Features (May 2010)

Christians have so much to learn from other faiths
New Deacons coming our way…
Don’t Shoot the Messengers!
Is Easter also for Palestinians?

Christians have so much to learn from other faiths

Sue Scott interviews Sheila Bamber, residentiary canon at St. Nicholas’ Cathedral

The daughter of an avowed atheist, a former door-to-door rent collector who doesn’t have a television and who, when she became Director of Education for the Durham Diocese, confesses that she didn’t know a thing about church schools – Sheila Bamber seems, at first glance, an unlikely choice for the role of residentiary canon at St. Nicholas’ Cathedral.

A spell in her company, however, reveals a woman of fierce intelligence with a passion for Interfaith issues, a strong commitment to Christian education and an evident desire to make the very most of her new job, hoping to see the cathedral under Dean Chris Dalliston’s leadership become “a big player in the life of the city.”

The job takes her some way from her roots in Kent and Gloucestershire with a father who was “absolutely anti” when it came to God or the Church. She and her siblings – there are seven of them and Sheila is the eldest – were shipped off to Sunday School each week, but only because “we lived in a rural area and there was nothing else to do.”

It was her exit from the rural life, and a degree in geography at Lampeter in Wales, which brought her into contact with worshipping Christians who were passionate about their faith. Lampeter was also, in those days, a theological college, and as Sheila puts it “there was a lot of religion around.”

She started to attend chapel services, and from then on “I never looked back.” She was confirmed at university, with close friends from the Girl Guides – with whom she’d been very active – taking on the role of godparents. He father, far from cutting her off or challenging her beliefs, was sanguine about her decision, perhaps respecting a daughter who knew what she wanted and was determined to pursue it. “He was simply a man who made up his mind about things and knew what he thought,” Sheila says. “He was totally against television, for example. He thought it was terrible for children, and we never had one when we were growing up.”

This is one paternal trait which Sheila has not rejected, eschewing the lure of plasma screens at her new home in Holly Avenue, Jesmond, and tuning in to the delights of Radio 4 and audio books instead. But she will confess to having a small television which she watches whenever she visits her bolthole cottage in High Spen. “The telly is a bit of a treat when I’m there,” she admits.

Sheila’s career has been varied, to say the least. After university she went to work for her beloved Girl Guides Association offering her talents for training and admin. But the job was time-limited because of funding, and after two years she found herself looking for a new way of keeping body and soul together.

“I applied for everything under the sun, everywhere!” she recalls, “And one of those applications was as a door-to-door rent collector for a housing association in Middlesbrough. I didn’t even know where Middlesbrough was. I had to look it up on the map!”

It’s been a family joke since then that Sheila has been slowly moving further and further North, through the Durham Diocese, and now to Newcastle. She began by landing the job in Middlesbrough and eventually rising from rent collector to manager of the housing association. She stayed for 15 years, living in Darlington, worshipping at St. Cuthbert’s in the town, where she became a close friend of one particular vicar, Geoff Miller, later to become Archdeacon of Northumberland.

“Geoff was instrumental in setting me on the path to ordination,” Sheila reflects, “And at the start that was very scary. I had a good job and a comfortable life in Darlington. Why give it all up?”

The answer came through prayer and discernment, and a chat with the vocations advisor in the Durham Diocese – Nick Chamberlain, now vicar of the Jesmond parish in which Sheila lives – who told her he couldn’t understand why she’d never done it before.

She studied for ordination at Cuddesdon – “Who wouldn’t want a bite at Oxford ?” – but found some aspects of life there rather challenging. “I’d been in charge of a department with 22 staff. Suddenly I was being treated like a 19-year-old!” All that changed, however, when she was able to move out of the college into a flat with another female student, allowing some much needed freedom.

It was during her time at Oxford that she visited India and became involved in multi-faith discussions, realising that Christians “have so much to learn from other faiths.” It’s a view some Christians may find difficult, but Sheila asserts that the key to interfaith understanding is to have a strong and reasoned commitment to your own faith. “It’s never going to work if we’re not clear about the claims of Jesus,” she says. “Once you are clear, then the whole world opens up. People of other faiths are not a threat. And if we’re not threatened by them, then why should we appear threatening ourselves ?”

