When two myths collide

Even without my cultural academic hat on, I would roll around the floor laughing at this nonsense (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/stormy-meeting-over-future-of-cregneash-church-1-6511315 ) in which two delusions, almost equidistant from contemporary society, go all handbags at dawn.

So, as Harry Enfield would say, which myth is more important, religion or heritage? Only one way to find out......F-I-I-G-G-H-H-T!!!!

Just to put off-island readers in the picture... this is not really a church, and Cregneash is not really a village; together they are more of a film or theatre set. Until somebody in government paid a visit to the Ulster Folk Museum, then saw the potential of the “living museum” concept in the Thatcher era, Cregneash was just a farm next to a semi-abandoned chapel, known only to Gaelic language pilgrims because Ned Maddrell (a Manx speaker whose chance introduction to an Irish language academic in the 1940's kicked off attempts to save Manx Gaelic) used to live nearby.

And ever since the beginning of the village's commodification for Manx touristic purposes there have always been historically inaccurate “improvements” to the church to make it look more “authentic”. In reality, like any other working church, it is a mish-mash of odd little bodge-ups according to liturgical and national fashions of times when money, labour or materials were available.

In the late 1980's, and again in the late 1990's, my job took me to every tiny chapel and church on the island. Most, however threadbare, at least have an air of being loved and used. Someone regularly running a duster over the pews and brasses, flowers changed, scattered hymn books and bibles indicating that acts of worship actually take place.

Cregneash chapel, by comparison to most, is more like a storeroom for a few religious props. When I last had to know, it held an evensong every couple of weeks but no Sunday morning communion, because the potential congregation refused to attend when tourists were milling round the museum proper (i.e. when it might just have drawn in visiting Christians eager for a rural religious experience).

The only time in recent decades either looked well was when they became a fictitious Irish village for the film Waking Ned. For which the church had subtle changes made so it seemed more like a rural Catholic church (which it has never been) and the village telephone box was painted green to look like a proper Irish one, and was not repainted for years – even at a time when the Baillie Scott design of it was being played up in a row over whether to keep it.

Why was it never repainted? I'm told because a nationalistic element within Manx Heritage at the time preferred it green so that it wouldn't look English, even though telephone boxes on the island throughout history have always been red, like the postboxes.

That tells you all you need to know about the difference between “history” and “heritage”, just as the single figure congregation's rows with “church management” reveal how wide the gap is between Manx Christianity as an inclusive act of faith and an exclusive means of cultural practice.

Poe-faced Pillockry

This (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/unholy-row-as-former-lt-gov-targets-bishop-1-5609756  ) was a welcome relief from the Sefton Hotel row (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/business/cannan-says-sefton-deal-is-ill-judged-and-fundamentally-unfair-1-5603786  for example) which dominates the Manx press but does not interest me in the slightest.

Two unwanted political presents from Westminster (at least one, thankfully, well past his sell-by date) taking a noisy pop at each other. You could not make this up.

A hissy catfight between two colonial relics over the future of the island’s campest High Gothic church. I’m only surprised that instead of the picture the local press used they didn’t just Photoshop the protagonists into Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic’ painting.

Google it and you’ll soon see what I mean. Larry New would be a spit for the grump with the pitchfork.

Isle of Man Newspapers used only the bilge generated by both sides in this silly argument, and did no digging. This is a pity, as neither side wants us ‘heathens’ to really know what is going on.

To get to the root of it, just go to http://www.stmatthewsiom.org/ and note the prominent announcement that St. Matthew’s is “a Forward in Faith Parish under the Pastoral care of the Bishop of Beverley”. THAT is the root of the problem neither side will talk about in public. For some years now, this Anglican church has been unique on the island in having a special dispensation to, when it suits, take orders from another Bishop rather than any memsahib who might hold office under the island’s Bishop.

The thing is, the present Bishop of Sodor & Mann could be described as “conservative with a small c” .Think ‘Anglican Mainstream lite” – conservative but evangelical rather than high church, keeping the church status quo together, now willing to see women priests rather than look ridiculous in the eyes of the unchurched public but gays are still a step too far.

Forward in Faith, by comparison, are at best UKIP with a hint of Monster Raving Loony and probably far worse. Pouty, petulant, predominantly ex-public schoolboys who will take their ball home if the world won’t let them run things. For years they have been threatening to break away, initially to Rome (which doesn’t want them), then playing footsie under the table with the Russian Orthodox churches. Basically, anything it takes to let a bunch of silly boys carry on flouncing around in nice frocks, ringing bells, and chucking incense about.

