Fergus Butler-Gallie is a priest and writer. His latest book, Touching Cloth, is a memoir on his time as a priest in Liverpool.
We cover many topics relating to Fergus's life, work, and perspectives on faith and the Church of England. I also ask him what he would do with the Church of England if he had a magic wand.
Fergus provides insights into life in Liverpool, discussing local culture, diversity, and the famous Liverpool accent. He argues that many stereotypes and assumptions about the city are inaccurate.
We explore how Fergus's time as a minister in Liverpool impacted his faith, with Fergus sharing that it was an overall positive experience that affirmed his sense of calling.
Discussing the Church of England, Fergus critiques the managerial bureaucracy and argues for decentralization and a return to an earlier model. He wants more inspiring, eccentric bishops.
We discuss eccentric reverends from history that Fergus has chronicled, including a food-obsessed dean who famously ate the mummified heart of King Louis XIV. Fergus shares thoughts on the Eucharist and transubstantiation, after I suggest an analogy to actors embodying a role. We discusses how wearing a clerical collar changes how one is perceived.
"Dean Buckland was dean of Westminster, which is a very high profile job in the Church of England. And he made it his mission to try and eat everything that had ever existed. So he ate mice, he ate tadpoles...And they go and say, "Oh, now we reach the most impressive thing that we have." And they're very carefully taking it out this casket. And they said, "Because you're such a privileged group of people, we're going to hand it around to all of you. And this is the mummified heart of King Louis XIV smuggled out of France at the revolution and now kept here in our private museum." And it goes around all the people. They look at it and think, "Oh, this is amazing. This is wonderful." It gets to Dean Buckland, he looks at it and he says, "I've never eaten King before." And he pops it in his mouth."
We play a short game of over rated under rated and end on Fergus’ life advice.
Fergus rates: James Bond, the British monarchy, Afternoon tea, The House of Lords, Double decker buses , Black cabs, Pubs, and Cricket. On life advice:
Fergus recommends reversing our instincts - don't take seriously what we think we should, and take seriously what we think we shouldn't. For those considering ordination, he advises prayer and cautions it's not for everyone. "There are things in life that should be taken seriously and there are things in life that should not be taken seriously. The real thing to realize is that they're the opposite way around to the way you think they are. Anything you think should be taken seriously, don't take it seriously. Anything you think should not be taken seriously, take it seriously."
Podcast available wherever you listen. Video available on Youtube or above. Transcript below.
PODCAST INFO
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Transcript: (only lightly edited)
Ben
Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Fergus Butler-Gallie. Fergus is a writer and priest. His latest book is “Touching Cloth” which is a memoir of his life so far in the Church of England. Fergus, welcome.
Fergus
Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.
Ben (00:00:19):
What do you think is most misunderstood about Liverpool?
Fergus (00:00:23):
Everything is the answer. Almost everything is misunderstood about Liverpool. You get people who make jokes about lack of employment or people stealing cars, all that kind of scally culture; that idea of scouters being sort of dangerous or idle. That very much-- that's obviously misunderstood. There’s the scandal around Boris Johnson, the spectator interview, the Republicans as a sort of grievance mongers. Again, I don't think that's true. But I think Liverpool has some myths about itself as well. I think it's actually, deep down in my experience, a very sort of small sea conservative city. It's a red city scout socialist. It doesn't like change very much. So I think the myths about Liverpool are the ones that are imposed on it from the outside which are generally very negative. Those are completely untrue. The people that are exceptionally welcoming, they're incredibly hardworking.
Then there are the myths that Liverpool itself cultivates. We've always been a city of immigrants. We've always been this, that or the other. It isn't really true. The history of Liverpool is exceptionally interesting, I should say. I think the most fascinating of any city in Britain and from how it goes from a sort of fishing village founded by King John to this center of global trade, to what it is now in its 20th century history. But what I would say about Liverpool is the one thing that isn't a misunderstanding is that it's different. It is different. It feels different to other cities. It feels like it has a culture to itself. Fascinating stat recently that every single accent in the UK, every single regional accent is softening; i.e., moving towards a kind of center point, whether it's people who speak in a very received pronunciation; the queen-- famously the late queen. Her voice got sort of, “Started like this, near some clipped,” and by the end it became a little more elongated with the vowels.
Every accent is doing this; from Tyneside to Devon to sort of Cockney except Liverpool. And the Liverpool accent is getting harsh. Scouse is getting more scouse, more sort of harsh, which I think says something about its willingness and its desire to be different and do things differently. So that sort of myth. But I think everything else, the way in which that unfolds I think can lead to misunderstandings.
Ben (00:02:59):
And does their sense of identity and culture span most of the city, everyone who speaks scouse have it? Did that also span rich to poor, or was your ministry mostly in a kind of poorer community?
Fergus (00:03:16):
Very much it span rich to poor. The thing about Liverpool is having said, it has always been-- It is a huge diversity, but diverse in ways that people don't quite expect. So its wave of sort of, for instance-- It got the oldest Chinatown in the UK. Now, most immigrants to the UK from China came in the late 19th or late 20th centuries. In Liverpool, they came in the 18th century. And so you have people who are from Chinese Liverpool families who have been running businesses there for nearly 300 years. And that is a very different kind of routing. Ditto. It's black communities, partly because of its links with the slave trade, which again, Liverpool perhaps keeps quiet in some ways. So yes, it's very diverse and that, but that scousness is sort of throughout, it goes like a stick of rock. It really is throughout the whole of society there.
But my ministry was with everyone. That sort of is the great joy of the parish church I served in. So it is the oldest institution in Liverpool. Liverpool was founded as a little chapel by the River Mersey, which became the Church of our Lady in St. Nicholas, which means you were dealing with the Lord Mayor, the political elite, the mayor Joe Anderson, who was famously arrested on corruption charges. You are dealing with the Earl of Darby, because again, Liverpool is still hugely aristocratic in a number of ways. The Duke of Westminster and the Earl of Darby own vast tracks in the city center in a way that isn't the case in Manchester or Newcastle or even Central London which is considered to be more aristocratic.
But because you're in the center of the city and because in Liverpool distances are shorter, so you can have these glorious Victorian apartment blocks, Edwardian apartment blocks which are filled with comparatively wealthy people with these new skyscrapers and things like that. We had a skyscraper opposite us where there was a box on the top of it which was a self-contained apartment where Jurgen Klopp had lived for his first few years as manager of Liverpool. So you've got that, and then literally one street away you will have council housing, estate housing, you have people living very close to the poverty line. So unlike London where you can sort of categorize it, there are pockets of social housing in places like Chelsea and Westminster. But in Liverpool, it really is very, very obvious that from one street or even on the same street, one street to another, you have this incredibly close-knit living of the super-rich in terms of the footballers and some of the businessmen who were there and really, some of the poorest people in the UK. So yeah, we had to deal with both of them because they were in the parish and that's sort of the point of the parish church.
Ben (00:06:04):
Did they make you choose sides between Everton and Liverpool?
Fergus (00:06:08):
Yes.
Ben (00:06:09):
Although difficult congregations.
Fergus (00:06:11):
They did. And gosh, I have to say it. I followed football. My father was a director at Charlton Athletic football club when he left the Army. So again, I had always gone round-- I knew about football. I never quite believed the level of the intensity and the kind of rivalry is a big deal. I had a colleague who wouldn't wear anything red. He wouldn't wear red clothing. He just wouldn't wear because he was such Leviton. I will say I went to Goodison Park more-- I went to Everton more than I went to… I used to get out of it by saying, “Of course, I was really Tranmere Rovers fan who were the team in Birkenhead who play in white.
Ben (00:06:50):
So very good. Safer to be wearing black then, really.
Fergus (00:06:55):
Yes, exactly.
