15: Ecumenical Dialogues with Jamie Hawkey

Jamie Hawkey: And of course, within the Christian tradition, as we know, there is this extraordinary intellectual
life. But that has to be rooted in the life of prayer, because if it’s not, then it just becomes an exercise in
speculation, and that’s no good. And more importantly, it’s not of any use to anyone.
Brandon: Hi, I’m Brandon Nappi.
Hannah: Hi, I’m Hannah Black.
B: And we’re your hosts on The Leader’s Way, an audio pilgrimage from Berkeley Divinity School, the
Episcopal Seminary at Yale University.
H: On this journey, we reflect on what matters most in life as we talk about all things spirituality, innovation,
leadership, and transformation.
B: Hey, Hannah.
H: Hey, Brandon, how’s it going?
B: It’s going really well, because I am planning a pilgrimage to the Eternal City, Rome, Italy, this spring.
H: Are you really?
B: I am. So I had the great privilege of spending a year living right in the historical center of Rome. And as
some of our listeners may know, my mother passed away just about a year ago. And she made us promise
that we would all take a family trip to the motherland.
H: Oh, my goodness.
B: Yeah, the year following her death. And initially, we just sort of thought, like, Mom, why are you being so
morbid? And it was actually a really, really great gift that she made us make this promise to her. And so we’re
planning various sites that we’ll go visit, various churches that we don’t want to miss, and various restaurants
that we want to make sure are part of the pilgrimage.
H: That’s amazing. What are the top things on the list? Or what are you lobbying for?
B: Well, we’ll begin in Florence, and we’ll pack up my daughter, Sophia, who will just be finishing up a
semester. And then we have a full seven days in Rome.And so, I’m thrilled to hang out at the Vatican Museum
while I have, you know, lots of time, more time than I certainly had as a student. I’m really excited to go to the
Anglican Center and visit St. Paul’s, you know, the Anglican Church in Rome. And I’ve just discovered that
there’s another Anglican church near the Spanish Steps that maybe some of our listeners know. So I’m kind of
on the Anglican tour of Rome,
H: oh, wow, Look at you go!
B: … Which is sortof a fun, new way to explore the Eternal City. Yeah.
H: Oh, my goodness. My husband and I also once went on a Rome trip where we just kind of declared that it
was going to be a Cacio e Pepe tour. So we went to four different restaurants to try to discern what the best
Cacio e Pepe in Rome really is. I have no answers for you. They were all amazing.
B: So I have three restaurants on my Cacio e Pepe list. But I’ll need your … your sage experience.
H: Mmmmm hmmm … I’ll dig up my notes, because I do have notes.
B: We should in the show notes, share the Massimo Batura Cacio e Pepe recipe. Oh, do you know this story?
H: No.
B: So I’m gonna get some of the details of this a little wrong. Or I may exaggerate the story a little bit, but you
can get the story on the Chef’s Table show on Netflix. The first … I believe in the very first season.
H: Oh, cool.
B: They do a whole episode of Massimo Batura, a wonderful Italian chef. And let’s see, there was a storm,
maybe a power outage in the warehouses that kept Parmigiano Regiano cool.
H: Oh, right.
B: And so these warehouses couldn’t keep the cheese cool. And they were going to lose like thousands of
wheels of cheese, right? And so Massimo Batura sort of put the Parmigiano Regiano industry on his back and
went online and started teaching the world how to make Cacio e Pepe. And they sold in like a week, before the
cheese spoiled, like thousands and thousands of these great big wheels of Parmigiano Regiano. And so he
became like the hero of the industry.
H: Talk about creativity and innovation. Leadership.
B: Oh, my gosh. I may have preached a sermon on this story, in fact, in the past, I mean,
H: It’s asking for it. Really. I have another recipe to share in the show notes, which is for rochata. I would say
it’s most similar to a cinnamon roll, but different. It comes from Assisi. And I learned of it in Assisi when today’s
guest, Jamie Hawkey, brought myself and a bunch of other chapel wardens and Clare College people to an
ecumenical monastery in Assisi as a chapel retreat from Clare College, Cambridge. It was just amazing and
beautiful. And one of the monks told us you have to go to this bakery, ask for the rochata. And it was so good
that we got home and like googled furiously how to try to figure out how to make it.
B: Wow. Every day I learned some new secret skill that you have. There’s the baking skill, there’s the crochet,
knitting, quilting. I think my skill is just learning.
B: Is there a better skill? It’s the mother of all skills.
B: Another skill I’ll name was pivoting effortlessly from my Rome monologue. Because Rome actually tees up
our guest.
