BBC

Bringing the Church of England into the 21st century

The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Wilby © Ricky Yates

Yesterday, I realised that the next post that I would write on this blog would be post number three hundred! I went to bed last night, trying to decide what on earth would be the most appropriate topic to tackle for such significant landmark in the life of ‘Ricky Yates – an Anglican in Prague’.

Then this morning came the announcement of the appointment of the first ever female bishop in the Church of England – the Rev’d Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Lane, to be the next Suffragan Bishop of Stockport in the Diocese of Chester. Rather than write about ‘Ricky Yates’ or ‘Prague’, why not write about the other noun in my blog title – ‘Anglican’?

I, along with the vast majority of the clergy and people of the Church of England, are rejoicing that with this appointment, we finally have the reality of gender equality in the Church. It has been a very long time in coming! I’m also extremely pleased that this appointment totally confounded the secular media and the bookies!

The secular media has recently been declaring, with its usual self-belief, that the first female bishop would be appointed to one of the four currently vacant Diocesan sees – Southwell & Nottingham, Gloucester, Newcastle or Oxford. But the reality is that most Diocesan Bishop appointments are made from those who are already Suffragan Bishops in another diocese. Therefore it was always almost certain that the first female episcopal appointment would be to a Suffragan, rather than a Diocesan see. Which is exactly what has happened.

Likewise today, the BBC News website is once more revealing the religious ignorance of those who work for it. The news article announcing the appointment of Rev’d Libby Lane as Suffragan Bishop of Stockport, ends by stating, ‘Churches in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already allow women as bishops, but haven’t appointed one yet’. Firstly, it should be Anglican Churches – the Episcopal Church of Scotland, Yr Eglwys yng Nghymru/ the Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland. But the Church of Ireland, which serves the whole of the island of Ireland, does have a female bishop who was appointed and consecrated in 2013. There is actually a link to another BBC news item about her appointment posted below the article!

I fear that in further reporting of today’s historic appointment, journalists will inevitably find an Anglican priest who wants to be more Roman than the Pope, together with a well below the floorboards Evangelical, each of whom will be saying what a dreadful day this is for the Church. As always, disagreement is deemed to be newsworthy, whilst ignoring the fact that 95% of clergy and laity welcome the Church of England finally arriving in the 21^st century. At least so far, I haven’t seen the BBC reporting a sound-bite either from the British Humanist Association or the National Secular Society 🙂

But whilst welcoming and rejoicing that appointment to the Episcopate in the Church of England is now possible for any ordained priest, regardless of gender, thus removing a major obstacle to the mission of the Church, there are two other changes which I would also like to see. One relates to my own diocese, the other to the Church of England as a whole. Unchanged, both currently have negative connotations and hinder mission.

I frequently have to explain to people that the Prague and Brno Anglican congregations that I serve, are actually part of the Church of England. They are two of just over three hundred congregations, scattered across continental Europe, Turkey, Morocco and the parts of the former Soviet Union in Asia. Together they form the Diocese in Europe, or to give the diocese its correct full name, ‘the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe’. And it is that correct full name that is the problem – having ‘Gibraltar’ in the title.

We have numerous growing congregations serving English-speaking residents living in, and visitors to, the Spanish ‘Costas’, as well as in Madrid and Barcelona. You can imagine the difficulties for them with having ‘Gibraltar’ in our diocesan name. Elsewhere in continental Europe, it just appears as laughable – a relic of British imperialism.

I would strongly defend the right of the citizens of Gibraltar to remain British and self-governing, as is clearly their declared wish. I would also quietly remind the Spanish government whenever they complain, as they do at regular intervals, about the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa 😉 But just because historically, there has been a Cathedral in Gibraltar, it doesn’t always have to be so. As we have rightly decided that both men and women can be ordained, not just men, surely we can change the location of our Diocesan Cathedral and the name of our Diocese.

Today’s announcement of the appointment of the Church of England’s first female bishop, officially came from Downing Street – the Prime Minister making it on behalf of the Queen. This is because of the Church of England still being the official ‘Established Church’ in England, though not in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Whilst there is now no political involvement in Church of England appointments, this is an anachronism which we do not need.

