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Leading
Politics
7 min read

Leaders wanted for these testing times

We need leadership that is famous for fifteen miles not fifteen minutes.

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

A deflated looking woman stands aside from a protest rally, holding a small doll of herself that reads Recall Knope'.
Local leadership: Leslie Knope serving Pawnee, Indiana.

We are in a year of elections – locally, nationally, and in the US, and I have been wondering whether it’s true that we get the leaders we deserve, whether political leadership has always felt this way – this detached, divisive, even dangerous? More about ambition than integrity, about individuals more than our common life? Where might we find leaders that can take us into an increasingly hard to navigate, uncertain world?  

I find myself thinking back to local leadership and difficult conversations I was involved in as a district councillor. These were often conversations about priorities, and money – mainly, the fact that there wasn’t enough of it, and what there was continued to be pared back and back until only the absolute essentials were covered. Many council tax bills have recently gone up, usually with an explanation of the reason for the rise. Local authorities in Scotland recently voted for a council tax freeze but only after the promise of funding from the Scottish government to make up the shortfall. During my time on the council, we would write letter after letter to government ministers seeking clarity about grants or cuts. When extra funding was announced we were pitted against other councils to bid for meagre pots of money, taking time away from officers who were already stretched too thin. Each councillor, each officer, each member of the community we served had their own idea about how to approach budgeting and spending. Sometimes those ideas aligned, but often they did not. Councils are in an impossible situation.  

And yet decisions made at this level impact us all. National leaders might set the direction, but local leaders steward and implement and envision and listen – they are close to the people they serve, their decisions impact us all day-to-day: councils are responsible for things like children’s services, highways, housing people, parks and pools, and lots more

The people who have played the biggest role in my life have been the people that made me feel valued, seen, heard, capable. 

Conversations about how to fund local authorities are difficult at any time, but especially so now, with crises coming from every angle – cost of living, climate change, ongoing post-covid recovery, austerity, and so on. To be a leader now – nationally yes, but especially locally, means making sure that essential services keep functioning despite lack of funding or clarity from government, and whilst also tackling climate change and all the other pieces of our fragmenting world. To be a leader now who shows vision and humanity and care despite the seemingly cynical and hurting spirit of the age – is, I think, a test of the meaning of leadership. This test of leadership doesn’t just face local and national government though. It faces all of us right now as we contemplate an unknowable future.  

Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that “our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be”, and we are all capable of helping others be what they can be – whether a neighbour, a colleague, a community, a team, an organisation, others we come into contact with; we can all lead. Author, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The people who have played the biggest role in my life have been the people that made me feel valued, seen, heard, capable. They have seen who I am, and who I could be, and they walk with me as I move in that direction. I think the best leaders do this too.  

It is not glamourous, but, like a lighthouse that shines by just staying where it is, it calls people, lights the way, watches, serves, guides. 

In contrast, the worst leaders seem to cling to traditional ideas of power, to control more than setting people free, to achieving their goals through any means necessary. I think of authoritarian regimes that rig elections and limit freedoms, and corporations that pursue profit at the expense of employees and the environment, and political campaigns that prioritise controlling the narrative over informing people. These embody warped leadership traits. And these warped ideas of leadership are given airtime, they fuel our news and our social media feeds and our anxiety. They make us angry, but they can also disempower us and close off the possibility that there is another kind of leadership, one more aligned with the Old English root of the word ‘leader’, meaning ‘one who guides and brings forth’. There are, though, places we can look that point to that other kind of leadership – to something more beautiful.  

One place is my own doorstep. Here, there are people that see a need and organise people to fill it – whether hunger, loneliness, lovelessness, this is a kind of roll-up-your-sleeves leadership, the kind that is famous for fifteen miles not fifteen minutes. It is not glamourous, but, like a lighthouse that shines by just staying where it is, it calls people, lights the way, watches, serves, guides. 

I try to hold on to the fact that we do not need to wait for national elections to call forth the kind of leaders we want. 

