A friend of mine came to visit a few days ago whilst having an enjoyable trip to France. He had been a continuing Anglican priest in the 1990’s and returned to the Church of England, went through the selection process and was conditionally ordained in an English cathedral. He served for some years in a team ministry and is now more or less retired. He shared his reflections with me. Being in the mainstream certainly gives a sense of stability and respectability, but yet there is the sacrifice of the initiative and inventiveness we enjoy when we are marginal. It is an interesting thought. I had to conclude that I am socially disconnected and simply don’t have the profile to imagine that I would fit into the Anglican establishment. It was simply an intuitive realisation – quite apart from ideological considerations and theological issues – which can save an awful lot of heartache.

This is also what I discovered as a Roman Catholic deacon, even in a traditionalist context and then faced with the realities of French rural parish ministry. In the mainstream, you have at least an illusion of respectability and a decreasing degree of stability, as bishops move their priests around far too frequently in order to keep them under control and stifle initiative. Stifle freedom and you don’t have to worry about the headache of having your authority challenged! That is wise episcopal management, keeping your diocese free from conflict. But how much freedom does that give to the Christian spirit?

Churches, big and small, only reflect human nature. Many independent Catholic and Anglican jurisdictions are observed to split and multiply at a rate of knots, this being an argument to convert people back to the mainstream. Indeed, such bodies are often established as miniature replicas of the mainstream churches. All the trappings are there, or at least described on their websites: canon law, bishops and curial offices, somewhere for people to send donations and so forth. Scratch the surface, and we find that the church in question is just a group of bishops who get together from time to time – for a consecration or an ordination.

Then we think of the history of Old Catholicism from 1724 and 1870 over questions of politics essentially (Jansenism was just the red herring), the movement of Archbishop Lefebvre and more independently-minded parish priests and the continuing Anglican movement, we find a story of men and women taking things into their own hands. When a church jurisdiction is small and marginal, it is wise to keep structures to a minimum and have something of an “anarchist” mind. There are many clergy in the world who serve in solitary vocations and render service in the secular world with an interior Christian motivation. Like the “underground” Church behind the old Iron Curtain, many communities have refrained from trying to look like the mainstream. They try to find internal cohesion through friendship rather than organisational structures.

We here enter the world of freedom, the notion according to which Berdyaev said that anyone who has come from a background where their faith was free cannot submit to an oppressive and deterministic system. But, this freedom comes with the resolve to renounce power ourselves, cease wanting to control others and decide what is “best” for others. It is such a notion of love and respect of freedom in Christ that attracts me to Christianity in any form.

Any of us who has known something of what some call DIY Christianity can get very frustrated at the sheer amateurism we find. I was trained in the mainstream, albeit where there were traditionalist and conservative options, but within the institution. I had a good university education to Licentiate standard and a solid training in a Tridentine style seminary. All that gives a sense of regularity, routine and discipline. Many independent clergy haven’t had that kind of background, and it is easy to pooh-pooh them and judge them. We can become very frustrated and begin to hanker for the mainstream. I believe that this is what happened in the TAC after decades of frustration with the inability of marginal communities to offer the institutional stability of the mainstream. Most of us thought along those lines rather than get “warm feelings” over the idea of being in communion with the Pope. The justifying theology comes a posteriori. It is what makes a bishop or a priest prepared to sacrifice his vocation and become a Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican layman. It has happened again and again, as it is happening with Archbishop Hepworth like Archbishop Mathew a hundred years before.

Is it really a problem to live on the fringe of anything one could recognise as a church? There are always opportunities for ministry, even if it is just being a good and kind man in the secular world motivated by one’s faith and spirituality. How do we learn to be free? That is the drama of humanity since the dawn of history, the whole story of Moses and his people in Egypt and the Exodus to the Promised Land. The story is both historical and an allegory, as all biblical stories are.

