Perhaps not surprisingly, the first review of my book on Michael Ramsey comes from the Church Times, in the issue of 31 July. The reviewer is Graham James, bishop of Norwich, to whom my thanks are due. Read the full review (PDF).

As is the case with most reviews, James points out a factual error, where I have indeed misnamed a theological college (or rather, applied a later name change to an earlier period). I rather think that if this was my worst mistake, I should think I had done quite well. More interesting are some points of interpretation of subsequent Anglican history, which I mention here.

James quite rightly notes a mismatch between the memoirs of archbishops and those of the politicians with whom they interacted, where evidence of influence is as absent in the latter as it is present in the former. He asks whether this is self-delusion on the part of ecclesiastics, or an attempt to downplay influence on the part of politicians, in memoirs often written at a later point in time. I suspect the answer is something of both.

One of the central burdens of the book is that, as Ramsey sought and gained greater autonomy from the state while overseeing the emptying of the moral law of its Christian content, there opened up a space and an opportunity for the Church of England to discover a more prophetic role for itself, speaking the truth to power from a greater distance. James, I think correctly, notes that “it has never emerged, except, perhaps, in the Runcie years under an archbishop rather at home with the Establishment.” There remains a whole new research project into why the Church of England didn’t grasp the opportunity.

James also suggests that one of the results of the greater autonomy of the church to make its own decisions was that “the Church of England became increasingly captive to its own internal political factions. Ramsey seems to have been innocent to this possibility…… His grasp of ecclesiastical politics was immeasurably weaker, and his interest even less. We suffer from the consequences still.”  Certainly the General Synod can be partisan, as more recent transactions such as those over the ordination of women bishops show. But so could the Church Assembly be that preceded the Synod, and a great deal less efficient with it. One would hope that no-one would seriously now argue that the Church of England needs Parliament to help mediate when it can’t make up its own mind (which is what this view seems to me to imply.) If there is partisanship, it isn’t the fault of the Synod as an apparatus, but is about people and culture and an endemic lack of trust between members of the same church. I don’t think Ramsey could have done much to change that, at least.