Press Releases
The Changing Ethos of the Church of Ireland A challenge for parishes and schools
Address by The Most Reverend Dr Richard Clarke, Bishop of Meath and Kildare
I have often felt that the second last refuge of the scoundrel is, when asked to read a paper on a specific subject, then to redefine the title into oblivion. I promise not to do that, but I do want us at the outset to look very carefully at this word ethos which features so prominently in so much of our discussion, but which may also, I think, be at the very heart of our confusion and uncertainties, when we ask ourselves just what our national schools are actually for.
The word ethos is, as it happens, a particular bête noire of mine. It seems to smack not only of intentional imprecision, but of outright evasion. In other words, we are using a word which cannot be defined or analysed, because we are not quite sure what we want it to mean. It's all rather like Humpty-Dumpty inAlicewho claims that when he uses a word, it means what he takes it to mean, neither more nor less. In our use of the word ethos, it is usually less.
I want us therefore to think instead of two words which, taken together, explain, I happen to believe, what ethos probably means. And both are words which we seem strangely hesitant to use.
The first is faith and the second is culture, and I want us to put the two together into a single, rather Germanic-sounding construct, and to think of a faith-culture as being what ethos means or should mean.
I have said that both the words are ones which we tend to avoid in such discussions : faith because it sounds too religious, and culture because it sounds too elitist.
However, faith is ultimately what any Church community is about, and if there is any point whatsoever in attaching the label ‘Church of Ireland’ to anything, it cannot be totally devoid of a faith content, however much people might wish it otherwise. And I am using the word culture in its neutral and technical sense, meaning not Mozart, Rembrandt or Shakespeare, but culture as that which sociologically gives an identity to a particular group of people in a particular setting at a particular time.
Now, if we combine those two ideas and speak of a faith-culture of the Church of Ireland, it seems to me that we may be on a far firmer footing, particularly if we try to conceive of faith-culture almost as a spectrum. Because those two notions, faith and culture, cannot be separated indefinitely. They must affect each other and influence each other.
No inherited faith is totally unrelated to, and uninfluenced by, the world in which it is expressed. You cannot hold any faith in total isolation from the outside world, unless you are living in a ghetto (and again, I am trying to use the word ‘ghetto’ with no pejorative overtones). And , as a corollary, any culture, any collective identity, will inevitably reflect underlying faith values of some kind, even if these are not specifically religious values.
So I want to suggest that when we talk of a Church of Ireland ethos, we are thinking of a Church of Ireland faith-culture, something which contains both the content of a particular religious understanding - a faith, and also the expression of an identifiable way of being in the world which relates to that faith - a particular culture. Because it is a spectrum, where we place ourselves within that spectrum is of clear importance. Let’s look at both ends.. Yes, if we were to ask some people at one end of the spectrum why we should have Church of Ireland schools, the answer would be clear - "To keep our children within the fold of our faith and to keep them from exposure at an impressionable age to any other expression of faith, namely Roman Catholic." and , yes, at the other end of the faith-culture spectrum, there are certainly those who would see Church of Ireland schools as a good thing because they seem to protect a kind of benevolent and very civilised humanism, which we can rely on not to overdo the religion bit. I have to say that, taken to their extremes, both those positions are untenable. Why?
If we move to the very end of the faith spectrum, and see national schools as only for imparting one particular denomination’s understanding of the Christian faith, then we are talking about Sunday School on weekdays, and it must be questioned whether normal education could proceed - after all, we don’t have Church of Ireland maths or Church of Ireland geography. We may indeed have had a Church of Ireland view of history for some considerable time, but fortunately that is today less apparent. But to think that our schools are only to keep our children protected from alien influences shows an appalling lack of confidence in what the Church of Ireland is, and what contribution it has to make to a country at large. In the present day, we cannot support denominational schooling only as a way of keeping our children as a separate caste. I am sure that there would be some who would wish that schools, national and secondary, would work almost as pre-matrimonial agencies, what I have described elsewhere as the Giant Panda syndrome. [Like giant pandas, keep that other endangered species, our young people, together, and eventually genes will take over and they will marry "the right way", as it was traditionally called, and the species will be saved.] That, I know, is an exaggeration, but how much of one? In a fast-moving, mobile changing world in which we live, we must surely believe that we have something to give to the country in which we live other than our survival. I do not mean this in terms of proselytising. But if we do not believe that we have any purpose as a Church, other than simply to survive as a label, let us arrange the funeral for the Church of Ireland now.
