Vicars these days have to deal with endless tantrums, schmoozing and fake piety. It’s a world away from the ‘Vicar of Dibley’, says Giles Fraser, canon chancellor at St Paul’s Cathedral as “Rev” returns tomorrow on BBC2
Giles Fraser writing in today’s Daily Telegraph states:
From Derek Nimmo to Dawn French, the on-screen Church of England vicar has always been a figure of fun and gentle mockery.
In a world where people still blow each other up in the name of God, this neutered do-gooder represents a form of religion that it is still safe to laugh at. But the stereotype has never done justice to the real thing.
Which is why the new comedy Rev looks so interesting. The Rev Adam Smallbone – played by In the Loop actor Tom Hollander – is set to be the first TV vicar who gets to grips with the reality.
Speaking on Start the Week, Hollander ably demonstrated that his research for this role had let him into a number of trade secrets. For instance, he has discovered that most vicars prefer taking funerals to weddings. Whereas the funeral is a place where big questions are asked and real pastoral care is needed, the modern wedding is often a fancy set for an expensive vanity project in which the vicar has little more than a walk-on role. The Vicar of Dibley may have been happy with that part. Smallbone is not – and good for him.
Rev finds its comedy in what vicars really do. And so it is, in the first episode, that Smallbone cycles straight into the choppy waters of middle-class parents turning up to church to muscle their kids into the local church school. “On your knees, avoid the fees,” as they say. In west London, Hollander talked to a vicar who was apparently the most invited person on the local dinner party circuit.
I can believe it. For several years, that person could well have been me.
For nine years, I was the vicar of Putney, with two flourishing churches and two popular church schools in the parish. I had people camping out on my doorstep clutching their church-school form. I had the tantrums and the schmoozing.
But as Smallbone will discover, the reality of middle-class pushy parents is not all it seems. Yes, fake piety is utterly ridiculous. I still wince when I recall some of the photographs people have attached to their church-school application forms – the family kneeling together in prayer, the family gathered round the church altar, little boy in badly fitting suit and tie. I guess they thought that they were fooling somebody. But all they were really doing was making themselves look foolish. There is much here that can be played for laughs.
But there’s another side to this phenomenon. Many who first turn up at church with ulterior motives end up staying long after little Johnny has – or has not – got a school place. In Putney, we did a lot of research on the church-going behaviour of parents after school places had been allocated. Yes, some stopped coming. But many others stayed and got involved, even those who would later admit that what first encouraged them to get out of bed on Sundays was the thought of not having to pay expensive school fees.
After years of trying to second-guess who would stay and who would walk, I gave up. On several occasions I felt deeply betrayed by those who would snigger at the church after having pretended to be a part of its life. No one ever offered me their second home in France for a week. What was offered was friendship. Or help with the Sunday school. And to discover this was sometimes a bribe and a lie was painful.
Certainly, all of this can drip poison into a community. But there were also those who I thought would be off in a flash but who surprised me, discovering something unexpected in church that changed their lives. The funny thing is, some people make light of their churchgoing because it has become less socially acceptable. Some pretend to pretend.
Queen Elizabeth I famously said: “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls.” It has been one of the founding principles of the Church of England. The job of the vicar is not to inspect the motives of his congregation but to offer welcome and help people approach the deeper mysteries of the universe. Those who abuse this welcome, pretending to be something that they are not, do damage to their souls and offer their own children the message that you get on in life by cheating.
But, notwithstanding the importance of Elizabeth I’s comment, the question of fake worshippers needs addressing because it’s clearly not fair for them to claim a place at a church school at the expense of another child living more locally. This is why admissions criteria need to be carefully examined. And here, I suspect, the church doesn’t always get it right.
After years of observation, it seems clear that the best way to structure a popular church school’s admissions policy fairly is to make the church side of this criteria much tougher. The fake worshipper will just about manage church-going once a month for a couple of years. But if you make the required commitment considerably more than that, and include the requirement of further involvement in the life of the church, the fake worshipper will give up.
Despite all the challenges, the truth is that church schools offer a much valued education for the children of those parents who want a school to reflect the values of the Christian faith. Parishes with church schools do well for many reasons but mostly because church and school together generate a rich sense of community.
The media fuss about church schools has been largely whipped up by those campaigning to replace a diverse educational landscape with a one-size–fits-all secularism. An atheist would quite understandably be upset by a school that imposed religious values on his child just as I would be upset by the equivalent imposition of secular values on mine. This is precisely why we need our schools to be free to determine their own core values and not have them imposed by government.
So, Adam Smallbone, here is my advice to you as you take up your new parish. You walk on many of the fault lines of modern social politics. Parish ministry is not arranging flowers in Dibley; nor is it the management of some private holy club. It is helping all those in your care to catch sight of the glory of God. And it is right that you see this role as fundamentally a comedy. All our efforts to live up to our better selves are threatened by pomposity and hypocrisy. We must laugh and keep on laughing only because the whole thing is so serious.
* Dr Giles Fraser is canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral. Rev starts tomorrow evening on BBC Two at 10pm