Vermeer: a life lost and found

Andrew Graham-Dixon

Allen Lane £30

978-1-846-14710-4

For many decades hanging in one of our rooms has been a copy of Vermeer’s painting Girl with a pearl earing. I am not alone, for this is the most iconic work of one of the most popular artists of our time. There has always been a mysterious stillness about Vermeer’s paintings, an almost spiritual quality. Now, in a ground breaking book which will radically transform the way we see these works, Andrew Graham-Dixon has revealed why they cast such a spell.

The vast majority of them  are not, as might have been thought, genre paintings sold on the art market. They were commissioned by  a particular couple, Pieter van Ruikven and his wife Maria de Knuijt, for their own  home, and they paid Vermeer a set sum to paint them over a period of years. Andrew Graham Dixon shows by a careful examination of the documents of the time, wills, bills, accounts of visits, debts and sales that this couple belonged to a pious Christian group who held meetings for prayer, worship and music in their house. These paintings on their walls expressed their understanding of  the Christian faith in everyday terms.

Religious life in the Dutch Republic at the time was fraught and dangerous. It was dominated by the strict Calvinistic Reformed Church. At the same time there were a number of splinter groups wanting something more tolerant. Emerging out of an Arminian theology they called themselves Observants and within that wider grouping, Collegiants. Women played a key role and of course most of Vermeer’s paintings focus on women. Graham-Dixon builds up a picture of these Collegiants and their contacts with Pieiter and Maria, who lived in a house beside an Observant church. Against this background he examines each one of Vermeer’s paintings arguing for its Christian significance. The girl with a pear earing for example is Mary Magdalene, for whom the group had a particular devotion, recognising the risen Christ. Woman with a balance  depicts a woman weighing her conscience before God, whilst The Milkmaid  which shows a woman pouring milk from a jug is a sign of our duty to feed the poor. These Christians were peace loving and also looking for the promised new heaven and new earth which they thought would come soon. So Vermeer’s painting View of Delft , it is argued, is not just an ordinary town scene but a sign of that new age when all will be enveloped in peace.

Andrew Graham-Dixon is careful at every point to put in ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘perhaps’ and ‘probable’ for the direct hard evidence is scarce, but his plausible conjectures are like a good detective story and they build up to a fascinating story. One particularly difficult feature to fit into his story is the fact that Vermeer’s wife was a Roman Catholic and they lived in the house of his fiercely catholic mother-in-law on whom they were financially depended. All their 11 children were baptised as Catholic. This suggests that Vermeer’s own presence in the group of his patrons must have been very limited. But overall Andrew-Dixon convinces and as a result of his detailed research  these paintings will never be viewed  in the same way again.

Richard Harries is the author of Seeing God in Art: the Christian faith in 30 images, SPCK

The Council of Nicaea (325) and the development of Christian doctrine

The Council of Nicaea, which took place 1750 years ago in 325 of the Christian era was and remains fundamental for all mainstream Christian churches. It defined the most distinctive and crucial aspect of our faith.

Nicaea, the modern day Iznik, lies about 90 miles East and slightly to the South of Istanbul in modern Turkey The reason the Council took place here is that the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire was then at Nicomedia, only 40 miles away. In 330, not long after Nicaea Constantine, the first emperor to be a Christian, was to found a new Christian capital at Byzantium, renamed Constantinople and today Istanbul.

You might wonder why the emperor was here rather than in Rome. This was  because of the permanent threat from the East provided by Persia. He needed to be here for defensive purposes.  But from the point of view of the Council  Nicaea was handy for the emperor, with his capital just up the road at Nicomedia, and it was the emperor Constantine who called the council.

325 CE was an extraordinary time to be a Christian. For some 250 years the church had been subject to spasmodic but fierce persecution culminating in the great persecution of Diocletian which began in 303when more than 3000 Christians were killed. Then in 312 CE Constantine won a great battle at Milvian Bridge, according to accounts seeing a great cross in the sky with the words In hoc signo vinces, ‘in this sign conquer’. Although Constantine was not baptised until his death bed, because sin  after baptism was  such a serious matter,  restrictions against the faith were removed and the Church began to be favoured. However Constantine was perplexed to find  the church was bitterly divided over some theological matter; not something he wanted in his empire. He told the bishops to sort it out and he himself presided over some of the sessions. Furthermore he provided accommodation for them and free travel on the imperial transport system. About 250 bishops attended the  sessions,  the majority of them from the Eastern part of the empire though the Council may have been chaired by Osius, the Bishop of Cordoba. Including presbyters and deacons, the total attendance was nearly 1900, including two presbyters representing the Bishop of Rome. They met in a basilica in the Royal Palace in Nicaea now under water, though the remains of a mosaic to one of its entrances has recently been uncovered.

So what was this dispute about? Jesus Christ was clearly a human being but the writings of the New Testament witness that Christians had come to think of him as Divine. St John’s Gospel comes to a great climax with the words of  Thomas to the risen Christ ‘My Lord and my God’. St Paul wrote that ‘In him the whole fullness of God was pleased to dwell’ (Col 1.19).

The people of Israel were monotheists. It was the most fundamental feature of their faith that there is only one God, creator of all that is, visible and invisible. So how could a faith that talked about Father, Son and Holy Spirit fit into this? It is not surprising that there were different views and fierce arguments. This was particularly so in Alexandria, the most intellectually sophisticated city of the time. It was here that the dispute began. The Bishop, Alexander, was accused by one of his presbyters, Arius, of making Christ and the Father one in such a way that there was no distinction between them. Arius argued that there was a distinction and that only God the father was uncreated. Arius was condemned and expelled, but he went around getting supporters and the split grew. Constantine first tried to reconcile  Alexander and Arius and when that failed called the great Council which met from May to the end of July 325, and from this  came the first part of  what we call the Nicene Creed.

