Third force moves into the frame

METHODISTS sometimes describe themselves as the third force of Christianity in this country. And, as is the way with many third alternatives in our polarised society, they can find it difficult to get into the frame. Sometimes quite literally.
As in my home town of Liverpool where the Anglican, Catholic and Free churches have struck up a highly effective partnership in dealing with the practical dilemmas facing the inner city. Yet in the past when it has come to a photo-call on some newly renovated urban housing estate, the Free Church moderator John Newton constantly would find himself out of the picture when it appeared in the press. Derek Worlock and David Sheppard would be standing there smiling — but no Dr Newton at their shoulders. However, never ones to be daunted by such minor technical hitches, the first and second force church leaders insisited on putting their Free Church partner between them for picture calls, ensuring his appearance in the finished result, as in their collective work for Liverpool.
There are of course reasons why Free Church leaders are noticeably less prominent than their Anglican and Catholic counterparts. They don't wear any extravagant robes for example; they have less authority; and they have a limited period in office. Only Lord Soper has managed to make much impact on the national scene — and that more for his verbal dexterity at Speaker's , Corner each Sunday than for any contribution on a more national platform.
However, times they're a changing with the election of John Vincent as President of the Methodist Conference. Although readily acknowledging his Church's role as the "third force", he is determined that it should not therefore be a neglected force, and he has been hitting the headlines since he took office in June of this year with a series of unflinching attacks on government policies in the inner cities.
It's very hard to pin John Vincent down. After a good six months of trying I managed to meet up with him at Wesley's Chapel on City Road, just along the road for the Herald's offices in central London, and one of the birthplaces of Methodism in this country.
Radical minister
AS those who read Dr Vincent's piece on the development of a British version of liberation theology in the inner cities in the Herald last week will have realised, he is a radical Christian in the best traditions of the Founder. "I saw my job from the beginning to say things in public from the inner cities, and to say them from a radical Christian point of view," he told me.
John Vincent is an unlikely looking radical. Indeed the whole historical atmosphere of Wesley's Chapel, not to mention its location in the heart of the financial centre of London, made his radical statements ring rather hollow. But John Vincent has lived his commitment to the urban poor in Sheffield for many years. And he speaks with real authority on the subject.
"People of every denomination and none know enough of the story of Jesus to know that He was an opponent of the establishment." Yet in Dr Vincent's view all the mainstream Christian churches in this country have drifted
towards being part of the establishment. "We have now to return to a New Testament fundamentalism, to the radical tninistry of Jesus. And indeed we are seeing that in the cities, with those on the fringes of religious orders moving into urban areas alongside the poor, and with young lay Christians in their 20s and 30s working with and for the poor".
And that work for the poor is uniting the denominations as no talks on doctrine can, Dr Vincent feels. The parish model of denominational Christianity is giving way in the inner cities to a new post denominational form of basic Christian community with Christians working together with the same radical goals of solidarity with and justice for the marginalised.
Domestic CAFOD
I'M not quite sure how far down the road that Dr Vincent describes the Catholic Church will be willing to go. Although individual priests, religious and laypeople are giving an inspiring witness to the radical Jesus in the inner cities — like Sr Helena Brennan on North London's Broadwater Farm Estate, described two weeks ago in these pages by my colleague, Rita Wall — the Church institutional has yet to make any comprehensive commitment to the marginalised in this country. By which 1 do not mean that there are not various agencies, supported by the bishops' conference, that do sterling work, but rather that their efforts are necessarily dissipated by the lack of one central, united campaigning body — a kind of domestic CAFOD,
The voice of the Catholic Church would be irresistable if the expertise of such pioneering bodies as the Catholic Housing Aid Society, Westminster diocese's Social and Pastoral Action, the Catholic Children's Societies and such like could be brought together under one umbrella organisation that would give them both adequate funding and strong and consistent hierarchy back-up.
Pipe dreams, perhaps, but if
the Catholic Church is going to answer the questions that pioneers like John Vincent are posing, then our present ad hoc, decentralised structure is in need of reform.
Justice battle TOO often, of course, the burden of making the Catholic stance known to a national audience on social issues falls on the shoulders of one or two individual churchmen Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Worlock being the prime candidates, with Fr Michael Campbell-Johnston, provincial of the Jesuits and the brave Bishop Guazzelli making their voices heard as well.
It is to Cardinal Humc's eternal credit that he took up such an active stance on the plight of the Guildford Four, imprisoned for 14 years for a crime that they didn't commit. The rights and wrongs of our judicial and police systems are now under investigation, and have been dealt with at length in previous editions.
But few can have failed to be moved by two of the Guildford Four, Carole Richardson and Paddy Armstrong, on Yorkshire
Television's excellent First Tuesday programme. As they walked together through the autumn leaves, one got a very real sense of just how much their lives had been shattered — no compensation can ever make up for that. And there was the emotion of their release after all those years of false imprisonment.
What 1 found most amazing and most Christian about the whole programme was Paddy Armstrong's apparent ability to forgive. When he talked about what had happened to him, the beatings, the frustration, he smiled so much he could almost have been describing having a shopping trolley run over his foot.
The final impression of the programme, and not one that was explicitly included in the text, was, for me at least, a determination that the case of the Birmingham Six should now be reviewed. These six Irishmen are
without a shadow of doubt innocent of the crimes of pub bombings and murder they were convicted of. There is no outstanding evidence against them except their own confessions, which, as MP Chris Mullin showed in his book on the subject Error of Judgement, contradict each other in several vital places.
These men have now spent almost 15 years in prison. They have suffered in similar fashion to the Guildford Four, a suffering few of us can even comprehend.
It was therefore good to see last week that Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville of Birmingham broke a long silence on the subject to declare himself in favour of a review of the case. Cardinal Hume is known to be considering the case in private, and he is to be urged, with all speed, to bring his decisive influence to bear in this matter as in that of the Guildford Four, and bring an end to a scandalous injustice.