Social ritual paradigm shift observed

Our second Sunday worshipping live in church at St Catherine's this morning, so good to see Fr Rhys and Mthr Frances at the altar ministering together. There was something comforting in hearing banns read for two couples, who are going to marry in their parish church fairly soon. It's a small sign of the return to the 'new normal'. The words and form of a wedding ceremony won't change, but the way the rite is performed has to change because of the requirement for social distancing.

The routine formality of banns calling is so easy to forget when lots is happening in and around the liturgy, so you remember late or are given a nudge by a member of the choir who noticed, just when you've processed in to start the service. Then you have to go back, hunt for the banns book in the sacristy, and slip back to your place during the first hymn. Not today however, with Mthr Frances up in the pulpit reading them before she and Rhys entered to start a service without music or procession. We were thirty adults and half a dozen children again, same as last week, same faces.

Calling banns was much easier in my younger days when parishes employed a verger cum clerk to support the Vicar and look after basic admin tasks. The last time I had that pleasure was thirty years ago in Halesowen. On the whole, when doing interregnum duties, church wardens are keen to ensure everything runs as normal, they know they must brief the locum cleric in every detail each time. The number of weddings in church has slumped catastrophically. It began to be noticeable in the nineties. Some parishes go several years without a church wedding nowadays, so when one is being proposed it's something people in much smaller congregations know about and take an interest in.

After the decline in church weddings began, the demand for funerals with a minister of religion didn't slack off noticeably, with the decline in church membership. In the new millennium however, things have begun to change, with the emergence of desire for secular rituals and growth of a new class of celebrants to offer non-religious people formal ceremonies, arranged with family members. When the churches denied the possibility of gay marriage and ceremonies, secular celebrants could help to devise rituals surrounding core legalities. Likewise, bespoke secular funeral ceremonies. 

Bereaved families have come to expect a wider range of choice in the trappings and content of a funeral service. Clergy have come to accommodate most consumer demand on pastoral grounds.  Such freedom of choice has led many to realise that having a church minister is no longer the default option, as the number of secular humanist celebrants available has increased. Pandemic restrictions on church funerals has had a significant impact, and the demand on secular humanist celebrants has increased and they are busier than ever, despite the fact their charges are double, so I've been told. 

As there are fewer overworked clergy covering more ground, and less available to respond to the full weight of pastoral need, it's an inevitable trend, likely to continue after pandemic restrictions have been lifted and maybe long after. Clergy by vocation are committed to serving the wider community, planting and nurturing church fellowship and worship. The focus for Humanist celebrants is response to particular family need and demand. It's no bad thing, but what are the long term consequences for the loss of the pastoral presence in the community?

My afternoon walk took me up to the Cathedral again. Another retired cleric, a contemporary of mine entered just after me. Perhaps it's something many of us do now we have time. Even though there's no Evensong to attend, there's still the sunlight dappled nave to rest and pray in for a while. Meanwhile the footpaths along the Taff and through the parks are busy with families appreciating the freedom to walk and talk together outdoors.

  

Waiting on Parliament and on God

I've been following events in Parliament closely this past few days and will do for the rest of this critical week in European politics. I follow just as closely what media reports and the commentariat have to say about it. It's hard to know which group is the more worrying of the two. 

For ages it's seemed to me that MPs are dimly aware or ill informed on all the consequences of decisions they are required to take, often less interested in the common good than in preserving self-interests. Journalists and interviewers often seem poorly briefed, not quite up to date, and utterly devoted to over-simplifying every issue, and enforcing binary options to which an instant response is required from their unfortunate victim. 

I find myself reluctant to trust the majority of public voices, whether elected or employed in the media, to speak the whole truth in the service of all citizens. It's argued that all this disagreement, division and harsh debate about the way forward for the country is what democracy is about. What I see is elite groups struggling for control, not for a unifying consensus, setting a bad example that exacerbates existing social division in the population. It's recipe for civil strife if many on both sides of the brexit debate feel their voices are unheard and don't get what they thought they wanted from the outcome of this agonising process. 

Britain is no longer a society in which Christian moral values and spiritual influence set the tone or give a lead in nurturing a more just and equal society. We have become to a much greater extent a multi-faith and plural culture, tolerant in some respects, but overly lax and permissive in others. The total proportion of people of any faith who practice their religion and apply its teaching is perhaps a quarter of the population. To have a secular environment in which all believers enjoy equal respect and treatment can be beneficial to the common good, but at what price? To have secularism as a dominant ideology fostering individualism, striving to discredit and exclude religious thought and influence from the public debate, poses a grave danger. 

It's all too easy for cultured despisers of religion to dismiss the faith perspective on the grounds of differences in beliefs and the awful conflicts these have generated, and ignore elements of different religious paths on which believers do unite in pursuit of truth justice, equality and goodness. The idea of Christendom is a lost cause, but the spiritual reality of God's kingdom, and human beings as God's children transcends culture and religion. I believe it can and should be worked towards by all people of faith, thinking and working together for the common good, regardless of differences. And to make any fresh impact on the wider world, every household of faith has to set its own house in order, purge itself of deceit, corruption and exploitation. Believers in God have lost so much of their credibility, it's easier said than done to restore it, maybe beyond us humans, but not beyond God. So, it's a matter of watching and waiting on God for the kingdom to break through - yet again.