Ben (00:06:56):
And so did your time in Liverpool confirm your faith or dent it in any way? Or did it swing in roundabouts? I have my impression from reading your work that faith is something that compounded and crept up on you over time. Crept is probably not the right word, but compounded over time as opposed to-- And I guess most people don't have a kind of damaging moment where they convert except for these occasional saints and perhaps like that. But I think for most ordinary people at it is, there's a kind of quiet growing, or not even quiet or maybe in steps and things. I get my impression that actually perhaps your faith was confirmed, at least in the everyday ministry. Was my impression correct or was it dented at all, or what happened?
Fergus (00:07:44):
It certainly changed and adapted. I think it was confirmed. I think your point is absolutely spot on. I think there is a myth that people have; maybe people outside Christianity, and I think some people in Christianity have this idea that there is a kind of burning bush moment. There is a road to Damascus. There is a radical showy thunder and lightning, jazz hands, assorted choirs moment where you say, "I now believe I'm a Christian." There are certain churches and certain people within the Church of England who I don't think help that. In that there's this idea that people say sort of, "Well, that was the day I knew I gave my life to Jesus. That's the day. I can pinpoint the day I became a Christian."
I could tell you when I was christened, when I was baptized as a baby. But I think part of the historic prevalence of infant baptism, of baptizing children in the Church of England which has always been its tradition, means that actually people then have faith on a back burner almost. If you're cooking a large meal and you've got something-- Let's say you are cooking a roast and you've got your gravy on the back burner, the gravy is a thing that will make the meal. But you're not paying attention to it for most of that meal until it becomes critical, until it bubbles over or until you realize the gas wasn't on at all and you haven't cooked it full stop. So I think for most people it is this sort of this slow burn, but as you say, compacted and confirmed by certain experiences undoubtedly.
But those often aren't one moment, they are whole periods of our lives. The period of my life that I spent in Liverpool absolutely did that. It showed me multiple things. It showed me the good the church can do. It was a very positive experience of what the church is doing, both in practical terms as we talked about. There is poverty. Enormous practical help is being given by the church in terms of food banks, in terms of legal advice, in terms of giving people kind of a sense of purpose, a place to go, a roof over their heads, et cetera. But it also showed me that the church can have a kind of sparkling intellectual life. My colleagues were fantastic there. It showed me that it can really give meaning, not just practical help, but actually something much deeper than that.
So I was hugely confirmed. It was a hugely positive experience for me and sort of selfishly. It showed me what the church can do, the capital C Church, it showed me what that small C, that individual church was doing. But it also confirmed in me, I suppose, a sense that this is what I should be doing as well. And I think inevitably talking about that thing about faith, I think there is a sense of imposter syndrome with clergy because you go up there and it's your job to do something that is in itself impossible, make it impossible to know God known as an unworthy servant of the most worthy God as certain theologians put in. But also you are aware that your faith does change. There are days when you don't feel like you're doing the right thing. And there are days where you don't feel you're in the right job. And there are days where sometimes you go downstairs and you're not even sure you believe in God.
But the whole point is you're held within an institution and you're held within a sort of cradle of worship, a rhythm of things that can keep you going. That's why that regularity and that rhythm is so important in the church. But for me, it sort of confirmed me against having had that before, there was sort of this, "Oh, should I be doing this?" I had raucous teenage years, I didn't behave well, not the kind of people who knew me when I was at school or university. When they hear that I've become ordained their kind of jaws hit the floor. There's a sort of, "Really him?"
So there is a sense of that kind of imposter syndrome. And I think that happens to people from all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of traditions in the church. I suppose what Liverpool taught me is, of course, it's not actually about me. It doesn't matter if I have imposter syndrome. Every priest necessarily has that. It's about being held in the kind of cradle of the whole, held within that tradition, held within that rhythm of doing things and actually knowing that it could operate, it will operate, it does operate without you. And then knowing that you are sort of useless, so to speak, being liberated to then do what you need to do and becoming a kind of agent of that which is good and right and speaks to glory, I suppose.
Ben (00:12:31):
And have you ever lost your faith or come to a very low ebb that it might be? I recall a story. So we are recording near Ladbroke Grove which is in West London, and there is actually a set of karma like nuns around the corner. These particular nuns, a bunch of them have a vow of silence as well as prayer and live what most people would say such an austere life that it seems incredible that they are around. But there was a documentary that someone managed to fathom after writing to them continuously for quite a number of years. And the head nun, I get the terminology wrong-- But one of the most important nuns there described her time when she first joined the monastery. And she'd graduated from Cambridge from I think a reasonably well-to-do family who didn't understand her choice. And so she said, "No, I've done like a university thing and now, this is what I want to do."
But she also described for what seemed to be a number of years where she really questioned whether she was doing the right thing; these enormous vows of poverty, austerity, and continuous prayer for others. And I was listening to her and she wasn't sure for years that it was the right thing. Then she came closer to her faith and now very important. And that really struck me as someone who's living such an incredible life coming so close to losing faith or essentially I think had lost a sort of faith and then come back to it. I wonder if that was something you've come across or you come across in clergy who you meet?
Fergus (00:14:22):
Absolutely. And I very much find that faith that has gone through serious encounters with doubt. I mean serious encounters, not just, as I said, those moments where you think, "Oh, I can't be bothered today” because everybody has those. People have that with whatever job they do. But I think faith that has gone through serious encounter with doubt is always stronger at the tail end than faith that hasn't. And I do encounter people who haven't really experienced doubt. And actually I, for a long time didn't really experience it. I suppose I experienced, as I say, this kind of sense that, "Oh, should I be doing this?" But I don't know whether I'd undergone some of the real kind of horrors that some people undergo.
Now, I did go through a period of that, of feeling really very-- I took a job in London that was misery inducing. I hated it. I hated where I worked. I hated who I worked with. Hate is a very toxic emotion and it is cancerous in the sense that it spreads. If it isn't sort of treated, it will cause lasting damage essentially, and it will kill other parts of your life other than where it started. And I was beginning to find that to be the case. So when you are treating something cancerous, one of the ways of treatment is of course you blast where this has come from, that you try and kill with radiation. So part of me thought, "Well, maybe I should cut faith out of my life completely. Maybe I need to kind of chemo on that. I need to just irradiate that so that the other parts of my life cannot be poisoned by the real nastiness and poison that I'm experiencing in the world of faith in where I was working.
So I did come close to making that decision, but slowly but surely I realized that actually the analogy with it being sort of cancerous is wrong because actually the way faith works is sort of like anything. It has the potential for enormous good and it has the potential for enormous wickedness and evil and enormous bad. My job I felt as a person of faith was to, as I think anything, is it speaks more perhaps to the human spirit than to the specifics of faith. That when something that was good and enriching becomes bad and poisonous, it's about going back to basics and working out, "Well, what got me here in the first place and why do I feel this cool?" Everything has a potentiality of good, everything has a potentiality of bad. How do I go back to the beginning and turn back along the path of the good? That's what I sort of had to do, which meant actually quite the opposite of cutting it out completely. I had to go back to the very root basics of it. It's more pruning than irradiating. It's a kind of horticultural synonym is perhaps more helpful.
Ben (00:17:39):
I definitely got that sense for your time at Liverpool. And I got a real great sense of the rhythm of ministry; births, weddings, and particularly deaths and funerals. And I also got this sense that you wrote that a your kind of feeling fulfilled by this-- I would call it everyday ministry although every day sort of seems to not do it justice. And actually through that you were also conscious that you are holding something larger than yourself, which I thought was very telling. But I'd be interested in that theme of death which goes through the book. So my fun question would be, what reading or music would you have at your own funeral or what have you found most touching in funerals that you've been to? I asked this partly because I've had a show for the last couple of years, a performance lecture show where you get to help me create my own funeral. So I've had many different pieces of music chosen by my audience, but I'm always interested in what people would choose themselves.
