…Ramsey is not purely of historical interest. I would argue that his mixture of principle and pragmatism offers the churches in our own time a means of negotiating the particular pressures they now face.
There are still many people in countries with an Anglican presence with a living memory of Michael Ramsey. The composite image of the man tends to be of a saintly figure, even other-worldly; physically imposing, with a touch of the ancient about him when in full episcopal costume; eloquent in debate but awkward in small-talk.
Critics have drawn attention to his lack of interest in administration, and to failures in handling his staff. I would argue that much of Ramsey’s apparent eccentricity could be explained if we understood him as autistic. Be that as it may, his personal eccentricity masked a remarkable ability to hold together all the myriad, disconnected and pressing matters that crowd around an archbishop. Three examples will make my point.
Elves, this is an interesting article but you may want to make a correction to the heading. It was written by Peter Webster, not Peter Wagner.
[We thank you Ross Gill – title corrected by Elf]
[blockquote]Ramsey believed that it was possible for a church to retain its own moral discipline while supporting the liberalisation of the secular law.[/blockquote]
That went well didn’t it.
Ramsey was gravely mistaken concerning the effect of the legislation that he used his moral authority to support. Of course, perhaps there was no alternative, and surely legislative changes he championed were hardly the only cause of a collapse of the church’s moral discipline.
[blockquote]Since then the Church of England has been criticised for holding the door open for liberalisation of the law that has since had unintended consequences, which some have seen as malign. But this is to read later history back into an earlier period[/blockquote]
It absolutely is not. If one reads the Parliamentary debates, the subsequent consequences were correctly predicted and the bishops were publicly warned by crusty, inflexible, uncompromising conservatives. The bishops just disagreed with such predictions.
[blockquote] The political establishment expected their involvement, as did the other churches; and without their influence the settlement reached would have looked very different.[/blockquote]
Indeed. If the bishops had not thrown their moral weight behind the various pieces of legislation, in the last era in English life when they had some moral authority, who knows what might have happened. At the least the church would not have been complicit in chucking its own beliefs into the abyss. They chose the City of Man over the City of God. It’s the perennial Anglican temptation.
Let me add – since that is so one sided – that Ramsey’s devoutness, kindness and breadth make him an extremely loveable character and that almost invariably his own theological instincts are orthodox – it’s just that his service as Archbishop, in a time of crisis, manifests the tribulations of a church leadership that has simply forgotten that the “Yes” of Jesus Christ must mean, at least sometimes, a “No” to the world.
I should say, I don’t think Ramsey offers a model for the contemporary church. The key assumption behind his pragmatism – namely that the moral consensus affirming the traditional teaching of the church would simply continue – has proved false.
In the debates around homosexuality in 1965 Ramsey affirms the teaching of the church in a way that, were he to do it now, without Parliamentary privilege, could lead to his arrest.
The church now has the choice to remain faithful to its historic doctrine or to affirm the moral consensus of an increasingly de-Christianized society. Ramsey’s pragmatics offer little guidance for this world. Instead we might learn more from his commitment to prayer and his delight in the glory of the Lord.