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Apr. 3rd, 2014 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafRev. 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).
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).
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Date: 2014-04-05 10:13 am (UTC)