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4 min read

Reform votes: what really matters in the end

Two votes, three decades apart.

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A grand dinner table set for a meal sits within a large room with paintings on the wall.
The dining room of the Garrick Club.

I was this week one of several hundred members of the Garrick Club, with many more attending online, crammed into a central London conference room to vote on whether women could be admitted as members for the first time since our founding in 1831. 

We Garrick members rather fancy ourselves as a secret society – and it was a rich irony that our vote was held in the same block as the Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen Street.  

Actually, I rather like the tradition that what’s said and done in the Garrick stays in the Garrick. So this isn’t about our club’s internal wrangling and politics, beyond the now widespread news that women were voted as eligible for membership by a majority of 60 per cent. 

Rather than go further into that, I want to compare it with another well-fought fight for women’s inclusion: The admission of the female gender to the priesthood of the Church of England, more or less exactly 30 years ago in 1994. 

Much of what was going on in the Church then was being rehearsed again in London WC2 this week. You might call it long overdue dismantlements of patriarchal institutions, even if neither the Church nor our club would self-identify as such. No case could continue to be sustained for all-male preferment in our Church or in our club. 

To their great credit, the vote was won for reform by those who decided to work together, without rancour or resentment, in preference to further division and bitterness. 

There are two observations I would make of the Church precedent that may be of some comfort to my fellow club members, who may feel that nothing will ever be quite the same again. The first of these is quite a quick point. After a couple of weeks of women’s priesthood, almost everyone in the Church wondered what all the fuss had been about. Ordained women became a natural part of the priestly fabric of the Church really that quickly. 

Yes, provision had to be made for those who in conscience couldn’t accept women’s ordained ministry, so the process was not without its pain. But three decades on, women priests (and subsequently and inevitably bishops) are so much part of the weave of that fabric that most church congregations feel they’ve always been there. 

The second point I would make is that I know anecdotally of very many traditionalists opposed to women’s ordination who, at the General Synod, either voted for women or abstained when the result became inevitable. To have fought a last-ditch, hopeless defence  could only have lastingly damaged the Church’s reputation and ministry.  

To their great credit, the vote was won for reform by those who decided to work together, without rancour or resentment, in preference to further division and bitterness. My feeling is that a tranche of Garrickian votes were cast for similar reasons. 

These were women at the top of their game. It’s just taken a couple of millennia for our churches and clubs to catch up.

The comparison of a gentleman’s club and gentleman’s church is an imperfect one. Members of a church could be male or female; only the clergy were strictly male. There were profound theological and ecclesiological arguments (though I don’t share them) made against the prospect of women priests by Anglo-Catholics, which aren’t available to fans of men-only clubs. 

But the similarities between the institutions are founded on the principles of patriarchy nevertheless. The idea that men, in private circumstances, can behave and associate in the pretence that they are still in charge of everything, as they were in the nineteenth century, both at church and in clubland.  

This doesn’t matter much when it comes to the likes of all-boy or all-girl sports teams – though it’s a delight to see Woodlanders Football Club, Lioness-cubs to a girl, beat the boys to win their cup.  

It begins to matter very much indeed when the senior figures of professions and public institutions seek to associate only with their male colleagues. That’s as true of a boss who takes only the boys in the office to a rugby match at Twickenham as it is of gentlemen’s clubs. It may be patriarchy-lite, but it is rooted in the same hegemony that gave the Church its patriarchs. 

It’s an irony as rich as the location of this week’s Garrick vote that the gospel is far from patriarchal in its narratives, even though the language of Father and Son so ostensibly is. The Nazarene, scandalously for his day, freely associates with women.  The Jesus movement is radical in gender equality in a manner that its Church has failed down the centuries to emulate. 

Jesus gives full messianic attention to a despised and shamed Samaritan woman; he saves an adulterous woman (code for prostitute) from stoning; he stops to address a bleeding woman who just wants to touch him; as the risen Christ, he gives a woman, Mary of Magdala, the greatest apostolic mission in history to tell his dispersed disciples what she has witnessed. 

Little wonder women appear so prominently in the Acts of the Apostles. These were women at the top of their game. It’s just taken a couple of millennia for our churches and clubs to catch up.

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Belief
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5 min read

Is Goodison Park a place of worship?

Delve beyond the identity and the inspiration.

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.  

  

Football fans wearing blue stand and watch a match in a stadium.
Everton fans hope.
Everton F.C.