H: Well, okay. Let me just tell you about the Reverend Dr. Jamie Hawkey. Jamie Hawkey is canon theologian of
Westminster Abbey and chair of the Westminster Abbey Institute. And he’s a chaplain to his majesty, the King,
having first been appointed as a chaplain to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2017. And Canon Hawkey is a
Bye-fellow of Clare College Cambridge, which is why I know him. He’s also a visiting professor in theology at
King’s College London. So before he was canon theologian at Westminster Abbey, which, Hannah Fitch, I
know you’re listening and you just desperately want me to say “Wabby.” So there it was. That was for you.
Before he was at Wabby, he was Dean of Clare College Cambridge. And at Cambridge, he was basically the
priest in charge of the college as well as a theologian who was teaching undergraduates and grad students.
Jamie’s teaching and research focuses a lot on ecclesiology and ecumenical theology. So we’ll ask him about
that today for sure. The other thing that you just really need to know about Jamie is that he is the reason I met
my husband. Because we showed up in 2018 to Clare College Cambridge, and Jamie like poached each of us
to be… I think he sniffed us out. It was like this person might volunteer to be a chapel warden. So, he got both
of us to be chapel wardens. And that’s how we met. We met at our first chapel warden meeting that year over
some soup.
B: Wow. So he was also a matchmaker.
H: Yeah. In fact, before COVID, COVID-fied our wedding, we were planning to have a matchmaker throne for
Jamie to surprise him with as his seat at the wedding.
B: I feel like there needs to be a Clare College reality show where he matches people up. And he’s the person
who brought you to Assisi where you tasted that pastry right?
H: Yes. Yes. So as the Dean, there were several years in a row that he led a retreat to this ecumenical
monastery, San Masseo in Assisi. It’s just so beautiful. It’s like at the bottom of the hill and you get to go and
live and work with the monks doing things like pruning the grapevines that they make wine from and raking
hay. And we did some moving rocks. It was very hot … but we also then would go to liturgies, and pray
together, and eat together all around a big table in silence, and the monks would cook different things for us.
They made so much fun of us because our favorite thing was the panzanella. We’re just throwing out Italian
dishes for everyone to try left and right today. But our favorite thing was the panzanella and they ruthlessly
made fun of us because they were like … that’s the leftover food. That’s the stale bread and our leftovers. And
that’s what you liked the most? It is.
B: Oh, the show notes definitely need the panzanella recipe. So in late August, that is daily on the Nappi menu
everywhere.
H: Really?
B: Oh, absolutely. Right.
H: Oh my goodness. Oh, and this is reminding me of another recipe, which is the Claire’s Cornucopia
Lithuanian Coffee Bread, which I would say is the rochata of New Haven.
B: Oh, well, and that one did not maybe bring my wife and I together, but kept us together and keeps us
together.
H: The coffee cake like glue.
B: Okay, this has been the most luxurious and luxuriating intro. It could go on. We’re actually disciplining
ourselves and cutting ourselves short.
H: Yep, yep, yep. Save your further recipes for next week on The Leader’s Way.
B: This is a really fun conversation and Jamie’s my hero. So I think you can enjoy this one.
H: Well, Jamie, thank you so, so much for taking the time to be with us today. It’s especially a pleasure for me
after having had the pleasure of being formed by you at Claire. This is just wonderful.
J: Well, it’s wonderful to see you, Hannah. Really good to be together across the Atlantic in this way.
H: Yes, yes. Well, many of our listeners probably don’t know what a canon theologian does. And of course,
you’re Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey; could you tell us a little bit about your role and what it’s like to
be at Westminster Abbey?
J: Yes, of course. So, the four Canons of Westminster with the Dean make up the Chapter, which is the
governing body of Westminster Abbey. And we’re all crown appointments. So, appointed by the crown in a
process which is outside the jurisdiction of either the archbishops or the Bishop of London or the Church of
England, because the Abbey is what they call a Royal Peculiar, which means that the Dean and Chaps answer
directly and only to the sovereign. So that puts us at an interesting sort of … slight slant, as it were, from the
wider Church of England, because of course, we’re all Anglicans, all of us who are priests here. But it does
mean that the Abbey is free to operate, in a sense, with its own kind of priorities, its own kind of style, we hope
at the service of our Anglican Communion, of our nation; also serving the King and his family and trying to
really ensure that faith is resourced at the very heart of our national life here in the UK. So the four canons are
the Canon Treasurer who deals with the money, the Canon Steward who deals with the welcoming of visitors,
pilgrims, and so on. Then there’s the Rector of St Margaret’s, our church on the North Green, who is
responsible for quite a substantial ministry in Parliament alongside his colleague, the Speaker’s Chaplain, who
is also the Canon Steward, and the Canon Theologian, who is responsible in many ways really for the
intellectual life of the place. So what that means in practice is that I oversee all the Abbey’s learning and
education work. I work with schools, with university students, I also share the Westminster Abbey Institute,
which is our body for engaging with the public square. And that was a project that was put together just over 10
years ago, really asking the question, What kind of moral muscles does public life need now? So we run public
programs. We have a really good fellows program for young public servants; we take between 20 and 25
young public servants each year to be with us on our course, we have residentials, and so on. And it’s
important to say that they’re people of any faith or none. We’re explicit about why we do it, but it’s not an
evangelistic thing specifically. And then we have a series of private seminars that we run for government
departments. So I chair all that. But one of the amazing things about being a Canon of Westminster is that
there is time for each of us to have a ministry in the wider church.
