Closure of Interim Support Scheme
From the Church of England’s National Director of Safeguarding
Madam, — I would like to clarify certain points in the letter from Andrew Graystone (2 April) relating to the Interim Support Scheme set up a number of years ago to provide immediate help and support to survivors and victims whose life circumstances are significantly affected by the abuse suffered and the response to it.
Over this period, the scheme has evolved and has helped more than 160 people, and positive outcomes have been acknowledged. There will be no gap in support offered, as, while the scheme will close to applications this autumn, a new survivor support fund will continue to provide this immediate, short-term support, sitting alongside the Redress Scheme due to open later in the year.
As with any long-running support programme, learning has emerged along the way. Reviews, including the Peter Spindler review, have highlighted that, while the scheme has been beneficial, in some instances it may also have created unintended dependency. In light of this, the Church of England has decided to redesign the scheme so that it continues to offer meaningful support in ways that are sustainable and appropriate.
Victims and survivors will be involved in the co-production of aspects of the scheme, and their voices will be central to the redesign. The Church of England is clear that it remains committed to supporting victims and survivors and to ensuring that the right help is available, including thoughtful and carefully managed transitions where changes are needed.
Communications sent to those currently receiving support were intended to provide, in precisely the way that Mr Graystone commends, early awareness that changes were being planned. They were not intended to suggest that support would end. Rather, they reflect a commitment to continuing support, which we know survivors welcome, while recognising that the way in which this support is provided may look different in the future.
ALEXANDER KUBEYINJE
Church House
London SW1
The Bishop of Leicester’s suggestions for promoting ‘healthy patriotism’
From the Revd R. W. Crook
Madam, — The helpful article by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow (Comment, 17 April), on fostering a healthy kind of patriotism reminded me of my schooldays, when we used Prayers and Hymns for Use in Schools. In that book were a good number of hymns to express our love of, and allegiance to, our country.
I realise that assemblies and, indeed, corporate singing are not what they were in days gone by, but I do believe that we need to recapture that part of what the Bishop refers to as our historical memory. Singing is taking to ourselves sentiments and values that may lie dormant for some time until reawakened by circumstances. To sing is to allow words that may well be dry and lifeless to become part of our emotions and convictions.
Of course, we do this a little when we attend ceremonies on Remembrance Sunday, with “I vow to thee my country” and “And did those feet in ancient time”; but there are others that seem to have faded into the distant past: “Land of our birth, we pledge to thee”, “Rejoice, O land, in God thy might”, and others. In our ongoing hymnody, we need songs and motivation to express this healthy patriotism.
Flying flags on lamp posts may well mean different things to those who put them there, but surely we need to express our faith in hymns, songs, and that which refers our lives to Almighty God and the teachings of our Lord.
R. W. CROOK
Northwich, Cheshire
From Mr Simon Ramacci BEM
Madam, — As a naturalised citizen, I feel proud of my now dual English and Italian identity, though, unfortunately, sometimes I still feel compelled to prove that I am “the right kind of foreigner”.
I have, thankfully, never felt that way in church, but I have noticed that we are often a bit embarrassed about affirming our national identity. I think Bishop Snow’s suggestions in the last issue can go a long way both in moving past such embarrassment and making people like me feel more comfortable with our dual identities.
SIMON RAMACCI
Address supplied
From Professor Andrew Bradstock and Dr Jonathan Chaplin
Madam, — It is helpful to see Bishop Snow addressing head-on the contentious issues of patriotism, nationalism, and the flag of St George. His proposal for a “healthy patriotism” will be advanced if we commit to an inclusive national identity able to embrace all communities making up England’s and Britain’s diverse peoples.
The debate about identity, belonging, and patriotism is not going away, and churches need to offer their distinctive contribution to it — and not just churches: perspectives from all faith traditions need to be heard.
Resources to help with this are not plentiful, but the Faith and England’s National Identities project has published (on its website and on Substack) a range of stimulating essays and blogs from thinkers across the UK faith communities seeking to voice those diverse perspectives.
ANDREW BRADSTOCK
JONATHAN CHAPLIN
Editors, Faith and England’s National Identities project
Centre for English Identity and Politics
University of Southampton
Southampton
David Jenkins and the resurrection of the body
From Mr John Appleby
Madam, — The Revd Jonathan Frais (Letters, 17 April), asserting that the former Bishop of Durham David Jenkins was “unable to affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ”, goes on to say that this rendered him “not appropriate for Christian ministry”. This is a common trope, misrepresenting Jenkins’s stated views.