Fergus (00:18:49):
Yeah. I have been to obviously lots of funerals and each funeral is different; that is important to know, even if the words you are using are ostensibly the same. I have a long running joke with my mother about this. My mother wants a kind of everybody coming in bright colors, celebration of life sort of thing. She wants happy music, cheerful music. That to me sounds appalling. I can't think of anything worse. So I keep on threatening that I would predecease her just to avoid having to go to her funeral, because what I would like is-- And this is partly because I think-- It's not that I-- Again, there are some clergy who can be very sort of judgmental. I have been to funerals like that, that work; that sort of make you feel happy to be alive. But the more funerals I go to, the more I realize I think we have a kind of myth. We like to think the funeral is about the dead person, but it's not. The funeral is about the living and how they can cope and carry on.
Now, for some people that might be a kind of celebration of life thing. But I think actually a really important moment with funerals is it's one of the only times we do acknowledge death, where we actually say death is real and people do die and we will die. And so for me, there's something I think enormously salutary about basically telling people that, "Yeah, okay, this has happened." Yes, life carries on, but death is a thing that we pass through. Now again, as a Christian, I don't believe death to be the absolute end. I don't. So for me, this idea that in a funeral you don't acknowledge death and you simply focus on that life that has just been lived and the wonders of it is sort of slightly counterintuitive because to me, there is much, much better to come.
Firstly, because I believe in the concept of eternal life. I believe in heaven. And two, death then becomes the elephant in the room. I think it's much better to look at it head on and be honest about it. So for me, what would I have? I've sort of said I want everybody dressed in black. I want it pouring with rain. Only the priest is allowed an umbrella outside. I want my will read out by a kind of crusty lawyer and there to be a kind of-- I want an absolute textbook kind of church; historic Church of England funeral. Partly because as I say, I think there needs to be an acknowledgement of death and an acknowledgement of eternal life. Those are the things I'm interested in. And again, what I've said explicitly is there will be a reading from the Bible and there will be a sermon, and the sermon cannot mention me.
I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about the thing that I hold to be true and the thing that I've cultivated my life around, namely the idea that Jesus Christ, by His death and resurrection has defeated death. Preach on that, not on me. I'm thinking of employing a bouncer to remove anybody who uses the phrase celebration of life including if need be my mother from whatever church it's held in. I'm being slightly facetious, but I am-- Ironically, of course, as someone who is quite kind of cynical, that funeral would probably reflect me more than a kind of all singing, all dancing. I've been to all of them and as I say, I do think the ones that work best are the ones that say, "Yeah, this person has died. Death is not the end, but death is real." Whereas some of them I think are attempts to pretend it's not.
Ben (00:22:28):
If I recall correctly, I think you wrote in your book that people were the church's greatest treasure. Do you still believe that to be true?
Fergus (00:22:40):
Yeah. Well, so that goes back to the story of St. Lawrence. So St. Lawrence is the patriot saint of all kinds of things; comedians, barbecues which relates to his manner of his death. He was roasted alive. And midway through being roasted, St. Lawrence sort of summoned over the Roman guards. He went, "Come over here, come here." What could you possibly want? You're being burnt alive. He said, "I think you need to turn me over. I'm done on this side.” So he got them to flip him around. But the prank that he got into trouble with was when the Emperor of Rome asked him to bring him the great treasures of the church. “I need money. He could bring me the church greatest treasures,” meaning silver and gold.
And St. Lawrence bought him a group of people. He bought him specifically the lame, the old, the children, the mute, the deaf, et cetera, the blind. So yes, I state that the church's greatest treasure is people. However, I would preface that with the fact that some of the church's greatest problems are rooted in people as well. And the thing with the church is it is a human institution. If the church shouldn't have humans in it, it could be perfect, but it isn't. And the reason why it's not perfect is because it's got humans in it. Yet its whole existence is predicated on the fact that there are humans in it. So that sounds very roundabout, but what I'm essentially trying to say is that I am not some great candle carrier for human nature.
I actually have a very low view of human nature. I do think we are inclined to do bad things. I think we regularly do bad things. I can only speak for myself in that regard. But yeah, I have a kind of swiftian view of human nature, which is not positive. That said, it is the job of the church to see in the human the possibility of the divine, the possibility of the good and the perfect and the beautiful and the truth. And again, it goes back to what I was saying about funerals. The best way you can do that is not by pretending that the bad stuff isn't there, but by acknowledging the bad stuff, saying, actually, "Yes, we are bad and wicked and do things wrong," full stop. That then enables us to live in a way that is so liberated by acknowledging that, that we can work towards the good and the beautiful and the true. Does that make sense?
Ben (00:25:09):
It does. It also explains how you want your funeral constructed. So if you were to ask that same question, "What is the greatest treasure of the church" to the synod or to the manager class of the Church of England, do you think they would respond in the same way? And I guess my question is getting at, I think a lot of people on the outside of the church don't really understand the church's institution or the church's bureaucracy. And actually there's been quite a lot of mumblings from frontline vicars and priests about the problems of the institution of the church, which is, as you say, rooted in its people, perhaps rooted also in its economics, in its governance, in its long checkered history. So I'd be interested in your reflections on the institution of the church and whether they value the same things in the same ways, or how it has come about.
Fergus (00:26:05):
Yeah. I think we are in the midst of a serious problem at the moment of disconnect between the ordinary people of God, the ordinary people of the church and its managerial class. Were you to ask them, “What are the greatest treasure of the church?” You would get a consultative process, you'd get a 600 word policy document, you wouldn't get an answer. You would get a claim that they'd followed due process, that they'd done this, that and the other. You would get a working group formed. You wouldn't get anything that speaks to anything that is beautiful and true. That is my big issue. We've reached a point yes, where the structures are hugely complicated. But the way I describe it to people-- And again, people who don't understand it, is that there are two churches of England.
There is the Church of England that is your local vicar who often has many, many churches that he or she has to look after. It's all the people who help them. It's the people who try and live according to the principles of Jesus Christ on a day-to-day basis, who volunteer their time and their money and their effort, who say their prayers, who struggle along. These are the Church of England. They are the Church of England and they are the people if you go into your local Church of England church nine times out of 10, they are who you will encounter. Particularly if you're in a place where it isn't kind of lots of gathered churches, you get a problem in London where you have people traveling all over to these sort of big, showy churches who then don't really have much connection with the specifics of where they are of the parish. But nine times out of 10, that's what you'll get.
You then have Church of England PLC. You have a kind of managerial class. And again, they are increasingly monochrome; not in there necessarily in the externals of diversity, but in the way they think. So absolutely fascinatingly. I'm not a huge fan of the Myers-Briggs test. I think it's mostly voodoo. But I think it was very telling that whilst the external diversity of the bishops has changed in terms of their class background, their gender, their race, their educational background, their areas of interest ostensibly, that has become considerably more diverse. What's become much, much, much more mono is the way they think. And tellingly, I think it was said that there was only one or two bishops on the bench who didn't have the same Myers-Brigg profile as the rest.
So that is why we have institutional inertia, I would suggest is that people who think in the same way, namely that, what should triumph is the procedural over the human. What should triumph is the sort of technical over the mystical. Now, these are people who to my mind be fantastic as your bank manager. I'm not sure they'd be very good. Well, they haven't proved to be very good as bishops. They haven't proved to be very good running the church because yes, the church needs procedures. Yes, it needs management. Yes, it needs the technical. But what you cannot do is try and make the people whose job it is to set hearts on fire, to make people go and do great sacrificial things, namely the bishops, the leaders, the shepherds of the flock, the people who are the successor to the apostles.
Remember who Jesus choose as disciples are not managers. He chooses very unlikely people, dangerous people, difficult people, people who make mistakes, grumpy people, unrealistic people. That's who He chooses as His disciples, not the safe managerial class. And the problem is that now we have a church that is run by a safe managerial class in the interests of that safe managerial class. And that will then mean that that first Church of England we talked about, the kind of the good or ordinary people of God will always play second field to procedure. And that actually you have sucked out the human as well as the divine. And you were left merely with a kind of husk of policy, paper that doesn't mean anything.