I will be using the Nicene Creed as we have it in Common Worship, which is shared by all the Western Churches. A point to note however is  that the creed we use now has not only been put into modern language, it is in fact the Creed of Nicaea as tidied up and expanded by the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE and is often referred to not as the Nicene Creed but the Niceno Constantinopolitan creed. I will be dealing only with the first part of the creed  the substance of which  comes from the Council in 325 CE. As we have it now in Common Worship it reads:

We believe in one God, 
the Father, the Almighty, 
maker of heaven and earth, 
of all that is, 
seen and unseen. 
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, 
the only Son of God, 
eternally begotten of the Father, 
God from God, Light from Light, 
true God from true God, 
begotten, not made, 
of one Being with the Father; 
through him all things were made. 
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, 
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary 
and was made man. 

A fundamental challenge with all theology, but particularly in relation to the difficult issues discussed at Nicaea, is to find language that conveys what we want to say. The Council wanted to draw a distinction between God and Christ and yet at the same time affirm that  they were fully one. So first of all they made the distinction by using the word begotten in contrast to the word made. As the creed affirms, Jesus is ‘eternally begotten of the father’ τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων or in Latin,  de Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Then it goes on to say that he is  ‘begotten, not made,’ γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα or in Latin natum, non factum.

Arius believed that Christ was Divine, but he thought that there was a split second before he was created. Theological disputes in Alexandria at the time were much like football rivalries today and you could go to your barbers to talk theology and hear people shouting the great Arian slogan ‘There was a time when he was not’ ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. He was not eternal like the Father but had a beginning in time. This the Council decisively rejected. He was not created, not made. He was eternally begotten. Now you may say that we don’t really know what begotten means, and you are right for there is no other example of being begotten. It applies to the unique relationship of Christ and the Father-and here we come up against the fundamental fact about language when it is applied to God because as such it will have no exact equivalent. Or to put it another way, human language when used of God is used in a metaphorical or symbolic way to point rather than giving an exact description. But begotten, so far as we can give the word meaning suggests a coming out or emanation. The best example are the words  we have at the very beginning of John’s Gospel. As our words both come out of us and are fully us, so Christ streams forth from the Father and at the same time remains one with him.

We then come to a no less crucial part of the creed. He is  ‘of one Being with the Father’ or as the old English version put it, ‘of one substance with the father.’ ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί, or in Latin, ejusdemque substantiae qua Pater est; The Church Fathers really struggled to find the right words for they not only had to find a word to affirm the oneness of the Father and the Son, they had to find a word to affirm the distinctness of the three persons in the Trinity. In the general confusion words were often used in different senses. In fact, before the Council,  homoousion, meaning of one substance, or  of one being, was not one of the key words in the debate but was allegedly proposed by Constantine as a way of uniting people.

It is important to note that however crucial the Council was for the future of the church, it did not end controversy. Followers of Arius continued to campaign and in the succeeding  years they sometimes managed to get the emperor of the day on their side. The next Bishop of Alexandria was the great defender of Christian orthodoxy, Athanasius, and it was said in his time that ‘The whole world groaned and found itself Arian’. And there were not just Arians there were semi-Arians, those who said that Christ was not of one substance with the father but was of  like substance  homoiousion-just an extra i in the word. Outsiders of course scoff and ridicule the church for all this dispute over a single letter, but I hope you can see that something fundamental was at stake. The Nicene fathers affirmed that Christ is ‘of one being with the Father’ In Him it is God himself who reaches out to us - not a semi-divine figure but God himself.

It is also important to note that there were other  issues which were not considered in full at Nicaea. For example: how are we to understand the relationship between the divinity and the humanity of Christ?  What about the position of the Holy Spirit? What about the relation of all three of them to one another, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  

The relationship between the humanity and divinity of Christ was addressed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 ce. The background being  that again there was a dispute. Christians in Alexandria emphasised the Divinity of Christ and were always in danger of thinking that this swallowed up his humanity. Christians in Antioch emphasised the humanity of Christ and were always in danger of underplaying his divinity or failing to see how the humanity and divinity could combine in Christ to make one person. Always there was a danger of misunderstanding. The leader in Antioch was a man named Nestorius who was accused of overemphasising the humanity of Christ at the expense of his divinity and the unity of his person. When I was at Cambridge many years ago I had to write an essay ‘Was Nestorius really a Nestorian? Chalcedon did not solve the problem, in the sense of making it understandable. It simply laid down boundaries. It said that Christ was fully human and fully divine and that the two natures were united in him so that he was truly one person. Chalcedon is important historically not just for setting up the boundaries of the faith but for the splits that resulted from it. Some bishops did not sign up for Chalcedon or for some reason failed to turn up, the result being that in Egypt today we have Coptic Christians, who emphasise the divinity of Christ and Christians in places like Lebanon and Syria who stress the humanity. Interestingly Nestorian Christians, who found themselves in Persian territory, took the faith along the Silk Road to China. These non-Chalcedonian churches, sometimes called the Oriental Orthodox, are very much part of the world wide Christian Community today and much has been done to overcome past misunderstandings.

Then what about the position of the Holy Spirit? In the fourth century there was a group of very distinguished bishops called the Cappadocian fathers, ministering in what is now central Turkey, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Basis of Caesaraea who championed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.  In our creed in Common Worship  we say:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, 
the Lord, the giver of life, 
who proceeds from the Father and the Son, 
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,

The key word to notice here is proceed. How this differs from begotten is not stated but the main point is clear enough. The Spirit comes forth from God and is to be given equal worship with the Father and the Son.

There is here however one controversial point. In our creed we say ‘who proceeds from the Father and the Son.’ The Orthodox churches, such as the Russian, Greek, Georgian,  simply say who proceeds from the Father - and that is what the original Creed of Nicaea said - In Greek τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον and in Latin -  a Patre procedentem, So the Orthodox churches have a legitimate grievance that the words ‘and the Son’ ‘filioque’ were a later addition. This resulted in the great Schism between East and West in 1054. The modern ecumenical movement has however brought about much greater understanding between the churches. In the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England. parishes are allowed to follow Orthodox usage and omit the filioque clause or substitute through the Son instead. So it would read ‘who proceeds from the Father through the Son.’  