On the other hand, if we move to the other end of the spectrum, and think in terms of ethos as a particular culture alone, with no relationship to faith values, we are talking only of the liberal humanism of the Dublin chattering classes. [I can say that as a Dubliner by birth and upbringing, but I cannot say that it is a particularly important value to purvey.] and there is, as we all know, an acute danger that this is seen as an attraction of the Church of Ireland national school and the Church of Ireland secondary school for many people - that their children will get a good education without being disturbed by too much serious religion. I happen to believe that, in the first place, if we are to have a system of denominational education, it is not the business of the Church of Ireland to provide a benign but godless liberalism with no underlying value system. But nor do I believe that such a culture can survive for long. Unlike many post-modernists, I happen to believe that every culture must have some underpinning structure of values, even if they are not religious values. I will try to give two examples of why I say this.
One is the present situation in what was formerly the USSR. For over seventy years, a Soviet culture was sustained by a faith, not a religious faith, but a Marxist-Stalinist faith. The removal of that underlying value system, as much as of that particular economic structure, has meant that there has been a disintegration which is far more than political or economic - it is also cultural.
Far nearer home, if we think of the extraordinary scenes in Britain that followed the death of Princess Diana, what I believe we were seeing was a culture which had long since abandoned any links with an underpinning system of values, frantically searching for a re-connection with meaning, and, in the broadest sense, with faith. So a culture cannot indefinitely remain rootless, disconnected from some value system, some faith (be it religious or non-religious faith).
So when we speak of Church of Ireland ethos, we are, as I have said, thinking of a spectrum, which connects inherited faith and prevailing culture. When we speak of a changing ethos, we are asking where we find ourselves on that spectrum, as a Church, and as a component in a system for denominational education.
A generation ago, we would have been comfortably placed, right through the country, far far closer to the faith end of the spectrum. As I suggested earlier, if, in the 1950s or even the 1960s, we were to ask the fundamental question, anywhere throughout in the country, as to why we wanted denominational education, the answer would have been the same - that it was for the survival of a particular expression of faith, and axiomatically the survival of a particular grouping, the Church of Ireland in particular, and the reformed churches in general. It was believed that only if the children of Church of Ireland people were educated apart from the children of Roman Catholic people, would the Church of Ireland survive for a further generation. When I describe that as a ghetto model, I am not being critical.
Indeed, I would pay a sincere tribute to generations of dedicated teachers who have worked with that vocation at the very centre of their lives. But, in the world in which we live today, with exposure to more influences and philosophies from near and far, with media exposure to very different cultures and value-systems, with the instant availability of information of any and every kind through electronic means (principally the Internet), with huge social mobility and geographical mobility, I would question whether the protective model of education can survive, or could be effective for much longer anywhere in Ireland.. At a local and entirely practical level, to give one obvious example, there are a far greater number of couples in inter-church marriages who, reasonably and responsibly, wish to keep contact with both traditions. There are also many people in Ireland who are now on the very edge of Christian belief, for whom we should, as a Church which believes in itself and its Gospel, seek to provide some window into a faith in which we have confidence. The point about any model of denominational education which seeks to be entirely protective of its adherents, is that it must, if it doing its job, repel outsiders. If we want to do that in the kind of world in which we live, we have lost any conviction about what we are.. Speaking for myself, I have always regarded myself as an adherent of a reformed and catholic faith which has a purpose and a function to proclaim Jesus Christ in the world in which it is set.