Ben (00:30:11):
And does that explain why the church has run into such troubles over safeguarding and its response, or at least a bureaucratic response. And there has also been, at least in Britain at the moment, a dispute on pay and on economics as well. I have one reflection hearing that. This is from Corporate World. We often joke that you cannot change or influence corporate culture by policy. And in fact, putting a policy on it is usually your death now. That's because there's people very well meaning going, "Ahhh." The only thing we can do is create a policy because actually culture is arranged by leadership and behaviors. Actually, even in corporate world is defined by corporate purpose. What you want to achieve in the organization or company that you work for?
And I found it's an interesting paradox because you would've thought that with the church-- And in fact you do meet people like you who are full of faith and purpose so that you would've made it easier. Yet it seems to be not so. Is that your major through theme for why it has run into these troubles with safeguarding and economics and things like that? Or is there something more going on?
Fergus (00:31:37):
I think there are multiple layers there. I think every institution has people who will enter it to do bad things. There are bad faith actors. And the problem with the church is much with education or the health service. Is that as an ostensibly caring profession, ironically it will attract a higher number of sociopaths, basically, because there is a curtain behind which one can hide. So, yes.
Ben (00:32:06):
Interesting. And do you think they always give people because of its nature as well, the benefit of the doubt first time round?
Fergus (00:32:12):
Absolutely. And there's a whole-- We're told to forgive people. So there is an inbuilt problem there for Christianity. But that's not an impossible problem, that's not a circle that should be square, because Jesus is also very clear. Anybody who harms those-- He specifically says this about children, about vulnerable children. He says, "Anybody who harms these, it's better for him that he would have a stone thrown around his neck and he'd be thrown in the sea." So there is clear structure there. I think what you have is-- and it's absolutely fascinating to hear what you say about the corporate world, because I get the impression that the corporate world is, as you say, moving away from this idea that you can manage your way out of problems, that you can simply slap a policy on it, that you can simply follow due process and things will fundamentally then work.
Former bishop of the Church of England famously said, "You can rely on the Church of England to enter a room just as everybody else is leaving it." And it strikes me that the Church of England is still in the room of managerialism, of policy, of paper. I have friends who work in the corporate world. They are being sent on meditation retreats, their leadership; people in their leadership roles. They're being sent to rediscover the ideas of Ignatian spirituality, to connect themselves, to create healthy rhythms within which they can operate. My leaders, someone whose job it is to speak spiritually, we are being sent on kind of hackneyed MBAs out in conference centers in the home counties. And I hope this will somehow help us manage our way out of decline. It's deranged.
And it is essentially doing exactly what it's doing; trying something that the rest of the world has found wanting and we are thinking, “Hang on.” And it means, again, that bad faith actors can work very well. So there's this recent absolute scandal in the Diocese of London where this guy, Martin Sargent, who's now gone to prison for defrauding the diocese of millions of pounds, essentially could walk in saying, "I know all this business voodoo. Let me run things." And rather than saying, "Hang on, actually that's not how we run this institution. This is a different institution that works essentially on a completely different hierarchy to that,” the leaders of the church turned around and said, "Three bags full. Yes. How can we give you everything you need?"
So there's a kind of this sense that because we need to-- Because yes, the underlying issue in all of this, of course, is that fewer people are going to church. The church's assets are increasingly spread too thinly. The economic problem goes back to at least the 1950s, the 1960s, when essentially every vicar was paid a different amount; different parishes were worth more because the way that it was funded were based on the historic assets of that parish. Now in the 1970s, the church says, "Well, let's centralize that. Let's bring it all into the center and we'll spread it out evenly." The problem is that what the center did inevitably was spend more money on the center and less money on the peripheries. And so now you have a system where the center is-- the managerial class has grown enormously.
It used to be that the bishop had one, two secretaries and that was it. And now you have 70, 80, 90, a hundred, 200 people in some diocese and offices, vast corporate buildings. That money has to come from somewhere. And where it has come from is from the parishes. Now, it's almost impossible to give that back because of the way the centralizing of that funding has worked. But you do have an economic problem because fewer people are going to church. And again, that perhaps is a problem of leadership because we can't convince people. When we are totally caught up in this argument over, “How do we pay people and how do we keep the show on the road?” We are not focusing on how we actually encounter people. But again, how can you encourage people with the skills you need to come and join that institution, to come and give up opportunities to earn elsewhere, opportunities to have more comfortable lives elsewhere. To say, "Yes, take up your cross. Follow me," when you can't even pay them. You can't even give them a house in some cases. You can't even offer them anything. You have to say, "Well, not our problem."
Ben (00:36:27):
Interesting. It strikes me that that reading of the church shows me that the churches reflects all of the problems that we see in society. But maybe a step, half a step to three steps behind. It also strikes me that actually that manager class is performing like a very poor corporate. And this is probably maybe imitating something that's not. Whereas if you had-- I'm just going to throw it out because people would know; Patagonia, which is a very purposeful clothing company. Purposeful companies tend to have a mantra of three P's, which is people, planet, profit. But they put the P’s in because without profit, you can't support the people and the planet. So this is why it comes within a corporate form, not obviously for church. But it strikes me that churches actually haven't had very good CEOs or managers, but actually they wouldn't necessarily.
So if you had a magic wand or God's powers for this, is there one thing or a couple of things that you would wave and change around the Church of England or organized religion? Because increasingly I hear-- I guess it's with the stats on the organized religion bit across all of them are pretty much going down. But if you ask the question slightly differently; something around spirituality or something around community and faith, particularly in this country, although I see it echoed in surveys around, it's still roughly where you would've thought it might be because at the margin, human beings do seem to believe in one another. Yes, you have bad faith, you have bad apples everywhere. But actually, there is a stronger sense of community around that which I find quite striking. So magic wand, what would you do?
Fergus (00:38:16):
Yeah. How one does that? How one is able to take that goodwill, that real desire. And I do think there is such a strong desire for what the church can offer and the church is failing to get there. So what I’d do with the magic wand, I would distribute the money more effectively. The way the Church of England has billions of pounds of assets, the way that is distributed is completely shockingly bad. Talking about what we went to earlier, if it means actually saying, "Okay, we're going back to position one," where we are unraveling all of the bad change that has happened in the last 40, 50 years, and then let's work out how we can do it more fairly from there. That's what I would do.
I would say actually we will completely repeal the concepts of common tenure, which is how barista employed. We will completely repeal all of the centralization of funds. And then let's see where we are. Distribute that out. I would sack almost the entire current pension bishops frankly. One of the reasons why I will never get really prolonged in the Church of England, but I would, because I don't think they're up to scratch. I think they are theologically uninspiring. I think they're managerially incompetent. And I think they are stuck within a cycle of dehumanizing technocracy, which means they cannot see the wood from the trees and they can no longer see the humanity of the people of God. And I have replaced them with people who can. Those people may be too old, they may be too young. They may be not skilled enough in the technical ways of the world; technical managerialism. None of that matters.
I would make sure that every diocese has a bishop who can speak comprehensively and coherently of the beauty of following Jesus Christ because that's what it's all about. I don't think you have that in the current crop, frankly. And so I would make sure that-- Again, I would change the way we appoint it. I would return some of that power back to people who are independent of the church because this is part of the problem that we have become much more introspective in how we appoint people in the Church of England. And much more power is held within a very small, very churchy, clique essentially. It used to be that you had input from the state, you had input from external people.
It was much more you say, "Hang on, what are the skills?" A bit like, if in a company you don't always want that to be a totally internal appointment. If you're appointing a CEO in a company you don't want, “Well, what we're going to do is simply have the board. The four people who sit on the board are going to choose one of themselves and they'll hold it in rotation.” That is not a recipe any for kind of construct engagement. You get people from the outside and say, "What do you think we need? What do we think we need? What are our values?" That doesn't happen. So I'd have a return to that. And then having said all what's wrong, I would have a big campaign both in terms of reminding people in the parishes, going round and telling them this. But also telling people outside the church of all the good that is done and all the good that can be done, and the enormous fulfillment that it can bring.
