Don't Believe Everything You Read
(Including This?)

In my piece last month about the late Lord Runcie, I commented on the hostility towards the Church of England of the British media, and especially the press. I remembered this about a week ago, when I was talking with a retired clergyman. This dear old saintly man, for many years a dedicated and hard-working missionary, teacher and parish priest, is now almost blind, and unable to attend public worship. Because of this, he has to a large extent lost touch with the church he loves and served so faithfully for most of his life. He can't take part in, or have any influence on, or even find out about, what is going on. His only way of knowing about what's happening in the Church at large, is the same as any other non-churchgoer's: through the media of radio, TV and newspapers.

And how was he feeling? Almost in despair, because he had been convinced by media reporting that the Church was in total moral, spiritual and numerical decline. "If only someone would speak out," he lamented. "If only some Bishop would give a firm moral lead." But instead of that, all he could see was a Church in which teaching about doctrine and morality had become so woolly that it was virtually non-existent.

When the day of Reckoning comes, journalists and editors will have to bear a heavy responsibility for this poor man's frame of mind, as well as for all the other people they've misled. If Dante had been living today, I guess he would have invented a specially deep circle of Hell for journalists, one in which they were sentenced perpetually to believe, or maybe to eat, their own words. Jesus himself had a special condemnation for those who caused a child - or any other vulnerable person - to stumble.

Because so much of what this elderly saint, like many others, has been led to believe, is simply not true. It's a lie. All over the country, from the greatest cathedral to the tiniest parish church with a congregation of three, faithful preachers are telling people of the love of God, the lengths to which he has gone to put the world right, and the right way for people to live. Nowhere, not anywhere, does the Church's worship have anything in it which could make the Eucharist end with the words: "Go out and please yourselves, ignore God all week and live in sin as much as you like," with the response, "Thank you very much, we're off." No, of course not. Everywhere it ends with the words: "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord", and the congregation respond, and mean it, "In the name of Christ. Amen." Because that is what it has all been about. The hymns and prayers, the reading and reflection on scriptures, the shared meal and the act of dedication, are all directed towards learning the right way to live, pledging ourselves to do so and seeking the help we need.

But none of this honest activity gets reported. It must have something to commend it, else people wouldn't keep coming back week after week for a lifetime; but that isn't news. What gets into the public eye is the occasional oddity of a Bishop or other church leader who comes out with something radical, to get people thinking. Or the boredom or negativity of people who have never learned the knack of doing something that is, let's face it, more demanding than most contemporary activities.

The Church of England doesn't deserve the bad press it gets. It is a home for true believers who love God and know they're not perfect, but are doing their best to live for God and for their neighbour.

So don't believe everything you read about church, and don't let others believe it either. I do hope that you will believe what I've written here, however. But just in case you don't: Come along and see, and find out for yourself. Every Sunday, at 8, 10 or 6. Seeing, and belonging, is believing!