There’s nothing like a royal wedding to create both a much-needed sense of national connection, and a much-noted national debate. Last time round it was a certain sister in a dress, this year a certain sermon or address. Saturday’s wedding was, about time, a celebration of the mixing and merging of cultural strands. Some relatable to ordinary people in a marriage across heritages, with very different family treed. Some confined to the elite in the joining of two branches of the celebrity tree. Emblematic in all of this was, of all things, a sermon. Twelve minutes of passionate, promulgating of the gospel of love…all featured in full colour and transcription in the Sun https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6337201/royal-wedding-sermon-bishop-michael-curry/Today, and for a few days perhaps, the nation is talking about the role of preaching and the nature of church. A master stoke invitation perhaps from the ABC, who has not only consistently advocated Michael Curry’s witness and preaching, but who himself is probably more inclined himself to preach from the heart than autocue.
Amidst the acclaim and the eye rolling it is fascinating to see how people are reacting to a sermon and debating its delivery and reception on Social Media. How unexpected it is that a wedding address should cause such debate. Why? Was it the preaching without notes, in the distinct register of call and response spirituality? Did the prophetic aspect of citing the experience of slavery in a chapel at the heart of the establishment disturb a response? Was there a shock factor that, during Sate formality, the joyous proclamation of a gospel of love and acceptance came with the fervour of evangelical zeal? No doubt those teaching homiletics in theological colleges have got a new case study to explore…
Without diving into too deep an analysis of content or structure this sermon delivered something that was in keeping with the merging, with occasional clash, of cultures that the whole day evoked. Britain has always been the absorber of cultures, but almost always when it has been able to control these – to colonize these – by adding an appropriate sauce to smooth the palette. English culture, in my view, is full of the morphing and mixing of international influences – and better so for this. There has been a good attention to this broader issue in other places. Here, I want to focus on a much narrower question of identity. That there is something in the reaction and reception to this sermon to help us ponder about the identity of Anglicanism as much as around the broader reflection on the nature of British or English identity.
On the news this last weekend both Rose Hudson-Wilkin and Kate Botley have let the helium out of excited debate over that sermon by suggesting that this is what happens up and down the country in ordinary Anglican churches. Have you never met a real vicar being Botley’s refrain – we are warm, passionate believers. Well judging by the response, t seems not. It doesn’t surprise me said Hudson-Wilkin, if you went to my old church in Hackney you would see this every week. Well precisely, most of England couldn’t or wouldn’t!
In Michael Curry’s sermon we have in my view a picture for the identity struggle in the church – how to speak to the familiar, without sounding strange and how to make the strange familiar to the fringe. What’s interesting to church geeks is that there is a subtlety going on here that transcends the ascetics of preaching. Curry – as Primate of the US Episcopal church – is a hero to the liberals and anathema to the conservatives. Over his position of LGBTQI+ for one thing. Such commentators are as likely to laud people like Curry as they are to lament over the ‘evangelical takeover of the church’ with all its emotive and popularist connotations https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/27-april/comment/columnists/angela-tilby-deliver-us-from-the-evangelical-takeover . Curry’s theological politics mixed with a more evangelical style hitting the spot – sound a bit like a recipe for some creative ecclesial mixing of our own!?
Of course, not every response to this sermon was attentive and appreciative. Witness the eyerolling of some to affirm – https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/962346/Royal-Wedding-live-Meghan-Markle-Prince-Harry-2018-Reverend-Michael-Curry-sermon-reaction – and I would suggest that outside of the sacred canopy of Twitter this was replicated in living rooms up and down the land. However, we can perhaps learn a few things that could be of use in evolving an Anglican identity. First, the need for authenticity seems evident. When we enable faith to be proclaimed from lived experience and memory, it communicates. For some this is held at a distance, perhaps to be digested later. For others, it is received as soul speaking to soul. Second, passion is more a value of our nation as we realize – and not something to be ascribed to ‘other cultures’ (be these Southern European, Caribbean or African). In part because being British is to be (in genetic and culture history) all of these…A church that talks and acts in quiet passion, that which is formidable but not feverous, might just catch the imagination. Third, be down to earth. A church that appears staid and disinterested will be met with disregard and suspicion. So much of our spirituality seems to be caught in the air, whereas it is lived out in the earth.
There is no simple answer as to how the Church of England finds a voices that connects to the diversity of Englishness. A diversity of voices is likely to help. However, in general it seems that we eschew passion at our peril.
Thank you, Bishop Curry for giving us a proper wedding fascinator this time around…but yes, it was a bit long and you didn’t need the car and airplane stuff….and do check out Saturday Night Live’s spoof interview...a whole other perspective…
Nick Shepherd 