People and Bishop
By J. R. GLORNEY BOLTON
THE other evening the Bishop went to the village on the steep hill and confirmed eleven young people. Though he wore cope and mitre and stood before an altar flaming With many candles, he made the service simple and personal. His address was short, direct and understanding. He spoke as Edward King might have spoken when farm-lads from the wolds came before him for confirmation. Their speech was slower in King's day and their garb plainer. As in Lincolnshire, so down in the south, those who reach the discretionary years now wear an outward sophistication. They go by buslo the cinema. They hear the radio, and sometimes they beg an affluent farmer to let them see a television programme. They are still at the school age, and nothing about their dress or manner distinguishes the boy at the village school from the boy at the nearest grammar school, for often they are brothers._ The Bishop has lived among his people for more than twenty years. He knows that at heart they differ little from their pink- cheeked grandfathers who painfully rehearsed the catechism, scrubbed their hair until eyes bleared with soap-bubbles, and then set off for confirmation with the last vestiges of cow-dung removed from heavy boots. Their minds are slow and do not become speculative. Doctrine baffles them. If they are religious, they think in pictures, like a maker of parables.
When the service was over, the Bishop walked across the road to the rectory, where he put off mitre and cope and got ready to meet the parishioners. Patrons of " The Lion " watched him go by. Church and inn have shadowed each other for about 600 years ; for after Mass came conviviality. The congregation, how- ever, was not making for " The Lion." Elderly ladies, prim in dress and eager for the episcopal handshake, had the church-hall as their goal. They were to drink tea, not cider. They were a band apart. The last century rid the village of its pluralist and absentee rector. It saw the coming of a Puseyite, who brought beauty and order where too long there had been torpor and neglect ; but his Anglo-Catholic successors could not carry the village with them. Wesley's conquests have held, and among the villagers one in five is a Methodist. Within the church the mediaevalist is at home. Outside, the divorce from the inn shows eloquently that the continuity of mediaeval England is broken.
The village on the steep hill pays a penalty for its loveliness. It is a place in which to retire and grow old. A cottage up for sale starts a scramble, and so the cleavage widens between new resident and old villager. Yet we are not really demure in these parts. The village on the other side of the marsh holds up a more faithful mirror. It is less comely, perhaps, than the village on the steep hill. Council houses mar its vistas and discourage the genteel from buying cottages. But I know each council house and each family which has lived in the neighbourhood for more than two centuries. Those. who clamour for a council house are not the urban-minded. They are villagers of the oldest yeoman or peasant stock. Though they cannot bear to be torn from ancestral soil, they are not rooted to the farmstead in which they were born. They know its snags and drawbacks too well, and they are for ever grumbling about the draughts. Give them a council house, and they will cheerfully leave the old home to be improved, main-drained and garaged by a newcomer. Behind front doors, painted in cheerful, if garish, colours, live Saxon stalwarts who calmly awaited the Spaniards and the exciseman, Napoleon. Hitler and the Welfare State. Their spirit is old and intractable.
Once a deep inlet of the sea separated the two villages. People looked across the water in hatred and fear. Then the sea receded., The marsh was drained and the river shrank until it was no wider than a brook.- At last the two parishes were linked by a narrow bridge, but the hatred and fear did not die down. One night the young men from the village beyond the marsh scaled the steep hill and took away the church bells. The feud goes on. To this day the bridge leads from one world to another.
The Bishop knows the two worlds by personal experience. His meeting after confirmation the other evening was a decorous affair, for no one said the wrong thing, spoke out of turn, drank a second cup of tea. But a few months ago he went to the village beyond the marsh to induct the new vicar. He found its people lively and elemental. The barriers were down.
An induction is always more noteworthy than a confirmation. The whole village is represented. Clergymen come from other parishes, and the ambulance lads find an excuse for donning their uniforms. The sermon is for all the people, and not just for the newly-confirmed. It is an occasion, and the Bishop rose to it with' words brief, clear and well-chosen. When the service ended, I stood by the font and announced that tea and cakes were to be had in the hall. Free entertainment is always per- suasive, and by the time the Bishop reached the hall it was full ; the sandwiches and sausage-rolls were already attacked. As I looked for someone to introduce, my eye fell upon the shy farmer who is a mainstay of the parish council. He refused to come forward. " I can't," he croaked. " I'm eating a sandwich." The squire's gardener made the same excuse. My quest proved unnecessary, for some of the ambulance men had approached the Bishop on their own account. Soon I joined them, and one said to me : " Can you spare a moment or two? " In the manner of a host, flustered but anxious to please, I replied, " Certainly." " Then hold my hat." Before I got my wits together the white- banded headgear was pressed firmly into my hand. " I asked the Bishop to hold my hat," the fellow said. " He was just as annoyed as you are."
Here was the old tradition that gaiety follows church. Tea and cakes unleashed many tongues, and waggish backchat broke upon the speeches. We came together happily, just as we shall come together on Guy Fawkes night, though it is hard on the Roman Catholics. Our sense of the community is older than Guy Fawkes, older than inductions. It demands expression. They are better Christians, perhaps, in the village on the hill. We who stole their bells have something on our consciences.' Our hearts are pagan but receptive.
A clergyman cannot undo the past. He takes on a legacy. and he must mould it as best he can. In the village on the hill the rectors have imposed a standard of catholic churchmanship. Beyond the marsh the vicars have kept the church embracive. It is a village with only one Sunday-school, and its superintendent is a Methodist. Where church and chapel can work together there is a healing of old conflicts.
Among Englishmen the longing for Christian union takes many forms. Some would concede to Rome her primacy. Some would find in an approach to the Orthodox Church the way to world peace. Others forge links with the non-Roman Churches of Europe and America. Nearly all are looking beyond the Strait of Dover, for Anglicans no longer take pride in the national status of their Church. Yet the task of union lies at home. It is, after all, best to begin with the Methodists. Their secession is still a recent calamity, and those who try to bring them back are doing Wesley's work.
Humble- people will build the fabric of union,. with the Methodists. In time other parishes will follow our example of the church-chapel Sunday-school. Lay-readers will preach alter- nately in church and chapel. To most Anglicans they are still an innovation. Many clergymen do not like them; and regard them as though, like a woman verger, they were a distasteful necessity. But they come from the ranks of writers, teachers and doctors, who believe that their preaching is a vocation. The lay ministry is well understood and accepted by dissenters, and it may have emerged in the Church of England for a special task of reconciliation. Partnership in the Sunday-school and the pulpit will eventually put the problems of reunion in an easier perspective. It can bring immense benefits to the countryside.
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