So for me as Canon Theologian, I have a visiting professorship in the theology department at King’s
London. And I’ve still been doing some teaching in Cambridge until very recently. I’m a trustee of various
charities. And this year, I’ve had a visiting professorship at the Gregorian University in Rome, where I was
teaching the history and theology of Anglicanism. So it’s a very, very diverse life.
H: That sounds like a lot for one person. And I do have to say you and Brandon have a Rome connection. Oh,
tell me more, Brandon.
B: Oh, yes, I was hoping that we would write a Rome chapter of this podcast together. So I studied as an
undergraduate with Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame here in the States, at their Rome campus. This was
way back in the 90s.
J: Oh, fantastic.
B: Just really loving that place. And I wonder if you might say something about Anglican Roman Catholic
conversation. I’m heartened to learn that there is a place for an Anglican theologian at a wonderful prestigious
place like the Greg. How do you find the state of the conversation? Are Roman Catholics eager to have this
conversation? I’m a Roman Catholic myself, so I have a horse in the race. And I’m thankful that you’ve helped
these conversations to happen.
J: So I think the first thing that’s important to say is that the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church have
had an extraordinarily deep theological dialogue for over half a century now. The famous, inadvertent, of
course, beginning of that was when Pope St. Paul VI gave his Episcopal ring to Archbishop Michael Ramsey;
that famous story. But of course, what emerged from the common declaration that they signed on that occasion
during that time was the ARCIC conversation, the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, which is
now into three rounds. And I think it’s possible to say, that in terms of basic doctrinal agreement on the first
order matters of the Christian faith, we’re there. There is really no substantial difference at all, even on what we
used to think of as the hot button issues of Eucharist, Mary, ministry. One of the amazing gifts that the ARCIC
process has done has been to reframe those conversations.
So to take one example; on Eucharistic doctrine, you won’t find the word transubstantiation in any of the
ARCIC- agreed statements. That’s not because Anglicans and Roman Catholics fundamentally disagree
anymore on what that means. It’s that actually we’re trying to get beyond habits and vocabulary of strife into a
richer shared language about the nature of the Christian faith. So three rounds of ARCIC, extremely high level
of agreement. The remaining stuff is the tricky stuff. Many of the questions are questions which the whole
church is facing, the Catholic Church included, in terms of gender, sexuality, the nature of the human person,
the extraordinary challenges that are thrown up between local and universal. But I’m, myself, very very hopeful
for this dialogue, partially because the unity of the church is a gift. It’s not something we work for or achieve.
It’s something we learn how to receive. And we do that best when we’re on our knees together, when we’re
praying together.
Second, that we have a huge amount of shared practice with one another across the world in all sorts
of areas, including issues of justice and peace, which help to thicken ecclesiality in some way as the diaconnier
of the church, which is fundamental to her life. And thirdly, it’s important to mention the amazing synodal
process that the Catholic Church is currently undergoing under the leadership of Pope Francis, which is, in my
view, the single most extraordinary, if you like, experiment that any church has engaged in in the history of
Christianity. The idea that at this point, in the modern world–postmodern world, whatever you want to call it–the
world’s largest global Christian communion is seeking this method of synodality, which is reflective of the whole
church’s identity. You know, in the sermon, which John XXIII used to open the Second Vatican Council, which
became the encyclical “Ad Petri Cathedram,” he beseeched the Holy Spirit for a new Pentecost upon the
church. I mean, I think those prayers are being richly answered. Not uncontroversially, of course, but the very
fact that there is this openness to that method, I think, shows that we’re in business.
H: So I want to kind of add more texture to this for our listeners. When we’re thinking about ecumenical
dialogues, whether it be between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican
Communion and the Eastern Orthodox Church, who’s having the conversations and what is the format?