Oh, and they really don’t like homosexuality either, these beardy wierdies. Oh no, not one bit! Hate them more than women, the working class, believers in other faiths (don’t even go there on Jews or Muslims….) and commie subversives.

Two bishops back, the Manx FIF crew were tight with Anglican management. Nothing open, but the power behind the throne while the occupant was a permanently half-cut chum of Prince Philip (amicable enough though - as long you kept real life out of the conversation). He was replaced by an urbane careerist to whom nothing stuck – a real Teflon man – and who saw at once that these rabid smell and bell merchants would get him nowhere fast, so he quietly ditched them and got somewhere fast.

St. Paul’s actually, just in time for the Occupation. Whoops!

At this point the Manx diocese was really falling apart – losing worshippers faster than any in the British Isles in fact - so no surprise that John Sentamu saw to it that the next area manager was a lad who would knock heads together and stop the rot. Which, to be fair, he has done. The process is inevitably painful for churchgoers as hard economic decisions are taken, but most factions in his church seem to accept Paterson is trying to keep things together and even, in the long term, give some room for various models of (cost-efficient) worship to develop.

Except for half a dozen or so deranged FIF fanatics who cannot cope with democracy, the 21^st century, or the world in general because they have never had to deal with such distractions.

It is tempting to suggest the Bishop should just let them go, then consider what use would the building be when they have to sell up in the near future?

Sadly too few Manx Goths to finance a potentially amazing nightclub with a unique William Morris picture window. Perhaps some sort of S & M establishment to fuel the darker night-time urges of finance sector sickos? Real shame if it became yet another carpet warehouse.

More seriously, considering the government attempts to regenerate the quayside as an upmarket ‘development’, the particular history of some complainants with dodgy financiers and property developers (and that the only way to balance the diocesan books could be the sale of ‘surplus to requirement’ buildings) maybe the future sale of the church is all anyone is arguing about.

Now maybe that is the real story we are missing…..

No steps forward, two steps sideways

I found this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/52042/disarray-over-gay-bishops-embarrassing- ) quite amusing, as much for the detail left out as for the admission of failure thrown in.

As is not explained by Manx Radio or the Bishop, but I’ve mentioned before (after the UK’s religious press picked up on a prominent C of E press release and effectively asked me ‘Who the hell is this Paterson bloke and why does the C of E trust him to solve the ‘gay question’?”) the “small group” he chaired was a committee of fellow bishops charged by Anglican ‘management’ with finding a way out of the whole mess. In fact, so high profile was it that there were even talks about talks about who should choose such a committee. It was also stacked in favour of the homophobic minority to stop them whining…and yet even their hand-picked golden boys couldn’t manage a hateful enough ‘compromise’. Just how lip-poutingly pathetic can this bunch get?

Oh, and I wouldn’t take that letter to Sentamu as any kind of rebellious gesture either. As regular readers will already know, but newcomers might not, previous to his current post Robert Paterson was personal chaplain and assistant to John Sentamu. The committee of five which selected him as Bishop of Sodor & Mann was (quite coincidentally we must be sure) chaired by John Sentamu, otherwise comprised two brain-dead Manx politicians and two Anglican stooges, and it didn’t consider any other candidates.

But is all this ill will towards gay men the true Christian view?

Well, one suggestion that it is not can be found on Ekklesia (see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17737) and is written by the excellent Symon Hill, a fellow anti-militarist (indeed leading light in Campaign Against the Arms Trade) and all round nice guy. I recommend you read it, if only to remind yourself that not all Christians foam at the mouth.

