Life

Dr Richard Clarke: A model of Christian decency and courtesy

The bishops of the Church of Ireland are meeting today and tomorrow to elect a new Archbishop of Armagh to succeed Dr Richard Clarke. He spoke to William Scholes about his seven years as Primate

Dr Richard Clarke, pictured right at last year's St Patrick's Day parade in Armagh, has retired as the Church of Ireland's Archbishop of Armagh. He built a firm friendship with his Catholic counterpart Dr Eamon Martin, pictured left. Picture by LiamMcArdle.com
Dr Richard Clarke, pictured right at last year's St Patrick's Day parade in Armagh, has retired as the Church of Ireland's Archbishop of Armagh. He built a firm friendship with his Catholic counterpart Dr Eamon Martin, pictured left. Picture b Dr Richard Clarke, pictured right at last year's St Patrick's Day parade in Armagh, has retired as the Church of Ireland's Archbishop of Armagh. He built a firm friendship with his Catholic counterpart Dr Eamon Martin, pictured left. Picture by LiamMcArdle.com

WHEN he was elected as Archbishop of Armagh in October 2012, Dr Richard Clarke made a "quiet agreement" with his family and close friends.

As in the Roman Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Armagh in the Church of Ireland has not only diocesan responsibilities but is also its most senior bishop nationally, known as the 'Primate of All Ireland'.

This in turn means the Primate has an international role in the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Church of Ireland is a member.

It's a demanding job, in other words. Dr Clarke's agreement was that he would commit to being Primate for five years and that if he was still "up for it" he would continue for another two years, but no longer.

True to his word, in November he announced his intention to retire. Dr Clarke left Armagh earlier this month, returning to the home he bought with his late wife Linda in Bandon in west Cork, where he had previously served as rector.

The Church of Ireland's bishops meet today and tomorrow to elect Dr Clarke's successor from among their number.

They will do well to find another with Dr Clarke's good humour, clarity of thought and deftness at holding together the range of diverse - and on occasions contradictory - viewpoints that exist in the Church of Ireland.

Courtesy and decency have been hallmarks of Dr Clarke's ministry.

To some, these might sound almost like quaint, old fashioned virtues, yet it is obvious that public discourse and social media exchanges would be enormously improved with an injection of both.

"I think the Church of Ireland still has that innate sense of decency in the way it behaves," Dr Clarke tells me.

"Overall, it does have the sense that we owe to one another decent behaviour.

"I've certainly encouraged it - courtesy and decency in the world in which we live is in shorter and shorter supply."

This sense of decency is, he argues, part of the Church of Ireland’s DNA and can in part be traced to its disestablishment in 1870.

The Church has been marking the 150th anniversary of this momentous landmark in its history, and it is something close to Dr Clarke’s heart.

“Disestablishment had to happen, we could not remain as an adjunct to the Church of England,” he said.

“In 1870 the Church of Ireland had the opportunity to break up into small sects, and it didn’t do so and it worked very hard not to do so.

“It realised that disunity and fragmentation would destroy its mission totally.

“During the first 10 years of disestablishment they worked very hard together to find a place of unity and they found it in the Book of Common Prayer, as a place where they could worship together even though they had differences.

“The decency perhaps goes back to that, and it made it a much more cautious Church.

“We in the Church of Ireland have to be fairly well pushed to raise our profile. It tends to be a fairly quiet church.”

Of his own time as Archbishop, he talks about he also wanted to model “the idea of collaboration” in the Church. This included sharing the chair at General Synod meetings with other bishops in an effort to move away from a ‘presidential’ model where the primate would lead every session.

Courtesy and decency in the world in which we live is in shorter and shorter supply

Dr Clarke hopes the Church of Ireland’s three central institutions - the Representative Church Body, General Synod and Standing Committee - now work better as a team thanks to the influence of his time as primate.

Away from those more administrative areas, Dr Clarke says he would “love to feel that I have contributed to a Church in which every Christian disciple believes they are a front-line evangelist”.

“It’s something I’ve tried to preach and encourage,” he says.

One gets the impression that this is the sort of ministry with which Dr Clarke is most comfortable.

“I was always a bishop who loved going out and about in the diocese and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed meeting people, hearing their experiences, hearing of their faith, sharing faith stories with people in different parishes throughout the diocese of Armagh," he says.

“I think I am at heart a diocesan bishop.”

Part of the challenge of being Archbishop of Armagh is balancing the different aspects of the role.

“You are a diocesan bishop and a sort of actor-manager for the Church of Ireland,” he observes.

“You don’t obviously manage the Church of Ireland but you have to know what is going on and have to try and bring influence on some of the decision-making from an administrative point of view.

“But you also have to be able to go round the country as invited and be able to present the Church of Ireland to an outside world as best you can.”

The Anglican Communion dimension has to be accommodated too, though Dr Clarke says this was his "third priority by quite a long distance”.

I ask Dr Clarke about a curious controversy which developed towards the end of his tenure as Archbishop.

Church of Ireland bishops are elected by a group of lay people and clergy known as an electoral college.

The majority of its members are drawn from the vacant diocese but there is also input from other parts of the Church. The college's decision is then forwarded to the Church's bishops for confirmation.

