Diarmid MacCullogh is a historian, a church
historian, a very great scholar, an Oxford don and the recipient of many
academic honours, ordained deacon in the Church of England, last year knighted
by the Queen. When the time came for him
to be made a priest, his homosexuality was seen as a problem, and Dr MacCullogh
said: I was brought up to be truthful, and truth has
always mattered to me. The Church couldn't cope and so we parted company. It
was a miserable experience. He now describes himself as a candid
friend of Christianity.
I mention all this because MacCullogh’s
most recent book is an amazing work about silence in the history of the
Christian faith.[1] He describes how, from the outset, the church
has generally tended to be a noisy and busy thing, from the trumpets and
panoply of Westminster Abbey to the yelling choirs of Fiji or the loud dogmatic
preaching so much admired in numerous places.
Through it all however, down the years, has always been another
stream. For a myriad of reasons many
people of faith have had to walk a more silent path. MacCullogh calls them Nicodemists, after the
man who came to Jesus by night. I don’t
have time to go into this in detail, but it is as well to be aware of a stream
of faith which is more hidden and quieter, not always orthodox.
Of course there may be those who live
their faith in silence or invisibility because they have something to
hide. But here we are talking more of
the many whose journey, whatever they may have wished, has distanced them from
the church’s familiar sounds and sights, and activisms. They express their faith inwardly – some
might say, selfishly – and typically with more doubts and hesitations than
would normally be considered decent. There is a mature faith which looks not so
much for inspiration and encouragement, nor for constant reassurance, as for a
subtle inner consent and a cordial but humble acceptance of mystery. These are the silent people in the church,
and on the outskirts of the church. Some
of them like me are at an advanced age and of a crotchety disposition.
I think the real point here is that faith,
however it is lived and expressed, needs by its nature to keep growing and
developing. It is necessary to set aside
whatever stunts that growth. St Paul
wrote about this quite clearly. The
church is not always helpful. Simone
Weil feared the church as a social
structure. Actually the church can’t
help much with the journey of contemplative life and prayer, and it’s hardly
fair to expect that it should. It is
what Robert Frost called the road less traveled. There is much silence along it, and perhaps
much solitude. And yet, it contains the
wisdom the structural, institutional church will need from now on if it is to
live and grow.
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