St Matthew’s Gospel ends with the risen Christ standing on a mountain in Galilee saying to his followers ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ This was not spelt out at Nicaea but obviously the discussion was very much around at the time and in the centuries afterwards. Having affirmed that both the Son and the Spirit to be of the same being as the Father, but remaining distinct where was the language in which this could be expressed? The word for one being we have already come across, homoousion. The word the fathers eventually chose from the different persons was hypostasis. This caused a great deal  of confusion at first because the two words often meant the same thing. Anyway, the final formula was three hypostases, ℎ𝑦𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡á𝑠𝑒𝑖𝑠 in one substance or essence or ousia. In Latin, three personae in one substantia. You may find it helpful to think of one God in three modes of being.

The Council of Nicaea was of supreme importance in affirming the most fundamental aspect of our faith, that it is God himself in Christ who has taken our humanity in order to share his eternity with us. But as I have shown, there were other issues also to be resolved and in fact they were not all finally answered until the Seventh Council of Nicaea in 787.

In relation to using  the creed today, there are a couple of points worth noting. The first is that credal statements are doxological. By that I mean they are not statements on the basis of which further statements will  be made, but ones which open out into glorifying - the Greek word doxa meaning glory. A good example of what is meant is provided by the creed iself when it proclaims that Christ is:

 God from God, Light from Light, 
true God from true God, 

This is sheer worship. This is the end point of a process of affirmation which opens out into praise, not the start of a new line of reasoning.

The second point is that the English version as we now have it, begins ‘We believe’.  This reflects the Greek of the creed drawn up at Nicaea which is still used in the Orthodox churches. Most of us will remember the days  when we said ‘I believe’. That reflected the Latin translation of the Roman Catholic church – credo - and this is still their official version.  The importance of ‘We’ is that it reminds us that this is the faith of the church not a private manifesto. As congregations are encouraged to say at baptisms, ‘This is the faith of the church’ or as an old prayer puts it, ‘Regard not our sins but the faith of the church.’ Our personal faith may fluctuate, grow dimmer or brighter but like a great tree trunk the faith of the church stands strong to support us, and it is this to which we wish to cling. I regard the creed like the National Anthem, only more important. It is what we identify with.

Now it is very easy to think that these are just abstract debates that have little to do with the faith of ordinary Christians. What I hope I have shown is that they have been and are important for safeguarding the central tenets of the faith. These fathers thought that only God could save us from evil and bring us safe to eternal life. So Christ had to be fully God. At the same time only if he became fully human would humanity be redeemed. Or as they sometimes put it, if we are to be divinised, only God himself could share his divinity with us, and only if he took our human nature could our humanity be divinised.

These are not abstract doctrines but the life blood of our faith. Hold in your mind for a moment the account or picture of Christ’s baptism. The Father is present speaking. The Son is present hearing the words  ‘You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased. And the Holy Spirit symbolised as a dove, alights on the head Jesus. So it is that when we pray or worship, we come in union with Christ to address the Father and this is made possible by the Holy Spirit within us.

Finally I come back to the problem of language, of finding words that can point to God. As was said many years ago, what God is in himself is totally unknowable and incomprehensible. All  human words can do is direct our hearts and minds in the right direction with the right attitude. We can reject crude literalism. Equally we should reject the view that these are just myths. Christian language is symbolic realism. It is pointing to what is real, not just made up, but it can only do this through symbol and metaphor.

As Hilary of Poitiers put it in the fourth century

But the errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespass on forbidden ground. Faith ought in silence to fulfil the commandments, worshipping the Father, reverencing with Him the Son, abounding in the Holy Ghost, but we must strain the poor resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words. The error of others compels us to err in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart.
 

Church Times

An inclusive patriotism.

25^th September 2025

There was another far-right rally last weekend, this time in Glasgow. A good number of Saltires were flown, and there were the usual shouts of immigrants to go home.  The rally held the weekend before  in London was even more disturbing. First was its sheer size. It was estimated that between 110,000 and 150,000 people were present. Even allowing for the fact that they were no doubt bussed in from different parts of the country, this is a very significant number. Secondly, the fact that in addition to the many Union Jack and St George’s flags, there were wooden crosses and flags bearing Christian symbols. Crowds were led in chants of “ Christ is King”  and encouraged to pray while being urged to defend “God, faith, family and homeland”.

Christian nationalism has long been a feature of American culture and was a major feature of the memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sunday. It   been condemned by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church ‘as an idolatry of a white supremacist national ideology that uses the Christian religion as its justification’ and as such is ‘an apostasy’ that violates the first two commandments. It has come to Europe especially in Hungary where Victor Orban claims to be defending Christian civilisation and values against Islam. Until recently this theme has been fairly subdued in Britain. Nigel Farrage, who wants to distance himself from the far right but whose message resonates with it, has occasionally talked about Judaeo-Christian values but this has not been a major element in his rhetoric. However, a straw in the wind may be the recent defection of Danny Kruger the MP for East Wiltshire  from the conservatives to Reform, as he has explicitly called recently for a revival of ourselves as a Christian nation. Perhaps judging that he will not get much take up for that in the present conservative party he has more hopes of Reform.

The problem of course is that whilst God, faith, family and homeland are all good things in themselves, these slogans are being used to divide the country. An emphasis on faith, which is usually taken to mean the Christian faith, excludes those who don’t share it. An emphasis on family highlights those who do not fit the usual family pattern. An assertion of homeland immediately distances those who have come to this country from another homeland. These slogans, are being used in a highly aggressive and divisive way.

