at times. I therefore believed it was my duty to make the House of Bishops a priority in my diary. It was later to be a sadness during my time as Archbishop that this commitment was by no means universally shared. There were always a few who took their attendance at meetings of the House of Bishops lightly, and this seemed to me symptomatic of the state of the clergy generally – a half-hearted commitment to the institutional Church, suggesting a weak understanding of a theology of obedience.
Notwithstanding this, I quickly came to the conclusion that if one’s commitment to the House of Bishops was formed with reference to the actual quality of its meetings, truancy was entirely understandable. They seemed to be arranged so as to forbid participation. Organised as it was then by Derek Pattinson, Secretary General of Synod, conduct of business seemed limited to the two Archbishops, a few senior Bishops, and those who were bold enough to speak up and who sat close enough to the front to understand what was going on. The rest sat in the semi-circular chamber facing a large table behind which the two Archbishops, Derek Pattinson and a few lay staff sat. There were no microphones to aid communication.
Robert made no secret of the fact that the House of Bishops bored him, and allowed the Archbishop of York, John Habgood, to take the lead on the majority of occasions. John had a very quiet voice, which added to the already overwhelming atmosphere of an impenetrable club in which new members could barely hear what was said, let alone contribute. Consequently few did, in many cases because they were too terrified to speak up unless invited to do so.
I remember being greatly struck in my early days in the House of Bishops by three of my senior colleagues whose rhetorical skills were outstanding, but were not always employed constructively. David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham, could always be relied upon to speak entertainingly and often brilliantly, but I felt that he had spent so many years in academic teaching that his concerns were not always grounded in real life and the experience of people in his diocese. Bill Westwood, Bishop of Peterborough, was popular with the media and was also effective in raising emotions in the House, but he worried me by his tendency to pour doubt on all diocesan efforts to raise funds or enthusiasm. ‘We have tried it in Peterborough and it doesn’t work,’ seemed to be his constant and discouraging refrain. I recall arriving at a House of Bishops late one day because of a train delay, and asking Bill, ‘How’s it going?’ To which he replied, ‘All right, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be a Christian here.’ I thought that was a little rich. David Lunn, Bishop of Sheffield, a fierce defender of the Prayer Book and of Catholic life, was another whose eloquence was often unintentionally destructive through its gloomy diagnoses and assumptions. I have often wondered if the three men realised how negative they appeared to be.
Although these three Bishops did not represent mainstream thought in the House of Bishops, they undoubtedly affected its mood, as pessimism and despondency always will. Mark Santer, Bishop of Birmingham, was one of the most articulate and probing of the Bishops and a joy to hear, especially on ecumenical matters. David Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool, and Jim Thompson, at that time Bishop of Stepney, spoke up passionately for the Church’s involvement in society, and were very much behind the report Faith in the City which had caused such a furore a few years before, and which was about to take a practical form through the implementation of one of its recommendations, the Church Urban Fund.
The Church Urban Fund was a test of our mettle as Bishops, and although a majority of us voted to go ahead with it, I was troubled by a clear lack of enthusiasm among some of our number. We were not agreed on the principle of raising substantial funds for the urban Church, and some were convinced that the proposed figure of £20 million could not be raised in the economic climate of the late 1980s. It was a moderate triumph that we eventually agreed to raise this sum, which in my view was a very modest goal. The Fund was launched in Westminster Abbey in 1989, and attracted great publicity because there was so little government money going into urban development at the time. That the Church of England was prepared to pour so much money into our cities was a vigorous sign of our mission to the nation.
As far as Bath and Wells was concerned, our mainly rural diocese was expected to raise £350,000, which to my delight we managed relatively easily. Indeed, we gave £500,000 to CUF, and could have raised much more. Most dioceses reached their targets with ease, and in some cases – Oxford and Lichfield – raised substantially greater sums which were used to fuel diocesan projects. It has always seemed to me a pity that we had not started with the aim of raising twice as much money, although that would have met many objections.
As it happened, the way the Fund operated meant that far more than £20 million was given to our cities. Because a great number of the grants were offered on a matching basis, or initiated other giving, it is possible that the CUF in reality made £40 million available. Later, as Archbishop, I was able to see at first hand what a difference the Fund made to our mission. I recall visiting Barking and Dagenham, and seeing six CUF projects. I was amazed to find so many people in those churches supporting the vulnerable. When I asked the Archdeacon of West Ham, Tim Stevens, what difference the Fund had made to my old haunts, he replied simply, ‘It has made us credible.’ On the present level of funding grants, the CUF will come to an end in 2007. Will the Church have the courage and faith to relaunch it? We shall see.
If I had worries that Church of England Bishops were disunited, my experience of the Lambeth Conference of 1988 raised major questions in my mind about the state of worldwide Anglicanism. As the Conference fell just seven months after I had taken up office as Bishop, I was one of the newest there, and found myself rubbing shoulders with such giants as the Nobel Prize-winning Desmond Tutu and many others. On the face of it the Conference was a splendid show of Anglican strength and the growth of the Communion, especially in the developing world. I was, and am, proud to belong to a tradition which emphasises incarnational ministry among the very poor and the distressed. Desmond’s outstanding ministry in South Africa was greatly applauded, as was the fine work of Archbishop David Gitari in Kenya, whose bold condemnation of corruption had put him at great risk. Archbishop Robin Eames’s attempts to reconcile divided communities in Northern Ireland were also honoured, as was Bishop Samir Kaffity’s impassioned representation of the Palestinians.
But there was another side to Lambeth 1988, in spite of Robert Runcie’s gentle, wise and humorous leadership. I saw for the first time how easy it is for contentious matters to be ‘spun’ by the press. There were a number of Bishops who were able to use the media very cleverly. Bishop Jack Spong, Bishop of Newark in the United States, was particularly adept at getting his message across. A charming and handsome man, he was so often speaking to the media about the ordination of women and homosexuality that he was invisible as far as the Conference itself was concerned. The Bishop of London, Graham Leonard, was equally determined to promote his opposition to the ordination of women. Richard Holloway, the Bishop of Edinburgh, was the other media star turn of the Conference. But while all three were successful in getting the ear of the wider public, they gave a misleading impression of what was happening within the Conference itself. In the background was an awareness that Provinces such as England were preparing to introduce legislation to ordain women as priests, and that others such as the United States were already thinking beyond this, to the ordination of practising homosexuals.
Cultural divisions between First and Third World Bishops became apparent at the Conference. These were brought to a head in an absorbing debate between David Jenkins of Durham and David Gitari of Nairobi. Both speakers were excellent, but the evening belonged to the developing world, as David Gitari spoke with real fire and passion, whereas, as I wrote in my diary that evening: ‘David Jenkins’ address was brilliant but had no cutting edge or call to discipleship.’ To me, it simply lacked Christian conviction.
Lambeth ’88 will always be remembered as the Conference at which Bishops of the developing countries ‘came of age’ and spoke with confidence and authority. They were no longer prepared simply to make up the numbers, or to take orders from white Bishops. They were the ones bearing the heat of persecution or the cost of poverty, and this gave them an authority