Rummaging around the archives

Over recent months I have been making use of the new Lambeth Palace Library archives. I've been looking at material concerned with what was called 'auxiliary ministry' but has had numerous other descriptions over the years: volunteer ministry, supporting ministry, non-stipendairy ministry and currently the drab 'SSM', self-supporting ministry. More spirited terms (to my mind) have included worker-priest, priest-worker and priests in secular emplpyment, though where these have cropped up in the material I have seen the tone has been slightly dismissive. For the uninitiated, these are all terms for unpaid clergy.

I have been able to read internal reports and correspondence involving bishops, archbishops and the officials dealing with ministry matters within the Church of England. It has been fascinating. This is not the moment for a more detailed account of what these adventures have unearthed. But it may be the place for some brief observations....

1. There are references to, and lamentations over, the 'working classes' and the failure of the church to engage with them and draw them in to its life. (Some interesting material from Stepney, the eastern part of the Diocese of London. Trevor Huddleston, when Bishop of Stepney (1968-1978), in active partnership with Bishop John Robinson of Woolwich (Southwark Diocese, across the Thames) supported a programme to train and ordain a few working class men from Bethnal Green).
2. There was worry that to ordain men (it could then only be men), and especially ordinary working men who would continue in their secular work after ordination, ran risks: that of drawing in less able clergy and so weakening the traditional body of professional and educated men who made up the clergy; and also that it would undermine the role of the laity (the non-ordained). The first of these reactions was predictable enough, and has been mirrored in many professions. It's the closed-shop mentality. The second is unconvincing: the church has never taken the laity seriously.
   
3. The exchanges and discussions are all premised on the 'additional' clergy supporting the traditional parish priest in the parish. There is little grasp of such priests exercising their priestly calling in the setting of their secular work. Virtually all organisations end up seeing the world from their narrow perspective. Why would the institution of the church be any different?