Bishop David’s Opening Address to Synod

In his opening address to Diocesan Synod, Bishop David reflects on the attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue and the importance of marking Black History Month. He encourages us to rejoice in our diversity in Manchester Diocese and continue to proclaim the gospel message of love, justice, and reconciliation.

Bishop David’s address is shared in full here:

“It was in the spring of 1975 that the flame of Christ was relit in my life. Until then, I’d assumed all monotheistic religion was a bit like getting through the A Levels I had not long before completed. Somewhere there was a pass mark for the grade I needed. 1% above was heaven; 1% below lay hell. It was when a good friend – she’s still a good friend 50 years on – told me about the divine love that issues in grace and forgiveness, that everything changed. It made sense in a way the examiner god never had.

“Not that I was unique in having held that view of religion. The notion of balancing the scales between good and bad goes back many centuries. Along the way, the definition of good can get remarkably twisted. Pope Urban VI persuaded robber barons and dissolute soldiers that all their killing, looting, raping and plundering would be forgiven, if only they would join his Crusade to the Holy Lands. Closer to home in time and space, I suspect it may have been someone whispering similar sentiments who groomed a Prestwich man, not long before arrested for rape, to attack Heaton Park synagogue on Yom Kippur. A pretend bomb strapped to his waist, to ensure the events would end with his death, and hence, as he had been led to believe, guarantee his place in Paradise.

“Please accept my deepest gratitude for all that each of you, and the people you represent, have done over these last nine days to demonstrate God’s love in a world wracked by hatred, a world where some seek to bring that hatred onto our own city streets. We have stood, many of us literally, and sometimes in the pouring rain, with other faith and civic leaders, alongside our Jewish sisters and brothers in their time of mourning. We have done so, not to store up good deeds for our future destiny, nor yet to demonstrate our moral superiority in public, but simply because that was where love called us to stand. And we will go on standing there, alongside Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, Jains and humanists, politicians and public officials, until hatred of those of our neighbours unlike ourselves has entirely vanished from our communities. That is the Manchester way.

‘“Who is my neighbour”, a man famously asked Jesus. By way of reply he got the parable of the Good Samaritan.

“By this time on Monday I’m expecting to meet up with a friend for a trip to his old Theological College. The curriculum he studied, the books he was encouraged to read, the theologians he was taught as an Anglican to look up to, could have placed him in any of a number of Church of England TEIs of the day. Yet his College was not in Lincoln or Salisbury, Oxford or Cambridge. It was on the former sugar plantation, worked by enslaved Africans for over a century after it was bequeathed by Christopher Codrington to the Mission Agency I now chair, on the island of Barbados. I don’t actually need to step outside of this room to meet with those descended from Africans trafficked by British ships, funded by investments from the Church Commissioners, or Queen Anne’s Bounty as it was then called, and put to work in conditions that consigned most of them to an early death. But standing on the soil where they stood, seeking to promote a authentically Anglican and authentically Caribbean theology, one that reflects the history of those islands, matters to me as much as it matters to stand alongside the people of Heaton Park synagogue. This too is about solidarity in love as the means to overcome a legacy of evil.

“It is why Black History Month should matter to all of us, whatever our colour and background. If you haven’t already, you will be able to see the displays we have to mark the month during our coffee breaks and over lunch. It’s why it matters that we have our new Racial Justice lead Diane Gray-Stephenson. She is currently recruiting to her team and will be presenting at our next Synod. It is why it matters that we have never had a major diocesan service, over the last decades and more, fronted by an all white British altar party. If we are to be the people of God that Jesus is calling us to be, we must not only reflect our diversity but promote it and rejoice in it. We must see it as our strength. Rachel Watts, our Vocations Director will be strengthening her own team, to help us rise better to that challenge.

“Yet we do this against a background where, across many parts of the world, a new nationalism, one which clothes itself with the words and symbols of our faith, and pretends to be standing up for Christianity itself, is on the rise. From Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, it seeks to roll back the rights of minorities, be they ethnic, religious or sexual, alongside often seeking to return women to a subservience paraded as biblical. Alongside other Christian leaders, I recently signed a letter protesting against the hijacking of our religious symbols in aid of a narrow nationalist agenda here in England. I am not naïve enough to imagine such attitudes are absent from among our own congregations. But I do know we have a gospel to proclaim. A gospel that calls us to stand alongside those marginalised and rejected. To hear their histories, to embrace them in their pain, to affirm their inherent worth in God’s eyes. A gospel that calls us to be audible and visible exemplars of that graceful, accepting and non-judgemental love that captured my heart 50 years ago, and still captures it today.”