Can you feel I'm going to say something sunshine-y now?
This Synod has been notable for providing 'induction' for us newbies. This has extended to zoom sessions as well as on-site stuff - and has been well received and much appreciated. Please note - the Business Committee didn't have to wait for someone to whinge about the provision they hadn't made and how difficult it was to acclimatise. There was thoughtful and on occassion inspired provision. Thank you.
This afternoon we have passed a motion to enable more young people to be part of Synod. With our eyes wide open we have acknowledged that to be a younger church and a younger Synod of that church people will have to step back and let others have a go. This might seem a no brainer. In one way it is. But as a 50 yeard old who has spend her life in the Anglican church, and has spent much of the last 15 years of ordained ministry being reminded she is "young", and is still now sometimes told that she's not old enough for some things....... there is culatural complexity to be overcome.
We wait and wait until it is our turn to speak - only to suddenly be told that if we were smart, or interesting or competent we would not have waited - and not it is too late.
I have also been part of several conversation with very varied groups about the 'tone' of Synod. General consensus from people of many different perspectives seems to be that Synod has got nastier in the last 5 years. This is interesting because I think it points to a broader cultural movement. The current Synod, elected in 2021, is undoubtedly loaded with folks who are here because of LLF (Living in Love and Faith) - from either side of the debate. You might quite rightly expect things to be feisty. But anecdote says this predates the present Synod.
My feeling is that this is not a unique Church phenomena - but goes back to something I heard the sociologist Grace Davie say in the early days of my ordained ministry. She argued that despite increased secularisation and decreases in church attendance - the Church of England - those who worship in it and engage in it's ministry and leadership - are not uniquely different from the culture surrounding us. When people accuse the church of being exclusive, patriarchal, homophobic, racist, ablist, classist and the rest - they are not wrong - and it is not OK. Davie's argument was that even in our smaller, less central position, we are not an enclave for these problems amid a fair, just and inclusive wider culture. Instead she suggests we reflect the continuing presence of these problems in our wider culture and society.
Add to this the polarisation of our culture in the last 10 years - the impact of populism and post-truth - the resulting difficulty in engaging in respectful, nuanced and open minded debate - debate that holds the possibility of compromise or changed minds.
The question for me is how to function well here in service of God and God's people now - despite and through all this. How to encourage and enable the young people we spoke of and others whose voices are still not represented, into a Synod culture which reflects not mereley the fractures of the world, but the wholeness we find in Christ's counter-cultural Good News. I feel that some of this is about disengaging with unhelpful dialogue, as much as it is about discerning the places where good progress, good dialogue, good debate can be modeled.
This is not a manifesto - or even a complete thought. It is thinking out loud. No doubt not the last blog from this Synod.
