THE General Synod voted on the Wednesday morning to ask the Ministry Development Board to develop a national strategy for “the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of individuals from working class backgrounds”.
Introducing the controversy, the Revd Alex Frost (Blackburn) spoke of a desire to dispel two myths. A working-class vocation didn’t mean “a diluted programme of learning for somebody who’s a bit thick, or who lacks cultural awareness”, nor was it something “less rigorous or formational”. Working-class people “know who they’re”, he said. “They don’t should be means-tested or interrogated for validation.”
The motion was about encouraging the Church to develop a national technique to grow leaders in working-class communities. Fr Frost drew on a survey conducted by the Revd Dr Cris Rogers, which had found that working-class ordinands preferred mixed-mode training, and that classroom-based options were the least popular.
Ordinands felt that they were negatively perceived by the Church as “dangerous or misunderstood or unconventional or hesitant or unsuitable or unappreciated”, he said. One had told him that, in the course of the vocations process, he had been asked who his favourite artist was, to which the response had been “Eminem” — a reputation not known to the interviewer. In one other example, a working-class woman attending an open day had found ordinands playing croquet on the lawn. In one other, a person had been unable to attend his course, as he needed to work on Saturdays.
Fr Frost had himself been made to feel “inadequate” during his own training, despite 20 years of experience working at Argos after leaving school at 15 with no qualifications. He told members: “If you mostly do what you’ve got at all times done, you’ll at all times get what you’ve at all times got.”
There was something “wonderful and outstanding” in urban ministry, he said, “standing up for essentially the most vulnerable people”. But, in lots of places, the Church spoke “in a language of snobbery and elitism”. The apprentices of Jesus Christ got here from the working classes, he said.
The Archdeacon of Salford, the Ven. Dr Rachel Mann (Manchester), spoke of the “cringe” that never left you: “that odd sensation that individuals of working-class heritage sometimes experience in certain cultural contexts”.
She could, she said, do “a fairly good impression of a middle-class person nowadays”, but “I’ve never mastered the cheat codes. I feel not quite adequate.”
Education was a very good thing, however it was not a panacea that will address structural inequalities. “Until we’re led by the all sorts, the ragtag wonder of full humanity, we’re a partial body.” It was not pity or sympathy that was sought, but solidarity. “We need to be seen for who we’re. We need to be understood and never stereotyped.”
The Revd Anna Norman-Walker (Southwark) had worked for seven years in Streatham inside a “strong working-class presence”. This included Nehemiah House, where men recovered from time in prison or addiction. The men often worshipped at her church, including “Ronnie”, who brought friends with him in a “really effective ministry”. Those gathering around him were more like him than she was, Ms Norman-Walker said. Ronnie sensed a vocation, and was well-supported by the diocese, but he was already expressing anxiety “about whether his face will fit, whether his accent will let him down, or whether he will probably be considered educated enough to administer any form of academic training”.
The Revd Ayo Audu (Oxford) spoke to challenge the “implicit cultural lens through which candidates for ordained ministry are viewed”. He had almost been barred from selection because he had “stumbled” during a solution to a matter in regards to the last theological book that he had read, despite having several academic qualifications. His failure to show the “required airs and graces was taken to imply a deficit within the mental acuity required to undertake theological formation”.
The Archbishop of York said that he had taken a choice to not sign any private members’ motions, but that he really desired to sign this one. He had gone to a secondary modern school in Essex, and had left with three O levels, as he was “work-shy”. He managed, nonetheless, to get into the boys’ sixth form, achieving three A levels, and was the primary boy from his school ever to get a level, from a polytechnic.
During the vocation process, he had been told that he couldn’t do a level in theology, as he needed to have a level already. He had not grown up inside the Church. “You must learn the culture of the Church, and lots of, many persons are turned away.” He recalled, during a mission week, attending a karaoke night at a neighborhood pub, and being told by the DJ: “Why do you sing songs that no one knows?”
This was in regards to the Church, “about our language and our culture”, he concluded. The Church had “so much to learn”.
The Revd Gary Waddington (Leeds) spoke of nuances. There was a necessity to not “fall into lazy stereotypes and tropes” and never to supply “training lite” that will “entrench social differences and exacerbate othering”. While working in Portsmouth, he had found that half of the adult population were functionally illiterate. In the country, eight million people had the reading age of a nine-year-old, he said. There was a danger “that we change into nice middle-class people . . . who’re actually condescending”.
He knew this sense well. “Good old-fashioned snobbery is alive and well within the C of E today.” For instance, a candidate could be described as right for an estates parish, “but not quite the form of one who should come here”. He had grown up in a council house on free school meals, with parents who couldn’t read him books. He hoped that the controversy would help change the narrative that working-class people couldn’t reach certain positions.
The Revd Jody Stowell (London) said that her mother had a way of shame for being poor, something that Ms Stowell had not inherited. She had lost count of the times that she had received “euphemisms” with the word “prophetic” often used as “perhaps that’s a way of claiming you’re acceptably bolshie and opinionated, but only acceptably so so long as you stay barely on the margins of the structures.”
Training at Cambridge, she had found that elitism was “absolutely inherent to that structure”. God got here from the places that were marginalised, she said. “You will gain something if you happen to receive people as they’re, and don’t try to vary them into your image.”
The Bishop of Chester, the Rt Revd Mark Tanner, welcomed the motion, which he had seconded. The Ministry Development Board was committed to co-operating with Fr Frost and others. Vocation was not simply to explicitly ministerial positions. He warned against assuming that to be working class was necessarily to be disadvantaged, or to pretend that there have been no social injustices that needed to be addressed. There was a danger of “pigeonholing” people.
The Revd Jonathan Macy (Southwark) said that training in an Oxford college had “jarred” together with his experience of working for 15 years within the care sector with individuals who had learning disabilities. The years in Oxford had not trained him for what he encountered ministering in south-east London. Well-intentioned top-down initiatives were “flawed”: there was a necessity for working-class people in positions of influence and ministry.
Nicola Denyer (Newcastle) had grown up in a council house in Newcastle. She had began going to church in 2012, and “didn’t have a clue what anyone was talking about. . . I didn’t understand the language. I didn’t know when to arise or sit down.” It was rare to listen to someone on the front speak along with her Newcastle accent.
People in working-class communities “can have a deeper knowledge and love of God than another people in additional privileged circumstances. They live in pain, in hunger; they live without things that other people would expect to have. . . These people know God, and these people all have a vocation to guide others to Jesus.”
Nadine Daniel (Liverpool), brought up on a council estate in north Liverpool, gave thanks day-after-day for the indisputable fact that hers was a generation that had “full social mobility”. She had gone to a direct-grant grammar school run by the Church of England. When she became a barrister, “the cringe really kicked in,” in addition to in her position as national refugee officer at Church House. She said that, when the Bishop of Warrington had interviewed her before her BAP, she had turned her down, saying: “I’m not hearing the best language, Nadine. I don’t really know who you’re, Nadine.”
The motion was clearly carried.
That this Synod welcome work that has already been done to encourage the ministry of individuals from working class backgrounds, and request the Ministry Development Board to go further in developing a national strategy for the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of individuals from working class backgrounds and report back to Synod to debate that strategy inside 12 months.
