Spin in the Church

The journey into God demands not spin, not unreality, but honesty, self-knowledge, and an end to illusion.

The recent publication of the “The Blair Years”, the (edited) diaries of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s press-officer, strategist and confidant, have reminded us, if we needed to be reminded, of the role of “spin” and the “spin doctor”.

Although “spin”, the turning of all news to the positive and the suppressing of the negative, is associated with the New Labour project, it is really the case that Campbell and his team simply did it very well and with a certain zest, and that it has actually been around in some form or other for years. The politician who “spins” a by-election defeat into “an encouraging mid-term result” is not limited to any one party.

You find a degree of “spin” in the church as well. The necessity of finding a new Incumbent for Newton, and our own seeking of a Curate for next year in this parish, has reminded me of how Parish Profiles are so often “spun”. A perusal of those in the Church press regularly finds the following phrases (with the hidden and likely truth in brackets): “Exciting Building Project” (Dry rot), Lively Congregation (Open warfare), “Tremendous Potential” (No one actually goes to church at present) or my favourite, “Suiting a priest of resilience and humour” (The last three have had nervous breakdowns)

This is quite understandable, since churches need to attract ministers, if rather dismaying if the spin is so good as to cloak reality. There is a tendency to do the same with our Christian lives and ministries. Deanery Synods and Deanery Chapters, and even local Ecumenical gatherings are rarely the places where Christians, clergy or lay, are honest about the areas where their church falls short, or the fact that their individual prayer-life is passing through a dry and desert patch. Indeed, sometimes we may start believing our own “spin” – as has been said, humankind cannot bear much reality.

And yet, the journey into God demands not spin, not unreality, but honesty, self-knowledge, and an end to illusion. The glory of the Gospel is that in Christ we may stand before God as we are, not as we would like to be or think we should be or ought to be, and that the places where we know our incompleteness, our weakness, even our incapacity are as much the points at which we may know and meet God as the places of strength. Much of St Paul’s Corinthian correspondence, and especially the second letter, is about this very thing. At one point Paul even speaks of boasting of his weakness “so that Christ’s power may rest on me – for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). Growth and wholeness as Christians and as a Church comes from such honesty.

This is why worship usually includes some element of Confession, an acknowledgement of our falling short of what we are made and called to be. This is not some pathological negativity or doing ourselves down, rather something rooted in the awareness that we are loved and accepted by God as we are, and we need not hide or cloak the reality of our as yet incomplete and imperfect lives. The Collect for Purity which Anglican Christians have prayed at the beginning of the Eucharist is in context the most wonderful statement of this: to our God all hearts are open, all desires known, and from him no secrets are hidden, and this is not something fearful but a cause for joy – in the depths of our being we are known and loved.

The journey into God, our daily prayers, our common life together, is marked not by “spin” or unreality or anxiety, but at its best by moments by honesty, self-awareness and self-knowledge, for then we will know God’s amazing, transforming grace. The power of Christ will rest upon us.

Roger Clarke

August 2007