The change of ethos is where, as a Church we now are on the faith-culture spectrum. And again we have to be honest, and say that the Church of Ireland, in different parts of the country, will be on different parts of the spectrum. It will have a different ethos. It is a generalisation, but my own observation would suggest that in more rural areas in the republic, the place on the spectrum will be closer to the faith end, the protective end. In cities and suburbs, the place on the "ethos spectrum" will be closer to the culture-oriented end - the overt faith ingredient will be correspondingly seem more submerged. I would emphasise that I am not thinking in simplistic conservative v. liberal terms but rather as to how we see ourselves in relation to society around us. Most important of all, however, I would also have to say that, when it comes to schools, I do not believe that it should be at either of the extreme ends of the spectrum - either at the exclusively protective end, exclusively faith/ religion end, or at the exclusively culture-oriented end which tries to avoid connecting with faith as much as possible.. Is there then any very good reason as to why we should support denominational education at all? I would suggest two possible reasons:
The first might be that within our prevailing overall national culture, there is at present no practical alternative. In other words - if the majority Church is utilising a church education system, we must do likewise, otherwise our children will be assimilated into the Roman Catholic faith.
That is not an argument for denominational schooling per se, but rather an admission that we’re stuck with it. But it would be logical to work for totally non-denominational schooling, while retaining denominational schools so long as they exist, and making them work as best we can with energy and imagination. Non-denominational schooling does not necessarily presuppose an absence of any religious dimension, as is evidenced by a fairly large sector of the British educational system and by many of our community schools at secondary level in this country. But, if we are to go down this road even further, and work towards an entirely secular educational system, we need to prepare ourselves, with both finance and the provision of resources, to making the parish a far more powerful component in the work of catechetics, for both children and adults, as would be the case in Anglican parishes in the USA.
But it is also possible to argue for denominational schooling in its own terms, on positive grounds - that it is "a good thing" for the country that there are different approaches and traditions and ways of doing things that can reach right down into the educational systems. But to follow this line of argument, we need to have genuine confidence in what the Church of Ireland is, and in what the Church of Ireland ethos (the Church of Ireland faith-culture) is, and what benefit it would have for the country. [We would also, incidentally, then have no right to complain about segregated schooling in Northern Ireland, and support it here..]
Now it is easy to trot out words like pluralism in defence of a system which allows minority communities their own educational enclaves, but I tend to think of the word pluralism almost in the same unhealthy way that I think of the word ethos, meaning something which sounds grand and tolerant, but we’re not quite sure what, and we’re not sure we need to know or really want to know..
As I have been saying, however, I think that we should have a confidence in what the Church of Ireland faith-culture is. Anglicanism at its best (and I am not being triumphalist, because we don’t often see it at its best) is a tradition which tries to grapple with relating its inherited faith - its tradition, its dependence on Scripture - to the world in which it is set.
It is sometimes, and occasionally a little over-haughtily, described as the three-fold reliance on Scripture, tradition and reason. What this means in practical terms is what I have just been talking about: a way of being a Christian that struggles with how we relate what we have received through Scripture, and our inherited tradition, to the culture in which we live - the world in which we live, and the developments of thought in the world around us. Anglicanism is not unique in this approach and should not pretend that it is, but it is important that we understand that this method is at the very heart of what Anglicanism sees itself as being. We might even go so far as to say that its ethos is what the Church of Ireland is - a struggling and grappling with how we relate the inherited faith to the reality of the world, relating faith to culture.. I believe with utter conviction that is something profoundly valuable for the Church and for the world.
I have argued thus far that we should approach our national schools in a positive way: to see that what the Church of Ireland ethos is - what the Church of Ireland way of doing things is - is something in which we should have confidence, and which we should believe is of value for our country, even if it were not to add one more adherent to the Church of Ireland. And before we go further, I want to express a genuine gratitude to the teachers of our national schools who have contributed so much to the life of the young people of our church, and who continue to do so. When I speak now about new challenges, it is not so say that there have not always been challenges which have been met magnificently by a dedicated core of teachers. What we now have to look at are the challenges which must face all of us who have connections with schools in a ever faster changing society in Ireland, and in the Europe of which we are now so much more part. Practically speaking, where then are the challenges ? A few ‘starters for ten’..
The challenge of accepting that the ethos will be different in different parts of Ireland - that, for historical and sociological reasons, the ethos of the Church of Ireland will be different in Dublin 4 than in Bantry, in Monaghan than in Galway. So, why not go to the trouble, as boards of management, to work out objectively and systematically what sort of community you are in reality as a parish, and the sort of community you are serving, and where you should be in terms of ethos, but do not take the easy way out and head for either end of the spectrum.