J: So there are the formal dialogues, and for the Anglican Communion, they are based out of the Anglican
Communion office. And indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury invites those members of those formal dialogues
to be properly representative of the diversity of global Anglicanism. Of course, that’s itself a very real challenge
in some ways, because the diversity of Anglicanism; it’s often said we do our dirty laundry in public, but of
course, we also live as a very diverse family in public. We’re not embarrassed about the fact that actually our
Communion includes people who come to really quite different conclusions on all sorts of issues. So those
dialogues, the formal dialogues, people who are formally mandated by their churches to be representative
theologians on these commissions, there’s that level of dialogue. But then, of course, there are the
relationships between people, not least between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Holy Father. And there
was something I think deeply providential about the fact that we have Pope Francis at the same time as we
have in England Archbishop Justin Welby, similar priorities; that we had Archbishop Rowan Williams at the
same time as we had Pope Benedict, very, very similar, rich, extraordinary theologians. So there’s the personal
and the cultivation of personal links across the world. Some of your listeners will know about the IARCCUM
process, which is the pairing of Anglican and Catholic bishops that has happened across the world to, as it
were, cash out some of the fruits of our ecumenical conversation to work together in unity in their own context.
That’s very, very important, I think.
And then there are the informal conversations, including, for example, the Group des Dormes and also
the Malines Conversations Group, of which I’m a member, which by virtue of its informal identity is able to have
the sort of conversations that the formal dialogue at the moment is not having. For example, about Anglican
orders, about gender and ordination, and so on and so forth. So I think it’s a big symphonic operation, if you
like, which is only right and proper when what you’re talking about is the unity of the body of Christ.
H: Right.
B: There’s something that you said that’s really striking me. I think I’ll be reflecting on it for a long time, and I
think it may actually have some import for our political reality here in the United States and the elections that
are now coming. And that is that language, while important and sacred, can actually be a stumbling block to
the reality itself that we’re trying to achieve or name. Sometimes we’re actually wedded more to the language
than to the reality that the language points to. I’m thinking of that old Zen saying, you know, don’t mistake the
finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. And we tend to often, in the world of theology, fall in love with
our language even more than the thing to which the language points. And so I wonder if you want to say
anything about that, and perhaps you can offer us a lifeline in our American political flagmire.
H: No pressure.
J: Well, no pressure. Language is about identity, isn’t it, principally? And the question of, what am I willing to
give up so that somebody else can thrive is, I think, a really fundamental one here. What are our own ecclesial
or political flags or markers that might need to be sacrificed for the good of the whole? What are the dynamics
of our encultured life which work against the flourishing of the whole? How do we deal with them? How do we
encourage our own churches, political parties, families, our own selves to deal with those markers, those
flags– those red flags, very often–that we cling to, like the wreckage of a ship? And how do we therefore
encourage others? And of course, in ecumenical conversation, this is a matter which has been considered in a
wide variety of ways. You know, we speak of first-order and second-order theological issues. There are some
issues over which there is simply absolutely justifiable diversity of approach, just diversity of conclusion.
There are others where Christians require of one another a certain kind of similarity, a certain kind of
sameness. Of course, that’s how the creeds came into being. But I think, being very clear, that what one
requires of other people, one has to require of oneself, if I can put it that way. This is a process of ascesis, a
personal discipline, and that’s a discipline for our churches, a discipline for our political parties, a discipline for
our public life. I think that’s the beginning of an answer.
H: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your recent book that has to do with ecumenism? What are you trying
to accomplish as a theologian in this space?
J: So the volume I think you’re talking about is called Malines: Continuing the Conversations, and that’s a
co-edited book with the Belgian Benedictine Thomas Potr and the American Jesuit Keith Peklers. And it’s really
the first fruit of the work of this Malines Conversations group over the last decade. The Maline Conversations,
which took place, you probably know about them, in the early 1920s; Informal, the invitation of Cardinal Mercier
of Mechelen to a group of Anglican and Catholic theologians to come and just sort of talk, really, about
theological issues for the first time since the Reformation. That was … it was a group of friends, it was informal,
it was not mandated, it was theologically very, very rich. And many would say, well, you know, it sort of petered
out as well, because there was a gap between the closing of those conversations and the initiation of the
ARCIC dialogue, the formal dialogue. But in very many ways, the Maline Conversations were the progenitor of
the formal dialogue. And the current group that was founded, as I say, just over a decade ago, was founded to
begin to ask some of these knottier questions, including a sort of rather fundamental question about mentality
shift. I’ve been doing a bit of work on this myself recently, just as myself. What kind of paradigms do we need
to be working on when we’re talking about the unity of the Church in the modern world? Why is what we have
said about one another theologically not then revealed in how we behave together? You know, these kind of
questions. So I mean, in the book itself that you were kind enough to ask about, you know, there’s quite a lot of
work on ordination rights. There’s a new document, which was released actually a couple of years ago, but
published in this volume, arguing very strongly from a theology of communion for a reassessment of the
negative judgment on Anglican orders of 1896. There are some other very good papers on enculturation, and
other theological areas as well. So it’s very much an edited collection. My own chapter in that with a Flemish
liturgist called Yoris Keltoff is a commentary trying to explain what we were doing in this new document on
Anglican orders.