Being engaged in the Church of England, being employed by the Church of England, being a minister in the Church of England, finding my calling and my identity in the Church of England is by far and away the most rewarding thing I have ever done. That I include all the world travel, degrees, books, relationships, et cetera. My engagement with the Church of England is the thing that has rewarded me more than anything else. We need to get out and tell people that that's possible. And I fear we're not doing that. So yeah, I would have a blitz on how we communicate. I'd have a blitz on how we encourage. I think that's the huge thing that's lacking. I cannot emphasize how low morale is, and it shouldn't be, because morale is low in the rest of the country. The frontiers of the state are kind of constantly shaking. The political parties are hugely demoralized. The city is not hugely buoyant with confidence. There's stagflation, there's nothing works. The church should be a beacon of hope, not simply a circus mirror in funny outfits to the misery that permeates the rest of society. That's what we need to recapture. That's what we need to get.
Ben (00:42:44):
Sure.
Fergus (00:42:45):
It is magic wand stuff.
Ben (00:42:46):
Yeah. That sounds amazing. Actually, the cities, although there are stagflation things, is currently reasonably thriving, actually. But that's an aside. I summarized that as really interesting. That has given me more insight than I was expecting. So decentralization, I'm not sure about how the economics of its work. But that's really interesting, the decentralization and a call to an earlier time. I could see that you might not be very popular with bishops or the manager class, but I think there's an element of truth to that.
Fergus (00:43:22):
I would say there are some incredible people. I can pinpoint two or three bishops who I think are hugely impressive. And I can pinpoint people who are in that managerial class, particularly some of the people who are fighting around the safeguarding staff who are trying to do things who are fantastic. So I would say it is not all of them, but as you know through the kind of corporate world, there is a kind of management brain that has affected the vast majority.
Ben (00:43:48):
Sure it's not one way. But it actually strikes me that the church has a governance problem. And like you say, there's good people, but the system has come across which is causing people in the middle-- And yes, maybe there is a lack of diversity of thinking as well, but the weight has compounded the wrong way and they cannot escape from that. Because, for instance, just your comments around how elections happen. So in a corporate world your board is meant to be very independent. And in fact, you have shareholders who will sack the board if they get very grumpy about it. So there are the other mechanisms. But you are right, this idea is that you are choosing the best that you can for your long-term purpose. And there was lots of things around that.
But it strikes me that the church, if it's just choosing within its own way and if the same people are going to choose people who are like them, which you would generally gravitate towards because it takes a certain kind of person to choose people not like you. And actually, that strikes me as a governance problem because you can actually change those decision making things by policy or by different mechanisms. But if the people in charge know about that and that, and you have your synod and all of that time, it strikes me as that. But maybe harking back to the earlier time, you've written a great book on clergy over the last, I guess few hundred years and they come in different flavors. And so listening to this also that the church has lost some of these flavors of eccentrics, I guess intellectuals, people who are kind of borderline heretics, I would guess as well.
You've also written a great book on how they stood up to fascism and the like. So my thought on that is, if you were going to be one of these types of reverends or priests, who would you have chosen to be? Or maybe you can channel them as they were back in their time, but they're now transported to here and you are going to be one of these reverends. Would you prefer to be an eccentric or a prodigal son? A bon viver would be more spun. I don't know whether they have the most change. Which class would you do?
Fergus (00:46:04):
Margaret Thatcher had a line about being lady-like; being a sort of classy lady and she said, "There is one cast iron rule telling people about being a lady if you tell people you aren't." And I sort of think there's something about that, about eccentricity. I think if you go around telling people you're eccentric, then you are not a true eccentric because it can't be studied. The whole point of eccentricity has to be a complete detachment from other people's opinion of you. Now, as my previous comments probably suggest, I generally do have a pretty low interest in what other people think or say about me particularly people with senior roles.
I think each of these operate in their own time. If I could have the capacity and the free time and the bank account to be a true bon viver, that'd be fantastic. I would like nothing more. Seriously, I think God calls us in Christ to say that all things are blessed and you shall not call these things unclean and you must enjoy the great gifts God has given us. I think there is a reason why the central right of Christianity is a meal with food and wine and shared with friends. And I think that is sacramental. That is where we can encounter God. God institutes the sacrament in and of himself. He says, "This is my body." So, I think, yes. I suppose someone who enjoys living.
Ben (00:47:57):
Who was the most underrated bon viver then that you wrote about, do you think?
Fergus (00:48:01):
Well, one of the most famous ones was the former Dean of Westminster, Buckland. Dean Buckland was dean of Westminster, which is a very high profile job in the Church of England. And he made it his mission to try and eat everything that had ever existed. So he ate mice, he ate tadpoles.
Ben (00:48:26):
This is Dean of Westminster Abbey.
Fergus (00:48:27):
Dean of Westminster Abbey, yeah.
Ben (00:48:29):
When was this?
Fergus (00:48:29):
This was in the Victorian era. So again, this is sort of the height of the church's bar. And they put as Dean of Westminster, this man who's obsessed with dinosaur faeces. So he excavates dinosaurs. And again, that was considered a threat to the churches. This shows you just the catastrophic declining in confidence and culture that we have that at the height of the Victorian era, the height of the problems around Darwin and questions around the origins of the universe, they're pointing to Westminster Abbey a man who believes his main role in life is not to sort of minister at the great moments of church and state, but to eat everything that he possibly can, including every kind of type of animal. He even eats the mummified heart of Louis XIV.
He goes to a museum, his private museum, they only let 10 people in-- Looks around this big. And he gets a ticket because he's the Dean of Westminster. So they think, "Oh, he'd be a very good person to have on our private tour." And they go and say, "Oh, now we reach the most impressive thing that we have." And they're very carefully taking it out this casket. And they said, "Because you're such a privileged group of people, we're going to hand it around to all of you. And this is the mummified heart of King Louis XIV smuggled out of France at the revolution and now kept here in our private museum." And it goes around all the people. They look at it and think, "Oh, this is amazing. This is wonderful." It gets to Dean Buckland, he looks at it and he says, "I've never eaten King before." And he pops it in his mouth. Of course these people are completely horrified. And his only comment was, "It was very dusty." This is the kind of person they're appointing.
But he's an incredible figure and an incredible sort of gourmand and incredible thinker. I mean, his lectures on geology are still studied at Oxford today. So he was a great liver and eater and drinker. The more recent underrated bombardier is a man called Brian Brindley, who was a great manager on this civil action. He very recent only died in the last 25 years or so. I think it was the year 2001 he died. He was a great lover of food and drink. He used to go shopping in red high heels to his local Tesco and he would fill his trolley with double cream because he ate double cream with everything because he said it made it less rich. Famously, he put on this party for his 70th birthday; party where he decided to have seven courses.
And unsurprisingly given his mode of living, midway through the-- I think it was the dressed crab and the birthing Crut in between the two, he killed everyone dropped dead. And the people said the only person who would've considered carrying on eating in such a circumstance was of course him. But it was a great way to go in his grand 70th birthday at the Athenaeum Club. So I think he's a lesser well- known one. Although, interestingly, when people talk to me about that book, he is the one most of them have met because he was…
Ben (00:51:28):
His funeral had to have been a great feast. That would've epitomized his life. I spent about five years of my life going to Westminster Abbey three times a week and listening to stuff. And I had never had anyone like Dean Buckland. But that would've been really inspiring. Underrated saint, do you have an underrated saint? What does Church of England think about saints nowadays?
Fergus (00:51:53):
We have saints.
Ben (00:51:53):
You do have saints, but kind of more famously in the Catholic traditions. But you have your own. I feel they're all underrated then, aren't they?