The challenge of accepting that the Department of Education unequivocally supports the notion of ethos - and we don’t have to apologise to anyone for the fact that there is a faith-content in what we are providing. The Department has accepted that the protection of "ethos"can be a factor in employment - therefore the question of who will best protect that ethos is a legitimate concern of selection boards and one which must be addressed head on. In this context, I know that over many years, schools have employed teachers from other traditions and I want to pay a tribute to the way I know that so very many of them have, with integrity and conviction, worked to maintain a Church of Ireland ethos in those schools.
Turning to the relationship of the parish to the school, what should be the relationship of the local Rector to the national school? His relationship should be that of a pastor. I have to come clean, and admit that the two incumbencies I have held were both in a Diocese which had a policy of appointing laypeople as chairpersons of Boards of Management, except in rare circumstances where it was felt necessary to appoint the local Rector. I have therefore never been a chairperson of a Board of Management, although I was always a member of the Board, and tried to participate to the full in the workings of the Board. Even though I was not chairperson of the Board, I always spent a good deal of time in the national schools, but in an entirely pastoral role and I like to think that the pastoral role may have extended to the teaching staff as well as to the pupils. This question of chairmanship is a matter for individual Patrons and the willingness of Rectors to act in a non-chairing capacity, But, speaking for myself, I always found that it was easier not to get "wires crossed" when you were not chairperson. The Rector has of course full rights of entrance to the school, as the Patron’s representative. And I would say that it may, and perhaps should, take as much time to chaplain’ a school properly, as to be chairperson of its Board. But I do again ask the question : If the chairperson of the board should be someone who can chair meetings, understands and respects what the school is, what the parish is, and what ethos means, does that person necessarily have to be the Rector? Far from weakening ethos, I believe that it could actually strengthen the ethos of the school to have a layperson as chairperson, by demonstrating that you don’t have to have a clerical collar around your neck in order to believe that Church of Ireland values are of importance..
Remember that the parish is given certain responsibilities by the Department for Education. Theoretically at least, it is the parish which is responsible for the local financial contribution to the running costs of the school. There has to be some mutuality of relationship. For as long as we have denominational schooling (and I have suggested that I think it can be justified), then there can be nothing wrong with the children of the school knowing what the inside of the parish church is like, and even to worship there from time to time as a school. It may have to be on weekdays during school time. It would obviously be more desirable if school worship was something in which the parish as a whole, which has after all a "holding" in the school, felt that it had a place. I know that very often the relationship between Rector and school staff in this regard is excellent, but I did not come down in the last shower of rain, and I also recognise that this aspect of the relationship between teachers and parish (in the person of the Rector) has, from time to time, been rather fraught in some places.
I think we need again to be honest, and to say that this may well go back to a time when the Rector was automatically the manager of the national school, and if he had dictatorial tendencies, the teachers in what he saw as "his" national school were about the only people to whom he could dictate. Surely, a full generation further on , we can heal some of the misunderstanding of relationship. The setting up of the Boards of Management under the current scheme makes it abundantly clear that the Principal and staff of the school, and the Rector of the Parish in which the school is set, are to have a collaborative relationship.
It is sometimes pointed out that a country (or even a suburban) school may cover several parishes and that this can create problems of identity. I would have thought that a degree of common sense might suffice to overcome this. [Two years ago, the present Bishop of Down and I were neighbouring Rectors in a Diocese far south of here, and both had responsibilities in the same national school and look what happened to us!!] But, on a serious note, meet the challenge of being open and honest and honourable about the expectations of Rector and Principal with regard to the parish and the involvement of the school in worship, without the Rector flying to the Bishop, and the teacher to the Trade Union official, and all of them to the Department of Education.
I want to turn briefly to the challenge of Religious Education. I know that Archdeacon Swann raised this at the last conference and in sense there is little that I could add to what he said. The facts are that the Department for Education does not provide denominational schooling, so that schools can be devoid of religious education. As the Principal of this College, Mr Sidney Blain, in an excellent address given a few years ago (which has been taken up by the new supplementary handbook for primary schools under protestant management) pointed out, religious education should occupy a central position in the school curriculum and is regarded as a core subject. If it is to be that, and if the Church of Ireland does want it treated with respect by teachers, it must be of the very highest standards.