It’s this kind of openness and creative thinking that saw Sheila through a variety of parish jobs in the Durham Diocese after her ordination – including one in a church which had previously been opposed to women priests – and which eventually led to her being appointed Director of Education for the Durham Diocese. The Board had failed to find a suitable candidate, and Sheila, who was a serving member, was encouraged to apply. “I didn’t know anything about church schools – which I now realise was very wrong,” she says. “Now I see our schools as a great opportunity for mission and witness, and the question is how we make that happen.” One solution is to “keep banging on about it” as Sheila puts it, and this she has been doing – and will continue to do in her new job at the cathedral.

It is, she says, a very exciting time in the life of St. Nicholas’s. There are the new offices, the plans for a new education centre, the development of Godly Play and the emphasis on the spirituality of children. There is also the influence and legacy of St. Nicholas himself, a character who surely appeals greatly to children and adults alike.

Sheila’s role will be an enabling one. “We need to grow confident, articulate disciples who can talk about their faith,” she says. “We must learn to be confident with what we don’t know, as well as what we do. That’s the glory of God – we don’t know his mind, but if we glimpse a little bit of it, then we’re doing really well. Your glimpse, added to my glimpse, along with the glimpses of others, can make a real difference to the world.”

New Deacons coming our way…

Catherine Clasen Askew

I was born in the mid-70’s in Houston, Texas. At a young age, I moved with my family to Kingsport, Tennessee, where my parents still live today. I’m from a part of the country known for bluegrass music, mountain crafts like quilting, Nascar racing, and what some people would proudly claim as the label “Rednecks.” Though I haven’t lost my American accent, I seem to have lost my ‘twang.’ From my late-teens, I had a strong sense God was calling me to leadership in the Church.

I studied at Presbyterian College in South Carolina and Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. In 2002 I was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I served as an Associate Minister in Kingsport, TN from 2001-2005, working primarily with young people, worship leadership, and spiritual formation.

Although I enjoyed working in a church, I felt something was missing. I also felt called to live in community, offer hospitality to others, and engage in a deeper life of prayer. Because I wasn’t sure what this might look like, from 2005-06 I embarked on a pilgrimage to study and explore new monastic communities in the US and Europe. This journey led me to the Mother House of the Northumbria Community (near Belford, Northumberland) where I discovered a spiritual home and the man who is now my husband.

After marrying Pete and moving to Harrogate, I further felt led to switch over to the Church of England. I appreciate its focus on incarnational ministry, the parish system, and its sense of history. So, I began work as a lay minister at St. John’s and St. Luke’s Together in Harrogate, whilst also studying at Cranmer Hall in Durham. I have recently taken up a post for the Northumbria Community (www.northumbriacommunity.org) where, in addition to hosting guests, I am working in the area of spiritual formation, pastoral care, and liturgy.

The Mother House will move from our current location to one near Felton around November of this year. My NSM Curacy will be with Diane Westmoreland in Amble. I very much look forward to becoming more active in the Diocese and serving God together.

Daniel McCarthy

I’m 33 years old. I have been married for seven years to an amazing woman called Alison, and have an awesome son called Benjamin (two and a half ) and the delight of another child due to be born in the middle of July. I originally come from Essex, whilst Alison has split loyalties with Yorkshire and Lancashire. Benjamin is the only Geordie in the family.

I studied Law at Wolverhampton University, thinking I was going to be legal aid solicitor working in criminal law. But for the following six years I was involved in mission and church planting in Yorkshire, Liverpool and Essex.

In 2004, we sensed a call by God to Newcastle. So we quit our jobs and moved to Newcastle to live and work with the parish church in Fawdon (St Mary’s). We loved our time in Fawdon, the church there is amazing. In 2006, Pamela Ingham encouraged me to look at ordination, which shocked me at first. The more I prayed about it the more I sensed this was what I was meant to do with my life; to serve God in the church as we share this beautiful news with our neighbours. In 2008, I was accepted to train as a priest. I have studied for two years at Trinity College in Bristol. I have learnt from and been inspired so much by my friends’ and tutors’ passion for Jesus.

In July I shall be ordained deacon and will serve my curacy at St Bartholomew’s Longbenton. The people there seem absolutely amazing. I am going to learn so much from the people at St Bart’s. I am relishing the chance to be part of their mission, their love for each other and passion to reach out to young people. The leadership team looks ace, especially Father Martin who has promised me lots of support, tea and cake!

