Church in a spin

It's always worth coming to General Synod if you want to know what's really going on. So, between debates (Mental Health and Anglican Communion), I have to humbly report an error in my last blog. Revd JJ is still at the Lambeth Palace press office ... which rather undermines my theory about how the Archbishop of Canterbury was allowed to go on World at One and say what he did. It wasn't a depleted staff after all. Ruth Gledhill explores this element of the whole Sharia story in her blog. I'm sorry.

Meanwhile the Press (sitting conspiritorially next door as I write this) and the Church of England are having a stand off. The Press are calling for the Archbishop to apologise - for misleading the public (cf The Mail). The Church of England is increasingly calling for the press to apologise - for misrepresenting the Archbishop. Things are getting heated.

But it's not all about Sharia. In fact, on the floor it's hardly had a mention. Synod has been rebelling against centralisation, stalling a move to collect funeral and wedding fees centrally and throwing out plans for dioceses to take over official ownership of parsonages. There's been a moving and amazing series of stories in the mental health debate while we're now onto the Anglican Communion. And strong attacks on gambling and government plans for regional casinos.

We've also been asked if we can trace a giraffe called Kofi Annan, referred to by John Sentamu when he reported on his trip to Kenya. A woman in the public gallery shouted out her objections to Sharia Law before being hustled out yesterday and an old fella shouted out that Sodomites shouldn't be allowed in the church before being hustled out today. Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St Albans, who was about to speak, thanked the heckler and said he wouldn't take it personally before continuing as if nothing had happened. It's those little moments of theatre that make it worth the trip.

Connection number one I will encapsulate in a sentence. – Senior clergy should never speak to the press without consulting their press officers first, we are worth our weight in gold, Lambeth palace needs to bolster its Press office (was it a coincidence that all this happened following the departure just a week or two earlier of Jonathan Jennings the senior press officer) and I should be paid a lot more than I am!

Connection number two is a bit more interesting Let me summarise in two sentences:

Pancake racing , as a quasi religious community activity, should be granted freedom from red tape instead of having to apply every year for permission from some jumped up secular council which thinks it has rights over minority communities, in this case the Cathedral community. It should be exempt from stupid ‘vexatious’ claims for compensation if someone trips over on the cobbles of Kirkgate and allowed to operate under its own ancient rules without interference.

There – simple ain’t it! We solve two problem stories in one go. The papers can stop jumping up and down about both the Archbishop and the Political Correctness Gone Mad by recognising that the red tape they railed against at the beginning of the week (especially the Mail and Express) is the same ‘British Legal system’ they are defending over against the rights of religious minorities at the end of the week. The legal system which allows someone to sue the Cathedral and the Council if they trip over their clerical robes while running up the street tossing their pancake should just butt out, and recognise that Pancake racing is a centuries old tradition and in this case the rights of the religious community should take precedence over the local council, the high court or even the European Court of Human Rights.

This may not be a central plank of my argument on Radio Leeds at 8.05 tomorrow, but I’ll try and winkle it in somehow.

Happy Christmas, traditionally a time for giving, festive fun and the best seasonal/religious headline of Christmas competition. First prize in this year’s headline competition looks like going to the Yorkshire Evening Press for ‘Bus crash shame of ‘knicker vicar’’, the sorry story of a former vicar who lost his job, became a bus driver and then allegedly knocked a boy off a bicycle while swearing. Technically this is not a Christmas story, so may be disqualified, whereas this startling headline, ‘Jesus born in manger to Virgin Mary, affirms Archbishop of Canterbury’ is clearly seasonal - and wins the ‘dog bites man’ category.

Actually, I suspect it is also a contender for the ‘man bites dog’ prize because in the rest of the BBC Five Live interview, the Archbishop casts doubt on everything else including the wandering star, the date of Christmas, snow lying on the ground, donkeys and even oxen! Is nothing sacred!? It is this aspect of the interview on the Simon Mayo programme that is picked up in the Times headline, ‘It’s all a Christmas tall story’. However, winning the prize for the-most-oddly-written-final-sentence, Ruth Gledhill's piece concludes, “Dr Williams’s views are strictly in line with orthodox Christian teaching. The Archbishop is sticking to what the Bible actually says”.

News that the new Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg ‘does not believe in God’ made lots of headlines and vied for the prize of most-anti-Christian-headline-in-the-week-before-Christmas with news that Richard Dawkins is going to go on a speaking tour of the Bible belt. The Clegg story could I fear spell doom for Claire Kelly, the very nice (churchgoing) governor of St Aidan’s school in Harrogate who is also the Lib Dem candidate for Harrogate at the next General Election. Harrogate is, of course, a high churchgoing area and atheist politicians don’t go down well in these parts.

Midnight Mass, or Midnight Communion as we call it at St Mark’s Harrogate, was the subject of a Jonathan Petre piece in the Telegraph, 'Midnight mass at 8pm to fool drunks'. He rang up during the week to see if I could find any Anglican churches which were doing the same as some Catholic churches and making their midnight services earlier in the day to avoid drunken rowdy behaviour. I was about to say that we’d only had one or two cases of clergy who’d been drunk and disorderly during midnight mass, when I realised the gist of his question. Here, we have something called ‘Journey to Bethlehem’ earlier in the afternoon for families, but we also have the ubiquitous midnight service which caters for both party-goers and shy people. Both groups, for different reasons, want to avoid coming to church on Christmas morning, and as Christmas is a time for coming together and burying differences it seems an ideal mix. Being neither, I won’t be there at all.

Finally, the Churches Advertising Network is going all cyber this year with an island on second Life and the following little cartoon..So until 2008, Happy Christmas again.

This may not be the best blog posting I’ve ever done.. a tiring day after a tiring week so a few random and unconnected observations, though all germaine, one hopes, to the overall raison d’etre of this electronic diary..

