a strong sense of
presence
Reform's guest
Editor for October, Martin Hazell, talks to the Moderator of General Assembly
Elizabeth Caswell
Being in the
company of Elizabeth Caswell is a wonderful experience. She sparkles,
coos, guffaws and simply glows, making you feel as if you are the only
person she wants to be with in the world. I went one late summer morning
to the Eastern Synod Office and simply enjoyed Elizabeth, clutching a
mug of warmish, but very dark, tea, telling me about anything I wanted
to know. I simply turned the recorder on and asked my first question and
she was off. Twenty five minutes later I managed to stop her flow to get
in my second question. I looked down my list; how was I going to get
through the other seven questions I had prepared? Now I know why they
have discs on that Desert Island.
If you’ve read
Rafael Sabatini’s 1921 novel, Scaramouche, set during the French
Revolution you will remember how it begins: ‘He was born with the gift
of laughter and a sense that the world was mad’. The quote kept coming
to mind as Elizabeth regaled me with the story of her faith journey
using all her storytelling skills to full effect. I asked her: ‘What
makes you laugh?’ to which she replied, ‘almost anything’ and I believed
her completely. ‘Wit, puns, accidental things people say; there’s
nothing like a situation where I mustn’t laugh to make me want to laugh
for half an hour without stopping. Victoria Wood especially makes me
laugh.’
Elizabeth Caswell
started out as a child of a congregational family – they all belonged to
Parkroad Congregatonal Church which is now Gracechurch URC – her parents
were very involved and their parents before them – it was the sort of
church where you could spend the whole of your life; something going on
at all times. Elizabeth fitted in perfectly. I wonder though if her
parents ever thought their little girl was a bit odd. She claims ‘to
have played at ‘church’ like doctors and nurses. I’d come home on a
Sunday night, stand on the kitchen chair and ‘preach’– when I was about
four.’ Ah, a minister in the making! But it was not for little Miss
Elizabeth the usual primary Junior Church activities of model making and
singing All things bright and beautiful: ‘I never liked the sissy girly
sort of things – I was always the more thoughtful kind of person’.
‘I’ve never been very good at being a child. I always wanted to be grown
up. I think I was born middle-age really.’
Life was a lot
better in Juniors – ‘we had discussions, that sort of thing. Then we got
a new minister Fred Holley – and he was just superb. The way he lead
worship and preached – I was old enough to stay in church, and I wanted
to stay in church to listen to him preach.
When I was about
just 12, I fell and broke my leg – I spent the rest of what turned out
to be memorably one of the hottest summers in the 50s with my leg in a
full length plaster cast. I missed quite a chunk of school. I therefore
had a lot of time on my own – and I started reading the Bible and I
realised someone was talking to me. There was somebody in the room – it
was like – this is a conversation. In the silence there was a strong
sense of presence.’
commited to Christ
Elizabeth’s
parents took her to a film – Elmer Gantry (1960). ‘There was a woman
evangelist in this film marching behind a cross through the streets
trying to rescue people from lives of drink and dissipation. And
something just clicked for me: being Christian was about doing things,
following Christ, not just pleasant feelings. I went home and committed
my life to Christ.
‘I then entered a
whole new world of spirituality. A world where God’s there all the time
and frustratingly so – God’s still here – can I have a rest please? It’s
being born again – you enter this new world. Of course it’s been there
all the time but I wasn’t listening or seeing.’
Thoughts about
ministry gradually began to emerge while Elizabeth was at school. She
took up with ‘those of us who were serious about being a Christian, we
had a weekly Bible group’. Looking back it seemed a natural sequence
that lead to her testing her call. ‘It kind of seemed the most obvious
thing to do and goes back to that little girl standing on the kitchen
stool preaching.’
Unsurprisingly,
given her background in the church, Elizabeth holds to a more
traditional model of ministry and is not slow to identify where as a
church, we might have gone wrong: ‘In terms of understanding, knowledge
and communicating the faith I think we have in the last two or three
generations dumped all that on the minister. So that educated ministry
instead of educating others and enabling everyone to grow in faith, has
somehow kept people immature – that’s a gross generalisation I know, but
there is a passivity about some of our church life particularly in
regard to worship and Bible and prayer which I find quite alarming.’ She
longs for the sort of preaching and worship where you acknowledge there
are questions to be discussed, different ways of seeing things. ‘You
should leave worship thinking… well, just thinking would be a start.’
She thought about
that and burst into laughter. I had my chance to slip in another
question. I wanted to know what sustains her, what are the important
ingredients to her spiritual life. There’s the Bible, of course:
studying it, preaching it and sharing it with others. And of course, the
‘kind of prayer where you are quiet and not going through the motions –
closely aligned to music and poetry and friendship and the beauty of the
world around – you need space.’ I chuckled to myself as I imagined God
more in need of the space – just to get a word in edgeways. And as if
reading my mind, she added: ‘Life is a continual conversation with God –
but I like the good solid diet and then go off for a substantial feast
or fast every so often.’
I asked Elizabeth
another ‘big’ question: what did she think about the future of the
Church? This prompted a huge guffaw from her. She took a breath and
launched into what had the hallmarks of a pet subject.
‘Part of me wants
to say: I am not the slightest bit worried about the future of the
United Reformed Church. Another part wants to phrase it differently: I
couldn’t care less about it because it is entirely God’s business. The
big picture is not about the survival of this or that manifestation of
the church but rather: are we faithful to what we perceive to be the big
picture. There will always be the traditional kind of church but we need
fewer of them. We are seeing new and different and radical
manifestations of living a Christian life which are good. We may arrive
at, over the next generation, a united church, but what concerns me far
more is that as Christians we are revived, reignited, reenergised in our
discipleship in a way that we will be able to cope as Christians in
times of real difficulty because that is what I think is more likely to
happen. It will become increasingly difficult to be a practising
Christian. It is therefore imperative that people really know their
faith and can survive as Christians in other parts of the world do now
in times of violence and persecution. Or as a very small minority as our
ancestors did, worshipping in fields and barns.’
thoughtful
Suddenly a new
side to Elizabeth is revealed. Behind what may seem at first a jokey
exterior there is a clarity of vision and understanding that is very
impressive; true to that little girl in Junior Church, she is much more
thoughtful.
She found
moderating General Assembly ‘quite exhilarating really’, delighting in
the mix of the formal stuff and the more relaxed greeting of different
people and giving thanks. ‘It’s a great privilege.’ But it raised and
raises questions for her.
‘How we make
decisions as a church I find quite a difficult area. I think we need to
further explore and refine what we mean by being conciliar. We expect
people with very little knowledge about something to be making huge
decisions that will affect the whole of the church and the people who
know most about it are not exactly sidelined but are disabled somehow.’
This is reflected in her desire for the Church to explore further
Consensus Decision Making in our councils as a way of helping people to
grapple with and debate the issues before they reach a final form on
which votes have to be taken.
The time had
slipped effortlessly away and before I knew it Elizabeth was driving me
back to the station. She waved me off and was gone. Off to another round
of meetings…
Looking ahead she
sees a packed year. Elizabeth Caswell will continue to share her faith
with those who will listen just as she has done all her life: ‘to
encourage people about God and about faith – who God is and what he has
done for us through Christ’.
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