Big story, curious silence

Now here’s an odd thing.
Since December 1st I’ve been fielding queries from two ‘specialist’ areas of the press who know me of old. Both, from differing perspectives, are researching stories on an important development in their ‘specialisms’ in which a leading Manx resident will play a major part. Mainly, it must be said, because they’ve never heard of him. Yet the island media appear to know nothing about it.
Many current Manx journalists wouldn’t know a story if it crept up and hit them with a baseball bat, so nothing new or odd there.
What is odder is that powerful friends of the leading Manx resident haven’t spoonfed the story to a grateful hack either. Usually every vapid word he utters while going about his pointless and privileged job is not only relayed to the media, but followed by angry phonecalls and threats about the withdrawal of advertising if not immediately, and prominently, used.
So why not now?
Perhaps you can judge for yourselves.
The queries began when, on 1st December, the Church of England Media Centre issued a press release (see http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2011/11/group-to-advise-house-of-bishops-on-2005-pastoral-statement-announced.aspx) in which it was announced that:
“The House of Bishops has announced the membership of a Group established to advise it on reviewing its Pastoral Statement issued prior to the introduction of civil partnerships in December 2005. The Group will be chaired by the Bishop of Sodor and Man, the Rt Rev Robert Paterson. The other two members of the Group are the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Christopher Foster, and the Bishop of Dorchester, the Rt Rev Colin Fletcher. The Group will start work in December and report to the House in time for the House to reach conclusions during 2012.”
The statement goes on to explain that:
“The preparation of the pastoral statement was the last occasion when the House of Bishops devoted substantial time to the issue of same sex relationships. The House undertook to keep that Pastoral Statement under review and announced in July, this year, http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1289380/gsmisc997.pdf , that the time had come for a review to take place.
The House of Bishops also announced in July further work on the Church of England's approach to human sexuality more generally. The expectation is that the membership of that Group, whose work will be considered by the House during 2013, will be announced in the next few weeks.”
Wow!
The C of E is looking to make their most important policy statement since Civil Partnerships became a reality, and Sentamu’s Apprentice is in charge of the process?
How big a Manx story is that?
What’s fast emerging is that even their fellow Anglicans hardly know these guys either, never mind the world at large. Which may be deliberate, or just because there are too many church factions with an interest (and form for sulking and taking their ball home) for any of the ‘regulars’ to get picked.
It’s known that Colin Fletcher is a former tutor at Wycliffe Hall and former chaplain to Archbishop George Carey. So he would have been picked by Anglican Mainstream. Don’t let the name fool you. They’re the ultra-orthodox freaks who keep threatening to break away and take some of the oldest, most valuable, church property with them. In reality, a tiny but powerful bunch of cranks, the C of E’s equivalent to a mad relative in the attic.
Less is known about Foster, other than that he studied economics at Durham, then lectured in it before being ordained, since when he’s worked his way up through the ranks in various roles, apparently with a particular interest in church mission, which I thought was just every vicar’s basic job.
But if Sentamu’s Apprentice was chosen because he was a dark horse and therefore gay and liberal Anglicans couldn’t object, it isn’t going to work.
True, the AM nutters don’t know or claim him, but they’ve approved him anyway because they see him as a fellow evangelical; if a bit of a wimp because any apparent antipathy for humanity doesn’t extend to lady vicars or women and everyone else in general except sad old white blokes in frocks.
But on websites such as the influential liberal Thinking Anglican (see http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/ ) comments like this are starting to appear:
“Robert Patterson (sic) was vicar of a parish adjoining mine and is wholly unsympathetic. He sacked a celibate gay curate, and most recently [...] he was one of only two C of E bishops in General Synod to vote AGAINST extending the pension rights of civilly partnered clerics.
I contacted some gay couples I know who live in Robert's former parishes - Robert would not be their choice for this post! I wonder if there is a single civilly partnered person in the whole of England who would support his appointment.”
Well, we’ve seen his grumpy, charmless comments after the Civil Partnership Bill passed, toeing an old Christian Institute line which portrays gays trying to put their relationships on an official basis and ensure pension and other basic rights as little more than economic opportunism, rather than ‘proper’ marriages like Christians pretend to have.
And I’ve noted here his successful attempt to make sure criminal civil servants won’t do time for leaking highly personal and confidential information about transgendered people to vicars, who also won’t do time for receiving it, or have to explain how they got it or why they won’t conduct a marriage ceremony.
So, we already know he has a bit of a problem with gays. In fact, his reported comments are alarmingly close to those swivel-eyed Manx political lunatics whose rabid views on the (then only proposed) partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1991 caused all decent people in Britain to write us off as a third world backwater. A view of us which meant most trade union and business groups took their conference business elsewhere for the next 20 years for fear of being branded homophobic knuckledraggers.
When Patterson and his chums eventually reveal their ‘new, improved’ Anglican policy towards gays we can have little doubt that, however sincerely meant, many will laugh and some will even feel sick. No point putting lipstick on a pitbull.
The problem is, if that view seems influenced by someone who is also an unelected politician in the Manx upper house, and could be portrayed as some sort of moral leader on the island, then we are right back to 1991 in the eyes of the rest of the world. And with a world recession on those are basics none of us want to go back to.