1) Last Sunday, the Archbishop of York’s Press Officer’s phone suddenly started ringing as journalists called asking for more details about the boss's dramatic TV coup. Arun Arora told me in church that evening that the phone hadn’t stopped since John Sentamu had cut up his dog collar on the Andrew Marr show. Not only was this piece of television drama covered on bulletins and in every major newspaper throughout the following week, but clearly has caught the popular imagination too, if the conversations I’ve been having since are any indication. Apparently the Archbishop had been having trouble sleeping the night before the programme and felt God prompting him to think about the people of Zimbabwe, suffering under the Mugabe regime. He hadn’t actually warned Arun before the broadcast that he was carrying a pair of scissors in his pocket, but when he pulled them out and decimated his collar there was cheering in the Gallery, and not surprising. It was both dramatic and heartfelt and reminded me of the sort of spontaneous acts of the Old testament Prophets. He’s promised not to put the collar back on until Mugabe is deposed. Let’s hope it’s not too long.

2) So do we need press officers at all? It’s a question asked this week on Radio 4’s The Message (listen again) which wondered why politicians, for example needed spin doctors and couldn’t speak (Sentamu style) direct to the public. It was a question which was raised by Tim Livesey, the Lambeth Palace head of external communications as he told us about changes to the Press Office in the New Year, last week. A more accessible Archbishop of Canterbury, and more emphasis on direct communication with the public using new technology, less of the ‘old fashioned’ communication mediated by the middle men and women called journalists. And one less press officer! Well, let’s watch this space. My own feeling is that we need and will continue to need a mixed economy of communication methods. Just as announcements of the death of popular television could be premature (see previous posting) so too the view that press releases and press officers are ‘old fashioned’. After all, it was precisely the direct approach of the Archbishop which ruined m’ colleagues day off as he answered the phone and put out statements.

3) However…. The issue of more direct communication with the public, via new technology and the internet is something I recognise I need to spend more time on , especially as we start work on a new Ripon and Leeds website and look at the potential for generating video news, podcasts, and effectively TV and Radio on the web. Are we starting our own Christian broadcasting? Across the CofE communicators network, it has long been the strategy not to try and develop religious tv and radio but get the message across through the existing secular channels. But as the communications landscape rapidly shifts, that position is looking increasingly anachronistic – and when is a Christian video podcast not a broadcast? It’s an attractive thought to believe that we no longer need to rely on the hit and miss approach of relying on the vagaries of the newsroom to mediate our message – but is it realistic? Lots of questions and plenty to think about..

4) I managed to get together a programme of Communications training for Spring of 2008 at last – phew! Working with Bradford and Wakefield dioceses we’ll be making use of Trinity and All Saints College as well as an evening session with TV producer Andrew Graystone who is also Director of the Churches’ Media Council. Senior clergy will hopefully be learning how to handle television interviews, using the excellent facilities at the Horsforth college, as well as Geoff Druett, the genial Yorkshire TV presenter. So, hopefully if we do need to continue relying on journalists (of the TV variety), at least we’ll hopefully not make too much of a mess of it. (Geoff Druett pictured right)

I see Stephen Bates is still at it …the now non-religious correspondent is on page 2 of today’s Grauniad sounding off about the Archbishop of Canterbury and claiming he has been thrown into a political controversy thanks to his remarks in a Muslim magazine. You have to get three quarters of the way through the piece to discover that this political controversy amounts to a blogger in America called Katherine who didn't like what he reportedly said. Gosh. Rowan must be worried.

Guardian editors were, of course, probably a bit piqued to see the story on the Sunday Times’ front page when it had been totally missed on Saturday’s Guardian or in Sunday’s Observer, its sister paper. We know SB doesn’t think much of the ABC but the worst he does here is accuse the ST of selective reporting. Gosh again. The Grauniad would never do that. (I like it really.)

I was doing the Sunday Paper review on the newly crowned local radio station of the year yesterday. Yes BBC Radio Leeds has won the award again for its lively and informative approach. Whether the slot from 8am to 8.30am was lively and informative I leave the listeners to judge but we certainly romped through seven or eight stories including both of the main religious stories – the Archbishop of Canterbury, and more interestingly the one on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph about Tony Blair and his decision not to go pubic on his faith because people would think he was a ‘nutter’.

Richard Staples was also keen to talk about Borders and their ‘O Come All Ye Faithless’ cards (see previous blog), and I found I had revised my views a bit. As an ironic commentary on Richard Dawkins and his dismal faithlessness, the cards have grown on me a bit. I’m seeing them now as a bit of a send-up, knowingly and humorously shooting themselves in the foot – though that’s after I’ve had time to think about them and discuss them on the radio. Maybe I’m being a bit too sophisticated.

Still trying to get my Power Point presentation together for the gathering of DC’s (Diocesan Commmunicators) in London on December 6th. I’ve been searching the interweb for hours in an attempt to get hold of the excellently produced Caritas TV adverts to download, but so far nothing. I did however manage to download, edit and embed an interview with the head of the Vatican website, a Sister Judith Zoebelein. Remarkable woman - she has been in that post since 1995. Ive had to keep it to a minute or so, but if you watch the whole thing (see it here) its quite funny when they get onto the subject of Second Life – clearly some confusion, not helped by the French student who is asking the question but quite enlightening.

The website itself still looks like it did ten years ago and appears to have been created in the dark ages, and with a staff of 17 (‘not enough’ according to Sister Judith) you’d think they’d have done something about the design. Several people I met in Rome were a bit despairing of the site, but although it's a bit dull on the outside, it's quite sophisticated once you get into it. Sort of like the Da Vinci Code in reverse.