With the world’s eyes on Qatar, there’s a huge rumpus brewing in the clergy circles I move in – both face-to-face and on social media – about a suggestion by the Church of England that the World Cup Final on 18 December somehow trumps the last Sunday in Advent and that therefore traditional carol services that would normally take place on that day should be rescheduled. I am now wondering what all the fuss is about. The construction the always-happy-to-be-outraged had put upon this advice was that one of the two most important English religions – the National Health Service and professional football – had scored a goal against Christianity and Church of England calendrical propriety while ecclesiastical goal keepers were still in the locker room talking, as usual, about sex.
Having searched online and found the “Church Support Hub” where this suggestion first appeared, I discovered what I consider to be a perfectly sensible piece of advice: “On 18th December, churches often hold carol services in the afternoon or evening, and this could still be possible if you choose the time carefully… but what if there are penalties? It may be best to avoid that day altogether and host a carol service on Saturday 17th instead.” To what in this should I take exception? It is often reported that Anglican churches all over the country re-timed Evensong or abandoned it altogether when The Forsyte Saga (1967) or Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) were first screened on the television, so what is new?
I think the problem for my friends and, I suppose for me, lies in the further suggestion that instead of divine worship the match should be screened live in church with refreshments offered: presumably the beer so conspicuously missing in Qatar. The difficulty becomes apparent immediately, for the churches I frequent are generally not set up with big screens and other paraphernalia for live relays. Not for us the choruses projected above the heads of our evangelical brothers and sisters. Nor are we easily swayed by the website’s doubtful claim that “whether you love it or not, there’s no escaping the fact that football and the church have a conjoined heritage”. Even if it is true that “several Premier League football clubs started up as parish church football teams”, was Preston North End really established as a protest against High Church eastward celebration of the Eucharist?
The phenomenon of the “Church Support Hub” whence this advice comes is both a new one and a sign of the times. Its website bears the logo of the Church of England and, though my nostrils may deceive me, it smells distinctly of the CofE Communications Team – known to many of us as the fount of all error. But this “hub” is but a symptom of a serious problem: Church of England clergy are no longer adequately trained in liturgy or the conduct of decent, recognisable public worship. Many are ordained today without ever having seen the Book of Common Prayer, let alone experienced a service conducted according to its principles and content. The excellent resources of our Common Worship project are ignored and non-liturgical services – anchored neither in the Church calendar and lectionary nor in authorised forms of worship – are on the increase. Often they are nourished by nothing more substantial than the wacky ideas their originators have found online. This is where the cry “what have we come to?” resonates most powerfully.
All this aside, there are perhaps more serious reasons why churchgoers of all persuasions might object to the substitution of this particular football match for a church service and, to be fair, the website also has a link to a statement by the Bishop of Derby, the Right Revd Libby Lane, who is the Church of England’s lead bishop for sport. Before the football-fest began, she wrote that “We cannot look forward to the World Cup without acknowledging the concerns which surround this tournament in particular.”
Many people will want to know why the CofE would seek to screen, in its consecrated buildings on the last Sunday of Advent, a football match taking place in a stadium where hundreds of migrant workers died as a result of wholly inadequate health-and-safety arrangements during its construction. Many will wonder about the difficulties Christians face in trying to gather for worship in Qatar. Others will be unable to support FIFA’s decision to hold the World Cup in a country where LGBTQ+ football players and spectators are criminalised, and where freedom of expression has been curtailed.
There are serious moral reasons and concerns here which might lead us to question the wisdom of abandoning a carol service and substituting a big screen relay of the Qatar final where, to quote Bishop Lane again, “sport is a smokescreen for discrimination, oppression and exploitation.” That none of this seems to have occurred to anyone with responsibility for the advice that in the Church of England the World Cup Final should take precedence over the horarium of the last Sunday of Advent prompts the same question, once again. “What have we come to?”
Canon Jeremy Haselock was a Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II and a member of the Church of England’s Liturgical Commission
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