Being the ‘Established Church’, makes many people believe that we are an instrument of government. Certainly as a result, large sections of the population still believe that the Church of England is funded by the state as the spiritual arm of the Department of Social Security! Being the ‘Established Church’ brings little or no benefit but instead makes our task of mission and of raising the necessary funds to carry out that mission, all the more difficult.

Just because this has been the case, ever since the English Reformation under King Henry VIII, doesn’t mean that it has to remain that way. I respect Queen Elizabeth II for her own strong personal Christian faith and for not being afraid on occasions, to speak about it, as she has in several of her Christmas broadcasts. But if the Church in Wales can be disestablished, as it was in 1920, why not the Church of England in 2015?

The Church of England has properly arrived in the 21^st century by today appointing its first female bishop. But it would further help the work of my diocese if we could quietly lose the colonial anachronism of ‘Gibraltar’ from our name and the wider work of the whole Church of England, if it were no longer ‘established’. I even believe that the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society might approve of my last suggestion 😀

Václav Havel – death of a statesman

Yesterday, Sunday 18^th December, was a very significant day in the life of the Anglican Church here in the Czech Republic when we held our first ever service in Brno. However, just as I and five members of the Prague congregation were leaving Coffee Hour following our Sunday morning Eucharist in Prague in order to catch the train to Brno, news reached us of the death of Václav Havel, leading dissident during the communist era, first President of post-communist Czechoslovakia and, following the Velvet Divorce, President of the Czech Republic 1993 -2003.

I returned home from Brno, just after midnight last night, to find the death of Václav Havel as the leading news story on the BBC News website – the first time in over three years of living here in Prague that I can remember a news story from the Czech Republic being so featured. However, within a few hours, the story had lost top billing to the death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. In many respects, this is understandable as the death of the North Korean leader means there is a great deal of concern around the world as to what future leadership will emerge within that unpredictable nuclear power.

Living here as a foreigner in the Czech Republic, I have been trying to get the measure of how Czech people feel about the death of one of their most famous citizens. As I had previously understood it, the general consensus was that in many respects, Havel was more highly regarded outside of this country than within in it. Judging by what has happened within the last 30 hours or so since his death, that understanding may well be wrong.

The picture above is of the front page of today’s edition of Dnes /’Today’, one of the leading Czech national newspapers. The first section of the paper, all sixteen pages of it, is completely given over to reports about a whole variety of aspects of the life and death of Václav Havel to the total exclusion of any other news. In the second section for regional news, the first three pages are given over to describing the reaction in Prague to Havel’s death. All of that I believe, speaks volumes – newspaper editors usually know what their readers want to read.

What will be totally new territory for this nation is the organisation of a state funeral at which the attendance of numerous major figures from around the world is expected. No Czech national of the stature of Václav Havel has died since the fall of communism just over twenty-two years ago. Preparations for this event, which it is currently suggested, will happen this coming Friday, will be interesting to observe. As for the first ever English-language Anglican Carol Service in Brno, a blog post will follow shortly.

The New Atheism and the BBC

As I’ve written previously on this blog, ever since moving to the Czech Republic in September 2008, I have happily lived without having a television. Even in my latter years of living in the UK, I only tended to watch television in order to keep up-to-date with the News, together with enjoying the occasional major sporting event if it still was on terrestrial television. I refuse point blank to pay for satellite or cable TV, particularly as most of it is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. And we all now know quite clearly what journalists and others in his organisation do!

Therefore now, in order to keep abreast of what is happening in the world, I have become a very regular visitor to the BBC News website. I find its coverage to be fairly comprehensive, regularly updated and that it provides news without any particular political bias.

I do however, have a couple of gripes. As one who used to happily pay his annual licence fee, I am someone who always enjoyed the BBC as it was totally free of advertising. Because I now access the BBC News website from a foreign country, unfortunately advertising also appears.