Another place is the gospel, where again and again Jesus turned traditional ideas of leadership upside down. He taught that it must serve, not be served; that it can be great through humility not self-importance. He criticised religious leaders for seeking prestige and personal gain. And Jesus did not just teach this stuff, he lived it – he washed the feet of his disciples, he empowered them rather than wielded authority over them. He lived as a shepherd that leads and tends his flock with his love. He laid down his life for his friends, for all of us. And this I think is where leadership starts to look a lot like love. Jesus showed how true leadership that transforms individuals and communities, that heals division and brings people together, is led and motivated by love, not power. He taught that leadership without love is hollow and even harmful. He showed that leadership, and the love that fuels it, guides and inspires and cares for people. We need these kinds of leaders now more than ever. My own experience tells me that hard conversations become easier to navigate when care, humility, and listening are present.  

In the UK, many of us are trying to get the measure of Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer. An Ipsos poll in February explored how the public view these and other political leaders – a significant number were unclear about what they both stood for, but Starmer was ahead of Sunak in various leadership traits including experience, capability, strength. I want to know what other traits we’re seeking and demanding of our leaders nationally, locally and in ourselves. On the council I served on, I saw elected councillors asleep in meetings, ill-prepared, voted in because people did not think their vote or questions or care made a difference. On some level at least we do get the leaders we deserve – those we are prepared to be curious about, and call out, or encourage, or demand more of; more than just the ability to stay awake during meetings, more than just capability and strength, but also aliveness, care, compassion, humility, love.  

We need to demand more of our national leaders, especially now. But I try to hold on to the fact that we do not need to wait for national elections to call forth the kind of leaders we want. We can call them forth in ourselves, in each other, in our communities – these are the leaders that impact us closely, every day. I think of some of the best leaders I have known: theirs was a leadership of passion more than position, invested in people more than prestige, offering both humility and vision – a combination that feels hard to find in our current political landscape. They call to mind what writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, that: “if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Good leaders will help us see and navigate this endless ocean, these present storms – cost of living, conflict, division, ecological and economic unravelling. They remind us, like the gospel does, that the ship is a means to an end – one of new horizons, of togetherness, of love for this beautiful wide world. 

Explainer
Creed
Leading
6 min read

Why’s there a pope in Rome?

A modern gathering sheds light on an ancient question: who brings the church together?
A pope wearing a white skull cap and white robe, viewed from behind
Coronel Gonorrea on Unsplash.

On 1st March, an event called Gather25 tried something which it described as “unprecedented”. It sought to unite, in a 25-hour worship broadcast, global Christianity. Each session was led by a different nation, and its top pastors sent out to bat. It was slickly organised, as well as technologically sophisticated; I wished the event well, and prayed for it. While in the more institutionalised church settings, people are waiting on new Archbishops of Canterbury, or praying for the Pope to recover, here was action. 

It got me thinking, though: when can it be said that the Church has properly met? Who decides to meet? Who sends the invites? Who confirms the decisions? Anyone reading the Gather25 website will have noticed overtures about the ‘Council of Nicaea’. Nicaea was the first important gathering of the ancient Church, in 325 AD. By citing this, Gather25 positioned itself downstream of a very prestigious meetup. It perhaps hoped for itself that it would be similarly ecumenical (a Greek word to do with the whole household). Did Gather25 have the same Nicene status? 

Sadly, no. Gather25 was openhearted and dynamic, but it was a very particular slice of Christianity meeting for a very historically specific form of worship. The difficulty is that it takes more than even the buzziest PR, or all our modern advances in communication and streaming, to truly summon something as untameable as the Church to order. What do we need to ensure we have a gathering at which the Church is truly represented, and able to officially act with the “mind of Christ” (as St Paul puts it)? Wouldn’t you need something, or someone, able to steer the entire thing?  

At the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, nothing less than the most powerful man on the planet would do. The Emperor Constantine alone had the clout to draw in Christian leaders from around the world, make them sit together, and demand an official settlement of a difficult question: how exactly was God the Son, Jesus, linked to God the Father? Even with such heavyweight patronage, church leaders did not produce an absolutely finished answer at that time - it actually took a whole extra council, in Constantinople in 381 AD, to confirm the confession that is still known today as the Nicene Creed, and which begins “I believe in God, the Father Almighty”.  

Yet a problem had been touched on. Should a Caesar really have this kind of upper hand over a sacred institution? Some lines of thought tried to think of the emperor as a kind of ‘living law’ who represents God to the Christian people he rules over. But this couldn’t jive with key parts of a tradition wherein Jesus had radically authorised servant leaders from among simple Galilean fishermen, known as the Twelve Apostles, or ‘sent ones’. Who should rule? 