Some people are made for freedom and independence, and living out of the box. Others aren’t. Some need magisteriums, codes of canon law, popes, institutions, expensive churches, paid clergy and so forth, but they have to recognise that they are property and dominant men and their bureaucracy are their owners. Others are made for freedom, friendship, being ourselves and not some image others want of us. This is what we will find in all walks of life. Some people like to work in a structured corporation or company, and others prefer to set up a small business and organise our own work. Some live in cities in rabbit hutch apartments. Others live in the country or near the sea. The mainstream churches can only really cope with the corporate type of person, and is always disturbed by initiative and prophecy.

It is good to have references and rules like Tradition, canons, constitutions, the Bible, the Creed, whatever – and these are often sources of wisdom by which we can judge the rectitude of our conscience. But, to be free, we have to stand on our own feet and manage. A solitary sailor can take his boat out to sea and be free – but has to manage if his rigging breaks and the mast comes down. He has to jury rig and get the boat home somehow. Jesus calls us friends, not servants, but friendship is something very special.

Freedom has another downside – we cannot behave like the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm. We are called to respect in others what we would like ourselves. Do unto others what you would have done unto you. It is as simple as that. Our freedom ends where that of other people begins. Forget that, and you end up like Hitler!!! We often speak with the voices of others, bringing baggage from our churches of origin or the churches we passed through on the way. When we arrive in the desert, we long to return to the old fleshpots if only they would change somehow – allow married priests, ordain women, bring back the old Mass, whatever. The mainstream will change to make people unhappy but everything else will remain the same. We have our desert and we have to assume it, or surrender our personality and accept the all-or-nothing sentence: You’re good for nothing and you have only to die! The friend I mentioned earlier was offered a parish with one of the most beautiful churches in England – but his job would have been raising funds and meetings and administration, just about Jack Squat in terms of pastoral work. We long for a congregation, but have to realise that you have to be in the mainstream to have one, and then you belong to someone else…

We have to carry on, putting our hand to the plough and not looking back. We won’t be paid for being priests and security in life is but an illusion. We learned our theology in Rome, Fribourg, Oxford, Cambridge, whatever – and we continue to refer to them. But they are in the past for us, and we are history for them. We are in the Church and the Church is in us through our faith and our participation in the Sacramental life. All that is needed is the Eucharist, a valid priest to celebrate it, the faith and a right intention to be in communion with the body of the Church. At the same time, we need to come up with something original.

I have little experience of most of independent sacramental Christianity, and it is different over in America than here in Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim Europe. The mainstream churches have experimented with alternative forms of ministry like the Worker Priest movement, but find such alternatives difficult to integrate and control. I do believe that the future of Christianity resides in its ability to adapt and be independent from the old Constantinian and Erastian institution. It is an operation that involves picking up the crumbs from under the Master’s table. Naturally, the farmer’s fields are filled with both good wheat and weeds!

Those who are left behind and faced with the burden of freedom can only expect flak on the blogs and being trashed by the mainstream church zealots. Their victory over us is only a part of their own quest for security and certitude. On this Feast of St Francis of Assisi, what do we care if we are trash and “chopped liver”? So was Christ when they took him out and crucified him. We need to cease to justify ourselves, trying to make ourselves look more “respectable” or an imitation of the mainstream.

A serious concern is accountability. If we see sins in others, we have no reason to believe we are any better ourselves than those we judge. OK, I’m not a serial killer or a paedophile, but I do have issues of conscience. From that point of view, we need references to “calibrate” our consciences, to keep them upright and true. This is the real drama of freedom. You can go out to sea in a boat, but you still need navigation equipment and a chart to find where you want to go and get there. We need a compass, and the Church is often compared with this piece of equipment that tells us where we’re going, or if we are going the wrong way.

This is the real challenge, because we are accountable to God and all human beings we come into contact with. There are also the earth and nature, the land and the sea, the animals and plants of our planet. The Church as a compass is great in theory, but often in practice, we can’t trust this or that priest. Credentials often hide heinous crimes and spiritual darkness. A group of independents often proves to be a bunch of nutters! One of the lessons we learn from Jung and others is that it is in finding our own personality and individuality that we connect with other people and creation in a concept that is far wider and deeper than ecclesial communion.

God gives us grace, but we are ourselves responsible for finding the way. Who is willing to take up the challenge of freedom?