Secondly, as my first degree is in geography, I get irritated by the complete geographical ignorance of some BBC journalists. A couple of years back, a news article about something that had happened in Pau in south-central France, was accompanied by a map showing Pau as being on the Atlantic coast of France when it is 125 kilometres from the sea! More recently, a news article about Serbia included a map purporting to be of Serbia, which showed Montenegro as being wholly within it’s borders when the two countries had separated several years previously and mutually recognise each other.

But my real frustration comes whenever there is a news item that involves some aspect of the Christian faith. Firstly, the theological and ecclesiastical ignorance of many BBC journalists is even greater than the geographical ignorance that I referred to earlier. But what really annoys me is that, if the Archbishop of Canterbury is quoted, or the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster has made a pronouncement, then you can be sure that the news item will also include the completely opposite view of Terry Sanderson or Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society, or Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association.

The BBC do this because they want to comply with their obligation to be unbiased and balanced in their reporting. But the reality is that, by giving undue prominence to the views of the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association, and on BBC TV & Radio, giving them airtime, they are actually being highly unbalanced.

On the average Sunday in the UK, there are around one million people worshiping in Anglican Churches, about one million in Roman Catholic Churches, and a further million in a whole variety of Free Churches. This accounts for about 5% of the UK population. At least six million people in the UK attend Church at least once a month which is 10% of the population. I wish these figures were higher but even so, it still is a significant number of people.

Being aware of this, I set out to try and discover the membership numbers for the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association. In doing so, I discovered two things. The first is that this information is far from being freely available. The second is, I am not the first person to try to do so and to recognise that both organisations are being given absurdly more recognition than they realistically deserve.

The website of the British Humanist Association states that it has ‘over 28,000 members and supporters’. However, it doesn’t state the difference in numbers between ‘members’ – those who have paid an annual membership fee – and ‘supporters’. What is a ‘supporter’? Someone who made a £5.00 donation in the past or who wrote a friendly email five years ago?

The National Secular Society is even less clear. No membership numbers are published and an email I sent many months ago, asking the question, never got a reply. However, this blogger has looked at their financial returns and has come up with a figure of less than 5,500. Another writer has analysed the figures and come to the conclusion of no more than 7000.

These figures speak volumes. As Gavin Drake says, “If, as the (National Secular) Society claim, the Church is irrelevant on the basis of numbers; then on what basis is the National Secular Society relevant?” The answer is quite obvious – neither the National Secular Society nor the British Humanist Association are relevant. If they were, people would be flocking to join and support them in droves. Quite clearly, they aren’t. I rest my case and hope that, in the interest of balanced reporting, the BBC also takes notice.

Silvestr – New Year’s Eve

Zoo 3. — In the bleak mid-winter..... © Ricky Yates

Today is 31^st December – New Year’s Eve. In Czech it is known as Silvestr as we discovered last year when the car park attendant at our local Billa supermarket wished us ‘hezky Silvestr’ as we gave him our ticket at the barrier. Sybille immediately knew what he meant as today is Silvester in German. And the reason for the name? In the Roman Catholic Church, today is the feast day of St. Sylvester/Pope Sylvester I who died on 31^st December 335.

This post is really just a quick update on the things I’ve written about in my three previous December blog posts.

Weather

Not only did winter, with considerable snowfall, come early to Prague this year – it hasn’t gone away! We had a white Christmas with snow already on the ground and more fine powdery snow falling as we travelled to Church for our Midnight service on Christmas Eve.

Zoo 1 — Emu in the snow at Prague Zoo © Ricky Yates

Yesterday, rather than being cold and cloudy, it was fine; cold but sunny. So we went to visit one of Sybille’s favourite places – Prague zoo. The weather was perfect for the polar bears, North American bison and other animals used to snow and below freezing temperatures. However, I did feel somewhat sorry for this emu though I believe he was outside by choice.

Since well before Christmas, we’ve been planning to take the car to our good friend Adrian of Nepomuk in order to have four new ‘winter tyres’ fitted and a couple of other minor things fixed. But unfortunately, the weather has been so bad we just haven’t felt able to undertake the journey. Therefore, the poor ‘Carly’, as it has become affectionately known, continues to sit outside covered in snow.

