Job sat on the dunghill and scratched his boils with a piece of a broken pot. “Curse God and die,” his wife suggested. Job didn’t do that, but he cursed the day he was born. Job was bitter. And the Lord did not count Job’s bitterness against him, but instead rebuked Job’s sanctimonious friends. So we are to understand that bitterness is not in itself the sign of a bad character. Job is a righteous and innocent man. His children have all been killed. All he possesses has been stolen or destroyed. There are millions like him in the world today.
And yet it’s still hard for the human soul to maintain perspective. Are you still sitting in your benefice after a decade with no red piping on your cassock? No purple? That doesn’t make you Job.
Why do clergy do this to themselves? I put it this way because this bitterness is wholly self-generated and self-inflicted. “Where would you like to be in five years’ time?” “What hopes do you have for ministry in the longer term?” Two standard questions on the Annual Ministry Development Review form. The human institution that is the established church is a mosaic of godliness and worldliness. Examine the question of where any given priest would like to be in five years’ time and the hopes they have for their future and you open a window on this. First of all, there are the things you must not say: “I would like to be sitting in your chair, Bishop,” or, alternately, “I have no hope. I vaguely remember when I did, but not now. Don’t mind me.”
A calling from God, human ambition and the principle of Buggins’s turn are all part of the mosaic. In recent years things have been shifting a little, however, and some of the people I know are feeling it. Ambition isn’t being satisfied quite as much as it was 20 years ago.
It used to be the case that a middle-class white man could have a career in the Church of England. It helped, of course, if he got a degree from one of the ancient universities. Then he would go on to one of the residential theological colleges. Once there, the chatter would begin about who would end up where. You would hope for a curacy where you might be noticed. Then, perhaps a post as Bishop’s Chaplain, where people would get to know you. You would prove yourself in a town centre church, and your name would be put on the list of those who were bishop material. It helped if you were married and had children. Bachelors were suspect. And you would need to avoid rocking the boat.
There were clergy of colour in those days. Eventually there were women too. They weren’t part of this system. A woman tended to find herself in one of two kinds of posts. Either she became an associate vicar, assistant to the male rector, or she was put in charge of a large number of small rural congregations. “Dinner Ladies” was one colleague’s term. Women and black clergy of both sexes got used to the wearisome process of preparing to be interviewed for a post only to find that we were just there to show diversity on the shortlist.
We don’t hear much any more about the 2014 Green Report, which aimed to talent-spot people for managerial training before they were shot up to the clerical heights. Especially after the news that Paula Vennells was somebody’s first choice for Bishop of London. However, the foundation of the Green Report was a desire to see the leaders of the Church of England selected from a wider variety of backgrounds than had previously been the case. I doubt that all the black and female bishops who have been consecrated in the past 10 years are products of Green’s talent pool. We have them though, because after years of gifted people being sidelined because of their sex or colour, it was decided to enlarge the group of people thought suitable for preferment.
So where does that leave Buggins, the bitter and disappointed fellow who hasn’t had his turn? What’s his hope in a world so unfair as to raise women and black clergy above him? I have only one suggestion—well, only one that’s fit to print. Long ago I decided to live as if being a country parson—a dinner lady if you like—was the highest calling anyone could aspire to. After a while I found that it was true. I recommend it.