In February on the fourth attempt, I passed my driving test. It felt so good, and I proved to myself that I can achieve great things if I don’t go for the soft option of giving up. Alison, Benjamin, Bump and I are really looking forward to moving to Longbenton. As our time sadly ends at Trinity Bristol, we are becoming more excited about our time again in Newcastle. We absolutely love the beautiful surroundings, the love and passion of the people, and the crazy golf at Tynemouth. The people of Longbenton remain in our prayers, and we look forward to getting involved with your dreams and visions to share Jesus.

Tony Curtis

I’m delighted to be coming back to the North East shortly, to be ordained in the same church where I was baptised 36 years ago. Having spent many years in the choir and finally on the staff at the Cathedral, it truly will feel like coming home. I’m also really looking forward to serving my title in Morpeth. My wife Rachel, our two year old son Gabriel and I have already met some of the people in our new parish, and there’ll be another addition to the family a couple of months after we arrive. From what we’ve seen so far we’ll all feel very much at home there too.

This has been quite a long journey to ordination for me. After growing up on Tyneside and then in York, I spent around 10 years working on the Railway in Project Management, and some of that time was spent trying to avoid the nagging suspicion that God was calling me to ordained ministry. After finally deciding that I needed to explore my vocation, I went to see Canon Audrey Elkington and eventually found myself at Westcott House in Cambridge, where I’ve spent the last three years training for ministry and studying theology at Selwyn College.

As part of my training I’ve been on placements with local churches, an RAF Chaplain, and a rural affairs officer. I’ve also had a full-time training placement at St. Benet’s church, where Gabriel has taken a keen interest in icons and stained glass windows! I’m currently singing with the Chapel Choir at Selwyn, and studying Theology in the University Divinity Faculty and with the Cambridge Theological Federation. This is an ecumenical partnership which includes six Christian denominations, as well as links to Jewish and Muslim colleges. Last summer I was also lucky enough to spend time in Cappadocia and Constantinople thanks to Selwyn College.

Our time in Cambridge has involved a lot of changes. When we moved here from Monkseaton, Rachel gave up her job as a youth worker in Newcastle, and I went from thinking about development plans to studying Greek. A few months after we arrived, Gabriel did too, and that brought with it both great joy and plenty of challenges – I’m not sure I can Recommend studying for church history exams with a five-month-old sleeping in your bedroom! He has really thrived here though, and being born in a theological college means he has never been short of people to entertain him.

Rachel has been working at Addenbrookes Hospital for the past eighteen months, coordinating the young people’s participation board, and has also been involved in the life of Westcott House as Partners’ Rep. For both of us it has been a real change of pace and of place, but we’re now looking forward very much to coming to Morpeth, where I’ll be continuing my training and revisiting my nappy changing skills. As I had followed Newcastle United for 25 years before we moved to Cambridge, I dare say there’ll be the odd trip to St. James’s Park too...

Don’t Shoot the Messengers!

by Jean Skinner, Diocesan Safeguarding Children Advisor

The forthcoming road shows in the diocese during June will introduce new legislation in relation to Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults. It is very important that representatives from each parish attend. It is our responsibility as Christians to ensure that our churches are welcoming and healing communities as, under God, we seek to be His redeemed people, living out Christ’s life in the power of His Spirit. Part of our mission is to provide safe environments for children and vulnerable adults to worship God and explore their faith. It is within this context of mission that I want to introduce the new legislation.

Many of you will have heard about the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) Vetting and Barring Scheme which we are legally bound to implement later this year. I want to say at the outset that Audrey Elkington, Geoff Miller and myself are trying very hard to ensure that after the forthcoming road shows in June, every Parish/ PCC will have a clear understanding of what their legal responsibilities will be in relation to ISA, whilst not allowing it to weigh so heavily on us that it stops the churches’ mission.

I know there will be people who think this is just another level of bureaucracy. However, it has come about as a result of the Soham murders and it is a recommendation of the Bichard Report. Its purpose is to stop the most dangerous people from ever getting a job with children or vulnerable adults. Any legislation that can go some way to preventing such heinous crime as the murder of innocent children or the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable adults has to be welcomed.