In a frequently misquoted TV interview, he said clearly that, “Had the resurrection been merely a conjuring trick with bones, [we would not have Christianity].” To emphasise the significance of the resurrection as more than physical, he also cited 1 Corinthians 15 and St Paul’s view of “the spiritual body”, noting also the lack of reference to the empty tomb. That is, a purely physical resurrection was not only not unique in the Gospels, but a claim not unique to Christianity. Moreover, the story of the temptations and other episodes reinforce the message that our faith is not based primarily on physical miracles.
JOHN APPLEBY
Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear
From Canon Stephen Mitchell
Madam, — Until your correspondent the Revd Jonathan Frais tells us exactly what he means by “the bodily resurrection of Christ”, we will not be in a position to tell whether we can affirm it.
For the Gospel narratives to work, Jesus’s body has to be such that the disciples recognise him, but without thinking that he has been resuscitated. Yet his body also has to walk through walls, appear and disappear, and rise up into the sky without the disciples’ thinking that they have seen a ghost.
We can relate it, as a narrative, with conviction and imagination, but that is not the same as saying how or whether such a glorified body could possibly exist. Until such explanation is given, it should remain where it belongs in the Gospel stories.
Meanwhile, we seek, as Bishop Jenkins did, to live the resurrection life within our world and our communities and find the risen Christ in the lives of those around us today.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
Great Waldingfield, Sudbury
Historic connections with see of Canterbury
From Canon Peter Doll
Madam, — While I share the Revd Professor Paul Avis’s concern for the future of the communion of Anglicanism (Comment, 10 April; Letters, 17 April), in view of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, I believe that his accusation of factual historical error in relation to Churches with a “historic connection” with the see of Canterbury is misplaced.
Professor Avis argues that this wording would have excluded both the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Church in the United States. In fact, the Scottish historic episcopal succession was broken in Scotland and restored only in 1610 when three Scottish bishops travelled to England to be consecrated by three English bishops. And, although Samuel Seabury was consecrated by Scottish bishops in 1784 (with the tacit approval of John Moore, the Archbishop of Canterbury), the American Church would not have had its own independent episcopate without the consecration of three further American bishops by Archbishop Moore in 1787 and 1790.
The episcopal succession of the American Church has reunited these two lines ever since.
PETER DOLL
Norwich
Those annual meetings
From Mr Matthew Clements
Madam, — It is welcome that the leader comment (17 April) focuses on matters that directly concern many lay members. I must, however, point out some small issues with what was written.
First, regarding extending the length of time that a churchwarden may serve, the article has perpetuated a common misunderstanding of the Churchwardens Measure 2001, Section 3. This limits a churchwarden’s length of service to six years, but allows the meeting of parishioners to suspend that rule. The Measure does not, however, say that that the suspension resolution has to be made a year beforehand; there is nothing to stop a meeting of parishioners voting to lift that restriction and then, only minutes later, voting in a churchwarden for a seventh year.
Note also that such a motion is not passed by the APCM (as stated) and, even if it was, why would they need “enough nerve”?
Second, the article talks about the length of service for PCC members who are elected for three-year terms but, by saying “limited to three years”, it seems to imply that they cannot be re-elected for further terms, which is incorrect.
Third, PCC members actual trustees with legal responsibilities: it might be inferred from “technically trustees” that this were a minor matter. Even trustees of a PCC that is not a registered charity are still governed by the Charities Act 2011. All trustees are answerable to the Charity Commission. This is why incumbents do not have the legal power to make financial decisions themselves, as that usurps the trustees’ responsibilities in law.
MATTHEW CLEMENTS
Address supplied (Bicester, Oxfordshire)
Poet and pilot who slipped the surly bonds of earth
From the Revd Professor Lee Barford
Madam, — In “Astronauts transcend earthly limits” (Comment, 10 April), Paul Vallely credits Ronald Reagan with paying tribute to a crew of astronauts as having “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God”. Neither President Reagan nor his speechwriters should be credited with these phrases. They are from the sonnet “High Flight” by the American war poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Magee volunteered to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He penned these words in a letter to his parents in September 1941 while stationed at a Royal Air Force base in the south of England. He died that December. The first and last lines of this poem are inscribed on his gravestone in Lincolnshire. Magee’s father, an Episcopalian priest at a church in Washington, DC, had it published. By the war’s end, it was in widespread use in remembering aircrew who had died.
LEE BARFORD
London SW1
The people’s madness
From Mr David Eldridge
Madam, — Dr Claire Gilbert (Notebook, 10 April) asks whether the human family has gone stark staring mad.
As a boy, I remember singing Psalm 65.7, “Who stilleth the raging of the sea: and the noise of his waves, and the madness of the people.”
I think that not enough psalms are said these days, let alone sung.
DAVID ELDRIDGE
Berinsfield, Wallingford
The editor reserves the right to edit letters.
