Another day, another apology from the government. Yesterday Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia issued a heart-felt and sincere apology to those Australians who had been sent to the country over the course of 50 years under the Child Migration Scheme . 150,000 children went to Australia, with the promise of a better life, but some (how many? all of them?) found instead a life of misery, uprootedness and abuse. This is of course “a Bad Thing”, and our governments, concerned to protect us from Bad Things, want to make it right. The first step in making things right is to issue an apology. It is strongly rumoured that Gordon Brown will be next to apologise to the Forgotten Australians in the New Year.

This should not be a surprise. The government of which Brown is a part has made a habit of apologising for the activities or inactivities of its predecessors. Tony Blair apologised for the Irish Potato famine (1845-1850; the government of Lord John Russell, a Whig). In 2006 he apologised for the slave trade (abolished in 1807 under the government of the Duke of Portland – Tory). Gordon Brown recently apologised for the treatment of Alan Turing, the computer scientist, who killed himself in 1954 (Winston Churchill, Conservative).

It is easy to see a pattern in these apologies. They are all for things for which our elected apologists cannot possibly be held accountable. There is no direct or indirect connection between the government of Gordon Brown and William Cavendish-Bentinck in the 1850s, and not even Gordon Brown can be held responsible for decisions made a hundred years before he was born. Properly, these apologies are meaningless. Popularly, however, is a different thing. The apology to Turing came after a petition. The apology to the Forgotten Australians was the product of a similar campaign. People seem to think that a big, symbolic, expression of contrition is right and necessary, even when those making contrition have had nothing to do with the wrong. Almost twenty years ago, at the time of the anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, the travel writer Jan Morris stood out against the fashionable call for an apology from the European nations for discovering America. To apologise for Columbus’s discoveries is no different from taking the credit for the Renaissance or accepting thanks for the Enlightenment. In other words, it is a meaningless piece of posturing, an action of cheap political stunt-making, nothing more than modish morality.

Part of growing-up, being and acting with an appropriate maturity, is acquiring and showing the recognition that the decisions we make have consequences, for ourselves and for others. Growing-up requires us to reflect on and measure those consequences, and whenever bad comes out of our decisions to show contrition and make restitution: in other words, to say and show you’re sorry. The parable of the prodigal son shows this process: “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son’”.

If this pattern of reflection, contrition, restitution became common (it will never become popular!), then perhaps we would see governments, and others, apologising for things they have really done.

Which translates as 8,187 in the overall bestseller list (“I know my place”!)

After the fall of Exeter, it seems that Buckingham is the latest conquest for Kill George. Bishop Alan Wilson blogged the book on Tuesday:

At home I have a groaning shelf of books published since 1900 about ministry in the Church of England. Justin Lewis-Anthony’s If you meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him is the latest and, no mean feat, by far the best. …

Justin’s excellent book does not play this how-to game, although it does end up talking Turkey, with excellent alternative strategies and tactics to help lower spiritual and personal blood pressure, and bring a Kill-George-Herbert priest back from the Church of the Planet Zog into the Church of England.

…This book is a vastly intelligent, compassionate, understanding and helpful resource. Some will find it a bit clever, so if you prefer your books stupid, you may be disappointed.

(emphasis in the original)

Modesty and copyright prevents me from quoting all of it, but it is here, in all its glory!

(I shouldn’t be surprised really, as +Buckingham is one of only two bishops in the Church of England whose pronouncements I can be bothered reading!)

The review drew out a letter to the editor in the following week’s edition, of which the only thing I will say is never let actually reading a book interfere with your opinion of its contents.

In the meantime, I have been receiving some unsolicted comments from those clergy who, foolishly according the CT, have put the book at No. 2 in the CT’s best-seller list.

A priest of Coventry diocese:

Congratulations and many thanks for your brilliant book & title. Your book makes what I do seem legitimate.

A (retired) priest of Bradford diocese:

I felt I must write and say after just a brief examination of your If you meet Geo Herbert on the road … it’s a book I have been waiting for all my ministry.