However, we must never get into the position of thinking that the legislation itself is enough. It is the ‘vigilant community’ that is at the heart of safeguarding. An increased reliance upon systems leads some people, unfortunately, to believe that the systems themselves will ‘do the job’. There can be a tendency within some churches to assume that if somebody has had a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check, and in the future an ISA clearance, that a person will, therefore, be ‘safe’.

This attitude will actually make children, and vulnerable adults, and therefore whole communities, less safe. We have to work for healthy, safe, responsible attitudes and relationships and that will always be more difficult than ticking boxes to show that procedures and systems have been fulfilled and are in place. Whilst ticking boxes is helpful, responsible attitudes and relationships within informed vigilance is vital.

We live in a world where there are always going to be people who would do harm to children and vulnerable adults. It is really important that we recognise and have policies in place that will not allow that to happen. It is vital that we are able to reflect theologically on what we are doing, to ensure that our policies are rooted in our understanding of God and His Church, but also to offer our own particular perspective to society itself and to the issues which we face within our own communities and cultures.

The church is a soft target for potential abusers because they see what they perceive as a community of naïve people who are willing to love and forgive. Paedophile behaviour is addictive and manipulative. Paedophiles will go to great lengths in the hope we will let our guard down, looking for grooming situations, and likely people and communities in order to carry out their ill intent.

I believe we need to apply rigour and grace to our safeguarding procedures, taking into account that there will be a small minority of people in our communities who need us to protect them from themselves. I use herd immunity as an example here. If a herd of cattle are vaccinated against a disease and there are one or two that are not vaccinated and they then contract the disease, the diseased cattle are surrounded by the vaccinated herd, and the virus therefore has nowhere to go. So it dies out. If we apply that to safeguarding, the vaccinated herd are the vigilant community, who surround potential abusers so they are unable to harm others or themselves by the abuse.

“One of the major ways in which we within the churches are able to give a theological critique of safeguarding and our own culture at the moment is to emphasise the vital dimension of community and relationships over against the isolation, fragmentation and individualism that dominate so many people’s thinking and experience. We know well that those who have a tendency to cause abuse to others are more able to learn ways of managing their tendencies if they have a circle of support and healthy relationships with other adults around them. We know that as human beings we are made for God, for relationship, and therefore for relationship with one another. We all of us need to be part of community. The Church, at its best, is a welcoming and healing place for us to be and to enter into an ever deeper community in Christ with one another.” (Bishop Anthony Hereford).

In the parable of the wheat and the tares, good and evil exist side by side - and it isn’t always possible to root out those who would do harm. As a Christian community, if our policies are right it would be impossible for anyone to harm another person. We don’t have to root out those people who have abused, or are likely to abuse; it is our Safeguarding Good Practice that will protect. This means ‘safe recruitment’ of volunteers and paid staff ensuring that those who work in designated roles complete confidential declarations, and submit references which are monitored along with CRB checks and registered with ISA. ISA/CRB

So, as we introduce the ISA ‘Vetting and Barring’, it is important that every parish is represented at one of the road shows in June. It will be an opportunity to ask questions and learn what is the legal requirement of each PCC. We are only the messengers - so please don’t shoot us!.

One of the important things to recognise is that ISA does not replace CRB. The responsibility to register lies with the person who needs to be registered. However, this will usually be done along with an enhanced CRB check. Once registered it is portable between different roles and organisations, whereas CRB is not. CRB checks may still need to carried out in certain roles after ISA registration, and Jean Skinner and Kate Hindley are available for advice in relation to this.

In July this year anyone entering the work force or volunteering for the first time in a role may register with ISA. By November they must register. As far as churches are concerned anyone being recruited over the summer to start work/volunteering in September must register with ISA before they begin. There is also information on our diocesan website.

Is Easter also for Palestinians?

By Patricia Devlin

This year, the feast of Pesach (Passover), Palestinian Land Day and Easter for both the Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian Churches, all occurred in the same week. Israel announced that the West Bank would be closed (i.e. people with West Bank I.D.s would have no access to Jerusalem) from Sunday March 28th (Palm Sunday) until April 6th, the Tuesday after Easter.