Zoo 4 — The 'Carly' in the snow © Ricky Yates

‘On the Feast of Stephen’

Our broadcast service on BBC Radio 4 on 26^th December had been very well received. As well as complimentary emails from various persons, known and unknown, one other very interesting statistic has emerged. Our Church website normally gets 10 – 15 hits a day. On Sunday 26^th December it got 153 hits!!! If you haven’t yet heard the broadcast, you can still do so during the next two days by visiting the Radio 4 Sunday Worship website.

Christmas Carp induced flooding

We’ve dried out and all the electrics are working. However, we are still awaiting a visit from our neighbour’s insurance company’s appropriately named ‘liquidator’!

Happy New Year!

Zoo 2 — Frozen waterfall in the grounds of Prague Zoo © Ricky Yates

‘On the Feast of Stephen’

BBC Recording 1 — The Czech Radio recording truck outside St. Clement's Church © Ricky Yates

‘Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen’. So goes the opening lines of the well-known Christmas carol, the words being the work of the nineteenth century hymnwriter John Mason Neale. The carol is based on the life of the historical Saint Wenceslas, Duke of Bohemia (907-935), who is known in Czech as Svatý Václav, the patron saint of the Czech Republic.

Out of the blue, on Thursday 4^th November, I got a phone call from Canon Stephen Shipley, Senior Producer for BBC Radio Religion & Ethics, saying he wanted to record a service, to be broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 26^th December 2010 – the Feast of Stephen. His idea was that the service should focus on the twin themes of St. Stephen and St Wenceslas. And because there is a large statue of the Czech saint at the far end of Václavské námestí / Wenceslas Square and he is buried in St Vitus Cathedral, he wanted to record it in Prague.

The following days were marked by a whole series of phone calls and emails, back and forth, as we tried to pull the project together. But by the end of the evening of Wednesday 24^th November, we had successfully recorded sufficient material to turn the concept outlined in Stephen’s original phone conversation with me twenty days earlier, into a reality that will be broadcast ‘On the Feast of Stephen’.

As well as speaking with me about his concept for this recorded service, Stephen Shipley had also made contact with a Czech Ecumenical Choir called Naši pevci / ‘Our voices’, who had been recommended to him and were very keen to be part of the project. As the choir normally practice on a Wednesday evening, this seemed to both them and me to be the best day of the week to record the service and two Wednesdays in early December were both pencilled in as being suitable.

But we then discovered that the technical crew from Czech Radio, with whom the BBC have a reciprocal agreement, could not do either of these dates. Thus the recording had to be far earlier than originally envisaged, eventually taking place on the evening of Wednesday 24^th November. Fortunately the Church was available that evening which was another piece of the jigsaw which had to be fitted in.

Whilst I could find volunteers from the regular congregation to read and lead intercessions, one thing I struggled with was Stephen Shipley’s request that there be two different voices leading the service – one to give some short reflections on the Biblical passages and the lives of St. Stephen and St. Wenceslas, and one to link the various parts of the service together. And he was quite keen that one of them should speak English with a Czech accent!

It was during one of our phone conversations, little more than a week before the recording was due to take place, that I suddenly had a brainwave – why not ask Petra Hanova? Petra is a Czech former member of the St. Clement’s congregation who went forward to train for ordination in the Church of England. I had never met her but many longer-standing members of the congregation spoke highly of her. All I did know was that she was now married to a fellow Anglican priest Guy Elsmore, and was working in the Diocese of Liverpool.

Fortunately, Stephen liked the idea and agreed to phone Petra to see if she was willing to take part and also be willing to write three or four reflections for the service over the weekend, thus leaving me to be the link person holding everything together. Amazingly, despite the short notice, Petra was very happy with our idea and agreed to fly to Prague on Tuesday 23^rd November to be ready for the recording the following day. Petra’s parents still live here and she was able to stay with them and combine the recording with a family visit.

On the evening of Monday 22^nd November, I drove out to the airport to meet Stephen Shipley who flew in from Manchester. He stayed in the guest bedroom of the Chaplaincy flat for the next three nights and from the following morning until the middle of Wednesday afternoon, we worked continuously putting the various pieces of the jigsaw together into a coherent service.

