Janice Price, Director of Development, Worcester Diocese, reviews The Bishops by Trevor Beeson SCM Press 2002, pp.254, £19.95, ISBN 0 334 02867 | I read this book at the time that media fever was at its greatest prior to the announcement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. The more serious coverage of this appointment was concerned with the nature of the job and how the new occupant might undertake its many demands. This was essentially a discussion about leadership. What kind of leader does the Church of England need? What kind of leader is the Church of England going to get?
Trevor Beeson’s fascinating and delightful book The Bishops seeks to answer these same questions from the perspective of history combined with his own frank and insightful commentary.
The purpose of the book is twofold. First, ‘it provides brief portraits of 48 bishop who were in office from about the time of TREVOR BEESON the 1832 Reform Bill, when the Church of England ...entered a period of continuous change’ and second to critique the current trend of appointing ‘pastoral-manager’ bishops ‘with the strongest emphasis on manager’. Beeson argues that, ‘they now need to be liberated from a role which has become a denial of the true purpose of their sacred office and serious hindrance to the Church’s mission in the 21st century’.
He takes a broad range of bishops from the 19th and 20th centuries, all of whom are now dead, and through brief portraits outlines their contributions to the church and national life. This he does under chapter headings of ‘pastors’, ‘aristocrats and courtiers’, ‘scholars’, ‘evangelists’, ‘statesmen’, ‘church reformers’, ‘prophets’, ‘headmasters’, ‘controversialists’, sof 55 September 2002 wes ‘missionaries’, and ‘odd men out’. This shows what a varied, colourful and courageous bunch Bishops have been over this period. Among the controversialists are included Herbert Hensley Henson whose ‘declared agnosticism over the historicity of the Virgin Birth and the physical Resurrection of Jesus’ meant that Randall Davidson, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, thought about resigning rather than consecrate him bishop and only seven Diocesan Bishops shared in the event. John Robinson is included among the chapter on ‘prophets’ and tracks his career as an academic before coming to prominence under “Honest to God’ fame. Why was he never made a Diocesan Bishop? Instead he moved from South London to Trinity College, Cambridge and stayed there, unhappily, so the chapter suggests. William Temple is placed interestingly in the group entitled ‘statesmen’. He certainly was a statesman but a recent book on Temple entitled William Temple A Search for Prophecy by Stephen Spencer argues convincingly that he was a prophet on the grounds that both in his church and national ministry he was ahead of his time, spoke with peculiar foresight and was unafraid to speak the unpopular.
However delightful the portraits of the Bishops may be, the most valuable part of this book is the critique Beeson presents of the current system for episcopal appointments and what it produces. Combining historical perspective and personal comment, Beeson maintains that what is required, ‘In this serious situation...is...the need for visionary leadership and bold mission strategy... (which) is desperately urgent — and generally lacking’. (p.227) At the heart of this dilemma is the confusion between leadership and management. If management is about the deployment of resources then leadership is about defining vision and purpose. The visionary leader is one who will keep on defining vision and purpose for an organisation, hold the big picture, and remind its members and its managers constantly what that purpose is. Deployment of resources and strategy must hold together. Of course the two roles are closely related but Beeson argues that today we have too many pastor/manager bishops and not enough visionary leaders. I frequently hear the argument that all of this is due to the fact that the system imposes so much on our Bishops. I see the truth of that every day in my working life as a member of a Bishop’s Staff. What is required is the acknowledgement by the major players in the system that we want Bishops to lead in this way. Most people desire leadership that points to the big picture.
The Bishops is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on leadership in the church. It deserves to be read widely and among others by the movers and shakers in the appointments system. Given the eventual outcome of the process of the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury a few of us are daring to believe that the tide may have turned.