New appointment, new threat from old menace

Yesterday’s announcement of the appointment of a new Anglican Archdeacon (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36358) is interesting, and perhaps rather ominous.
Apparently: “Andie Brown has been Canon Theologian at Derby Cathedral since 2003 when he took up the post of Continuing Ministerial Education Adviser for clergy and lay people of the Diocese, working with the Mission and Ministry Team.”
Interestingly firstly because it confirms the growing rift between local professional clergy (or indeed any thoughtful Christians) and ‘area management’.
Traditionally, clergy used to come here as relative juniors and rise through the ranks. Take, for example, the career of the last-but-one Archdeacon, Brian Partington, who did just that – from a young curate who came originally to get a few church ‘youthies’ going and stayed until retiring as Archdeacon (a post older Manxies tend to believe he still holds).
Now the policy, officially, is to bring in ‘new blood’ rather than let ‘the professionals’ get rooted in the community, allied to both a major ‘cost-cutting’ exercise which sees retiring clergy not being replaced while their houses (and sometimes even churches) are sold off, and a new management structure which includes ‘honorary canons’ from other denominations and other outside influences.
While this policy is allied to a pretence that it even includes non-Christians (e.g. a laughable attempt to get public subsidy for the Cathedral by setting up a bogus management committee where ‘business’ and ‘other faiths’ have ‘input’) the reality is that, firstly, a senior Anglican advised the Manx government a few years back that there were no other faiths, thus no need for government to consult them, secondly Churches Together in Mann also refused to meet with other faiths to discuss ways of broadening ‘interfaith’ unity and discussion on the island and thirdly, while non-Anglican fundamentalist evangelicals are being handed jobs within the remit of the Anglican Church and both the Fundies and the Anglicans bang on about opening community facilities to church use (Fundies) and churches to ‘community use’ (Anglicans), neither party is using the obvious solution – the Church Sharing Act, a 1990’s piece of legislation drafted by the Vicar General which allows different denominations to share a church and bills rather than let empty buildings rot.
Odd, is it not?
Then we have Sentamu’s Apprentice saying that: “He brings skills in organisation, commitment to outreach, and experience of working with individuals and teams. I look forward to working closely with him in continuing to support churches in this diocese as they develop their involvement with their local communities.”
At the simplest level, this suggests that he has a track record for creating or excusing further interference by faith-challenged simpletons with our kids and communities, but to understand this threat more fully, you need to know that Derby University was, until 1992, a C of E teacher training college called Bishop Lonsdale College. And Anglicans, having flogged off the tastier campus facilities for redevelopment before the ‘upgrade’, still have more than passing influence on University life (see, for example, http://www.multifaithcentre.org/ ).
Also, as traditional academic faculties drop away, and government funding increasingly goes to places of lower learning which prepare students for the McJobs which British McIndustry wants, the course range gets more bizarre (golf course management, alternative health?) and subsidised by McResearch facilities.
Take, for example, http://www.derby.ac.uk/social-care-and-therapeutic-practice/applied-social-and-community-studies/research-groups/society-religion-and-belief-research-group, which enjoys a regular income from both public and private sponsors of ‘study’ which, rather conveniently, ‘validates’ ever more public money being micturated away on ever more right wing faith groups under the pretence that they are the glue which holds communities together (all evidence of their bigotry and divisiveness being, even more magically than transubstantiation, strangely absent).
So, keep a closer eye on your kids, your community and your taxable income in future, as all are under new threats from old, unsavoury quarters.

Where have all the loonies gone?

