Newsletter from the Parish Magazine
May Letter
Ian Scott-Thompson writes:-
Dear Friends,
My colleague Charles Lawrence, the Vicar of Shere, has featured in the papers and on the radio in recent weeks, with headlines about fury and warfare in his village. What on earth is all the fuss about?
One of the first things I noticed about moving from a town parish (with around ten times the population!) to a village setting is how much more high-profile the church and Vicar seem. In Wonersh, and especially in Blackheath, I know and am known by a large proportion of the villagers. This is wonderful when things are going well, but makes life much harder when things go wrong!
As far as I can make out (and it’s not easy to pin down), the trigger for all this was the question of who may legally get married in a village church.
Shere has a pretty church, much in demand for weddings. English law allows couples to choose any Registry Office for a civil ceremony; but for a church wedding the law says they have to go to the parish church where they live (or the one where they worship regularly, if they are on the membership list). If a bride or groom have moved away from their village, they can either apply for a Special Licence or they can travel back to worship regularly and become worshipping church members. When the law is explained to them, unfortunately many couples think that they are being refused a wedding; this is such a pity, because most Vicars want to welcome couples for marriage, but we must also keep the law. Within the next year we expect the law will change so that these marriages can be conducted by Banns rather than Licence, but there will still need to be a demonstrable connection with the church.
Other matters of opinion were also aired in the media, to do with personality and a change of style from the previous Vicar, which some clearly find unsettling. However, God has not changed, and provided the style is still within the (very broad) scope of the Church this should not be an insurmountable problem. After all, we worship God, not the clergy! Certainly none of us is without fault: but nobody deserves to be vilified in public in the way that has happened here. As a colleague said recently, it is expected that Christians will disagree with one another: that is part of being human. However, that does not remove from us the obligation to love one another, because this is our Lord’s command. We must learn to disagree in charity, but without losing the nature and qualities of Christ.
Melanchthon said, in the 16th century:
In Essentials,
Unity
In Non-essentials,
In All things, Charity.
Perhaps this could be our motto for May: to practise in all our relationships.