One action the government could take would be to give more attention to promoting fundamental British values. These had an unfortunate start in 2011 as they were introduced as part of the prevent programme rather than being put forward in themselves as an essential feature of our life together. They are also clumsily worded and defective but could be easily strengthened along the lines of my private members bill in the House of Lords. But even as they stand, defined as  ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’ much more could be made of them. This is particularly so if it was done in conjunction with the 2010 equality act with its nine protected characteristics of religion, sexuality, race, gender etc. These values, which bind us together as a society, could act as a counter-weight to the divisive slogans of the far right.

The problem of course is that values are rather abstract and do not carry the emotional force of flags or chants, so more needs to be done. Perhaps in areas where there are significant communities of people of South Asian, African or Caribbean origin flags could be hung there, to show that the flag includes all those who are UK citizens. Recently some people have been putting inclusive messages on their  St George’s flags. Perhaps churches could take the lead and encourage diverse  communities to claim patriotism for themselves in this way rather than letting it be high jacked by anti-immigrant forces.

Then to those who want to lead chants of Christ is King at such rallies. I wonder if they have thought of making sure that the group they bring to such gatherings includes those who are non-white? Of course it might be dangerous for them, but it would be a sign that their Christianity is not just a form of anti-immigration protest. After all, as we know, some of our liveliest Christian congregations now are made up of people whose families originally came from outside the UK.

There is no doubt that immigration is a major explosive point in our society  and any government must try seriously to address the fears expressed in some communities about the effect of this on housing and welfare as well as by  rapid change in the makeup of their communities. Patrician liberalism has no place. Many people are feeling disturbed and resentful. Unfortunately this is resulting in terrible abuse to those who are different in some way, especially immigrants, and many feel vulnerable.

The swing to the right in this country and elsewhere is not just due to immigration or to anti-woke rhetoric however. It is he result of a swing away from the ideology that has dominated recent decades, in which free choice has been seen as almost the only value. Recent decades have been dominated by a combination of market and social liberalism. In the market let people buy and sell what they want. In the social sphere let them do what they want. But free choice cannot exist on its own. It needs to be embedded in a wider set of values. J.D. Vance the US Vice-President said recently that we need a post-liberal politics. But that is wrong because liberalism, that is, an emphasis on personal choice is a fundamental good of our society. We do not want to be ‘post-liberal’ but what we do need is a common good liberalism, a liberalism that is rooted in and supported by a wider set of values that make for the good of the whole community and that includes patriotism. So called ‘Blue Labour’ led by Maurice Glassman tried to get the Labour party to see this a few years ago, but met with something of a rebuff. Sadly what we are now seeing in society is a sign that a chance was missed.

 The churches, in conjunction with other faith communities, have a key role at the moment in promoting a sense of social cohesion. We can thank God that Anglican Bishops in particular have in recent years have built up good relationships with other religious leaders. They have an opportunity now to affirm with them  those fundamental values that we share and help communities express and symbolise an inclusive patriotism.

Richard Harries is the author of Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian Roots of our political values. SPCK

The qualities needed in a new Archbishop of Canterbury

The Church of England has never been in a weaker position, divided on the question of same-sex relations and set in a culture in which only 45.2 % of the population identify as Christian, few of these being Anglican churchgoers.  Yet after decades of disparagement and indifference there are now a few signs that people might once again give serious attention to Christian belief. The new Archbishop will have a real opportunity to give voice to that faith

First and foremost they will need to be a person deeply rooted in the life of prayer. This may sound rather dull to outsiders but those in the church know that without this everything they do would be hollow. Moreover, without a grounded spiritual life they simply  would not be able to cope with the demands of the job.

Then they need to be at home in their own skin. This will  manifest itself by not taking themselves too seriously, and a certain  capacity for self-mockery, as was the case with Robert Runcie and the grossly unfairly treated Justin Welby.

Being Archbishop is a job with at least three major  roles. It means  being able to speak to the nation as a whole or at least to such of the general public who will listen. It means  being able to give a clear  lead to  the Church of England  and  means being able to hold the already fractured Anglican Communion together.

In order to speak to the nation as a whole they need not be a good theologian like Michael Ramsey or a public intellectual like Rowan Williams but they must be able to speak simply and convincingly to a wide general public about the faith. The last Archbishop who was really able to do that was probably William Temple who died in 1944 when as a result of the seriousness brought about by World War II the culture was much more receptive to the  words of a religious leader.

In order to give a lead to the Church of England and hold the Anglican Communion together they need to be a person who can be trusted by all sides on the contentious issues which divide us. This is not enough in itself but without it there is no way forward.

The new Archbishop must also be able to speak on public issues in a way that is morally compelling even if they arouse the anger of the government of the day or some of the public. The issues they speak on should be few and significant. Geoffrey Fisher did this over the  Suez crisis in 1956 asking 8 times in the House of  Lords ‘Who then was the aggressor?’ Michael Ramsey did it when Rhodesia declared itself unilaterally independent and Robert Runcie aroused opposition when he insisted the service after the Falklands war should not be triumphalist but have elements of penitence, reconciliation and prayers for the dead of both sides.

The next Archbishop will be the eighth one I have known. The last seven have all brought something distinctive to the role as will the next. But it is a killing job and means living with the constant strain of  what the press might say about them next. I used to tease Rowan Williams and say ‘God has given you every possible gift under the sun-and as your punishment he has made you Archbishop of Canterbury’. Nevertheless George and Eileen Carey when they came to Lambeth decided that they would enjoy the job. I hope the new Archbishop will take a similar attitude.

Richard Harries, a former Bishop of |Oxfords, writes about the seven Archbishops in his autobiography The Shaping of a Soul: a life taken by surprise.The qualities needed in a new Archbishop of Canterbury

A Christian country?

Are we a Christian country? Against this is the fact that those who identify as Christian are now a minority. According to the 2021 census 46.2% defined  themselves as Christian and  37.2% said they had no religion. Muslims constituted 6.5 % of the population and Hindus 1.7%. So from the point of view of individual belief we are a pluralistic, multi-faith country. Most of life carries on without any reference to religion. It is assumed that people have different beliefs and this is a private matter.