Walking down Strand Street, our capital’s main shopping area, yesterday I couldn’t help thinking something was missing.
Small town adolescents in no brand hoodies desperately trying to look menacing – check.
Chainsmoking wideloads in jogging pants being pulled by asthmatic Staffies – check.
Drunks arguing with their reflections in cheap bar windows – check.
Pensioners still looking for proper local shops that vanished before the 1990 ’redevelopment’ – check.
The rich – not there, but nobody with money shops locally anyway so that wasn’t it either.
No, couldn’t put my finger on it until I got home and found http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=43968 on the Radio Cowshed website.
Of course – swivel-eyed lunatics quoting the Bible and crossing themselves while walking past the Ann Summers window display –THAT’S what was missing!
Well, now we know where they were. We might even feel grateful to an apprentice of Uganda’s second best known son (after Idi Amin) for keeping his fellow Sentamunatics off the streets for at least an afternoon.
Curious, of course, that he chose St. John’s Church, next to the Tynwald Field, and not the Cathedral. Apart from being used once a year as part of the Tynwald Ceremony it remains empty - another national mausoleum maintained at public expense. Also, interestingly, it is not a clergy appointment under the control of the Bishop or Manx Diocese. In fact, a moderate vicar who used to run it as part of a trio of sleepy village parishes used the fact that his was a Royal Appointment to defy both when the Diocese was in particularly right wing hands.
It might be that any Manx Christian aware of the early ill-treatment and continued anti-semitism experienced by World War Two refugees would feel uneasy at a histrionic evangelical Easter marathon being held in the Cathedral in the midst of the Anne Frank exhibition. Probably not though; few study their own history and even fewer have social consciences – otherwise they’d also have felt guilty hosting the exhibition.
Or was this a sly way of trying to place Anglicanism at the heart of Manx life? If so, are we supposed to conclude that a three hour sobfest held smack bang in the local BNP heartland and only attended by slack-jawed yokels was also indicative of Manx culture? That would be so depressing it should necessitate a national day of repentance.
Also dismiss any claims which might be made in coming days that this was a national gathering of the Christian community.
For the record, at 12 noon I was at a gathering in Douglas which only began when folk who had been at church services around the town that morning arrived, including key members of the island’s ecumenical organisations. None of them went on to St. John’s, so whatever went on wasn’t regarded by Churches Together in Mann as a vital show of strength.

Looters gather in a dying town

You can guarantee that when a community starts dying three groups of parasites move in to offer ‘help’ – smack dealers, fascists and evangelical cults.
You gauge the extent to which the community is in trouble by whether all three are dug in and bleeding the dispossessed dry. When it gets to the extent that they’re not only present, but that one or more of those three elements are fighting turf wars with others of their kind then things are going downhill fast.
Which brings me to another item about faith-based antisocial elements not to make it online this week. This one concerns Living Hell (that’s ‘The Living Hope Community Church’ to those who don’t follow this blog regularly) and their efforts to further destabilise the community in Peel.
Curiously, another item about Ramsey’s ‘Faith in Action’ crew made it not only into Tuesday’s Examiner but online (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/north-news/New-man-at-Faith-helm.6113318.jp), so it isn’t that the regional news pages haven’t been updated.
So could it be that there’s now some kind of quota on the amount of drivel from the lunatic fringe of the zombie-worshipping community IOM Newspapers is prepared to admit it prints? Or is it just the editors accept that nobody except the diminishing and increasingly senile churchoing community reads this guff any more.
Whatever.
As you can’t read it, I can only tell you that it’s a puff piece to tell us that Living Hell are running some of those embarrassing pop orientated church services in a community centre. I suspect because even the Dept of Education have wised up to these scam artists and refused them use of a local school.
It is, more seriously, a snapshot of the way the war between our evangelical Crips and Bloods is going in another community. Broadway Baptists don’t have a presence in Peel. They left the territory to an ally, Grace Baptists, who ran a few ‘charitable’ moneyspinners such as an Indian ‘street mission’ (which is, technically, illegal in India, by the way) but were losing ground even before their godfather, Matthew Else, popped his clogs last year.
Sadly, Peel has been going downhill fast since the happy times in the late 1980’s when it even had a town newspaper and I worked on it. Then it was a poor but respectable community where folk looked after each other. Now….it’s a mess.
The rot set in when the House of Manannan, a heritage museum, was built there in the early 1990’s, supposedly to ‘revive’ the town but having the effect of killing it. This happened because Manx Heritage sit on planning committees, so when plans for improving the Peel roads and transport links came up MNH blocked them until the one way system took cars outside and around the main street, diverting buses, coaches and tourist cars straight to the door of House of Manannan and then out of town again to Stepford Central (Tynwald Mills Shopping Centre). Small business and shops closed, and by the time the main shopping street was pedestrianised there were no shops left.
I’m sorry to see things going so badly, and the ‘help’ of self-interested churches is no help at all, just a shameless pitch for public money which will inevitably prop up institutions for the deluded while further keeping resources away from the real community.
I can’t help noticing, for example, that the ‘business interests’ in developing the Cathedral as an ‘educational’ and ‘heritage’ facility are exactly those which benefited most when the new traffic system killed off the retail trade and the social superstructure it kept intact in the first place.