B: What I’m hearing in all of your reflections, Jamie, and maybe you can speak to this if I’m sensing it correctly,
is a real … Would you call it like a theology of humility? That we desperately need one another. And so the
capacity to be humble and curious become exceptionally important, right? Am I hearing all of this in the right
way?
J: I like that. I like that very much. Absolutely. A theology of humility. Humility not just in the face of one another,
but heaven knows that’s important. But humility, as it were, in the face of God, firstly, before anything else. You
know, the church is not God. The church is the body of Christ. St. Augustine very properly tells us that Christ is
the head and we are the body, you know, totus Christus; very, very important. But I think humility in the
overwhelmingly true and loving face of revelation. And we can be helped greatly here by insights from the
Christian East, that somehow what we have to say about the person of Jesus Christ and the reality of the Holy
Spirit’s sanctifying grace in the world is telling us the truth about the world, about creation and the new
creation, about protology as well as eschatology. And heavens, one has to have humility in the face of that
mystery. Not a mystery in terms of something just being spooky, you know, but in the theological sense of … of
mysterion, which of course is then translated into the Vulgate into Latin as sacramentum, from which we get
sacrament. Humility in the face of that overwhelming mystery, which is generative of truth; a truth which doesn’t
belong to anyone. We don’t possess any of this, you know. So yeah, I mean, a theology of humility is, and
practices of humility are, really important. And that takes us of course back to the political as well as to the
ecclesial. We’re not very good at that on either side of the Atlantic at the moment.
H: Right, you are.
B: I’m pretty sure it’s not the water.
J: Exactly, exactly. Although I mean, there are signs of hope, certainly, in the UK, and I’m sure in the US in
terms of, you know, particular people who one would want to point to as saying, yeah, they’ve got it, you know,
they point us in the right direction.
H: So I want to keep talking about ecumenism, but also to talk about something I know you and I both love
talking about, which is a specific instance of ecumenism in Assisi, where you took me and some of my peers
as a student to an ecumenical monastery called San Masseo. What is an ecumenical monastery? How did you
get involved? Tell us about Assisi.
J: So the monastery in Assisi, the Fraternita in San Masseo, is one of the houses of the Bose community. Now
Bose is a little village in between Milano and Torino, and it was founded by an Italian layman actually called
Enzo Bianchi, just after the Second Vatican Council. And it really is, in its theological style, in its setup, a real
fruit of the Council. There’s no question about that. And when it was set up, the intention was very much that it
would be a monastery which contained both Catholics and non-Catholics, brothers and sisters, by the way. So
Bose is not only ecumenical, it’s men and women. And their charisms are profound. Their liturgical life is
absolutely fundamental, their hospitality, as you know, is very, very rich. They have a strong commitment to
manual work and also to the life of the mind. So this community in Bose grew exponentially really through the
80s and 90s, up to the point where they founded some fraternities. There’s one in Puglia, one in Tuscany, and
one in Assisi, and they do, or they certainly did until recently, I don’t know if they still do, have a sort of
representative brother living in Jerusalem as well, really for a presence in the Holy Land rather than
establishing a house.
I first got to know the community when I was a Ph.D. student, because they run some really first-class
conferences. And I used to go for some years every year to a conference they held on liturgy, liturgical
theology, and often architecture actually, so liturgical architecture. But as you know, Hannah, from our visit
there, and I took, I think it was three, maybe four groups from Clare College to that monastery. It’s a place
where we would pray with the monks, we would eat with them, we would work with them in the vineyards in the
morning, and then we’d go out and do something as a group in the afternoon. And from my perspective as
Dean, what was so extraordinary was seeing people become more themselves on those retreat weeks. For
quite a number, that either meant … they were taking their faith seriously again; in a couple of instances, it led
to baptism and confirmation. But I think for the vast majority of people who came, they came back more alive.
And that is the task of the church today, to point people to the human being, the second Adam, Jesus Christ,
and to say that life in the communion of Jesus Christ is the fullest reality of being human. I think that’s
something of what we were doing there.
H: So much about it is life-giving, like you’re saying. I think I’ve been on a lot of churchy retreats and academic
retreats that are mainly angsty and we have a goal, but this was something that was just generative and open
to whatever generative things the Holy Spirit had for us, I think, which is profound in and of itself. And I should
also say, I think our listeners could book a trip if they wanted to go work in the vineyards.
J: Oh yes, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s important to say, but one ought to say this, when one’s talking about a
spot as beautiful as rural Umbria, the monks don’t run a hotel. It’s not a hotel or a guest house. It is very much
go to be part of their life for a little while. But yeah, absolutely. If you Google “Monestero di Bose” and
“Fretenitas” and “Masseo”, you will find them and there’ll be an email. I spent a month there myself in
November a couple of years ago for some writing. And not only is it somewhere where I’m able to write and
pray, it’s also somewhere where I can sleep. And that for me is very precious.