However in a recent parliamentary speech  Danny Kruger the MP for East Wiltshire argued strongly that we still are a Christian country and called for a return to ‘Christian politics’. He is certainly right in his first assertion. Our whole history has been shaped by the Christian faith, as have our major institutions. Even more fundamental the values which we take for granted, like the equal worth and dignity of each person, are a direct result of the influence of the Christian faith. This has been demonstrated in  books by historians like Tom Holland and Larry Siedentop ( who particularly stressed the role of St Paul).

This Christian faith has taken particular form in the shape of the Church of England and its special role in relation to the monarchy and the state. The Monarch is crowned in  Westminster abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Each day in parliament begins with prayers, in which parliamentarians identify themselves as ‘We thine unworthy servants’. In recent years Church of England bishops and priests have exercised this role in a very inclusive and hospitable manner. Indeed other religions welcome the establishment of the Church of England as an umbrella in which their own place and contribution is recognised.

In his speech Mr Kruger expressed two worries related to moving away from our Christian roots. One was the rise of Islam, whilst noting that on a number of social issues he stood with them. About the other religion, which worried him more, he said  ‘I do not think that “woke” does justice to its seriousness’. Unfortunately his attempt to define what he meant was so vague and general and polemical it is simply not possible to say what he is really getting at. Will someone define  what it is to be ‘woke’ and why I should be worried about it?

Like Mr Kruger I believe that the reality of  God as made known in Christ is the most fundamental fact of all for both the life of a nation and for each individual. It is good that Mr Kruger has reminded us of this. But to trumpet this in our present society would I believe be counter productive. Not only would it fail to resonate with the majority it would be mis-interpreted to imply that Christians were seeking special privilege or that they would like to enact repressive legislation And his call for a ‘Christian politics’ glides over the fact that Christians do in fact disagree on a number of issues. I am strongly opposed to the Assisted Dying bill but there are a few Christians who support it and presumably do so on Christian grounds.

Rather than stressing that we are a Christian society I believe what we should face up to is the decline in Christian influence and as a result the consequent  lack of any underlying and unifying ethical basis for our life together. We need to work together with people of other faiths and no faith to affirm certain fundamentals that are sadly lacking at the moment. These are that we are moral beings, that life is a moral struggle, and that whether or not we think we are ultimately accountable to God we are accountable to one another. On this basis we need to oppose the moral relativism which is so prevalent and debilitating in our society at the moment and to reassert our belief that as human beings we are truth seeking, truth telling beings. This is not the Gospel but it is an essential preparation for the Gospel.

T.S. Eliot got it just right when he argued that a Christian society would be one in which ‘the natural end of man -virtue and well being in community- would be acknowledged for all and the supernatural end- beatitude- for those with eyes to see it.’ The importance of this definition is first of all in its rejection of individualism, for the end is well being in community for everyone. Then what startles the modern mind is the inclusion of the word ‘virtue’- but this is just what our society needs now. Virtue cannot be imposed by the state, which can only make laws. But unless virtue, or what we might call fundamental decency, is a feature of society, the role of the state will be little better than that of a cage to stop us tearing one another apart.

In recent decades our society and its governments have been shaped by a combination of market and social liberalism. In other words, the only value that has been recognised is that of free choice, both in the market to buy what you want in in personal life to do what you want. It is now beginning to be recognised that a much thicker set of values is needed and free choice cannot and should not stand alone. This is one of the reasons why there has been a swing to right wing populism and in some cases a turn to Roman Catholicism. The Christian churches have a crucial role to play in helping people rediscover those fundamental values without which no society can operate. It is not a question of downplaying the essential beliefs of our faith but of what is the appropriate and right action in our society now.

Now is not the time to placard the claim that we are a Christian country. We remain a Christian country in the sense outlined above, but this is a truth about which at the moment it is best to be reticent in the same way Bonhoeffer suggested in his letters. What is needed is the expression of our  Christian faith  in a desire to find common cause with others in championing human beings as above all moral beings, and our life together as based on certain fundamental values.  

Richard Harries is the author of Faith in politics? Rediscovering the Christian roots of our political values.

The World Within: why writers and artists and thinkers retreat

Guy Stagg

Scribner (Simon and Schuster)

978-1-3985-3350-9

Why do people withdraw from life, sometimes for quite long periods? Why do people, including now many secular people, go on retreat? Guy Stagg asks these questions in relation to three of the most arresting people of the 20^th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who shifted our whole understanding of philosophy, David Jones, at once a remarkable poet and painter, and Simone Weil, the French intellectual and mystic.

In this intriguing book Stagg brings out a number of different reasons why these three led such radically different lives from most of us, some more easy to understand than others. One is the reason for solitude in order to concentrate on essential work. So Wittgenstein went to a remote area of Norway in order to write the Tractatus Logico- Positivus  and David Jones spent the last years of his life in a dishevelled hotel bedroom totally given over to his painting and lettering. Then a person might be solitary by nature. All three of those discussed were essentially loners.

More startling are some of the motives that drove this apartness from normal human activity. With Simone Weil it was a desire to fully identify with human suffering. This was what led her first to join the republican cause in Spain, then to work for a year on a conveyer belt in a factory despite being nearly crippled with migraine. When the war came she could have stayed safely in the USA but came back to Europe to support the resistance but refusing to eat more than what she judged the poorest ate, she in effect starved herself to death. With Wittgenstein the reason is more difficult to grasp. During World War I he had deliberately put himself in the position of most danger. He separated himself from the huge wealth of his family to live on his earnings.  Leaving academic life he worked for a period as a gardener in a monastery, then trained as a teacher and taught in remote mountain schools for years. It seems as though he was troubled about his own character and wanted to put himself through the most difficult trials both to test himself and to grow morally as a person.