Different Strokes

As I know from various friends, one reason for respectable hard-working people coming to the Isle of Man is to escape sectarianism or even outright theo-fascism elsewhere. As I discovered yet again this week, they still won’t be safe as long as the Manx government and churches are packed with self-serving bigots.
The latest example can be seen with the apparently innocent announcement in this week’s Courier that regular multilingual orthodox services are being held at St. Matthews in Douglas, with the hint that maybe the Manx community should somehow ‘help’ to establish a local Orthodox priest to cope with the ‘growing demand’.
Except that there isn’t a growing demand because, as in the UK, the number of East European guestworkers has peaked and they’re now returning home. Falling attendances at the local Catholic churches alone show that, never mind work permit figures.
Such ‘demand’ as there is actually comes from another group.
The thing is, St. Matthews is the Manx centre of Forward in Faith/Anglican Mainstream activity. While they will never openly admit it, those who study such oddballs know that what they’d really love, short of controlling the Anglican church, is not defection to the Catholic church (which is big enough to resist their petulance) but a link-up with the even odder Eastern Orthodox gang. And as the Effineffers hold the balance in the Manx synod El Bish has little choice but to meet them halfway if he is not to lose a church or two and some rich but eccentric punters.
It’s also coincidentally funny that the priest is being flown in from Belfast. As if Northern Ireland hadn’t bred enough sectarian hate of its own, it is now cultivating and exporting an East European variety.
Because this, as I discovered when mentioning the article to a Russian friend, is the nub of the matter. Surprisingly, a number of Russian-born Manx residents who have mortgages, good and useful jobs and are here to stay are not Christian but Muslim. They came here because, as Jews before them suffered late 19th century pogroms, the new links between Putin and Orthodox theo-fascists made new and convenient scapegoats of an often relatively secular and moderate Muslim community. So they upped sticks and took their skills instead to a place where Stalinists and priests don’t run the finance sector.
My guess is that the Eastern Orthodox worshippers won’t face the problems of Manx Muslims – no Facebook sites, no mutterings about wierdly bearded foreigners putting up strange and distinctly un-Manx buildings. Which is quite funny, because wierdly bearded folk from here and elsewhere are meeting to celebrate a version of Christianity linked to both past and present fascist activity, and doing it in a listed church designed by a notable 19th century architect. Meanwhile, business people join quietly with a few doctors from the Asian subcontinent to worship in a garage. Not a veil or burqa in sight either, from what I hear, and the women are differentiated from locals only by their designer clothes.

The Emissionary Position

Many will now be aware that government routinely publicises bad news on Fridays, knowing that we’re too busy trying to slip away for the weekend to notice.
Similarly, Radio Cowshed, our nation’s only publicly subsidised broadcaster, has little or no professional staff and no newsroom at the weekends. A skeleton staff hangs about long enough to collate Saturday sports reports from club secretaries then hands the keys to the religious correspondent. This explains why the Sunday ‘news’ items are so often dominated by faith-based tittle-tattle.
Today’s features a report on the future of Anglicanism ( see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=37924), which confirms much of what I’ve said over the last year – i.e. that it’s flogging off the spoons, laying off the professional clergy and finding ways to hand the everyday stuff over to lay volunteers. Nothing there but good management sense for a business whose traditional market has gone, in fact. Almost makes you wonder if they’ve roped in the Tourist Board or Manx Heritage. The problems, navel-gazing cluelessness and solutions are so similar, and it would at least explain why government agencies are flogging gigs like Songs of Praise at Rushen Abbey.
What might be interesting, considering that rural deans are professional clergy and at least nominally in touch with their congregations, is to see if (as I suspect) these ‘Mission Partnerships’ will be controlled by locals notorious for a dislike of transparency and the democratic process who have skulked in government broom-cupboards for years.
The stuff about the website is no news either. I was told months ago who will run it and the horse-trading that went on first, but that can wait for another day.
In fact, my only concern, given a long history of shady dealings between Manx government and the ‘Established Church’ which is almost a pocket history of the denial of Manx democracy, is who, exactly, is this ‘mission’ to?
Is a self-selected elite trying to preach to congregations who have few problems with women, gays and folk of other cultures and creeds, and who just won’t get with the right wing agenda? If so, we shouldn’t care less as long as we are not asked to subsidise a fatuous tiff between devotees. However bizarre it is to the rest of us, people freely choose their faith and should live with the consequences.
Or is a church which already gives moral approval to shady politicos in return for privilege coming for our children through compulsory school activity? As both many of us and our kids now see that church as an amoral, anti-social hate joke we’re sick of listening to, that just might be a problem.