Fergus (00:52:00):
Well, the Church of England has a funny deal whereby it's sort of about the reformation. It said, "Well, we're not going to get rid of saints. We still believe in the community of saints, but we're not going to make any new ones.” They did actually make an exception there with King Charles the first when the restoration happened. Charles was declared St. Charles King and martyr and put in the calendar. Now since then, in the 20th century actually, the Church of England has put together a calendar whereby it includes holy people; often unlikely holy people from recent years, martyrs of the 20th century. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer is in there. People like some of those sort of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa are in there. Teachers and preachers from the 19th and 20th century; bishops, Charles Gore, who founded a lot of monks and nuns back in the Church of England. He helped bring them back. He's in there.
So there's a real mix of people, but they tend not to call them Saint X. I mean, in terms of most underrated saint, there are so many glorious ones. There is a saint, my absolute favorite saint whose name is Joseph something. He is a saint not in the Church of England; he is in the Catholic tradition. But he's a patron saint of loud noises. He was a junior brother in a monastery in Peru, I think it was. They needed money to rebuild the church. It had been destroyed in an earthquake. He said, "We don't know what to do, we can't farm, we can't do anything." So this chap said, "Okay, I've got you." So he found the noisiest donkey he could, went around and he listened to the constant bray, “hee-haw, hee-haw,” went to the owner and said, "Can I buy your noisy donkey?" He said, "You'd be doing me a favor to take it off my hands."
And essentially he went around every house in the town and he parked the donkey outside the house and said, "I'm going to leave this donkey here until you give some money to the donation of the church." And eventually people got so fed up with the donkey making this loud noise and they gave him money. So this chap became a saint because he rebuilt the church, but entirely through making loud noises and annoying people. And I think he's such a good reminder that the saints-- We think of the saints as kind of doe-eyed, very pious, constantly in prayer, but often annoying and loud people can be saint as well. And that's quite a good corrective. When someone annoys you, you think, "Hang on, they could be a saint."
Ben (00:54:34):
Yeah. That's a theme I get through all of your books and writing. And actually we've had it in this conversation that the church even today, but in its huge history, has a lot of diverse thinkers. People who you wouldn't necessarily associate with the myth of a do gooder church goer now, much more wide-ranging in their thinking, in their interests, in their passions. Much more human in a concentrated humanity, which I found really fascinating. You bring that to life very well and with a lot of humor. I think my favorite saint, although I think this might be apocryphal, I think it's Saint Drogo who's meant to be a saint of coffee, but I think it's a late one or something on trading.
Fergus (00:55:19):
I'll have to look it up.
Ben (00:55:21):
So I have an esoteric question for you because it has only recently come to my mind. And that's around transubstantiation. So this is the idea of becoming something. I have this in my theater work and practice, and I was thinking about this and speaking with other theater practitioners. In theater, we say an actor-- There’s as an actor that comes to mind. Maxine Peak, she's a great actor. She becomes Hamlet. In that moment, she is Hamlet. And you don't say, "Well, she's obviously not a Prince of Denmark. She's obviously on the one hand, not Hamlet.” But actually in that moment she is obviously Hamlet. And we're not saying there's any process change. We are simply calling her Hamlet. And it occurred to me that that is actually a form of transubstantiation. So if other people are really saying, "This is the blood of Christ, this is the whatever," actually in that moment who's to say that's not the same process which is happening when we say, "Maxine Peak, you are Hamlet." And so my question is, has this ever come across in your thinking? And then maybe as my little segue as that's a little bit esoteric, is do you think you become a different person or do clergy kind of become a little bit of a different person, although you are the same person, when you are wearing the collar? Is that in itself a kind of form of transubstantiation?
Fergus (00:56:47):
Absolutely. I think that's a really interesting analogy. And again, there are lots of strands of theology around the Eucharist; of thinking around what the body and blood and what the bread and wine is from memorialism which says you're simply doing something because that's what Jesus did and you're sort of copying Him. Which again, there is a school of thought in acting that says you are simply copying. There's consubstantiation that says, "Okay, well it is more than simply... You have a kind of spirit with you and through you the reception of this, but it isn't necessarily in an essence itself." You have transubstantiation. You then have the kind of the slightly Anglican mess of the idea of the real presence that you affirm the idea that Christ is present, but you don't necessarily want to know how. It comes down to how technical you like your metaphysics and how technical do you like to know, "Well, what is this?" And as you say, would you technically say Maxine Peak is Prince of Denmark now? In that moment, perhaps. But I suppose as a good Anglican, I think the technicalities are less. It's about incidents and accidents. The technicalities of it are perhaps less interesting than the fact of the moment, the living in the moment.
But that leads onto do you become a different person when you're wearing the collar? Yes. Because you become a cipher for everybody and you've become a different person to each individual person you encounter. So you are a different person to the lady who comes to the midweek communion service, to the guy sitting outside Tesco who you give five quid to, to the person who just sees you on the bus. But you are necessarily a cipher then for that person's encounter with the church, that person's encounter with God, that person's encounter with themselves and their own relationships with the world and the divine. So you necessarily become, whilst I should say-- this is why it is a good analog-- whilst also maintaining the kind of bread and wineness of your own, the fact of your own being.
You are still at that point son or daughter or husband or wife. You are a friend, you are a lover, you are an irritant. You are someone who is allergic to milk. You are someone who doesn't eat tuna. You are someone who prefers sparkling. All the things that are bound up in the sense of self are still there. Yet you also then have this fact that you are no longer yourself. You are now a type, a cipher, a kind of placeholder for on one level the church, but on a better level, you are there to represent Jesus Christ. And that's a huge responsibility.
Ben (00:59:42):
That's fascinating. I hadn't heard it explained that way. It makes a lot of sense as to that communal being that you can bear. Okay. So back from the esoteric. Little deviation into hardcore theology there for a moment. We'll go to a few more fun things. Who would you like to write a biography of yourself? Or would it have to be autobiography, which you're doing. But if someone's going to write a biography of you, who would it be?
Fergus (01:00:12):
Can I have a dead person?
Ben (01:00:16):
Yeah, Shakespeare.
Fergus (01:00:18):
No, not Shakespeare. I would like Laurence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy because I think that he is kind of absurdist and he was a clergyman so he'd get it. I think he is one of the funniest writers ever to write in the English language. His kind of almost modernist rush for the absurd that you get interest from Shandy is unparalleled. And I think might be the only way-- Sometimes I find myself in a situation and think, “This is so absurd. There is no way of communicating this with a straight face.”
Ben (01:00:48):
Yeah. So there's a whole branch in creative arts where-- There's an argument that humanities have gone slightly wrong by not following more of the Tristram Shandy line. Because the other line in modern novels, which you'll probably know more than me, I haven't particularly studied literature as a theory, more as a practitioner. Is you have the kind of modern story which needs to be, perceived to be quite close to how we think life is. And if it feels too farfetched, it's we don't believe it. Whereas we have this phrase now is that we see things in real life and we go, "Oh, if that was a story, you wouldn't believe it."
Whereas if you follow the Tristram Shandy line and you have got elements of this magic realism and these other things which are obviously fantastical fantasy and science fiction would be there. But actually that fantasy in science fiction, magic realism and all the like, what we found is that by being so obviously not of the real world, it's actually revealing something deeper. It also shows much more what we call narrative plenitude. And actually, I think about it because it's a little bit of your critique of the institution and the church because it doesn't have that variety anymore because it's adhering itself to something that it thinks it wants to be, which is closer to this modern life concept as opposed to towards that you are eccentrics, you're Buckland's, your Tristram Shandy.
Fergus (01:02:21):
The thing of course which book does that better than almost anything else? The Bible. People say to me, "Do you think it's true that x, y and z happened in the Bible where you have Balaam's ass, where the donkey starts talking?" It's like, "Well..." My other great argument is who is one of the best theologians of the Bible is Pontus Pilot because he asked the question, "What is truth?” And then he answers his own question when he says, "Behold the man." So the truth is necessarily then encapsulated in the lived experience of Christ. That is where truth is from.
