Video for March 19th, 2026
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I’m recording this at Whitby on the North East coast. Its now more famous for Dracula and gatherings of Goths, but it played a very important role in the development of Christianity in these Islands. The Synod of Whitby was held near here in 664, 12 years before the foundation of the diocese of Hereford. It was summoned by St. Hilda’s double monastery at Streonshalh, later called Whitby Abbey. Its main purpose was to set the date of Easter and decide on haircuts for monks. The first had more political significance than the other. The ancient Celtic church centred on Iona in Scotland and its extensive network of daughter houses still observed an 84 year Easter Cycle, whereas the new tradition kept in Rome by this time was a 19 year cycle adopted from the church in Alexandria. In the kingdom of Northumbria, these two traditions co-existed, as each had been encouraged by different royal houses. At one time this led to visible disunity in the Northumbrian court. Queen Eanfled observed a different day to King Oswiu. One faction was celebrating Easter while the other was still observing Lent! The result of the Synod was the adoption of Roman practices. The Ionian monks threw their toys out of the pram and went back to Iona and carried on their traditional practice.
Whitby marked a transition away from a dispersed church towards a more centralised one much more entwined with political power.
Hilda was a key player in the conversations. She already had a reputation for wisdom and was frequently consulted by local kings for advice. Bede wrote, “All who knew her called her mother because of her outstanding devotion and grace”. The Synod was largely a conversation between clerics, although King Oswiu, who presided, eventually made the judgement. Unlike many medieval Synods, it was quite likely a short meeting of a day or part of a day. Nicaea took 8-10 weeks! Councils in the Bible were probably more like Whitby than Nicaea. The Council of Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15 to discuss how gentiles were to be incorporated into the growing (but then largely Jewish) church was probably short also. That’s a Council that is worth studying in some detail.
The Church has frequently been confronted with difficult decisions. Sadly, the really intractable ones often lead to division. We managed to stay more or less together until the great schism of the 11th century between east and west. But since the reformation, the slightest disagreement seems to have resulted in new denominations. We are at about 22,000 and counting now. Some of these splits are about deeply held convictions. Others, sadly, are more to do with power and the recognition of legitimate authority, as indeed Whitby was. Unity is much more important than we protestants have traditionally given it credit. Jesus cited the way we get on with each other as the best evidence for the Gospel. A desire for institutional unity flows from that conviction. Our culture doesn’t promote the idea of disagreeing agreeably. I think its an especially important part of our current witness and calling.
We need the wisdom of the Hildas to navigate the choppy waters of disagreement. Part of the love for others she no doubt advocated was a desire to see Christ in one another. We do well to avoid caricaturing and ascribing motives to those with whom we disagree. I have mercifully given up social media for lent, but before I stopped, I did notice on some of the change advocate streams around the LLF debate a tendency to see those on the more traditional side as in some way psychologically inadequate. Their position, incomprehensible to those who advocate for change, couldn’t be a genuine conviction about biblical texts coherent with the churches reading of them for 2000 years and which still remains the interpretation of most biblical scholars, both liberal and conservative. It had to be something about their childhood or personality that predisposed them to a rigid way of thinking. Conversely, the tendency of some on the traditional side to regard advocates for change as biblically illiterate was equally unpleasant. When we get into ad hominem arguments of this type we are in deep trouble. We will just have to accept that people come to different conclusions whilst holding an equal regard of the authority of the biblical material and a desire to witness to the gospel.
The talk of different spaces, third provinces or delegated episcopal oversight as a means of resolving our current difficulties is frankly bonkers in a diocese like ours. I doubt whether any of our churches have sufficient cultural and theological homogeneity to choose one way or the other without blowing the Church up through an unholy row or splitting congregations away from their clergy. Neither seem especially desirable to me. While the conversation continues, which from the recent vote of General Synod it will, we will just have to love one another, be kind to each other, think the best of one another, accept one another, and welcome LGBTQI+ people to worship, as I hope we have always done.
We need the wisdom of Hildas and Milburgas and the kindness of the Aidans and our other founding saints to chart a course together
+Richard