My dear sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus,

This meeting of our diocesan synod follows so closely upon the recent meeting of the Church of Ireland General Synod that it is not practical to undertake today the work allocated to us by the General Synod. The Synod passed a resolution requesting each diocesan synod to consider the findings of the Scoping Study undertaken in connection with the Sectarianism Education Project and entitled ‘The Hard Gospel’. I intend to make arrangements for a special meeting of our Diocesan Synod to be held in the autumn so that the findings of the Study can be presented, its implications considered and our responses collated to meet the deadline of January 2004. Every member of the Diocesan Synod will receive a copy of the Study in due course allowing ample time to reflect upon its contents before we meet again.

The meeting of our Diocesan Synod resembles a family gathering in certain ways. When we assemble and meet together we exchange news of the family and views on the state of Church and Society. A good deal of news is to be found within the pages of the Books of Reports. Other news will come in the form of speeches and presentations to the Synod. I want to focus critically in my Presidential Address upon the moral and philosophical state of our society and especially on the family.

I recently read a statistic quoted on the sleeve notes of a book by Joanna Trollope (‘Other People’s Children’) to the effect that in the United Kingdom by the year AD2010 a majority of children will grow up in step families. This is one result of extremely high levels of marital breakdown followed by divorce and remarriage, along with the seeming serial exchange of partners among some co-habiting couples. The implications of all this in respect of societal instability, the experience of family, and the sheer trauma inflicted upon vulnerable and impressionable children, remains incalculable but must be enormous.

It will seem to some a tired cliché, and yet one that I believe we need to restate, that the family is the fundamental building block of community and society. Yet we live in an age which has redefined the concept of family so that the model preferred by many resembles not so much John-Boy and the Waltons, but ‘Friends - the peer group family of Chandler, Joey, Ross, Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel. Nowadays, family as a support system is as likely to be drawn from work colleagues, or from amongst one’s socially mobile acquaintances, as from the members of one’s biological family. The biological family is often characterised as a failing institution, fractured by divorce, dysfunction and distance.

Divorce and dysfunction themselves, together with considerations of expense, have convinced many - perhaps a majority - of contemporary, risk-averse young people that marriage is a poor option. Couples choose the supposed freedom of setting up house together with a minimum of commitment, and without the burdensome additional expense of a costly wedding with its attendant risk of costly and traumatic divorce if, as they half fear or anticipate, the union cannot be sustained. Furthermore, they recognize that the benefit system no longer in any significant way favours marriage. They also recognize that little social stigma attaches either to the state of cohabitation or to what once would have been called illegitimacy. There are residual legal advantages and safeguards (especially in respect of inheritance,) built into matrimony and still protected by the law, but these have become much reduced. Add to this the feminist disapprobation of marriage as a form of oppression, the unfettered availability of contraception, and abortion, (more or less on demand even for residents of Northern Ireland,) and we face the most radical social change imaginable right at the heart of our social structure. The change is likely to continue if parliament moves to provide for the registration of civil partnerships. Arguably, in my judgment, these changes pose as great a challenge to society as drugs of addiction, alcohol and tobacco put together.

I believe, therefore that we need coherently to restate fundamental criteria and priorities for wholesome human personal and social relationships. The Church’s contribution will be informed by biblical and in particular New Testament values but it must be articulated in ways which command attention and respect in a sceptical world. Here are what I believe to be essential criteria:

• Society should aspire to and be prepared to advocate (I say advocate rather than impose) high moral values. For society to be at its best it must aim high. Christians believe that the teaching and example of Christ and the standards of the New Testament embody the highest possible human aspiration. It is therefore the Christian’s responsibility to live by the teaching, example and standards we claim to believe in. We cannot advocate to others standards we decline to embrace for ourselves. Fundamental to all that Christ taught is the priority and obligation of love, not as mere gratification but as the power and motivation for the offering of trust and service.
• Christians believe in the divinely inspired institution of the family at the heart of which is the formation of a loving, permanent relationship by mutual consent of one man with one woman to the exclusion of all others.
• This relationship is most perfectly embodied and expressed in the institution of marriage which embraces not only consent expressed privately by the couple to one another but also the public signification and recognition of that consensual, exclusive and permanent relationship before the community and by the community. Such relationships represent the desirable norm in society except for those called to a life of celibacy.
• That form of cohabitation in which couples commit themselves to each other in a loving, consenting, exclusive, permanent relationship is a form of commitment less complete than marriage, and therefore not the same as marriage, but is, nevertheless, a state of life which may be chosen in good conscience and is deserving of respect. Christians may find it curious that permanently committed cohabiting couples choose not to solemnize their relationship in a public ceremony but their right not to do so should be respected just as the relationship of those choosing civil marriage is accepted and respected.
• Forms of cohabitation which lack a commitment to permanence and exclusivity, and worse still are marked by promiscuity or a casual attitude to love and trust are irresponsible, antisocial and undeserving of respect.
• Marriage, which involves the public declaration, signification and ratification of a pre-existing private contract ‘now to be married’, is a state preferable to cohabitation, both because of the public dimension to the relationship and, in the case of marriages conducted in the context of a religious ceremony, because appropriate expression is given to the spiritual dimension of the relationships of the couple, the respective families and the wider community. Marriage is, thereby, a more complete and supportive context for the care and nurture of children.
• Nevertheless, whether in the context of marriage or of cohabitation, the best conditions for family life and the procreation, care and nurture of children are always to be found within stable loving and permanent heterosexual partnerships which by their nature provide positive female and male role models marked by commitment, mutuality, responsibility and love.
• Instability in the domestic unit, whether within marriage or among cohabiting couples is inherently damaging to the couple, to the children, to the extended families and to wider society, but no human relationships are immune from the ravages of sin. Promiscuity, adultery, violence and neglect are forms of abuse which damage and demean the abuser as well as the abused. It is frankly immaterial whether such abuse is perpetrated inside or outside matrimony, it always involves abuse of love and trust which are the key elements of human and societal relationships.
• Relationships should be entered into responsibly, sincerely and trustfully, and never as a consumer option merely to gratify transient appetite. The ready availability of contraception and abortion calls for, rather than dispenses with, mutual responsibility.
• The exploitation of the sex instinct through pornography and the activities of what is often now referred to as the “sex industry” is degrading and damaging to society. In particular it encourages the trivialisation of the sex act, the chief purpose of which, along with procreation, is positively to sustain and deepen the mutually loving relationship of a couple. Sex and human intercourse ought not to be portrayed or treated as a commodity for to do so degrades humanity and condones exploitation as individuals are deprived of their human dignity, robbed of their personhood and traded as abject objects.

