Snippet
Care
Comment
Education
Hospitality
3 min read

University turmoil makes the case for chaplains

Creating space, offering time, across cultures.
A cup of coffee is offered across a table to a hand that is hesitant.
Priscilla Du Preez šŸ‡ØšŸ‡¦ on Unsplash.

As the university sector convulses, whatā€™s the point of their chaplains? 

The university chaplains fulfil a role which calls for a unique set of skills, including pastoral imagination, flexibility, and creativity as they respond to various, often unpredicted, challenges. Chaplains occupy a place between highly professional Students Services colleagues at the university - think counsellors, experts on emigration and finances, and local parishes representing diverse theological viewpoints.  

Every year, while meeting and greeting international students, one of the earliest tasks for the chaplains is to explain their role, as in non-European languages and cultures there is no equivalent of a ā€œchaplainā€. Are the chaplains sort of ā€œspiritual gurusā€, ā€œlife coachesā€, ā€œchampions of wellbeingā€? What is the real difference for the students and the staff in a secular academic institution, between approaching a chaplain and a professional counsellor?   

In addition to all these initial questions that a student might ask, other observers question the role of chaplains in a secular academic institution, for being counterproductive. Why provide and finance a chaplain without any measurable outcomes of his or her work? Whether it is counting confirmations, ensuring Christian faith and values as clearly pronounced, or/and conducting regular acts of worship for the students and staff? 

Looking at my daily engagement with the international, diverse community of the students and the staff, there are at least three areas of presence (rather being than doing, adapting famous Gabriel Marcelā€™s distinction), which illuminate this unique type of vocation.  

First, currently British universities are going through a very painful, dramatic time of saving money and redundancies. Chaplaincy is becoming a visible space for emotional support to those who are worried about their immediate future. Students and staff are going through a period of uncertainly, if not confusion, so chaplaincy holds the unique space on the campus to show empathy to those who cry, and to offer time for those who need to speak about their pain.  

Secondly, chaplaincy has the privilege of being very creative in the ways of engaging with the local academic community. The memorial services for the students and the staff who died recently are not the formal funerals: yet they allow the participants to speak, play the music, show videos about the departed.  There is a real celebration of life, brings consolation to academic colleagues, families and relatives.  

Thirdly, unlike other professional services, only chaplaincy is able to show the generosity of time to anyone who comes through the door. Thatā€™s because those  individuals are welcome as the ā€˜imageā€™ of God. The rest about that individual is accidental, he or she finds ā€˜home away of homeā€™ in the space of chaplaincy, because through the eyes of Christian faith: he or she is precious and unique. 

What about proclaiming the message about Jesus Christ? There is a story about St Francis of Assis who said to his brothers, while approaching an Italian city: ā€œnow we will proclaim the Gospel to all who live in this cityā€. After that he and his companion marched through the streets in silence. When they left the city, one of his brothers, rather surprised by lack of preaching, asked: ā€œFrancis, when did we proclaim the Good News?ā€. ā€œOur way of walking was the proclamation of our faithā€. The way how we greet, spend time with students, talk, joke and pray ā€“ reflects that proclamation.     

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Article
Assisted dying
Comment
Politics
4 min read

The assisted dying bill is an undignified mess

Literally life-changing legislation needs a parliament at its best not its worst.

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

A parliamentary committee meets, sitting at wooden raised desks in a wood panelled room.
The bill committee meets.

The first clue came when MP Kim Leadbeaterā€™s private membersā€™ bill passed in the House of Commons at the end of November. She came outside to greet pro-euthanasia campaigners like she was emerging as a winner from the Big Brother house, in tears of joy, whooping and hugging and high-fiving, with prime minister Keir Starmer gurning awkwardly in her wake. 