Ben (01:02:52):
Deep Bible stuff.
Fergus (01:02:54):
When someone says to me, "What about all the kind of crazy stuff in the Bible? Is that true?" It's like, "Yeah. Crazy stuff happens all the time." And actually, something that is crazy and as you say, magic realism, that can speak more earnestly of the truth than someone describing their, “I went to the shops and I bought some toothpaste and then I went home and I spoke to my friend and then I went to bed.” Something that is ostensibly more anarchic or more absurdist can speak much more deeply of the truth than something that is simply procedural.
Ben (01:03:25):
Yeah. Gets closer to the mind, gets closer to the human. Given that we're nowhere near close in any of that. So your writing day or your week? So you minister, you are going to have hopefully another job soon, but where do you find time for your writing? Are you one of those who writes an hour a day or four hours a day? Or does it come in fits and starts and do you have anything particular to your writing process?
Fergus (01:03:53):
It's quite erratic. I used to always carry notebooks with me. I've now gone into the appalling habit of the notes app on my phone, which I hate. But I do find myself-- I might be on the tube or on the train. I have a really small notebook laptop with me that I try and keep with me at all times. I do try and keep written notebooks on me, but the thing I always have on me is my phone so I can always take notes on that. So I will often write whole paragraphs or whole articles just if they come to me if I'm traveling. I spend a lot of time traveling. So I've now got to a point where I work really well on the train. I'm traveling around the country if I'm doing promotion to the book.
I was in Scarborough the other week, I'm going up to Yorkshire again. I've been in Liverpool. I'm going to the West Country in the autumn for a big tour there. So there's a lot of traveling. I don't drive so I use the time to work and I find that is hugely helpful. But if it comes to actually sitting down and writing a chapter, I do like to have done all that noting and all that. I've got hundreds of-- What I tend to do is I copy it. This is incredibly boring, but it does speak to the slightly chaotic nature of it. What I will do is I will write it in the notes app on my phone. I will then copy it to a Gmail document, a draft Gmail, send that email to myself, this whole random array of notes, and then put that on a Word document. And then from that, extrapolate further word documents that are like, "Okay, well that relates to that article that relates to that chapter." But when it comes to actually sitting down and writing the chapter, I like to write generally in the evenings. Sometimes in the afternoons actually I can work from-- I don't like really working in the mornings. I like to have a bit of a lead in, but I can work from 11. 11 o'clock I can probably start work. I like to sit and get a really solid three or 4,000 words done.
Ben (01:05:40):
That's pretty good in the day. But it strikes me you write a lot from observation. Your writing seems to me very well observed. And I'm guessing that comes from your notebooks and other observation. Then the other thing which is not utterly unique, but it's not perhaps super common, is a very strong thread of humor. And therefore actually both your observations and your commentary is often undercut-- Undercut isn't the right word either, but crosscutting both humor to either emphasize a point or to make some other observation. And the humor is obviously often centered around yourself like good standup comics do or in the footnotes or even in some of your sentence structure. And it strikes me that you've been funny for all of your life starting from young.
I think I heard your one podcast say that you were a little bit of a clown as a boy. But I was just interesting. Is there anything which comes around how you make those observations and the way that your humor comes out? It also strikes me as if we were to call something, because we don't call it much, but there is a ‘Britishness’ to your humor or an English. Actually, you hear it-- I don't know whether this might be a public school thing; Touching Cloth. If you know, you know is all I'm going to say on that. So there is a strand of that which I find also really intriguing. Is it something that you have to work upon or is it partly, I can now hear in this because you've got a slight irreverence for authority or rather you will see something and tell it how you see it, which is actually there's a big strand in a great English tradition of that as well. So I guess the question is humor, observation, how does it all come about in how you think?
Fergus (01:07:37):
I suppose they come about through-- I always think through kind of being sort of anti-systematic, if that makes sense in that I know that I am a paradox and I know that Christianity is paradoxical. I grew up in a kind of very paradoxical context of being. I had a very privileged and very happy childhood in many ways. But equally it was sort of erratic and slightly bonkers and disorganized. So I suppose there are one of two routes you take when that is kind of the way you come into that. Either you then seek systems very strongly, even try and impose order. I talk in the book about my father's whole life has been kind of an attempt to impose order on the order list.
It's why he likes recycling bins. When I go back to my parents' house, the bin is divided into four different things going that you can seek to impose on or you can begin to embrace the idea that order is not in fact the norm. That again, the only thing I think that has any kind of coherent order on itself is the concept of God. And that's too ordered for us to understand. So to us it seems absurd and yet it is in fact your order. So there's this sort of an embrace of paradox, which I suppose is very British, the kind of idea or English perhaps. Again, speaking of someone who is irreverent of authority and yet knows he is part of an authority figure who is part of an establishment, who is a clergyman. And again, we've always been very good at that; I think, of holding that intention.
The finest writers in English, the comic writers in the English Canon are people who are both insiders and outsiders. It's Jonathan Swift who is an Irishman. He seems like an outsider. He fails to get political performance because he's too scatological and controversial and yet he is Dean of Dublin. He is an establishment figure. He's an Oxford graduate. Look at Jane Austen similarly, you look at Sterne. I think if you look at those great English comic writers, all three of whom interestingly have-- Two of them are ordained, one of them is the daughter and sister of cleric. And I think actually the great gift the Church of England has given perhaps to global literature is that ability to hold the paradoxical and say, "Yep, okay, these things are..." And it means you can poke fun of something without necessarily saying, "I want to destroy this thing completely." So I can poke fun at the Church of England and still say, "But I still believe it's better that it's there."
Ben (01:10:07):
I just laugh because you are saying that basically the Church of England is full of clowns.
Fergus (01:10:13):
Yeah.
Ben (01:10:14):
But with love and kisses.
Fergus (01:10:17):
Exactly. Exactly that.
Ben (01:10:18):
I read, I think you did a very good defense of P.G. Wodehouse as well as a comment correcter.
Fergus (01:10:24):
Yeah. Again, Wodehouse is very good at that. That whole concept of Wodehouse living in a sort of dream. I mean, the person who writes the finest defense of Wodehouse is George Orwell, who when Wodehouse is getting a lot of stick because he was living in France and the Nazis and entered and they made him some right things where he sort of says, "Oh, maybe we shouldn't be fighting after all chaps," that sort of thing. But Wodehouse’s genius is kind of living in that fantasy world yet also saying something true through the absurd.
Ben (01:10:54):
Yeah, paradox.
Fergus (01:10:54):
Paradox
Ben (01:10:56):
Great. Okay. We’ll do a fun section now of underrated, overrated, and then finish up. So I'll name something and you can go underrated, overrated, or you can pass or you can make some sort of comment. We've got a few. The theme is kind of Britishness on this. So overrated, underrated James Bond movies? Got to be careful with this one.
Fergus (01:11:21):
Yes, I do. It very much depends. Again, this is very Church of England to both. I think certain James Bond movies are overrated. I actually think the Daniel Craig movies are overrated, I'm afraid. I think some of the Sean Connery films are actually overrated. I think the Roger Moore ones are underrated again because they are preposterous and I enjoy that. I think Timothy Dalton is underrated, George Lazenby is underrated. I think actually Pierce Brosnan is underrated.
Ben (01:11:50):
All of the underdogs underrated. That's interesting. That's very British. Okay. Underrated, overrated, the monarchy? Let's go for the British monarchy.
Fergus (01:11:59):
Again, both. I think what is underrated is a lot of-- I think the crown actually operates in a way that it can create a kind of degree of coherence and a degree of cohesiveness, which again, is ridiculous. But rooting your national myth in something ridiculous is a hell of a rooting than rooting your national myth in something that you can practically oppress people's lives with. I am a monarchist. I am an ardent monarchist. What I think is overrated is, I think the human aspect of it. I actually don't want to know about what their feelings really, I don't really care. The psychodrama of it I think is overrated. But I think the concept of the crown is underrated. I think we don't realize how strong.
Ben (01:12:51):
Very fair. Afternoon tea?
Fergus (01:12:55):
Overpriced. I'm a man who can eat clotted cream until I die, which is exactly what would happen if I only ate it.
Ben (01:13:06):
Good job. You are in the clergy then.
Fergus (01:13:08):
I know, yeah. Underrated. I think it has become too kitch. I think the actual roots of it are very good.
Ben (01:13:15):
Yeah. I think I would agree. The House of Lords?
Fergus (01:13:19):
Underrated. I'm a great advocate for the House of Lords.
Ben (01:13:23):
Should we still have bishops in them?
Fergus (01:13:25):
Yep. I would have only bishops. Just not these ones.
Ben (01:13:26):
Maybe the ones elected by elected bishops. Very good. Double decker buses?
Fergus (01:13:38):
I love the tube. I love trains. I hate traveling by bus because I get this sense that I could be walking quicker certainly, and I hate that idea. And I hate the fact that some bus routes, which I know they have to do, will take me away from my destination in order to get me there quicker. So if I'm on the tube, I can't see that happening. If I'm underground or I'm on the train line, I can't see that happening. So I think buses are overrated.
Ben (01:14:06):
Yeah. So you're using travel to travel as opposed to, I would say, well maybe you just sit on the top of the double decker bus, watch the world, don't worry if it's going to take you 12 minutes or 17 minutes. This is London. It's just going to take you whatever. Whatever route you decide to choose will always be about the same type. Actually, I really do recommend walking, but it will be the same. You have to walk away, around and you get stops.
Fergus (01:14:29):
I like walking and I get this sense that I could be walking.
Ben (01:14:34):
That’s true. Okay. Black taxis?
Fergus (01:14:37):
Underrated. I think with the rise of Uber and Bolt and Free now and all that they sort of say, "Oh, one of the black cabbies." But there are genuinely times where hailing a black cab has felt like saving my life when I've been walking in the pouring rain and I've got to get to a train or stuff. So yeah, there have been black cabbies that have undoubtedly saved my bacon a number of times. So I will say underrated.
Ben (01:15:05):
Pubs.
Fergus (01:15:08):
I love pubs. I don't think it's possible for them to be overrated because I cannot speak too highly enough of them. That said, there are a number of appalling pubs, particularly in Central London. There are bad pubs. So some of them are underrated, some of them are overrated.
Ben (01:15:27):
Yeah. Community pubs which have got more family orientated. I'm assuming-- I haven't been too much around Liverpool, but Liverpool wouldn't be the same without its pubs either, right?
Fergus (01:15:37):
Some of the pubs in Liverpool are just... It would be impossible to overrate them because they're so good.
Ben (01:15:43):
Okay. And then last one, cricket?
Fergus (01:15:45):
I've got a bit of a kind of tan partly because I have spent the last 10 weeks essentially playing cricket. I think cricket is underrated and I don't mean because I think it's some sort of great sporting thing, but I think cricket is long. It can often be boring. It has moments, flashes of inspiration that seem gone too soon. And it is often, as we saw in the ashes yesterday, incredibly unfair. Therefore I think it is a very good metaphor for life more generally. So I will say it is underrated.
Ben (01:16:21):
Yeah. I think I tend to agree on that. So I think the long form test match or things over days-- Well for theater, I think it does tend to reflect a five act play or the acts of life of which in any good five act play now that you have is partly boring, at least for modern life. Even Shakespeare in its long acts we cannot stomach it in the same way. Shakespeare in its time was actually a much more community sport, community practice than we have it today. And naturally I do think it ties together, Britain. But interestingly, if you go to India or Pakistan-- I guess this is mixed colonial legacy, but it really does tie together the country as well. So it's interesting although it's not a huge worldwide sport. I think it does reflect a certain amount of humanity, perhaps a little bit better than it might seem. Great. So what are your current projects or things you're working on or thoughts?
Fergus (01:17:20):
I'm writing on bits. I'm hoping to have a new book out next year that I'm sort of working away on and I'm negotiating the exact format of at the moment. But once that is finalized, which I'm hoping will happen this week or next, it will be a very busy run of the season.
Ben (01:17:37):
Is that a secret theme? Or can you mention?
Fergus (01:17:40):
It'll be something to do with places around the world. It'll be a bit more global than previous ones. We'll feature churches in some way, shape, or form. So it will keep its religious theme, but I hope it will be a bit more global. As you mentioned, I have been appointed to be vicar of Charlbury in Oxfordshire, just north of Oxford starting in January. So I've got a lot of kind of prep for that really. So yeah, it's keeping me busy.
Ben (01:18:08):
Keeping you out of London and the London church politics. Great. And then last question then. Do you have any life advice? So this would be very appropriate for clergy, or I guess you could say -- We've covered a lot. So either life advice about thinking about how to live in the world or maybe also advice for young people or people thinking-- because you don't need to be young-- thinking of a life in the clergy what it might mean to be ordained or not. So you can go either or; so vague life advice or thoughts that you want to end with.
Fergus (01:18:46):
So my vague life advice is this that there are things in life that should be taken seriously and there are things in life that should not be taken seriously. The real thing to realize is that they're the opposite way around to the way you think they are.
Ben (01:19:00):
Interesting. So reverse it.
Fergus (01:19:03):
Yeah. Anything you think should be taken seriously, don't take it seriously. Anything you think should not be taken seriously, take it seriously.
Ben (01:19:10):
Very good. Okay.
Fergus (01:19:11):
That's my advice. In terms of those considering holy orders in terms of ordination, it seems an obvious thing to say, do pray about it. I think prayer is helpful. Prayer works. It is a huge life-changing decision. It is not to be taken lightly. I have a clerical colleague who I love and respect very much. And he says, "I always think when someone comes to me and says, ‘They want to be ordained,’ it's my job to do my very best to put them off. And if they still want to do it, then to encourage them as much as I can.” It has been the most important thing I have ever done. But it isn't for everyone. And you can be a fully authentic and impressive person and a fully authentic and impressive Christian without having a piece of cloth around your neck. So do always bear that in mind.
Ben (01:20:06):
Very good. And I guess that means you're a fan of meditation in general, prayer as a specific form, all of that.
Fergus (01:20:11):
Yeah. And for me it is about rhythm. Keep some form of rhythm. For me it is saying-- One of the things I hate most in churches today is where you go in and you don't know what's going to happen. Where it's just like, "We're going to change it today because it's blah, blah, blah." I use the same words every morning and every evening to pray with because I think-- Again, it goes back to what we said at the very start about faith and doubt. If there is a day where actually I go and I don't feel it, I'm held in the rhythm of that regularity. If you're constantly trying to do something different every day then you're not going to get that rhythm in.
Ben (01:20:48):
It's the same with some Buddhist chanting practices. Actually Catholic chanting practices as well with that would help.
Fergus (01:20:54):
Repeated words. And they enter into your soul then in a way. I've seen people on their deathbeds who have that rhythm. And it will kick in, in the important times of your life when you cannot hold things in yourself, whether that's when you die or when you're going through major things, you'll just find those words.
Ben (01:21:06):
Yes, I've read about it within Mystic Practice as well, though I haven't personally seen it.
Fergus (01:21:10):
Yeah, and I've seen massive. But for me, the Book of Common Prayer, just this rate which has been part of the rhythm of English life and prayer for 500 years nearly now, it works. It's that rhythm. It's just keeping that rhythm of prayer taking over until you need it.
Ben (01:21:27):
Great. Well, on that note, I'll just highlight once again the book, "Touching Cloth." And Fergus, thank you very much.
Fergus (01:21:35):
Thank you.