Following the election of Belfast minister Rev David McClay as Bishop of Down and Dromore late last year by a 51-strong electoral college, a letter from a group of 36 clergy based almost exclusively in the Republic was published.

They insisted that Mr McClay should be barred from the episcopacy because of his involvement in a group called Gafcon which, they alleged, meant he opposed the ordination of women.

Gafcon - the 'Global Anglican Future Conference' - was established in 2008 by the leaders of the majority of the world's Anglicans in response to what they believe is "moral compromise, doctrinal error and the collapse of biblical witness" in parts of the Church.

However, it proved to be a rather embarrassing episode for the letter writers, who were in error in a number of significant ways, not least because Mr McClay's obvious support for women clergy has been borne out in practice during his ministry.

The opposition to Bishop McClay - his election was duly confirmed and he was consecrated last month at a service led by Dr Clarke - has been described by some as virtue signalling.

It certainly wasn't in keeping with the courtesy and decency Dr Clarke has modelled.

Although he personally doesn't believe there is a need for Gafcon "within the Irish context", Dr Clarke says it was "disappointing that the kind of head of steam built up to suggest that somehow the house of bishops had the authority and the right to overturn a decision of an electoral college".

“David was elected by an electoral college and the house of bishops’ ratification of that election is not a rubber-stamping,” he explains.

“There are three things of which we have to be assured. First, that the election was done properly; second, that there is no evidence of any moral misdemeanour in the individual that might not have been known to an electoral college; and third, that there is no record of acting outside the faith and order of the Church of Ireland.”

There was “no indication whatsoever that David won’t work with the rest of the House of Bishops”, he adds.

In common with many other denominations, the Church of Ireland has had a lively debate over sexuality and marriage and the tension between biblical authority and following culture.

"I don't say it's the end of the matter, but I think the Church of Ireland overall has tried to have a good, decent, reasoned debate and has found a way in which it can contain the different strands," he says.

Abortion is part of a culture that sees life as a commodity - and, for some people, an accidental commodity - rather than as a gift. That affects beginning of life issues, and it affects end of life issues

Another challenge with which the Church must grapple, says Dr Clarke, is "our reverence for creation".

“Creation has been given as God’s gift. In this country we have luxuries as a result of that, that we haven’t deserved,” he says.

"Other people are undoubtedly dying while we luxuriate in aspects of the creation that should be cared for rather than simply abused.

"It's a deeply Christian issue but it's becoming more and more prevalent.

“If Christians don’t understand it from the context of our duty to God and to neighbour, and just see it as a kind of political and trendy thing, we are in trouble.”

Orthodox Christians, led by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Constantinople, have a better grasp of the gift of creation and ecological justice, he says, while “we’ve been fairly lackadaisical”.

We talk about other questions with which the Church, and Christians, must be concerned.

"How do we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ so that it is intelligible to those who have almost been inoculated against it?" he asks.

“That’s always been the challenge and will go on being the challenge."

Christians must have a willingness “to communicate the gospel not simply forcefully but also intelligently” to people “in such a way that they don’t just hear churchy language”.

Meanwhile, the relaxing of abortion legislation is a "step into darkness".

"It's part of a culture that sees life as a commodity - and, for some people, an accidental commodity - rather than as a gift. That affects beginning of life issues, and it affects end of life issues.

"If we do not believe that all human life is a gift, but a commodity that we own, then why would you not drift towards euthanasia?

“Christians need to stand up for the fact that life is a gift of God. Every Christian should be ready to think the consequences of what’s going on at the moment and not just leave it to clergy to preach about it.”

He notes that politicians "who possibly could have done something about it did not choose to do so because they thought they had other priorities".

Stormont's three-year absence, meanwhile, was "tragic for the people who most needed to have an operating government - children, medical services and social services... There's no doubt that the most vulnerable have suffered dreadfully".

"It did drive the Church leaders into a far more forceful position," says Dr Clarke.

"We could see around us the effects and just found it incomprehensible that public representatives couldn't see it."

The Assembly's return is therefore welcome and ought to leave Northern Ireland “in every way a healthier place”.

"The very fact that people of different political viewpoints are together in one place is a start but their first task is to restore confidence in political structures," he says.

"If people lose confidence in democratic structures they go elsewhere to look for political salvation.

"We've seen that through history - in Ireland, Germany, Spain, Italy and elsewhere - when people lose trust in democracy they go for the 'messiah' - and not the one they should be thinking of.

“The politicians also need to do a good service to those who have suffered over the last three years.”

During his time in Armagh, Dr Clarke has built a firm friendship with his Catholic counterpart Dr Eamon Martin.

"It's something I'm going to miss - and he will miss me too. It's a genuine friendship and it's enabled us to do things that would have been unimaginable."

That includes jointly leading groups to First World War sites at the Somme and Flanders, as part of an effort to understand Ireland’s “multi-layered narrative” to the Great War.

And though Dr Clarke says he isn't "a person that speculates about the future", for those who have valued his leadership there is perhaps some hope that he may yet have more to contribute.

"What does a retired Archbishop do? I know what a retired Archbishop doesn't do - that is to show any apparent interest in what the Church of Ireland is doing. That's the only rule I know of," he says.

"Other than that, if I'm asked to do things and it's not treading on people's toes, I'll happily do it."