B: So I wonder if you could take us back, Jamie, and share a little bit about the way your vocational path
unfolded. We have a lot of listeners who are discerning a vocation to priesthood. We have a lot of listeners or
students that we encounter who are discerning Ph.D. programs and really grappling with this struggle … is the
Ph.D. for me? So I wonder as you share your story with us; if maybe you can highlight how you discerned
through both of those, priesthood and Ph.D. studies, because we’d love to know how you became you.
J: The first thing to say, I suppose, in terms of vocation is that I don’t come from a particularly churchy family at
all. And my initial sense of a vocation to the priesthood is the sense that I have now, which is that it is not
primarily an intellectual thing in any way actually, which is ironic given my job. And that I’ve spent so much of
my ordained life working in the academy. But the kind of fundamental root of my vocation to the priesthood,
which is, for me, just about being Jamie, who happens to be a Christian; my priesthood is just simply an
outworking of how I see myself as a Christian. It’s something that is sensed rather than put together
intellectually. So I can give you an analogy. Do you know that feeling if you’re staying with a friend, and you
maybe go into their kitchen, and you smell a smell that you can’t name, but it really means a lot to you, it’s
maybe linked to your early childhood? For me, it was always something that was a combination of cinnamon
and marzipan or something like that, you know? For me, working out what that metaphorical smell, if you like,
has always been, is a vocation to the priesthood.
And of course, within the Christian tradition, as we know, there is this extraordinary intellectual life, but
that has to be rooted in the life of prayer. Because if it’s not, then it just becomes an exercise in speculation.
And that’s no good. And more importantly, it’s not of any use to anyone. So I would say to your listeners who
are considering a vocation to ordained ministry, that this has to be about you being the best possible version of
you you can be. This has to be linked fundamentally to your baptismal vocation, to your identity as a Christian.
That’s not to say it can’t be about other things as well, including words that we’re not supposed to use these
days, like leadership and so on. That’s very, very important. We need people to lead the church, but we need it
to be rooted in their baptismal identity and calling. One’s ministerial priesthood is, in my view, an outworking of
one’s identity in Christ.
So those listeners who are thinking about doctoral study or graduate study of any kind, I would say do
it, do it, do it, do it. The church desperately needs good theologians, and it needs people who can put together
their life of prayer with the life of the mind. Learn how to serve the church. You know, it’s very, it’s very popular
in the Anglican world, in bits of the Catholic world as well, I know, from different perspectives, to be quite down
on the church. And we all know there are all sorts of reasons why the church sometimes disappoints us or
frustrates us, but love the church, love the church. Pray for the church, because the church is the body of
Christ, you know, and the church is us. So do your theological work, challenge the church, help us move in the
life of the Spirit, but love the church too.
B: Oh, I’m cheering over here about everything, but specifically about the role of prayer in the theologian’s life. I
wonder if you could say just another word about this, because it seems to me it’s not a foregone conclusion, for
theologians to be trained without prayer–or maybe there’s sort of a lip service; we sort of theoretically know
that a prayer life is important. But you go on and get a Ph.D. in theology, be a brilliant theologian, and have no
prayer life, not even believe in God, I suppose. And so how does this synergy between the life of the mind and
the life of prayer sort of work for you?
J: Well, the theology of the theologian who has no prayer life will dry up and wither. I think that’s extremely
important to say. And it should, because unless it’s resourced by prayer, unless it is plugged into the living
tradition of the church, it is not theology, right? So I often go back to Evagrius on this, who very
straightforwardly says the theologian is the one who prays. But of course, that tradition is then received later on
in Christian history via diverse strands, including, you know, Martin Luther, famously, the ploughboy is a
theologian too. But I think what we’re talking about here is, in inverted commas, I don’t like this phrase. So with
scare quotes, in some ways, I think what we’re talking about is sort of “professional theology,” right? You know,
people who’ve got the degrees, who tick the boxes, who sit at the tables, who speak and teach with some
degree of authority, perhaps. And I do question whether or not that can really do what it says on the tin without
prayer. I think if there is no prayer, we risk becoming fakes actually. Duds. That’s not to say, you know, we can’t
say interesting things or challenge. I mean, of course, there are all sorts of people, perhaps; I mean, the
person who comes to mind in all this immediately is Hans Kung, who has had a very flickery relationship, I
think, with elements of the faith. Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh in Scotland. I mean, I don’t
know either of them well at all, actually. In fact, I don’t think I ever met Kung, but I’m pretty sure that they would
both have said some degree of acceptance of the reality that is far beyond oneself and of sitting in the
presence of the musterion, of the mystery, the sacramental, is key for the theologian.
H: Can you tell us a little bit about your own prayer life? And I’m wondering how much Westminster Abbey
plays into that.