The 1980s religious education curriculum needs a revision. Those who created it would be the first to say so. The two options are either to embark on a revision of this course or to ask for permission to use another course such as the Roman Catholic course "Children of God" and to modify and adapt that, where it seems appropriate., One or other has to be done. I gather from Dr Hislop that a survey is being done as to what teachers think would be the best way forward on this. I am sure that a united push from national school teachers to the Church of Ireland Board of Education would not, and could not be ignored, provided that there was agreement that whatever was done would be regarded by all schools as a definitive curriculum. I would however want to couple that by saying, emphatically, that I believe that to have a situation in any Church of Ireland national school where religious education is given either a minor place, or (worse again) no place in the day-to-day life of any class, is both dishonourable and a very severe breach of trust - the trust of the Board of Management, the trust of the Patron, and the trust of the Department of Education.
I think that probably the most valuable suggestion of Archdeacon Swann made was the more general one that the entire area of religious education must now be tackled in an integrated way, not with one group here looking at primary school education, another group there looking at confirmation, another group discussing secondary school syllabi, someone else examining Sunday School work, a committee working on adult education. We are, sadly, a Church of individualists, and once any individualist’s territory is threatened, it has to be said that, almost literally, all hell breaks loose.
I think that, up to now, the task of total integrating all religious education - national school, secondary school, parish, adults, children, youth - has seemed too large, and that there has also been a fear that the ethos is too varied (and do not forget that you would have to include the huge Northern Ireland dimension into any totally integrated Church-wide system of religious education which encompassed parish as well as school), to make it practicable. And so we have lurched from one ad hoc arrangement to the next. I think that a second problem is that just as we are a nation of begrudgers, so we are also a Church of begrudgers.. In other words, once any scheme is devised, and attempts are made to put it into effect, the immediate response in far too many places is that it was badly done, and "wouldn’t work here anyway"..
Now please do not misunderstand me, I am not being cynical about master strategies or integrated strategies, but I am certain that if it is to work, the initial decision, as to what the real needs are, cannot come from a committee of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, or even from the Bench of Bishops duly assembled, but from a group of people who are involved in the reality of national school education on a day to day basis. And therein is a further challenge. Yes, resources will be needed; yes, enthusiasm will be needed from those who can rattle institutional cages, but until a coherent and comprehensive statement of needs is provided from those who have to deliver in the classroom, little useful will be done. And that is also precisely why there needs to be a real crystal clarity at school and Board of Management level as to why we have denominational schools, what their precise connection is with the Church of Ireland, and where we register on the faith-culture spectrum.
A final challenge : It is quite clear that schools do not exist for one denomination only, but also for those of other denominations, and of very little if any denomination. It has often been suggested that there must be an admissions policy to national schools which is manifestly reasonable and this challenge must also be addressed. The usual priority would seem to be there is a "right of admission" to those who declare themselves Church of Ireland, or of other known reformed traditions, children of inter-church marriages, siblings of those already in the school, and then, assuming there is space, and the facilities are already available, others..
In other words, the schools are not non-denominational or multi-denominational - that is not what the state is supporting. Even where there is a concern about falling numbers and the possibility of "losing a teacher", I would think that actively to recruit from beyond those for whom the state supports the separate existence of our denominational school, is very dubious from an ethical standpoint, and will almost certainly rebound on us, and rightly so.
I said at the outset that the second last refuge of the scoundrel is to pulverise the title of a lecture to the point of annihilation. The last refuge of a scoundrel, in Dr Johnson’s original epigram, was of course patriotism. And , as we all know, there is plenty of what we might call ecclesiastical jingoism around also. I would dread the day when the only thing that mattered was the flag or the label "Church of Ireland" attached to our schools, but with no meaning or conviction beyond that flag or that label. That would truly be the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Further information from:
THE CHURCH OF IRELAND PRESS OFFICE
Church of Ireland House
61 - 67 Donegall Street
Belfast BT1 2QH