As well as ‘Good King Wenceslas’, to be sung by both choir and congregation, there were several choir items in both Czech and English, two other congregational carols, three Bible readings re-telling the story of Stephen, intercessions, together with four reflections from Petra. Initially, the various items all seemed rather disparate. But slowly, Stephen was able to sort them into a coherent running order. Having done so, I then had to write the text that I was going to use to link the whole service together.

It was little more than hour before we needed to leave the flat in order to reach St. Clement’s Church and let the Czech Radio technical guys into the building to set up for the recording, that I finally finished printing off ten copies of the complete text of the service, together with running orders and hymn sheets for the congregation. I would be lying if I didn’t say that it was all a little stressful!

Stephen and I got to St. Clement’s Church just before 4.00 pm to find the Czech Radio technical crew waiting and ready to go. Fortunately, they had previously recorded a Czech service in the building and therefore had a fairly clear idea how to set things up to obtain a good sound balance. Once they were happy that they had access to everything they needed, Stephen and I were able to disappear for a quick coffee and a final check through the text of the service.

BBC Recording 2 — Rev'd Petra Elsmore nee Hanova © Ricky Yates

We returned to the Church around 5.45 pm to find Petra Elsmore sitting quietly in the pew waiting for us. Very soon afterwards, Lucie Nováková the organist and Lydie Härtelová the Choir Director arrived. Lydie is not very fluent in English but, because her husband is German, speaks German very well. She thus pushed my ‘bisschen Deutsch’ to the limit trying to communicate! Fortunately, very soon afterwards Magdaléna Stamfestova, a soprano from the choir and a fluent English-speaker, arrived and took over translation duties.

I had asked the congregation to be at Church by 7.00 pm but many of them came earlier and enjoyed listening to the organist and choir practising and to the readers, intercessor, Petra and I doing voice tests. Soon after 7.00 pm, we had a practise of the congregational hymns and following some final instructions from Stephen and me, all was ready to begin recording.

Everything was done to try and make the recorded service a continuous act of worship without interruption. However, one clear instruction was that if any participant fell over their words or made a mistake, they were to stop, leave a pause, and then go back to the beginning of the sentence in which the mistake was made and start again. This was to aid post-service editing when all our mistakes and stumbles would be eliminated! Petra also had to stop and start again whilst reading one of her reflections when a choir member suddenly had a coughing fit!

It was just before 9.00 pm that we finally finished recording. Even then, Stephen made us do three or four things again because he wasn’t totally happy with one or two aspects of the recording. One complaint was the lack of a good congregational ‘Amen’ when I gave the blessing at the end of the service. Consequently the congregation ended up going out having been doubly blessed!

Once all of this was done and the congregation, choir and other participants were free to leave, I still had to stay on whilst the all the Czech Radio recording equipment was dismantled and put away. Only when the last electric wire was coiled up into the back of their van, was I able to shut the main Church doors and lock them. It was 10.10 pm – more than six hours of hard work and concentration. Very fortunately, Stephen and I found a nearby Italian restaurant that was still willing to serve us where we both enjoyed some well deserved sustenance.

Last Friday, I received an email from Stephen Shipley saying, “I have now edited the programme and I’m very pleased with it. Inevitably there are things I wished we had time to do again, but considering the short notice and the earlier than expected recording date, I think it’s come out very well”. He has promised me a CD of the recording which I’m hoping will arrive in the next few days.

The service entitled ‘On the Feast of Stephen’ will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 26^th December 2010 starting at 08.10 GMT which is 09.10 CET here in the Czech Republic. It will be possible to listen to it online and there should be ways of downloading it or listening to it later. I’ll post an additional note about this here, once I know more.

BBC Recording 3 — Lydie Härtelová, Choir Director & Magdaléna Stamfestova, soprano and translator © Ricky Yates

Update – 16^th December 2010

If you click on this link, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wqkvd it will take you to the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship website with details of the forthcoming broadcast.

Update – 11th January 2011

The service as recorded, has now been uploaded to our Church website. If you follow this link, scroll to the bottom of the page, and then click the link there, you can listen to it.