J: There’s an enormous amount of public prayer here.
H: Yeah, yeah.
J: And that is, in very many ways, a blessing. From time to time, as with anybody who is a regular leader of
public liturgy, that brings its own challenges, because it means that you have to really recommit to your own
personal prayer, your own private life of prayer and contemplation. Because the structures here are in place for
prayer to just be something that happens, as it were, with the timetable. We were speaking a moment ago
about what one might say to people considering a vocation to the priesthood. One of the things I would say to
people considering a vocation to the priesthood is, do not knock the daily requirement to say the divine office.
Because when your prayer life dries up, it will be absolutely key. If you don’t have those lifeboats to jump in
every single day, you’re going to get into some serious trouble. But I think, as I say, there is an amazing daily,
365 days, days a year, 52 weeks a year, you know, every single year, life of public prayer here. And we are
both institutionally and personally committed to that. Those of us who live and work here, when we’re here, we
are there. We’re in church morning and evening when we’re here. That’s absolutely understood. No question
about that. It’s a priority.
But I think also, too, practices like spiritual direction I think are important. Spiritual accountability, so that
we’re accountable to somebody beyond ourselves, that’s quite important. Contemplation, silent prayer. You
know, Michael Ramsey was famously once asked how much time he spent in silent prayer each day. And I
think he said something like, “Oh, 20 seconds.”
And the interviewer said, “Oh my goodness, I thought you were going to say a bit more than that!”
He said, “Well, it takes me 20 minutes to get there.” So know yourself, know what practices work for
you, and commit to them. But be willing to be challenged by others and by yourself. I think that’s important.
One of the scandals of the late 20th century and of the 21st century so far, is that so many people in what we
might for a moment call the Western world have been taken away from the church by contemporary
movements in spirituality and mysticism (in inverted commas.) The church needs to recover her public mystical
tradition as part of public theology. You know? Not a sort of adjunct because we all know it’s there. If you like
that kind of thing in inverted commas, you can go and do the 19th annotation or you can go to this monastery
or go to this retreat house. But let’s keep it quiet. Of course, we’ll talk about it if you want. But a public espousal
of the mystical tradition of the church.
H: Jamie, that’s genius. We’re talking all the time here in the States about how less and less people are calling
themselves Christians or even any kind of religious, but more and more people are calling themselves spiritual.
That’s such an obvious solution. Why are we keeping the monastery for the super-Christians?
J: That’s exactly it, isn’t it?
H: That makes no sense.
J: That’s exactly it. As we know, Hannah, from our trips to San Masseo in Assisi, very often it’s exposure to that
rigorous life of contemplative prayer that is genuinely converting for people.
H: Yeah. People who haven’t considered themselves religious before, who go pray at a monastery and then
say, “Oh, this is what Christianity is about? Let’s do it.”
J: That’s right. That’s right.
B: I wonder about how the arts fit into all of this because I know this is something that you’ve worked on and
you’ve mentioned architecture already. So many of my conversion moments have happened before a piece of
art. I wonder, can Christianity really exist without a flourishing artistic life? I wonder if this is a necessary
ingredient when we think about re-energizing the church. So, how do you understand the arts, and how does it
fit into all of this?
J: Yes. I think, well, there’s so much to say, isn’t there? There is something, I think, in the category of
theological aesthetics that is very, very important for evangelism, for ministry and mission, and that is it has
something to do with the principle of excess, that all art is in some way about excess, about an overflowing,
about a creative expression that goes beyond either the person creating it or even the concepts themselves.
And I think excess is a very important theological category. It’s also important to say that, of course, for many,
many, many centuries, the church was possibly in countries that were monarchies alongside the royal family,
principal patrons of the arts, and it would be very helpful for the church to become a little bit more conscious of
that inheritance and therefore to really be patrons of the arts today. Of course, that’s happening in all sorts of
places, in sculpture, in painting, in music, in architecture. Brandon, you referred to that a minute ago as well.
But I think, again, so much of this is about priority and consciousness. Are we really conscious of the church’s
role as a patron of the arts? Dare we say this might be a priority for the church? Because part of the problem, I
think, there, is that, again, in what we might call the West for a moment, there is so much anxiety. You know,
we’re paralyzed by anxiety about numbers, about money, about attendance. And as we know, in all sorts of
contexts, anxiety is not particularly attractive, you know? It doesn’t really cut it somehow. And I think the arts
and the church’s patronage of the arts is one way to offer a bit of an antidote to the anxiety-ridden nature of so
much of what the church, so much of the way in which the church behaves, if I can put it that way.
H: Yeah, well, and if anxiety is unattractive, the most attractive thing by its nature is beauty. So why would we
not be thinking about the arts? And that’s another way of engaging a public who maybe doesn’t understand
that that’s what’s on the inside of Christianity, is beauty and creativity.
