2008 Boulton & Watt Commemoration with the Bishop of Birmingham

Below is the text of David Urquhart's talk.

Reflections on 18 months in Birmingham

Rediscovering the Soul of the City

Thank you for inviting me to reflect on my first 18 months in Birmingham especially in the context of the commemoration of Boulton and Watt The talents, ambitions, foibles, and experiments of Matthew Boulton, James Watt and William Murdoch, all commemorated in this parish church of St Mary, Handsworth are a remarkable example of human frailty, fruitfulness and faithfulness combining to make a better world.

Their life stories together with other Lunar Men, ably told by Jenny Uglow, are breathtaking in pioneering confidence, intellectual and practical enquiry, emotional intensity, and the ability to cope with personal and public crisis. Above all is the sense of the willingness to risk everything in the adventure of creative living.

Bishops like Lunar Society members do not come ready made and before giving my reflections on being Bishop of Birmingham for the last 18 months, I should tell you what came before.

I was brought up in the Highlands of Scotland in a medical family. This background gave me a strong sense of service and morality with high standards at home and at work I worked with BP throughout my twenties - it was a wonderful place to be and I could have happily spent my whole life there. Before joining BP I spent my gap year in Uganda where I fell among local Christians. There, I was found by God and became a Christian disciple at the age of 18. So I was trying to make sense of faith at the same time of trying to make sense of the post-second-world-war economy as well as live a life that was adventurous and fun.

Being Bishop is not something you can apply for. On Maundy Thursday 2006 I received a highly confidential letter from letter 10 Downing Street asking me to let my name go forward for the vacant See of Birmingham
The combination of my background in commerce, my experience of inner-city ministry meant I had always wanted city life. And so, when I saw this letter, and I had not been expecting to move, my heart leapt. I wrote back and said yes.

In many senses coming to Birmingham as the Faith Leader of the most comprehensive religious network in the region, has for me more of the excitement of 18th Century Lunar Society exploration than any of the 21st Century so-called certainties and assumptions.

Being a faith leader, as part of the Christian movement has a sense of adventure, excitement and uncertainty.

In schools I am often asked what a bishop does. I start continue and finish with prayer. I am also a 50:50 bishop. Not 50% believing in God and 50% not (you will have gathered I am 100% committed to Christian generous orthodoxy) but 50% in the church and 50% with those outside. (Of course the Church alone wants the bishop 110%!) This basic calling is important to me but it is a battle to make sure the right invitations are accepted to make this happen. But there is something more important. I need more and more time with God in prayer, time with others in prayer and time holding the city and people before God.

Although the Christian movement is changing rapidly, the rumour that the church is in terminal decline is greatly exaggerated - not least by the Times Religious Correspondent who said last week that the Soul of Britain is dying.

Let me gather our thoughts in three intermingling streams:

Fragility

The size and scale of Birmingham and region and the complicated structures that we construct to provide for our needs and wants (employment, health, education, housing, transport, order and law, recreation) remind me of the fragility of the human project. In all our endeavors we find errors and dissatisfaction. After a week in China last month, particularly amongst 16 million Beijing-ers, I shall never complain about the occasional blocking of the Aston expressway ever again.

And being in the east coast cities of China last month re-awoke me to the perilous condition of the whole planet and our urgent need to face the consequences of the current voracious human demand for the basics of water food and fuel. Can we assume in the mid and long term that our Western standard of living will be maintained? Are we equipping our children and grandchildren to be robust and confident with less rather than more?

In my first sermon in Birmingham Cathedral 18 months ago I smashed a clay pot (made in Malawi) to remind us that as St Paul wrote 'we have this treasure in clay jars to show that the transcendent power is not of ourselves, but of God' (The Holy Bible 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 7).

Those who work in for example the Childrens Hospital, or the City Hospital both of which I have visited in the past year, or those in the Selly Oak military unit, know about the extraordinary fragility and yet amazing achievement of both science and the human spirit when faced with illness or injury.

I have noticed that the million and a half population across the Diocese prefer to identify not with the whole but with a distinct local community or area.

This fragmentation is reflected in the city/region-wide organisations and networks whether in business, professions and even our civic and political oversight. It is of crucial importance when talking about what we want to achieve. Early in my time here I invited a friend to speak to a business forum on Birmingham the Brand which faced us with the challenge to commit to one overarching theme, proclaiming our unique identity to the outside world: what might that be? I still haven’t heard an answer.

Our allegiance to our city/region-wide democratic structures is also fragile. The Church is an example of mainly voluntary, humble service in promoting the Common Good. Many organisations are being encouraged to release staff for regular community service. But have we had an honest debate about governance and values: how to achieve well being for all. I believe that leaders in a city should come from all backgrounds and be encouraged to participate at every level in the exercise of power.