Palestinian Christians being prevented from attending the traditional Palm Sunday procession organized an alternative procession, starting from Bethlehem and heading for Jerusalem, echoing Jesus’ ride through into Jerusalem with crowds of people waving palm branches accompanied riders on a pony and two donkeys through a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem on Sunday, the Christian festival of Palm Sunday.

The march was supposed to have stopped at the checkpoint, but once the group reached the checkpoint gate for vehicles, approximately 100 protesters made their way through the gate. Apparently the security guards were unprepared: they were far too few to be able to stop the demonstrators who managed to walk through the second gate and on to the road to downtown Jerusalem, still being led by the donkey and the horse.

About a hundred metres down the road, the Israeli police realised what had happened and blocked the way. The demonstrators stopped, although they easily could have marched on as there were only a few police officers on the scene. In response, the checkpoint was closed for all vehicles and foot traffic attempting to enter Jerusalem. Eleven Palestinians were detained, including a prominent Palestinian politician

Checkpoint 300 - the main Bethlehem checkpoint giving access to Jerusalem from the Southern part of the West Bank remained completely closed for the rest of the week Those with humanitarian concerns (eg access to hospitals) had to seek access via an alternate checkpoint, and access for those wishing to enter Jerusalem for the Holy Week ceremonies at the Church of the Holy Sepluchre was very uncertain.

Eventually some permits for worship were negotiated, but there is now a movement from the churches to resist the demand for such permits Meanwhile , we observed Holy Week about 45 miles north of Jerusalem in the Nablus area. On the Tuesday of Holy Week, which was also Palestinian Land Day, we went to Awarta, where we took part in a very different kind of procession. On Sunday March 21st, two young men had been killed as they worked in the fields below the Izahar settlement. The circumstances of the killing were unclear.

Men lined the village streets as we marched in and entered the ‘town hall’ for a more official welcome from the mayor and his officers. We were joined by a small group of women which included women from the ambulance service which attended the incident

At 10 45am we set out to walk to the place where the young men were killed, a distance of about 3 km. It was a solemn march with many carrying pictures of the two young men. When we arrived at the spot people were anxious to tell us their version of events, and wanted us to take many pictures.

Then the olive tree planting began both to commemorate the young men and to mark Palestinian Land Day. Some of the youths became high spirited and raced up the hill with the Palestinian flag. The older men watched anxiously in case armed settlers would appear at the fence on the brow of the hill. But, the young men succeeded in planting the flag high on the hill, reclaiming their land in a symbolic way.

The walk back was more relaxed. We shared food and drink and the young men were very keen to talk to us. Many of them had gone to school with Salah and Muhammad, the two who died, and you could see them wrestling with the mixed emotions of anger and grief.

On Good Friday Sonti and I visited a remote village called Khirbet Tana, now in an Israeli military area. The dwellings in this village have been demolished three times, because the aim is to make it exclusively an Israeli area, part military, part green belt. The villagers are currently living in tents in the midst of their ruined dwellings and dreading the heat of summer.

We have been asked to visit because they are about to rebuild the school and there is anxiety that it will be destroyed again before it is completed. As we made our photographic record, the image of the phoenix bird rising from its own ashes came to mind and we carried these images to the Stations of the Cross in Nablus

Easter Saturday here is known as Holy Fire Saturday, and there is a tradition that the Holy Fire is taken from the tomb in the Holy Sepluchre Church in Jerusalem and carried out to the cities and villages of Palestine.

We joined the celebrations in the Rafidia area of Nablus. The Holy Fire was brought first to the Church of Jacob’s Well ( where Jesus met the Samaritan Woman) and the Orthodox priest then brought it to Rafidia , where it processed between four churches, led by the scouts with their drums and flags and flaming torches. We prayed in turn in the Melkite Church, the Anglican Church, the Latin patriarchate Church and finally the new Orthodox church, where everyone was invited to light their candle from the fire. After this we attended a more traditional Easter Vigil Service in the Anglican church On Easter Sunday morning I walked to the tomb of Nun, father of Joshua, which is little more than a mile away from our house and offers wonderful views of the Jordan Valley , and I tried to allow something of the spirit of Easter to permeate my heart and mind, now so full of often contradictory images.

I was sent by Quaker Peace and Social Witness to participate in the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the sending organization or the WCC.