Was this a bit of overreading, designed to give a senior cleric a Scriptural trump card to play against a secular leader in a petty power showdown? 

The problem has not really gone away. If we ignore this question of legitimacy, we are at the mercy of raw power. Either we seek an authoritative means of unifying Christians, or it becomes a case of who happens to have the most cash, or the most Instagram followers. It has never been the case that the Church has just organically ‘met up’ without a protos, a first name on the team sheet. Indeed, when has this ever happened, in any sphere of life? It would be like a parliament forming without the invitation of the sovereign.  

It is against this bigger problem that the rise of the Christian leader in Rome must be viewed. Rome was, of course, the centre of an Empire during the first few Christian centuries, but it quickly gained distinctly Christian prestige. St Paul’s letter to the congregations there continues to be one of the most sizzling documents in the New Testament; he was also martyred there, along with his fellow leader St Peter, one of the original Twelve. Rome was a big deal, and sources from as early as the first century show the leading clergyman (or ‘bishop’) of Rome, a man called Clement, being asked to weigh in on a dispute over 600 miles away from his locale. 

For Catholics like me, it is clear the Church was onto something. It would go on to discover that there was more to the Bishop of Rome than merely his occupation of a well-to-do area. There would be a development. Many church doctrines, after all, are the result of reflection, Scriptural deep dives, and the need for clearer unified doctrine and practice - the Trinity, for example.  

And the Bishop of Rome’s role developed in a particular setting: while the figure of the emperor loomed ever larger in the East, a parallel momentum would gather around the leading cleric of a city where St Peter had passed on his mantle. For St Peter had, after all, been singled out by Jesus in his earthly ministry. In the Bible, the Gospel according to St Matthew depicts Jesus giving “the keys to the kingdom” to his follower Simon, who he then renames ‘Peter’, meaning rock, upon which he vows to build his church. Not only this - Peter is to strengthen his brothers (St Luke 22:32); to feed the Lord’s sheep (John 21). The Bishop of Rome was increasingly thought to have this Peter-like quality.  

Was this a bit of overreading, designed to give a senior cleric a Scriptural trump card to play against a secular leader in a petty power showdown? It is an accusation hard to shake off completely, sinful humanity being what it is. In the Middle Ages, a decree was conveniently ‘discovered’ by the Roman Emperor that handed over all his power to the Bishop of Rome, the new pontifex maximus - it was, of course, a complete phoney designed to assert church power over secular rulers. But for Catholics, despite patchy moments, there has always been more to be said for the Pope (from Papa, ‘father’) as a legitimate consolidation of Jesus’ vision for the leadership of the Church he founded: a brotherhood, headed by a type of St Peter, the rock on which the Church is built.  

Not headed by St Peter’s successor as a flawless demigod, it should be said. For it is also part of Christian tradition about St Peter that he was capable of tremendous human weakness - he betrayed Jesus on the night of his arrest and trial, and denied he ever knew him. Some Popes have sadly been downright wicked or self-serving. Nor is it headed by the Pope as a tyrant. St Peter confirms early doctrinal pronouncements for the Church - he declares that food laws should not prevent Israelites from enjoying table fellowship with other ethnic groups, for example. But he is also frankly challenged by other leaders during early meetings in Jerusalem. The Pope teaches not as a lone ranger, but always within a bigger fraternity of fellow bishops.  

In 2024, a Vatican department released a new document pondering what role the Pope could play in bringing together the separated brethren of world Christianity. I hope this offer is taken seriously. Because what remains compelling for Catholics is a figure who makes it possible, at the most foundational level, to say that the Church is One, as per Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21, and all without needing to rely on good digital marketing. It is not just pious sentiment for a Catholic to say that they are genuinely connected to a global family of as many as 1.4 billion people, because they share a pastor who claims to serve the whole thing, the ‘servant of the servants of God’. Any critique of the Papacy - and there are many intelligible ones, raking over the sordid moments or disputing the Scriptural evidence - must, though, rankle with that: what really keeps us together, then? The Catholic insistence has always been that saying ‘Jesus’ or ‘the Holy Spirit’ really amounts to saying: “what I think Jesus wants; what I think the Holy Spirit is saying” - and that is, in effect, actually many popes instead of just one. 

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