ON REFORMING THE REFORM COUNCIL

This by Cranmer's Curate appeared in The Church of England Newspaper:

Dear ladies and gentlemen on the Reform Council,

The planned new Society for reformed evangelicals within the Church of England - St Augustine's is the name mooted - is very exciting. As you undertake the significant task, under our chairman Rod Thomas’s able and godly leadership, of constituting it, would you please consider this question: would an elected governing body give it a broader social, regional and educational base?

To try to answer the immediate objections:

1). The important thing is to get the best council not to get bogged down in bureaucracy. Certainly, paper shuffling needs to be kept down to a minimum. And it is also important to stress that the suggestion does not cast aspersions on the ability and godliness of the present council as individual ministers. Their high spiritual quality is not in question. This is about the collective dynamic of the council. It is respectfully to suggest that an evangelical Society called to support local churches in Christ’s mission needs as broad a range of experience as possible. Could an electoral process better deliver a more socially and educationally diverse council?

2). You sound like Tony Blair - this push for 'modernisation' is just motivated by inverted snobbery and middle class guilt. Maybe, but it is also possible that the question is motivated by evangelistic considerations. British people have become significantly less institutional in outlook and behaviour since the 1960s with the decline of trade unions, the abolition of National Service and the move towards comprehensiveness in state education. Is it possible that competitive elections could attract people from less institutional backgrounds to serve on the council and thus enable Reform to become more entrepeneurial?

3). Talk of diversity panders to politically correctness. But PC-style gerrymandering with, for example, a fixed 50 per cent female quota on the council is not being suggested here (though 50 per cent laity would be sensible). The question is whether competitive elections could enable our Reform movement better to tap its talent pool. The likely reality is that it would enable some of the very capable women in our membership to serve on the council.

4). Elections will encourage power play. That is possible, sadly, given fallen human nature. But is it not also possible that a self-appointed governing body can be marked by a 'jobs for the boys' mentality - a self-serving human tendency to want to congregate with people of a similar social and educational background?

Finally, it may come as some relief to hear that I would not be standing for election to the Reform Council, if that is the route you choose. My own Oxbridge educational and Iwerne Minster spiritual background is precisely what Reform needs to be broadening out from.