Two writers have influenced me:

Prof Rod Rhodes who wrote about the health service in the 80s and 90s and looked at Governance in terms of bureaucracy, markets and networks. This analysis has sparked a debate about which method of organization and transaction we prefer and what values we aspire to.

The second writer is Prof Zygmunt Bauman from Leeds. He considers the way society is working and distinguishes the complicated from the complex. He sees the complex as the natural state of society and the world. We have to handle complexity and do away with too much complication.

Of course the distinctive Christian contribution to all this human fragility is the priority of forgiveness and redemption found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. If you walked past St Phillips yesterday you would have seen thousands of Christians who had come together to pray for the city to be a place that is peaceful, joyful and fun to live in.

Fruitfulness

I have already mentioned the enormous creativity of the Lunar Men. The same movement continues today.

You yourselves will be part of this 21st Century adventure of post-industrial manufacturing and commerce, learning, caring, financial and leisure services.

In rediscovering the soul of the city one of the values that we have wanted to own in the church and community is generosity. This is not just in materials but also in attitude. If we want to be part of a good city, we need the freedom to be ourselves, to reach out and give. Before this audience I am likely to be preaching to the converted, not least in your generosity of time and talents, let alone money to a wide variety of causes for the Common Good.

This extra ingredient, a profligacy of grace, the generosity Christians see in God's sending of his Son amongst us, is experienced in hospitality and welcome. We need to find ways of saying yes rather than a defensive no. This hospitality and welcome is characteristic of Birmingham that we need to build up. It should be the hallmark of our households, streets and institutions.

Visiting the 200 or so Anglican parishes and clergy across the City and Region I have found much encouragement as local Christians worship God the Father, make disciples of Jesus Christ and bear prophetic witness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is enormous diversity from rural Knowle to urban Newtown where I walked with Street Pastors who give their time to make people feel safe to come out from their homes into the streets of that community. There are areas like Longbridge where their revolution is revealed in brick dust, the City Centre with St Philips and St Chad's Cathedrals and, of course, the Bull Ring. There is an infinite variety of expressions of generous hospitality and the love and joy of Jesus Christ, in for example Education, Regeneration, Inter-faith, Health Care, Business and Politics.

In the Church of England in Birmingham we have over 50 church schools with 15000 children. I recently visited a school in Alum Rock which was, I was told, 99.9% Muslim. I was not sure how this was worked out but when I got there I understood there were over 400 children, all of them Muslim except two Christians. Right inside the door was a display about Easter. That school showed confidence and generosity. We have 56 active community regeneration schemes reaching 33,000 people a week. You may have heard of the Faiths for the City seminars run with Birmingham University and tackling the big issues of the environment, business values order and law. We have a Faith Leaders group, chaplains in GP practices and health trusts, and recently I was approached about by the Chamber of Commerce to hold a Chatham House rules breakfast discussion on Values & Diversity.

The Christian movement is changing but I hope I have illustrated that its demise is not yet impending. Let me move now to my third stream:

Faithful

When I was interviewed by the BBC Politics show for a sound bite about how I hoped for the future of Birmingham I made the mistake of offering two:

Taking God seriously and the World in one City.

Which one do you suppose the interviewer deleted?

As a city that takes God seriously Birmingham is way ahead of the rest of Western Europe with our emerging 21st Century philosophy. We are a city of faiths but there are several features of the public and private perception of faith that are very difficult to shift. One is the division between science and faith that is still deep in the psyche. In John Lennox's book God's Undertaker he talks about science as the art of the soluble leaving theologians to wrestle with transcendence and the Big Bang. We are honest enough to say we can’t depend on proof and it is good to leave an opening.

Another perception is revealed in a public and private preference for detachment from authority. This is clearly seen by theologians who face difficulty in the academy where some colleagues from other disciplines are happy to say that theology is an extremely limited subject. Theology offers insights into both authority and accountability. In a society which chooses not to have boundaries or accept authority, theology continually faces this human dilemma by facing the realities of human flourishing. A third links the 'decline of the church' with the decline of interest and practice in faith and religion. There is a tendency to repeat a negative narrative. The evidence I have found is that ordinary people are very welcoming to a faith leader; they want to engage in debate and tackle complex issues like death, relationships and the future of the planet. It is a misreading of the narrative to just absorb and accept superficial statistics.

The church has a big job to do and I have illustrated this with some current activities which put the Word of God and words about God into practice. We are pointing the way for more and more people becoming involved in what God is doing. In the 21st century we have seen a move from public prayer and private faith to public faith and private prayer! In 2008 faith is now in the public square playing an important role politically and in society.

So I am thrilled to be in Birmingham as a citizen and as a Bishop. This is a truly great city but we must remember to whom much is given, much will be required.

Let us adventure together, rediscovering the soul of the City, in our fragility, fruitful generosity and faithfulness.

Bishop David Urquhart 12th May 2008