For her and her supporters, this was indeed great news. But these optics were far from great. It was as though she was celebrating the consequence of the legislation sheā€™d introduced: ā€œWhoa! Wonderful news everybody! Weā€™re going to be allowed to help people to kill themselves.ā€ 

Itā€™s not a good look, even to those who may wish for such assistance. Where was the dignity, the key word that assisted-suicide lobbyists have appropriated for their cause? Not in this carefree triumphalism, this cork-popping celebration of the prospect of death-on-demand. 

Since then, the billā€™s faltering passage through parliament has been characterised by this absence of dignity, a kind of cowboy rustler pushing a herd of supporters in a single direction, towards statute. And this lack of dignity matters. Not just because it is, literally, the most life-changing legislation any of us will see in our lifetimes, but because the dignity of parliament matters very much indeed. 

I donā€™t mean the ritual flummery, the state opening by the monarch, people marching about with wigs and sticks, Black Rod and all that. I mean dignity in the sense with which we honour our democracy, the way in which we frame our legislature seriously and with due process. 

Leadbeater presents as a good person and there is no apparent evidence to the contrary. But she is an inexperienced parliamentarian. Her selection for the seat of Batley and Spen, now Spen Valley, was rushed through in 2021, memories remaining acutely sharp of the murder of her older sister, Jo Cox, in the constituency in 2016. And, naturally, she has sat on the Governmentā€™s backbenches for less than a year. 

 Her inexperience of parliamentary process and scrutiny has shown. Committee hearings have been rammed with those who support assisted suicide and held in unseemly haste, such is the rush to get it into law. Before her billā€™s second reading, she described it as having the strongest safeguards in the world, each patient requiring a sign-off from a High Court judge. When this proved impractical, the judge was replaced with a social worker, which apparently was ā€œeven saferā€. So, safer than even the strongest safeguards in the world?   

But more worrying still is how the passage of the bill has been factionalised. Leadbeater has alienated the mild-mannered by calling opposing voices ā€œnoiseā€, which is a bit like lamenting that a debate should have two sides at all. And sheā€™s called those who disagree with her ā€œunconstructiveā€ and complained that opponents have ā€œmobilisedā€. Well, duh. Thatā€™s how parliament works. Indeed, itā€™s part of its dignity, rather than a simple inconvenience for an MP in a hurry. 

The media have noticed this lack of respect for procedure. Iā€™m not sure that thereā€™s ever been such resistance to proposed assisted-suicide legislation in the public prints before. Even the Guardian, which might be relied upon to see it as a progressive cause, has turned more than ambivalent. Only columnist and assisted-suicide flagbearer Polly Toynbee is available for a piece that amounts to saying we should move along, thereā€™s nothing to see here and Leadbeaterā€™s bill is doing just fine. 

She, too, claims absurdly that opposition is only coming from people who oppose assisted suicide. Well, blow me down. Try as I might, I canā€™t trace her complaining that Lord Falconerā€™s supposedly independent Commission on Assisted Dying of 2011 was both funded and packed with his causeā€™s supporters.  

In passing, it should be noted what an underminer of parliamentary dignity is Falconer too. He has claimed that justice secretary Shabam Mahmoodā€™s opposition to the bill should be discounted because of her ā€œreligious beliefsā€. Mahmood is a Muslim. For a constitutional lawyer, Falconer shows scant regard for our constitution. We might as well say that his views should be discounted because heā€™s a progressive secularist.  

One might expect PM Keir Starmer to bring some quality to this, as an alleged stickler for legal procedure. It remains a mystery, as a supporter of the principle, that heā€™s left assisted suicide to a private membersā€™ bill. If he really wanted it, it should surely be a Government bill. Cynics among us wonder if he has honoured a promise given to the terminally ill Esther Rantzen with token support for a private membersā€™ bill, but knows it will fail.  

Again, lack of dignity. If dignity in dying means anything since it was misappropriated as a campaign slogan for assisted suicide, then it should be accompanied by dignified debate and amendment in parliament. This bill has provided precisely the opposite. Let it die.

Join with us - Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If youā€™re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), youā€™ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what Iā€™m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief