Paying for the Right Things

The 5% rise in stipends planned by Guildford Diocese for its clergy was not something I asked for or even anticipated, but it made me remember that our own church staff here in Swanvale Halt – Sandra the office manager, Cally the bookkeeper, and Debra the cleaner – should be considered too. Sandra and Cally languished for years on the same pay rate because we simply forgot to do anything about it, when we ought to have reviewed their salaries annually. Anyway, I worked out that raising all their wages by 5% (which is below the average rise at the moment) would only cost the church £600 over a year, and if it was controversial I could use my own rise to cover that.

When I proposed it at PCC, Grant the churchwarden was beside himself with rage, saying it was ‘disgusting’ that the clergy were ‘lining their own pockets’ when people were suffering. I rather limply tried to say that a) the Board of Finance had decided it, not the clergy, and b) what we were talking about was not me but our own church emlpoyees, but he didn’t think they should be ‘rewarded’ either. The rest of the PCC tried to be as objective as possible. I eventually said we weren’t going to reach a consensus so would have to have a vote. Grant was the only dissenting voice, and immediately packed his bag and left the meeting. It is the first time anything of this kind has ever happened here, and it’s a testament to the quality of this church that several PCC members tried to contact Grant the following day to check he was OK. He wasn’t really as he was already annoyed about various things before we started on pay, but he and I were corresponding about other matters before long.

Leaving aside the question of whether clergy should have their pay raised in hard times, I still think I was right regarding our employees. There are, I suppose, two models of justice here. The first is that many in society are suffering, so the Church (and that means those who work for it) should suffer in solidarity: it is those very people who pay its staff, after all. The other is that justice must start with those the Church has closest responsibility for, namely the people who work for it, and if it can’t treat them fairly it has no right at all to speak to the rest of the world. I see the force of the first, but I come down on the side of the latter. I don’t dismiss Grant’s anger, and have put the Director of Finance’s details in this week’s pew-sheet, in case anyone else wants to make their feelings known.

It has made me reflect on the nature of the parish ministry, though, its pay and status. I’ve wondered for a long time what priests are for. A traditionalist Catholic account would insist that sacraments require priests and that’s why you have them, which is true but doesn’t get you very far because it remains unclear why you should have a special caste of people who earn their living from priestly ministry rather than do it as part of a largely secular life (as many now do).

Instead I find myself thinking this way. All Christians are called, by virtue of their baptism, to carry on the mission of the Church: living the spiritual life, proclaiming the Gospel, and serving their brothers and sisters. That’s what we’re all supposed to do. But the Church has found from long experience that that is not what happens unless you positively set people apart who both structure their whole lives around doing those things, as opposed to fitting them into their secular existences, and, very importantly, promise that they will do so. The business of promising is at the centre of what the Church calls sacraments, the signs of our promises to God and his to us, so it makes sense for the person whose life is organised around the publicly-made promise to carry on the work of Christ also to preside at the other sacraments. And, lo and behold, you then have eucharistic communities with priests at their centre. Of course this is only the sketch of an argument it would take a book to fill out!

The Church of England has chosen that its priests should be ordinarily comfortable; not wealthy in the context of the society that surrounds them, but not, usually, having to worry about putting a meal on the table or paying their taxes. A hungry or anxious person finds it hard to pray beyond the basics. The typical benchmark is that the entire remunerative package of a parish incumbent – not just their stipend (at the moment mine is quite a bit below the average full-time UK salary), but their allowances, expenses and housing too – should be roughly on a par with that of the headteacher of a small primary school. I think that’s quite generous, truth be told, as I’m sure the headteacher of Swanvale Halt Infants works far harder than I do. But then a good chunk of my 'work' consists, externally speaking, of sitting with my eyes closed concentrating on the presence of an unseen being, and you just have to accept that or get rid of the whole thing. Perhaps you think a separate group of people should not live ‘ordinarily comfortable’ lives basically off the contributions of others, and I could not really argue against you except to point to the purpose of full-time clergy which can hardly be provided for any other way.

Neverthless, you have to guard against the self-serving materialism that can, and universally does, creep into Church structures. The Church of England, riddled as it is with the standards and understandings of the World, has been notoriously grasping at points in its history:

In the bare ‘30s, bankrupt farmers

Blew themselves from barnlofts

While you whinnied at the door for tithe.

Your bloodied hands slide around the chalice.

Again, when monasticism began it was a hard and ascetic life to choose, but gradually as the faithful piled monasteries with gifts the lives of their inmates became more and more relaxed and ‘ordinarily comfortable’ or more than comfortable. That does not mean they did no good. Religious houses ran schools, fed the hungry, looked after travellers and the sick. In medieval Europe, they were one of the chief means of making a monstrously unjust society humanly palatable, and when they were abolished it didn’t make that society any less monstrously unjust. But they softened the injustice (when they did) with the very same resources they drew from it. I am no revolutionary, and you could argue I am in no different position. Perhaps one day I, too, will be expropriated, and if so will I be gracious enough to see in it the hand of God?