Where this book comes to its most crucial focus, however, is in the relation between the life style of these three and their understanding of suffering. All three of them suffered terribly. Three of Wittgenstein’s siblings died young probably from suicide  and suicide was never far from his own thoughts. He was homosexual at a time when this was illegal and he deeply grieved the death a friend  in early life whom he deeply loved. Unlike Wittgenstein David Jones did not have a need to suffer. In his long poem In Parenthesis, written from the standpoint of ‘Dai Greatcoat, which Auden called the best book to come out of World War I the tone is almost jaunty. But as a result of writing it Jones clearly suffered what we now know as PTSD and for three years he could do absolutely nothing. Most startling of all is Simone Weil. Her thought is always fresh, confident and arresting-and deeply disturbing- because for her suffering was not just an inevitable part of having a creation, it existed in the very heart of God, and the only true way to this God was to enter fully into the affliction  of  his absence. About the cry of dereliction on the cross she said  it was there that we had true proof Christ was divine.

Stagg writes ‘Misery is no guarantee of genius, and, in the case of these three, their achievements came in spite rather than because of their suffering’ (p.180). The first part of this sentence is clearly true, the second is more open to question. In the case of Wittgenstein and Weil, though not David Jones, the uncompromising nature of their personalities, with which their genius is so integrally linked, made some form of suffering inevitable.   

All three figures were deeply religious, but they understood religion differently. Jones converted to Catholicism as a result of seeing Mass and came to see all life in sacramental terms and his work as sign making. Wittgenstein  was also converted to Catholicism but for him what mattered was the ethical endeavour, the struggle to be a different person, about the rest one had to be silent. Weil had an overpowering religious experience. Reading George Herbert’s poem ‘Love’ she said that Christ took possession of her soul yet she refused to be baptised for fear of cutting herself off from wider humanity with whom she felt in solidarity.

This book is not only about these three figures, it is a very  personal quest of the author himself. In a relaxed and informative way he visits  and takes the reader to all the places and religious houses associated with his three subjects wondering at the back to his mind what there might be in withdrawal and retreat for his own life. But there is a fundamental difficulty here. He visits as a spectator, and as  he is a close, attentive  observer  we get some excellent writing about the places and people, with no false romantism, indeed some quite astringent realism. But this means that as an observer he can never quite fully enter into the experience and is sometimes bored by the place or the religious services. The result however is that he has given us a  readable book in which the biggest questions of human life are wrestled with by three people prepared to put aside the usual compromises to live with total commitment at the extreme edge both of life and their human spirit.

Richard Harries

He is the author of Haunted by Christ: modern writers and the struggle for faith (SPCK)

The qualities needed in the next Archbishop of Canterbury

Being Archbishop of Canterbury is a killing job, and likely to be even more testing this time round. I used to tease Rowan Williams and say ‘God has given you every possible gift under the sun and as your punishment he has made you Archbishop’. That’s how it must feel sometimes. The most difficult pressure comes from the press and anyone of any sensitivity is bound to feel exposed and nervous by the constant questioning, criticism and risk of saying the wrong thing or being misinterpreted. At the 1988 Lambeth Conference the American bishops were amazed at the constant press attacks on Robert Runcie, and I had to say to them ‘It’s a rough, tough  world over here’. The new archbishop is likely to be particularly vulnerable because of the church’s recent safeguarding failures and because of the general lowering of the status of the Church of England over recent decades. The church is an easy target and the new archbishop will be the person at whom the arrows are shot.

So how can anyone cope with this pressure? Only by the depth of their own Christian faith and the strength of their spiritual life. It does not matter whether they come from a Catholic or Evangelical background because by the time a person has reached the position of being considered they will almost certainly have gained wisdom from outside their own tradition. Both George Carey and Jusin Welby, from evangelical and charismatic backgrounds, drew on the disciplines of Catholic practise and discipline. In any case it is only by being daily and deeply rooted in Christ will anybody survive not just the exposure to the press but the relentless demands on their time and energies. And that points to the second quality which will be required: a capacity to prioritise the work.

The Arcbishop is not just the Chair of the House of Bishops responsible for running the Church of England, he is head of a national church with the expectation he will be able to say something meaningful  to the country as a whole. He is also one of the ‘instruments of communion’ of the Anglican church worldwide and  a focus of its unity. These different roles pull in different directions. Each one is a full time job. So the new archbishop will need to prioritise and as letters flood in every day asking him or her to do this or that they will have to  decide what should  be accepted and what denied. In particular it will mean distinguishing the important from what claims to be urgent and focussing on the former. This will mean asking time and again, what is it that I as Archbishop, and only I, can and ought to do.

It is not necessary to be an able administrator like Geoffrey Fisher. A good chief of staff at Lambeth and their team there should be able to deal with all that adequately. Nor can we necessarily expect the new archbishop to be an outstanding theologian like Michael Ramsey or a public intellectual like Rowan Williams. But they must be able to communicate intelligently and clearly to both the church and the country.  Recent Archbishops have been good communicators to certain kinds of audience such as conferences and church gatherings. But what is required in our age is the ability to communicate  in a society where Christianity has become a foreign language and what goes on in church strange if not alien. The present Archbishop of York has something of this gift -the new Archbishop will need it.

As we all  know the unity of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion have been severely strained in recent decades over same sex relationships. So the new Archbishop will have the unenviable task of somehow holding both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion together. This requires a particular kind of gift, combining  spirituality and wisdom in a way which evokes trust.

All the seven Archbishops of Canterbury  I have known have brought some particular  gifts to the role and I am sure the next one will have their own unique contribution to make. Although, as I have stressed, it is a killing role at a difficult time for the church there are also some tiny signs that the climate might be more receptive to what the Christian faith has to offer. The dogmatic atheism of Richard Dawkins and his ilk has long been discredited and is now very passé. And there are a few more voices in the public sphere  willing to confess the faith.

So the new Archbishop of Canterbury will need to have a deeply rooted faith and a strong spiritual life to enable them to manage the daily strain of the press and the relentless pressure of work. They will need to prioritise that work and constantly ask what is the particular contribution they can make in their role. This will mean being firm in refusing a good number of very worthwhile engagements. They will need both the personal qualities and skill to hold together an organisation that is in danger of fragmenting. And they will need to be able to speak in a language that is intelligent, clear and understandable to a sceptical nation. It is not impossible. In all the hyped up nonsense on television someone like Monty Don comes across as the real thing, able to talk about gardening in a way which is authoritative, natural and authentic. He is a good role model for a new archbishop  talking about the faith.

So how can the new archbishop cope? Like St Paul she or he will be  all too aware of their  weakness and ready to hear the words  “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12.9) Perhaps they could also take some advice from George Carey and his wife Eileen who decided that whatever the strains of the job they would still try to enjoy it.

Richard Harries. In his autobiography The Shaping of a Soul: a life taken by surprise, he has a chapter on the seven Archbishops of Canterbury he has known.  

Right and wrong

Recently in the House of Lords there was a question about the rise in the number old age pensioners shoplifting. The Peer who asked it was clearly trying to draw attention to the extent of poverty amongst old people. The Minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, in his answer said that shoplifting by anyone, whether they were a pensioner or not, was ‘unacceptable’ and should not be ‘tolerated’. Why those words? Why not just say that it was wrong? For some time now we have been frightened of using the word. We even talk about shoplifting rather than stealing. Those who use social media can be very judgemental, but even there words like right and wrong do not come naturally.

For centuries all children were taught the ten commandments. In many churches they were written on either side of the altar. They grew up believing we lived in a universe in which moral choices had to be made. It was not just a matter of what was legal or expedient but what was right. This certainly prevailed until the end of the 1950’s. Children would still then be taught a famous story about George Washington, how when he was six he was given an axe which he used to  cut down his father’s cherry tree. When his father was angry George Washington owned up to it, not being able to tell a lie, and his father’s anger dissipated. I suspect that all this teaching about right and wrong  began to fade in the 1960’s and certainly by the 1980’s we had come to the position where people could say ‘greed is good’  and where what was legal rather than what was honest became the prevailing mood.

There are three understandable reasons why we shy away from the language of right and wrong. First of all we have grown in our understanding of how people might be drawn into crime by social deprivation, dysfunctional upbringing, psychological factors or often a combination of all of them. It is of course good that we should trying to understand those forces but this should not undermine a basic belief that people are responsible for their actions. When Dostoevsky was in prison he had to live with some of the most hardened  criminals  on earth. Although felt a deep sense of pity for them he still asserted they must take hold of their own lives.

Secondly we hesitate to use  the language of morality for fear of sounding  self-righteous. If you say someone is wrong they might feel that you are claiming a moral superiority. Christians in particular ought to be able to address this one, because we know we are not morally superior to others. We are all mired in the solidarity of sin. Somehow we have to learn to use the language of right and wrong without implying any kind of self  righteousness.  Reinhold Niebuhr was exemplary in this regard. For example, he never doubted that we should fight the evil of the Nazis but was always aware that the seeds of that evil were in ourselves. As a line from one of his prayers runs ‘We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit’. Or again, ‘We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue.’

Third, there is the widespread moral relativism of our times, the belief that moral judgements simply reflect the outlooks of different people and  cultures and there is nothing objective about them. In fact although there is indeed some variety  it is not possible to find a society in which stealing and murder for example, are not condemned. There are some acts, such as torturing babies, which revolt any sane person. We live in a world where judgments have to be made, even though there may be fault on both sides. The Nato countries are partly to blame for the fact that we have the war in Ukraine, for steps could have been taken at the end of the Cold War to make Russia feel less paranoid about its policies. But there is no moral equivalence between Ukraine and Russia. Putin deliberately invaded a friendly neighbour and is causing the death of thousands of his own countrymen apart from the many Ukrainians. It was an evil act.

In fact there are rare occasions when we are aware of a moral dimension to life- when there is a national scandal. The then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak said  to the House of Commons on the blood infection scandal:

 This is a day of shame for the British state. Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life-from the National Health Service to the civil service to ministers in successive governments at every level.

He talked about a ‘moral failure at the heart of our national life’. The problem is that, as has been shown in relation not only to the blood infection disaster  but the Post Office scandal and the Grenfell Tower fire, we do not seem able to hold individuals or institutions properly to account. We hold up our hand in horror but no one is held responsible. Andrew Marr has written: ‘It’s time to acknowledge the obvious: we have a moral and intellectual hole sitting in the middle of our democracy’. Until we can hold particular individuals and institutions to account there will continue to be this hole.

We do not want a return to the alleged moralism of the Victorians and any kind of self-righteousness needs to be guarded against. We are after all welcomed by Christ through sheer graciousness not by any moral achievement.  But as human beings we are moral beings and life is a moral struggle. The Philosopher Wittgenstein  wrote that his life was in the world and:

That my will penetrates the world.

That my will is good or evil.

Therefore that good and evil are somehow

Connected with the meaning of the world.

It is a message our present generation badly needs to hear again in relation to all aspects of life, personal and political, individual and institutional.

Richard Harries. He is the author of The Re-enchantment of morality (SPCK) which was short listed for the Michael Ramsy Prize.

Alexei Navalny Patriot

As the world outside Russia continues to be shocked  by the unswerving support given by Patriarch Kiril to President  Putin, it is encouraging  to know that Putin’s main opponent,  the courageous Alexei Navalny, was strengthened  by his membership of the Orthodox Church which he entered as an adult having previously been an atheist.

Navalny grew up under communism in an army family and was appalled by the lies and more lies under which the country had to live. When Putin came to power it was not just the lies that enraged him but the massive corruption of both Putin himself and his cronies. After training as a lawyer he founded an anti-corruption organisation which exposed their vast wealth and also stood for election as Mayor of Moscow.  Despite everything the regime did to hinder him he managed 22.7% of the vote. He was however barred from standing in the 2018 Presidential election.