You may wonder why I have expressed myself at such great length on these matters and yet have said almost nothing about Christianity and Mission. My reasons are that I passionately believe that something must be said about the state of interpersonal relationships and the upbringing of children within our society, and also that the widespread casualisation of relationships is indicative of a wider moral and philosophical problem summed up in the overused term ‘postmodernism’.

It may well be that the chronic instability in contemporary personal relationships, the loss of confidence in commitment and with it the loss of confidence in marriage and other forms of social institution is a symptom of the restlessness and collapse in confidence that characterises the mood that is post-modernism. Post-modernism is, in a sense, a declaration that things don’t work, that science does not keep its promises and even that social progress is a myth and prosperity is no panacea for happiness. Thus post-modernism enters an absolute denial of the validity of any and all universal truth claims and the appropriateness or applicability of ‘meta-narrative’. In other words, in our post modern world, truth is deemed to be relative and what is true for you may not be true for me; and furthermore that no single universal account of reality, be it scientific or religious is persuasive and can command respect, rather truth claims and meta-narrative constitute a form of oppression and should be resisted.

This pervasive climate makes the traditional concept of evangelism - persuasive verbal proclamation with an appeal to the authority of an historic text - deeply problematical. Nevertheless, I regard mission, with its goal evangelisation, and its primary tools the ministry of word and sacrament, as an absolute priority for the good of society and as the core task of the apostolic community, the Church. We must tackle the issue, therefore, of what should be the shape of and approach to mission in the post modern era. In this regard, I give notice of my intention to hold a Clergy Conference for all the serving clergy of Connor Diocese at the end of January 2004. The principal theme will be mission and evangelism in the post modern era, allied to an introduction to the new Book of Common Prayer due for publication in Spring 2004.

In my judgment, one of the marks of a new approach to mission will be a rediscovery of incarnational theology rooted in church life that is an authentic expression of the Gospel and the values of the Kingdom. We shall never successfully argue for the truth of the Gospel, we shall only commend its truth by the authenticity and integrity of our living. Christendom has ended, no one is required to believe, nor is there any social, political or economic advantage in belief. People will come to faith not by word of mouth but by meeting the Living Lord.

I offer you a parable, recorded by that great yet humble missionary, theologian and bishop, John Taylor:

The story is told of an Indian catechist at the end of the 19th Century dismissed for some minor misdemeanour. Burdened with shame, knowing he would never again dare to preach, the man left the area and went off to some far-off village where there was no Christian community at all. There, where he was completely unknown, where malicious Christian gossip could never reach him, he settled down and made his living as a potter. The Church never heard of him again and he died there. Years later it was decided to send a team of evangelists to that very place. They rented a house and began to tell the stories of Christ. They were amazed when a crowd of villagers responded eagerly, “We know the man you are talking about! He lived here for years!” “No,” said the preachers, “you don’t understand. We are talking about Jesus Christ.” “Well,” answered the people, “he never told us his name. But the man you describe is our potter without a doubt.” Bishop Taylor’s fable rightly celebrates the power of life lived humbly and simply to the glory of God. Two other short stories amplify the point about the comparative power of word and example:

The first tells of a strange meeting between St Francis of Assissi and the great and devout Saracen leader Sala’din. The Sultan is reported to have said, “If I ever meet a second Christian like you I would be willing to be baptized, but, sadly, I know there is no danger of that.”

The second tells of a horrible incident less that three hundred years later. It involves the Inca King in Peru and a Franciscan friar who was accompanying the Conquistadores. The friar’s offer to the vanquished Incas was the terrible one of conversion or death. When the Inca King demurred, his hands were cut off and the appeal was then repeated: “Be baptized and you will go to heaven.” “No,” said the King, “for if I went to heaven I might meet another Christian like you.”

Whatever about the loathsome theology of a world long left behind, the conclusion is apposite and inescapable, the touchstone for mission especially in our confused post modern world: only a Christlike Church can really preach what John Taylor calls the Christlike God. Let us learn that lesson and reflect upon it as we meet in synod.