(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Rev. is back!

I watched last week's episode in my old theological college, whence I had gone for a few days on the 'Deacons' Retreat'. It wasn't much of a retreat, but there was a lot of reflection and listening to each other, and I found the whole thing exhausting but unexpectedly healing. Bits of theological college were good, but bits of it made me profoundly unhappy, and I think that's a (worryingly?) common experience.

Anyway, yesterday I caught up with Monday's episode, which I think was the best they've done in ages (though I do wonder what any non-church people in the audience make of it).



The A plot, about Adam being sent on a particularly awful course on Church Growth run by his old friend from college, a starry Radio Priest* was amusing, at least if you've knocked around the church a bit, and probably if you've done career development stuff anywhere. The unfortunate acronym ("So: the ABC of IED - Invade! Evangelise! Deliver!"), to help you remember what, once you dig into it, is actually pretty obvious stuff, when you dig into it. (Roland's advice basically boiled down to: go where people are rather than waiting for them to walk through the door, have confidence in what you believe, and do what you do for them well, but obviously it had to be dressed up to sound more macho and more like a magic bullet than that...)

However,the B plot was much more interesting (and timely). Adam and Alex are visited by old friends - two men, one of whom is a church-goer who takes his faith fairly seriously - who are getting married, and "we're doing the legal bit at the registry office, but he doesn't believe in registry offices, so can you do a wedding blessing?"

Aargh, thinks Adam. Because, of course, the answer is 'no', canon law does not allow you to, and you'd get in lots of trouble if you got caught. Adam, feeling guilty about the rules he is obliged to follow, offers "prayers after our normal Wednesday night Eucharist", but it all gets out of hand and ends in pastoral disaster, with Adam loudly insisting "no, this isn't a wedding!", and a great deal of upset for the couple (there is an excruciating scene after the service, where Adam and one of the couple each try to blame themselves for the situation, and the church-going half of the couple say nothing and looks like he's about to cry). And then someone denounces Adam to the Archdeacon for conducting a gay wedding...

It was an interesting episode in a number of ways; much of the humour was quite broad, even farcial (and I do wish we had some sympathetic women, other than Alex), but the painful nature of the 'pastoral situation' was taken seriously and not played for laughs. Adam eventually resolves matters by conducting a secret marriage, but only after we've seen him praying. And the Archdeacon, who is as ever marvellously played by Simon McBurney, gets a moment of raw honesty, when he's (ironically) trying to work out if things can be smoothed over and plausibly denied:

Adam: Why are you doing this, anyway? You don't believe it's wrong, any more than I do.
Archdeacon: (angrily) Don't tell me what I believe! I believe in the unity of the church.

Which, I think, we're supposed to take as quite sincere,and encapsulates a lot of the church's current dilemmas.

A very fine episode.


* It's a bit like being a Media Don. I don't think Roland is based on anyone in particular, but think a combination of Fr Richard Coles (without the pop background or the homosexuality) and Dr Giles Fraser (without the politics or the St Paul's debacle).

Comments

[perennialanna]

I wondered if the timeliness of the scheduling was deliberate - I had heard the series was originally supposed to start after Easter.

We definitely need better women.

[serriadh]

I do like Ellie the Headmistress, who's well done most of the time, but I agree we need more.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'd forgotten Ellie! (She hasn't been seen for a bit, which doesn't help matters).

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I think they might have brought it forward for topicality's sake.

[legionseagle]

I agree with the plot dilemma being well done, but I really disliked the way Wednesday prayers were shown going wrong, which could on one level be seen as the show endorsing "the reason you can't allow same sex marriage in church is that gay people and their friends can't be relied upon to behave themselves in church" which I don't think was what the writers were going for but which came over nonetheless. And the Adoha scene with the bed was definitely getting into "too creepy to be funny" territory for my taste.

(Though does anyone doubt it was really Nigel who did the denouncing? That scene between him and Adam was superb.)

[tree_and_leaf]

could on one level be seen as the show endorsing "the reason you can't allow same sex marriage in church is that gay people and their friends can't be relied upon to behave themselves in church" which I don't think was what the writers were going for but which came over nonetheless

Hm. That hadn't occurred to me at all, which is interesting, because I think it possibly says something about the perspective of the show, which is very clergy-centric. From my point of view - as someone who does Adam's job - it obviously completely Adam's fault. I can see how it happened, but he messed it up and he was to blame: he was so busy panicking about how to extricate himself without either breaking the rules or appearing to be rejecting that he stopped actually listening to what they were saying - he encouraged them to 'bring lots of people', and the casual response to 'can we bring flowers' shows he wasn't actually thinking things through. The fact that he did the prayers off the back on an envelope is also significant here (note the Archdeacon's incredulity at that point). It was Adam's failure across the board - he wasn't clear about what he was going to do, he didn't stop to think about whether they'd understood what he was offering, and he didn't actually take enough time to think about how he was going to handle the service.

