In September 1988, Barbara Harris was elected suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts. On February 11, 1989, she was consecrated a bishop, the first woman to be ordained to the episcopate in the worldwide Anglican Communion. (Source; also)
In his four years as head of the established Church, he has shied away from being a moral arbiter and rarely given an interview. When we meet him, however, he talks frankly about everything affecting society, from Pop Idol to gang culture.
"Is our society broken? I think it is," he says. "We are in a phase of our culture where the fragmentation of society is far more obvious. It's not just families, it is different ethnic communities and economic groups. We talk about access and equality the whole time, but in practice we all seem to live very segregated lives."
He goes on: "Outside my front door in Lambeth I see a society so dramatically different from across the river or in Canterbury. There is a level of desolation and loneliness and dysfunctionality which many people have very little concept of. If you sense that the world you live in is absolutely closed, that for all sorts of reasons you are unable to move outside, if nothing gives you aspirations, there is an imprisonment in that, there is a kind of resentment that comes with that and a frustration that can boil over in violence and street crime."
Inequality is, in his view, just a symptom of a wider moral vacuum. "I don't think that the huge wealth of some is the cause (of the problems), it is more that society just wants to reward business success and celebrity. If you're a teenager in Peckham neither of those are easily accessible."
Indeed, he is horrified by the triviality of modern society. "We are too celebrity obsessed, we have got into a dangerous cycle where fame is an objective in itself."
His children are 11 and 19. "I sometimes sit with them and watch The X Factor and it is heartbreaking to see people who plead with judges to get through because they just want to be famous so intensely," he says.
Broadcasters, he argues, are contributing to the moral decline. "There is a gladiatorial streak in the entertainment business now where increasingly humiliation is the way forward. That worries me, there is a kind of sadism that can't be good for us. It is the building-up and the pulling-down of contestants, it is pushing people into situations where they expose their vulnerability, encouraging a culture of shamelessness."
One of the Archbishop's key concerns is how the society we live in is damaging children. "What is lacking in children's lives is space. They are pressed into a testing culture, or even into a gang culture, they are bullied and manipulated until they fit in, they never have any time to develop in their own space."
He understands the urge to join a gang. "A lot of it is yearning for love, they want to fit in, if their families are as chaotic as some of them are, gangs give them a sense of belonging."
But he says pushy parents who rush children between ballet and violin lessons are suffocating their offspring too. "Children live crowded lives, we're not making their lives easy by pressurising them, whether it's the claustrophobia of gang culture or the claustrophobia of intense achievement in middle-class areas." "
February 7, 2007
I must begin this address by thanking Jo Wells for her welcome and all those who have made it possible for Eileen and myself to make this trip to North Carolina. We are especially delighted to be here at Duke University and gain a flavour of the life and vitality of this place.
However, the 18th century Church of England did not take too kindly to Methodism’s enthusiasm and direct spirituality. An ironic and somewhat bizarre witness to this is found in a church near Cambridge where a memorial plaque records the ministry of the Rector, of whom the plaque states ‘served for 38 years in this parish without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.’
That astonishing memorial was not erected by disgruntled parishioners but actually delighted ones who were clearly pleased that, during their Rector’s time the ‘enthusiasts,’ that is the Methodists, were kept at bay. Sadly, the division between our two churches today is due to that kind of attitude which prevailed all too often at that period.
Both John and Charles Wesley were disappointed by the reception given by the Established Church to the fledgling ‘methodistical’ preachers of their day. They died priests in the Church of England, even though both knew with reluctance that it would be only a matter of few years before the inevitable split between mother and daughter came about.
Dr.Wells invited me to speak about the Anglican Communion today, and I offered the title of: “The Anglican Communion; Past Blessings, present Challenges, future Hope.” I do so with some hesitancy because I run the risk of some telling me, yet again, that I am interfering and that I am undermining the work of Archbishop Rowan Williams.
My response is twofold; it is difficult to accept the accusation of interfering when I am speaking of my own Communion, to which I gave so much in eleven exhausting and fulfilling years. I love this Communion and I love the Episcopal Church of the United States. One only ‘interferes’ if the matter has nothing to do with one. This is scarcely the case.
Secondly, I fully support the present Archbishop of Canterbury in his desire to hold the Communion together and to find a way out of the present serious situation we are in. The Windsor Report, if accepted by all, would strengthen the Communion and heal our brokenness. Alas, it has already become clear that its strong medicine does not please parts of our body and has been rejected by some. The coming Primates Meeting in Tanzania should be in all our prayers as the leaders of the Communion seek a way forward to hold the family together.
So, let me reflect with you from this place, Duke University, a former bastion of Methodist life. What would the Wesley brothers have made of the Anglican Communion; indeed, would it have been a reality in their day?
... in 1533, July 11, Pope Clement VII excommunicates England's King Henry VIII for remarrying after his divorce.
