The Sunday Times Magazine • 27Perhaps this is because even now, when
fewer and fewer people have any
connection to church, there is a still a deep
cultural memory of the confessor, someone
who stands, in Archbishop Michael
Ramsey’s phrase, on the godward side
of man and the manward side of god,
directing the traffic, the matters that
trouble a conscience, the grace to heal
even the most terrible of wounds.
To have been such an intermediary
is a wonderful and awesome thing and
immensely challenging, not only because it
takes you to places you would not choose to
go and demands you give what you are not
prepared to give, but also because for me,
not someone who withers in the spotlight,
discovering that doing the job properly
means effacing rather than asserting
yourself is a hard lesson indeed. I appreciate
that as I descended on a cloud in a white
suit playing a golden harp to land on the
Strictly dancefloor not many viewers were
thinking “How self-effacing”, but then
my odd hybrid existence as half-time vicar
and half-time media starlet was bound to
produce some crunchy moments.
I have attempted to justify it by claiming
to be an authentic Christian presence in the
mainstream, where few of us are now found.
I have certainly been a visible presence, but
an authentic one? Some opportunities are
easier than others. On Saturday Live, the
programme I co-host on Radio 4, we can
encourage conversations that I think
consistent with my calling; but is it
consistent to appear on a reality television
game show where people are put through
the torture of elimination?
And it has come at a cost. “How do you
do all the things you do?” I am frequently
asked, and the answer is by neglecting
important things and disappointing people.
I was once called in the middle of the night
to attend a parishioner’s
deathbed and I could not
because I was in Glasgow
doing Celebrity Antiques
Road Trip. I found someone
to cover, but it should have
been me.
I am a half-time vicar
because, like a growing
number of parishes, Finedon
cannot afford a full-time
stipend. I know of one vicar
with 14 parishes in her care
instead of the one we were
originally intended for, and
I will not miss having to
come up with ways to spread
myself ever more thinly, or
find ways of paying bigger
bills from smaller incomes.Too much of our time is spent raising funds
to pay running costs — dizzyingly high in a
grade I listed medieval building. Most want
their churches to endure, as heritage if not
for their original purpose. But if we want
them we need to pay for them.
As more parishes tip into unviability, the
trouble for me is that the least viable are the
ones I like most. The Church of England
I love is a church of liberal sympathies, of
broad inclusion, beautiful worship, wise
preaching, dog-friendly with Fairtrade
biscuits, and when it comes to orthodoxy
would rather its members were not Goneril
or Regan, proclaiming their zealous
devotion, but Cordelia, confessing her love.
The churches that are viable — by that
I mean growing in numbers and income
— tend to be conservative, punchy,
fundamentalist in matters of scripture,
rigorous in matters of doctrine, and about
as likely to offer choral evensong as I am to
do the 400m hurdles.
Some of my friends, and many faithful
Christians, are at home in churches like
these, but if the future Church of England
looks exclusively like that, I cannot see
myself in it. This is not only because I find
the worship not to my taste and the culture
less congenial. I think I could live with all
that if I had to — I have just been doing the
clapping bit in Shine Jesus Shine with the
kids for our school Easter service — but
really because they are places where gay
people are not welcome, and that rules me
out. Not only me. In the past few months
I have had a growing number of inquiries
from same-sex couples dismayed to
discover their relationships do not qualify
for a blessing, or asking for reassurancethat their kids in church schools will
not be made to feel awkward for having two
dads or two mums. The former I am not
permitted to do [the Church of England
does not recognise same-sex marriages];
the latter I am unable to, I am sorry to say.
Things change, we are told; play the long
game, and I have. But now I see change
shifting more to exclusion than inclusion.
Such churches protest that all are
welcome, asserted on their websites and
noticeboards, but that welcome would be
on their terms, shaped by a conservative
reading of Scripture, and require me and
others not only to renounce the intimate
life we were made for but also to accept
second-class citizenship in the household
of God. I mind this not only because who
wouldn’t, but because I simply do not,
and cannot, believe that relationships
that are open to grace and holiness and
healing can possibly be contrary to the will
of God. Same-sex relationships are all those
things and more, just like everyone else’s,
a fact so obvious it cannot be denied, and
therefore the sin lies in accepting anything
less than equal inclusion. I appreciate
reconciling my view with the Church’s
traditional teaching on sexuality is
problematic, to say the least, but nowhere
does Jesus indicate that loving and serving
the Gospel is neatly done. What I will
miss least, once I have retired, is having to
pretend that it is legitimate to delay or deny
justice in this. That and photocopying.
I will still be a priest, I will always be
a priest, and I will minister where I am
able. Next month I am going to my first
conference of prison chaplains and I hope
I can make myself useful as a volunteer with
inmates in the criminal justice system. I will
also be helping out in a parish near me. But
I will not be the vicar. Will I still habitually
wish people good morning, or strike up
conversations on the bus, or
hear the phrase “More tea,
vicar?” again? And will
anyone burst unexpectedly
into song or into flames, or
turn water into wine, or see
and hear when they were
blind and deaf, or will I catch
from the corner of my eye
a bush that burns without
being consumed?
It is Easter. Jesus’s
followers go to the graveyard
thinking everything is over
but what they find there
sends them running out into
a world transformed. For
everything that has been
— thanks. For everything
ALAMY that will be — yes n^
“If the future Church of England looks conservative
and fundamentalist, I cannot see myself in it”
St Mary the Virgin church in Finedon,
where Coles has been vicar since 2011