A priest of Peterborough diocese:

I just emailed you to tell you how good I thought your book ”If you meet George Herbert …” I too am very fond of G Herbert, sometimes quote him, but I think that your book is excellent, honest and an accurate portrayal of the way things are for so many of us, including me.

A dean of a cathedral:

It’s a fascinating analysis…¹

A priest of London diocese:

I have a couple of chapters left and have so far found it encouraging, challenging and funny!

A priest of Birmingham diocese:

Thank you for your book. It’s helping me get through a hard time in my ministry.

A priest of Bury St Edmunds diocese:

I am really enjoying your book. It says so many things I have thought for years.

A priest of Derby diocese:

… I particularly found the idea of the “Cult of Nice” to be a very powerful way of understanding parish life…

1. And yes, I realise that this can be interpreted in all sorts of ways!

…in this calm summer time one of the good things which happens to me is that I get sent new books from church publishers for review or even with the invitation to write commending comments on the back cover.

One such recently was called ‘If you meet George Herbert on the way – be sure to assassinate him’. George Herbert was a courtier, priest and poet in the Seventeenth Century who wrote a classic handbook for the local pastorally-minded clergyperson called ‘A priest to the temple’. We need to revisit priesthood but I did not take to this book and wrote a few grudging lines for the back page full of double meaning for the reader to interpret. The publishers just edited them so that they read like a glowing commendation! Just like the theatre billboards which read Astonishing, Ground breaking or Sensational – but which could equally be code for Challenging, Awful or Unbelievable.

I really have made it. I’m being denounced from pulpits.¹

<stewie griffin voice>How thrilling!</stewie griffin voice>

1. and did you like the endearing way he forgot the title of the book, to boot!

If you buy books purely for their title, this is irresistible. Justin Lewis-Anthony delivers a brisk demolition of the George Herbert myth, before launching into an assessment of what modern ministry needs.

His initial thesis, occupying one-third of his volume, is that most George Herbert propaganda is inaccurate and what remains is irrelevant to today’s ministerial milieu. The true subject lies in his sub-title Radically rethinking priestly ministry. So this is less a book about George Herbert than about the challenges facing the priest in today’s Church. The author proposes three images of the priest; as Witness, Watchman and Weaver, before developing his methodology, expressed as five pillars in support of  self-knowledge, parish-knowledge and skills-knowledge.

Arguing skilfully, Justin Lewis-Anthony plumbs a plethora of sources, frequently featuring Michael Ramsey, John Howard Yoder, Rowan Williams and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and deploys anecdotal evidence to pleasing effect. If you meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him is supported by foot-notes, an extensive bibliography and comprehensive index. Justin Lewis-Anthony entitles his final chapter ‘Standing by Herbert’s Grave’, but stops short of dancing on it.

At a friend’s ordination recently, the preacher beatified Bemerton’s brightest; dare we recommend this book to our friend?

Under the headline The Cult of Nice, Wright says:

Fear not. Despite his book’s eye-catching title, Lewis-Anthony doesn’t hate George Herbert. He’s actually quite fond of him, especially his poems. What he detests is the way in which Herbert’s legacy has been abused over the past 350 years in order to cultivate a paradigm of ministry that has long since become redundant. Some Church of England vicars still try to live up to the romanticised (historically exaggerated) image of Herbert as the beloved, conscientious minister, living in a bucolic idyll, being all things to all men. It is this phantom Herbert that Lewis-Anthony wants to slay. I’d be happy to join the execution squad.

I’m glad that my true attitude to George Herbert (the person) has come over so clearly. That has not always been the reaction to the speaking and writing I have done on the subject in the past year (some of the comments in Thinking Anglicans were particularly unthoughtful in that regard).

Modesty forbids me from quoting the adjectives in Wright’s review (oh well, if you insist: “compelling”, “wonderful”, “apt”, “witty”, “well-intentioned”, “sophisticated”), but my son especially like the way the review finishes:

…the Church of England is fortunate to have such a bold, idol-smashing thinker within its ranks.

Ahem! <embarrassed cough>

Please go and read it all.

Ancient wall found in Jerusalem.