Symbolic stance

The Church of England’s consistory courts are not normally at the centre of the culture war. These bodies – there is one in every Anglican diocese – typically adjudicate somewhat arcane and obscure disputes relating to the maintenance of buildings and property. They always appear to me rather like something from an Anthony Trollope novel, with their careful inquiries into the disposal of antique pews or the mismanagement of churchyards.

Recently, however, the court for the diocese of Ely had to make a very politically delicate decision. Jesus College, Cambridge, had applied for permission to remove from their chapel a monument to the 17th-century courtier Tobias Rustat, who is buried there. As well as being a noted benefactor of several Cambridge colleges and the university, Rustat was an investor in the Royal African Company, a slave-trading concern, and towards the end of his life made a good deal of money from the investments.

The permission was refused. The court noted, among other considerations, that Rustat’s philanthropy to Cambridge predated the returns on his RAC investment, and thus the donations themselves did not come from money made through slavery. The historical and artistic importance of the memorial and its setting – Jesus College chapel is Grade I-listed – were also factors.

I don’t want to re-litigate the specific question of whether the Rustat memorial belongs in a Cambridge college chapel in the present day. In general, I’m highly sceptical about the iconoclasm that has developed in western countries recently. Making judgments about long-dead individuals is fraught with all sorts of moral dilemmas.

Equally, I do see the strength of the argument that someone who helped to run a slave-trading company, and is not recorded as having expressed any contrition for doing so, should not be commemorated glowingly in a Christian place of worship.

To my mind, the case raises a much broader question: namely, what does belong in a church? Every now and then there is a minor kerfuffle on social media when a picture emerges of a church bedecked with the gold stars of the EU, or the latest iteration of the rainbow flag. Often they are on the altar itself. Defenders of such displays sometimes respond by noting that there is a long-standing tradition of secular symbols – such as regimental standards or even national flags – in churches. This is routine in the Church of England, but not unknown in Catholic churches: St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle has the colours of the Tyneside Irish brigade, a formation raised in the area during the First World War, and military churches often have similar regalia.

Comparing rainbow or EU flags on the one hand, with the national or military symbols mentioned above, has a certain superficial persuasiveness. They’re all extrinsic to the faith in that they all symbolise an allegiance to something other than God. Just as the rainbow flag stands for an anti-Christian sexual ethic, a military standard in a church suggests an unchristian militarism and an attempt to entangle our allegiance to a country with an allegiance to God. Sweep them all out of the church! I must admit that this is my instinctive reaction.

Nevertheless, although I am personally uneasy with secular symbols in churches, I do think there is a substantive difference between, say, that old Tyneside Irish flag and the rainbow “liberation” flag. The difference lies in what the flags represent and how each relates to the Church’s teaching. Though there is a risk that the display of the military banner identifies the Church with the glorification of war, it seems to me that a person of goodwill would easily understand that it is predominantly intended as a kind of memorial and an expression of local identity and culture (Westminster Cathedral notably flies the Union flag over its west door alongside the Vatican flag). It does not embody an ideology or a party political position. By contrast, the rainbow flag, especially the version amended to include symbols of the transgender movement and the Black Lives Matter campaign, is an undeniably political symbol. To have it in a church suggests that the church is aligned with one side of highly contentious political disputes. More importantly, the positions which the flag embodies – sexual freedom, gender fluidity and so on – are not simply in tension with the authentic Christian teaching but diametrically opposed to it. 

And what of memorials to individuals – such as that at Jesus College? For Catholic churches at least, it would seem to me that they are at odds with our understanding of how we ought to think about death, salvation and the last things. There are statues and images of saints, of course, but they are different. By definition someone who has been canonised by the Church has been “vetted”, as it were. Even so, we ought always to stress the divine role in creating and sustaining their life of virtue; that is a powerful aid to humility.