However: this does raise the question of whether, at times, the perspective of the writers is too close to that of the clergy for it to come over as they intend to a wider audience.



the Adoha scene with the bed was definitely getting into "too creepy to be funny" territory for my taste

Yes, I agree there.

(It was definitely Nigel, and I don't know why Adam hasn't worked this out - other than the fact that he was panicking, and isn't terribly sharp at the best of times).

[perennialanna]

I had seen it the same way - turkeyplucker and I had been discussing what Adam should have done, and come to the conclusion that his solution was a proper planning meeting, where he says very clearly "This is what I am barred from doing. The line is here. This is where we are going to steer - right up to but not over this line".

But we're pretty much quasi-clergy (in brief, his father, mother and brother-in-law are all ordained, as is brother-in-law's father. As was my father-in-law's father. He is deputy choir master, and runs a monthly plainchant vespers. Me, I lurk at the back with the crayons composing rude tweets for later).

[el_staplador]

Sudden appearance of Mick with Katie threw a spanner in the works at a crucial moment, of course. He might - might - have been paying more attention had he remembered to bring his baby home...

(To be fair, my father did exactly the same thing with my middle brother once, except instead of a newsagent it was a fleamarket stall at a historic transport rally.)

[sara]

Yeah, see, that's why I'm not in communion with Anglicanism right now, in a nutshell: I really DON'T believe the unity of the church is more important than providing the sacraments to the faithful.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, I don't agree with the Archdeacon, on balance - but it was still a great moment, especially as (a) it was a rare moment where the character was showing genuine emotion, and (b) it was particularly powerful given that the character is a partnered, more or less out, gay man (and it does reflect how some, though not all, of the gay clergy I know feel about the matter).

[el_staplador]

Also, straight person telling non-straight person what they ought to be thinking about LGBT issue... I'd have snapped at it, I think.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, that occurred to me at the time, but I forgot to put it in (honestly, I think my brain is turning into porridge...). It's easy for Adam to be self-righteously right-on; he's not personally involved.

[el_staplador]

I hadn't until yesterday, so thank you for the spoiler cut! (Although I'd been fairly comprehensively spoiled by Twitter...) Poor Archdeacon - I yelped at that line.

I want to know more about Roland's terrible course. The Powerpoint is awful and nobody wants to go on it. Why is he doing it? And does he have nobody to make better Powerpoints for him?

[tree_and_leaf]

It is odd, given that Roland is apparently successful and high-profile. Mysterious!

[em_h]

I did NOT like that secret marriage at the end. To me that was exactly the wrong thing to do, and also sent the message that clergy who *don't* do things that way are the bad guys. As one of the clergy who does not do things that way, I am irked.

Here's the problem -- the conflict was all framed as being about getting in trouble, not wanting to get in trouble, how not to get in trouble. The archdeacon's "unity of the church" was at least one second of belief in something other than self-interest. But getting in trouble is not the point. When one is ordained, one takes a VOW to the bishop. It is a vow which is, in fact, very like a marriage (Andrea and I were joking the other day about being in a committed and permanent vowed relationship with our bishop), and like a marriage it is essentially about a relationship, or actually several relationships -- priest-bishop and priest-community most importantly. You do not manage conflict in a relationship by doing things secretly, at least not if you want that relationship to be healthy in any way. Adam appears to have conducted the marriage secretly from both bishop and community. That's … vaguely like adultery, actually.

When you have a conscience matter, and this *is* a conscience matter, no denying, you need to *talk* to your bishop about it. Of course we have not really seen the bishop and know nothing much about him/her. Speaking to the archdeacon is perhaps a substitute, but that conversation never reached the level of "how will we handle the conscience issue." And it must.

My own solution -- discussed in excruciating detail with my archdeacon, as stand-in for the bishop -- was to decline my license to perform marriages at all. I don't marry anyone, gay or straight. I am pretty happy with that, as I don't like being an agent of the state, and am dubious about marriage as a sacrament.

Another priest took the route of openly, publicly performing a lesbian wedding, having told the bishop he was going to do so, and in the full knowledge that the consequence would be the loss of his license, a consequence he accepted. Had Adam done that, I would have cheered loudly for him, as I did for the priest who actually did this.

One parish has worked out a deal where their priest conducts every part of the wedding except the legal bit, at which point a JP steps up -- this is done quietly, but again, with the bishop's knowledge. There is also at least one parish which is known to have been quietly but openly performing same-sex marriages for years, and the bishop is aware, and allows that one parish to do so, because they are such an outlier in so many ways.

So there are different ways to deal with the conscience issue, but secrecy is just the wrong one. Easiest to dramatize, yes. And easier than trying to explain ordination vows to a general audience, yes. But a cheap solution, to my mind.

None of which changes the fact that it is, overall, a *very* good episode ...