In some places football is considered a religion. No more so than in Liverpool. Its citizens revere not just one team but two - the Blues and the Reds.  

It's a divided city. Some wear the blue of Everton FC, others the red of Liverpool FC. A mere mile separates the stadia where supporters pay homage to their heroes.  

As the chaplain to Everton, I often contemplate this devotion. Is Everton’s stadium Goodison Park a place of worship? And is football really a religion?  

The quick answer is “Yes” and “No”. Goodison Park is surely a place of worship, and football is not a religion, though that second answer may need a bit of a defence.  

That football grounds are places of worship is instanced at every game played: chants of praise are sung and worth is given to the players, the team, the history, the manager, maybe even the owner.  

Goodison Park has hosted games since 1892. The attendance at the ground’s opening was 12,000, the cost £3,000, and the point of it all? Everton Football Club had begun in 1878 as St Domingo’s, founded by a Methodist minister. The Rev Ben Swift Chambers wanted to keep his St Domingo’s Church cricket team fit during the winter, and the cricket team was to help young men stay away from less worthy pursuits. Similarly, Manchester City was founded by Anna Connell, the vicar’s daughter, to keep young men on the streets of East Manchester away from trouble.   

St Domingo’s then became Everton FC and later came the move to the new stadium on Goodison Road. The crowds brought gate receipts, the players and staff needed wages, and football clearly becomes a business as well as an activity to help young men avoid trouble.  

Then and now the game is entertaining, the outcome is unpredictable, and the players can show outstanding skills, athleticism, courage, resilience, teamwork.   

That’s where the worship naturally comes in. Awe and wonder are important human attributes, and Evertonians have delighted in the skills and character of players down the club’s 147-year history. At every football ground there will be chants for players that celebrate their skill, character, achievements, giving worth to their ability. And yes, there may also be chants doing the opposite of worship to the opponents and to the unlucky referee just trying to do their job. The team is celebrated and worshipped, sometimes in language that is hard to believe: “We’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen” can feel like undeserved worship when Everton are struggling to avoid relegation. Such optimistic sentiment may reflect Evertonians’ awareness of the importance of history and the bigger picture! Another chant begins “And if you know your history...”.   

Outside Goodison Park is a statue of Dixie Dean: he scored 60 league goals in the 1927-28 season and his ability and achievement is worshipped, given great worth, by many before and after a game. The other statue outside the ground is of the “Holy Trinity”, Howard Kendall, Alan Ball and Colin Harvey, the midfield three that helped bring the League title to Everton in 1970. Many such players in the history of the club have received and still receive worship. Goodison Park is a place of hope, frustration, joy, anguish, and, yes, of worship.  

But is football a religion? Goodison Park is called by some a cathedral, the club has fans, it conveys an identity, the game offers principles for living such as teamwork and the valuing of different gifts.   

Yes, football is like a religion, and understandably religious language and gesture are often used around the game. “Salvation!” says the commentator as Graham Stuart scores the winning goal in the 3-2 win over Wimbledon to keep Everton in the Premier League. Television cameras can home in on a supporter clasping their hands in prayer at some decisive moment.   

And yes, football can play a part in someone’s life that is very like the part a religion can play: it can become the most important thing, it can shape mood, behaviour, it can provide long-lasting rituals.  

But it is one thing for football to be like a religion in some respects, it is another for it genuinely to qualify as a religion.   

This of course begs the question “how are you defining religion?” I am going for the stronger definition. So, I’m not agreeing with a statement such as “shopping is your religion”. I would rather say “shopping is one of your passions, interests, maybe overriding interests, but no, not a religion”. Some of the stronger dictionary definitions include “A system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses the nature of existence”, and “the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their life” and “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe”.   

Does football meet those definitions, does football answer the deepest questions of life?  

Who am I? An Evertonian, but deeper than that, who am I?   

What is the purpose of my life beyond hoping Everton win football matches?   

What happens after death?   

Football does not address those ultimate concerns. It is like a religion in offering identity, inspiring worship, having a gathering point like Goodison Park for communal activity, but it is not a religion as it does not address those ultimate questions.  

I will be going to worship the skills and characters of players, coaches, staff and manager at Goodison Park before the season ends, but I don’t see my love of football as a religion. The Christian faith is my religion: it addresses the deepest questions, the ultimate concerns, just as other religions seek to do.   

There is more to life than football. As an Everton manager, a practising Catholic, Carlo Ancelotti once said: “Football is the most important of the less important things”.  

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