Oneworld Publications (London). 2018. Hbk. 192 pages. £8.05.
‘God has to make do with the rubbish he gets.’ That was the deflating judgement of the late Alec Vidler, well known in his day as an acid-tongued theologian. He was addressing an Ordination Retreat and was warning the eager young men (it was long time ago) not to be puffed up about their vocation. Vidler’s observation receives clear support in this book produced by Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie. It is of course only the latest in a long line of books about the many bizarre clergy of the Church of England. What is it about Anglican clergy that so many of its members merit a place in such a book? Is it a clerical thing, so that clergy of other churches might be worth a similar going over? Is it to do with the English liking for eccentricity? Or is it to do with the Freehold, the security of tenure of beneficed clergy which until recently, and alone of the major churches of Europe, made it almost impossible for either bishops or congregations to get rid of the incompetent, the wayward and the mad? Possibly a mixture of all these factors, though I suspect the Freehold is by far the most important.
Nearly 50 Anglican clergy get a mention, many of them usual suspects, who tend to turn up frequently in such books. Hawker of Morwenstow, who invented the modern harvest festival, but also dressed up as a mermaid and sang to the surprised people of Bude from an offshore rock; Spooner of New College, who not only mangled words (kinquering congs their titles take) but also on one occasion poured red wine over spilled salt. Harold Davidson, of Stiffkey, unfrocked for his weekday ministry to Soho prostitutes, who was mauled to death by a lion in Skegness. Some are relatively modern (though from the lawyer’s point of view usefully dead) like Canon Brian Brindley of the baroque splendours of a back street church in Reading, served by ‘fast trains from London’; and Fr Hugh Maycock of Pusey House, who when he woke up in his pyjamas knew it was time for mass, or in his cassock knew it was time for tea. The best newcomer (to me) is the earliest entry, Marco Antonio de Dominis, a 17th Century Roman Archbishop of Split, Anglican Dean of Windsor and finally prisoner of the Inquisition, ‘odious to God and Man’, according to Archbishop Abbott.
All entries are treated with a degree of jocularity, and occasionally there are bull’s eyes. I particularly liked his description of Roman Catholicism in the book’s glossary, which ends ‘as befits such a diverse and complex global institution its operation is entirely vested in a solitary pensioner squatting in an art gallery’. But the jocularity can pall; the dust jacket has a photo of Butler-Gallie pulling a face and accompanied by the information: ‘He is according to his own taxonomy a Bon Viveur first and foremost with a soupçon of Roguishness and Prodigality.’ Which perhaps betrays rather too contrived a desire to merit inclusion in a later book of this kind.
But will there be any additions to the existing gallery? Butler-Gallie is optimistic. He goes on to say that he is sure that God will continue to call as many manifestly strange women as men to the sacred priesthood. Well God might call them, but will bishops and congregations put up with them? Bishops now have much greater powers to get rid of difficult clergy, mainly under the guise of pastoral reorganisation. And now congregations can vote much more effectively with their wallets. Almost every parish church is now dependent upon voluntary giving to keep going. If the money dries up, so does the church. It is not a big book, but it is a jolly one, useful for bedtime reading or the downstairs loo.
Canon John Fellows is a retired Anglican priest living in Suffolk, having served 39 years in the parochial ministry. Before Ordination he was a barrister.