Navalny really hit the world headlines however when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. Flown to Germany for treatment he miraculously emerged from a long coma and resumed his activities. He returned to Russia knowing it would mean endless arrests, imprisonments and his likely death, which turned out to be the case. He was sent to ever harsher prisons and finally to one in the artic circle where he died.  Angela Merkel had visited Navalny when he received treatment in Germany. She wrote ‘Navalny returned to Russia, only to be arrested at the airport. What followed was a three year martyrdom. On Feb16 , 2024 Alexei Navalny died  in a Russian prison camp, a victim of  the repressive  state power of his home country.’[1]

Navalny kept a prison dairy for these last years and they reveal  the portrait  of an extraordinary spirit.[2] He refused to be broken by the system, and continually argued back to his guards, but all the time with an amazing sense of humour and confidence. Despite all the attempts to isolate and humiliate him he retained a sense of elan, confident that the truth would eventually win through.

There are many nice touches of humour, as for example when he echoes Kant in saying there are two things in life that matter, the starry skies above and  the moral imperative withing  but  then adds a third,  passing his hand over his bald head.

What was the secret of this spirit? Clearly he was born with a sense of chuzpah, for even at school he was the pupil who cheekily answered back. He was also wonderfully supported by his lovely wife Yulia, who shared his ideas and was willing to suffer with and as a result of his activities. He also found meditation a great help in calming his impulsive temper. But what emerges from the diary is how much his discovery of the Christian faith sustained him through his ordeals. This began with the birth of the couple’s first  child Dasha in 2001.As he wrote:

Having a child changed my life in an unexpected way…Like anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I had never believed in God, but looking now at Dasha and how she was developing, I could not reconcile myself to the thought that this was only a matter of biology….From a dyed-in-the-wool atheist , I gradually became a religious person. (p.181)

Even during his time in prison Navalny fasted in Lent and had to face the absurdity that the bread he himself was not eating could not be given to another prisoner and had to be thrown away. During this time he learn the beatitudes by heart not only in Russian but in English French and Latin as well. One of the beatitudes in particular was crucially important to him, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be fulfilled’. In his final appeal to the judge in one case he makes this central. Despite his position as a prisoner he tells the judge that  he finds some satisfaction and fulfilment in trying to make that beatitude his own, and he argues that  deep down this is what the Russian people want. In the end righteousness will prevail over the deeply unrighteous Russian state. Truth will out and will win through. This faith undergirded his natural courage and gave him the nice mixture of self depreciation and irony that is so characteristic of his personality. The beatitude was  true because he did indeed find himself genuinely fulfilled in what he was doing .(p326-8) In an entry for  March 22^nd 2022, but which forms an epilogue to the diary,  he says he lies on his bunk looking up and asking himself if he is a Chrisian in his heart of hearts. He suggests with some ambiguity that some of what passes for religion may not be necessary  but then adds:

My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to Jesus and the rest of his family  to deal with everything else…..As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me. (p.479)

[1] Angela Merkel, Freedom, Macmillan, 2024, p.675

[2] Alexei Navalny Patriot, The Bodley Head, 2024

A book, a letter and a photo

In early 1958 I was serving as a soldier in Germany and thinking hard about the Christian faith. One of the books I read was Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy. This suggested that the great faiths had in common the idea of losing yourself to find yourself, of giving yourself away. And it struck me that if this is at the heart of reality what could be a more sublime example than the incarnation, when God gives himself to humanity. So it was that through a non-Christian book the central claim of Christianity was reinforced for me.

Also in the regiment was Lance Corporal John Haliburton with his baggy battle dress and waddle walk. But there was little in the regiment than went on without him. He ran the orderly room and being fluent in German was the regimental interpreter.  He organised the chapel, the jazz band, played the organ and ran a bible study group. In between he sneaked into the officer’s mess and in response to my sherry talked theology to me. God rest him. Many books have influenced me, but The Perennial Philosophy affected me in a surprising, unpredictable way and made me see that the incarnation is congruous with our deepest spiritual insights.

In 1972 I was the first and last Warden of Wells in the newly merged Salisbury and Wells Theological College. One day a letter arrived from Robert Stopford, the Bishop of London, asking me if I would be interested in being Vicar of All Saints, the old parish church of Fulham. Three years earlier I had been looking for, and the Bishop had remembered, that this was the kind of parish in which  I wanted to serve.  It was  the only time in my life when  I knew just  what I wanted. I did not want to worship what E. M. Forster termed the great suburban Jehovah and I did not want an eclectic inner city congregation. I wanted a socially mixed congregation in London but not too far out. Nothing was available. Several unsuitable jobs failed to materialise, and then I saw the Wells job advertised and although I had not originally thought I wanted to be on the staff of a theological college, it has turned out to be hugely important to me. The discipline of lecturing on doctrine and ethics laid a foundation for much of what I have done. Not finding what I wanted earlier, and as a result doing something which later  turned out to be so fundamental for my ministry, seems to me now a providential ordering.

When I retired as Bishop of Oxford in 2006 people often used to say to me ‘Do you miss Oxford?’ but I could not think of anything I missed. I began to wonder if I was normal not missing anything. Then some years later I realise I did indeed miss something-being part of the senior staff team with its shared sense of purpose and much humour. We  met every month but once a year we went away for a weekend together at a retreat house where we would worship, plan strategically and share convivial meals. On the Saturday afternoon we went for a long walk in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside. What I came to miss was never again being part of a small team which combined seriousness and laughter, mutual support and respect for difference. I think for many people it is in a small group that they first discover the reality of Christian community.  I discovered this at Wells Theological College, where we all had to be part of a house group. In Fulham, I encouraged the development of house groups and where once a year we took 30 or so people away for a weekend together. That weekend did more for church life that a whole year of church going. Another important group for me was my episcopal cell which met residentially twice a year. It is through such opportunities for sharing at some depth that we discover what it is to be the church, part of mystical body of all Christ’s faithful people. This photo of our senior staff team on one of our walks is a reminder and symbol of this.  

Richard Harries. His autobiography is The Shaping of a Soul: a life taken by surprise, Christian Alternative Books