Re-arranging the Titanic’s deckchairs

I’m under strict instructions not to laugh while reading Manx newspapers in case my stitches burst, but most days I can’t help it. Take this week’s Indie and a story (New canons and priests) which, wisely, isn’t deemed fit for the online version. (12/7/09 update - it's there now at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Bishop-appoints-new-canons-and.5444950.jp).
Apparently Sentamu’s Apprentice has appointed three new Manx priests and six honorary canons to the Cathedral. Anglican watchers knew he needed to bring in off-island professionals to balance the conservatism of local hobby vicars. So St. Thomas’s gets a husband and wife team and, next door, St Ninians gets a priest too.
Several funny and interesting things about the appointments. Firstly St. Thomas’s used to be the combined parish of All Saints and St. Thomas’s with (even more confusingly) a priest living in the street behind St. Ninians assisted by a curate who looked after the much smaller but wealthier St. Thomas’s congregation. The All Saints priest was then hospital chaplain to the old Nobles, and as there wasn’t enough for the curate to do he also acted as a general gofer for the bishop. The St. Thomas’s congregation, all very fur coat and no knickers, never liked this practical arrangement and have earbashed the last three bishops to be a ‘stand alone’ parish.
So the new St. Thomas’s guy becomes the ‘official’ priest while his wife is a ‘non-stipendiary priest’ (i.e. unpaid) and, more interestingly, ‘half-time chaplain to Hospice Isle of Man’.
In other words, a parish so small a baby curate could tend it on his day off now has two priests, one to minister to half a dozen folk in a church and be school governor to the primary school next door (which incidentally, even using illegal job advertising, could not find an Anglican head teacher and had to settle for a Broadway bampot) one to charm legacies out of dying Rotarians.
I’m sure the St. Ninian’s guy will be just as busy. Let’s see - he can pop across the road to St Ninian’s School and watch devotees of the Living Hopelessly cult whip up funds to further inconvenience disempowered Africans, and on Sundays stand at the door of his church watching worshippers drive into the fancy car park of the presbyterian church next door.
The honorary canons to the cathedral are even funnier, but equally illuminating. Six canons could outnumber the congregation most weeks, as the core congregation of wealthy, influential conservatives drifted away during the tenure of a previous priest, an amiable old buffer who didn’t hate women enough for their tastes.
The interesting thing is the new canons include Radio Cowshed’s religious correspondent (Catholic, female), the head of the Mothers Union (traditional enemy of the last two misogynists – sorry, bishops), a lady vicar from the South, a Blairite vicar (literally, he was the bass player in Tony Blair’s school band) and a Douglas Methodist.
Tucked away ‘accidentally’ in the last paragraph of the report is another gem. The diocesan warden of readers (i.e. the guy who trains and places clerical hobbyists to help out full time vicars) is moving to Corfu.
For some time, just as the laity members at Anglican Central have struggled with the career clergy to re-establish the homophobia and misogynism of their distant childhoods, lay readers and ‘non stipendiary ministers’ have been doing the same in Manx Anglicanism. For example, they were behind the ‘rationalisation’ which saw vicarages sold as fast as elderly vicars could be retired, especially if occupied by those who championed lady clergy.
In addition, long before the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans moved to make things official, Forward in Faith (which has a strong island contingent and really should rename itself Backwards in Belligerence) discussed trying to align Anglican hatred of women, gays and most other humanity under the leadership of any sympathetic bishop overseeing a diocese nominally comprised of rich ex-pats scattered throughout the world.
So, the poor old bish may be merely re-arranging deckchairs on a sinking ship, but in doing so is demonstrating he favours a broad church and interdenominational dialogue. We should give him that.