J: Yeah, no, I think that’s absolutely right. I think that’s absolutely right.
B: You mentioned, I think it’s your fellows at Westminster, and you talked about the development of the spiritual
muscles, the theological muscles that you hope they can learn to flex, even in the public square. And I wonder
if you could say a little bit about some of those muscles that you’re hoping that they learn to flex, even if they
don’t see themselves as a person in the church, as a Christian, maybe they’re completely secular in some way,
or they belong to another confession. What import does the church have for folks who are not in it?
J: I think probably I mean, let’s just start with three things. The first is a commitment to the truth, and to truth
being an objective, describable reality in political life, you know, that’s the first thing. And vacillating or putting a
dose of ideology into into how you describe the life of the world is not always helpful. And we’ve had again in
both of our countries, great well-known examples of politicians, public servants not telling the truth. And that
has been deleterious to our public life, has been deeply, profoundly damaging to our public life. But the second
point, which is related to that, is that truth is sometimes complex. It’s often complex, it’s often contradictory. And
you know, the opposite of how one might describe the truth is not necessarily the lie. You know, truth can be a
rich and expansive thing. So, taking into account people’s diverse lived experience of life when articulating the
truth, learning to listen, learning how to describe in a rich way, that’s very important. So those two things for
public life, whether people are Christians or not, the truth as being something to commit to, to commit to telling
and living by, also truth as complex, taking time, being careful. And then maybe the third thing would be
something about what makes a community not only healthy, but flourish with diversity, with difference. It’s very
interesting for the church, all this, because as the Catholic Church embarks on this amazing synodal journey,
and as global Anglicanism risks further fragmentation over all the obvious issues, we need to be asking
questions about how we can stay together. And that’s not a trite, middle-class Anglican thing to say, it’s a
demanding thing. You know, what gifts do we need to receive from one another so that we can live together in
diversity? To put it in another way, one might say, Can love be a political philosophy? Well, of course, the
Christian tradition would say yes. Elements of the non-Christian tradition and even of the secular tradition
would also come to an answer that is not entirely negative on that. But can love be a political philosophy? If so,
we’re in business.
H: That gives me hope for 2024.
J: Absolutely. But of course, we need to remember in all that, love is costly.
H: It is, yeah. It’s not straightforward, requires choice.
H: It’s often not cute.
J: Not cute at all. Exactly right, exactly right. Yeah.
H: Well, one of the things we really love to ask people about is what is giving them hope. I want to ask you that
in two ways because you’re Jamie Hawkey. What are your hopes for the church? And then I also want to know
what is giving you hope. Maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe it’s not.
J: My hopes for the church would be that she is faithful to the Christ who is Alpha and Omega, who is the origin
and the destiny of all things. And that that, as it were, ultimate picture of the sanctification and renewal of all
things in the new creation achieved on Calvary and in the empty tomb is, that’s what the church is about.
Everything else is a sideshow. That’s what the church is about, and drawing people into that.
H: It’s not just the Anglican Communion. It’s the church.
J: Anglicanism is provisional, you know. I mean, it is provisional on the wider church. Of course, there are
dimensions to Anglicanism which are particular and that I want to celebrate and so on and so forth; particular
Anglican contributions. Very important. I love our Anglican tradition. I wouldn’t do what I do and work where I
do if I didn’t think that about it. It would be a rather strange thing to do it if I didn’t believe that. But Anglicanism
is provisional upon the wider catholic whole. It’s straight forward as that. And the church is the sacrament of the
new creation. It is not the new creation, right? The kingdom of God is not just a bigger church, thank God.
H: No, thank you.
J: So let’s keep the picture rich.
H: Totally.
J: What gives me hope? I mean, that gives me hope. The extraordinary, and I think it’s quite important to go
from the macro to the micro as well. You know, chance conversations with people at the door. Doing a funeral
for somebody whose partner suddenly realizes they can turn a page. Hearing someone’s confession for the
first time and realizing that they’ve been carrying stuff around sometimes for years, sometimes for decades,
that they can leave behind. The sense that the church might be able to say something that secular politics
can’t. That gives me hope. My family and friends, the people I love, they give me hope. The tradition gives me
hope. Going for a run gives me hope, you know? It’s not one thing. I think as soon as one says, you know, I’m
just going to hope in this there’s a potential problem. Although of course, one can say that of Christ because
Christ is Alpha and Omega, the firstborn from the dead, the new creation.
B: Thank you for listening to The Leader’s Way. We hope you were encouraged and inspired. To learn more
about this episode, visit our website at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu\podcast.
H: Rate and review us and follow the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Follow Berkeley at
Yale on Instagram for quotes from the podcast and more.
B: Until next time.
H: The Lord be with you.