With all of the excitement from Russia and Wimbledon and questions about how the Government is dealing with Brexit, it is not difficult to miss the fact that the Church of England’s ultimate Governance committee is meeting in York this weekend. Indeed even their meeting was suspended for 90 minutes to watch the match with Sweden so the General Synod is not locked away from the rest of the world. However a person who I met when she worked in Brighton for Radio Sussex as their religious affairs producer and who has now become part of the mainstream BBC religious affairs department has been explaining how different the two Archbishops have been to previous General Synods. Neither of the men have been willing to be interviewed by Alex, whereas in previous years the Archbishop of Canterbury was willing to be interviewed by numerous organisations including the BBC. It seems rather concerning, although my own connection with the Church of England is now purely historic, that these men are behaving in the same way as Cabinet Ministers when it comes to being asked for interviews. They should have nothing to hide and a great deal to communicate. Clearly both of them suffer from the internal disagreements within the Church which are probably just as intense as those within political parties, but it seems as though the Church has lost its way a bit if a man who was clearly very media friendly a few years ago is now much more inaccessible.

Of course both of these men shown above appear to be media savvy to those on twitter as around about the time that Alex was communicating her disappointment at being denied an interview by both men, both were on twitter (assuming that they both run their own twitter accounts). John tweeted “I’ll be preaching at the Eucharist service at 10am @York_Minster today. Join us in worship & song! @DioceseOfYork” and within a few seconds it was retweeted by Justin. The idea that people outside of the Church will go to a Church Service to listen to one of the men, who is denying access to broadcasters misses the point of how communication works. York Minster will no doubt be full, but the airwaves are lacking any direct connection to either men!

I remember back in March following a presentation I heard in Sussex regarding a new way of building communities from a business that had achieved something similar in Kent, that Justin was on the One Show talking about how important Placemaking is. I wrote to his office explaining about the opportunity and suggested that his team link up with the church structure in Sussex and persuade them to engage with the process. The response was very courteous but did not go anywhere very quickly. It was a similar way in which MPs and Ministers respond to correspondence, albeit with a bit more humanity.