INTERVIEW: Paul Bayes

Former Bishop of Liverpool, Paul Bayes, talks about his new book, The Door: Fragments of the love of God …

 

How did you choose the title of the book – The Door?

It was based on my farewell sermon to the Diocese of Liverpool in 2022, which took the theme of a door from the Bible readings set for the day.

The Door was going to be a different book before your late wife, Kate, became ill and very sadly passed away - how did it change over time?

Our plans and hopes for retirement were derailed by illness and death. After Kate died I returned to the book, and the section “Altitude” in particular was written out of that experience.

How can adversity, pain, and grief inform our relationship with God? Can it bring us closer to God?

Absolutely - though it can also radically change the way we perceive God’s grace and love. I try to write about this in the book.

How can people who feel they have been humiliated, abused, and disenfranchised (sometimes by the very Church they have tried to be a part of) still sense fragments of God in their lives?

All through its life the church has tried and failed to live up to the example of Jesus. If we’re honest about these failings, then good can come from it. But if the church takes refuge in legalities or in obscuring what we really think and feel, then we communicate untruth to a world that’s looking for truthfulness. I think that it helps to say what we think, and to do what we say. If you don’t, you soon find that wounded people have very good antennae for hypocrisy.

As the former Bishop of Liverpool, do you welcome the appointment of the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury and what is your hope for the Anglican communion in the next decade?

As a theological student many years ago I was taught by a priest/doctor, Michael Wilson. He used to say that nursing was not a para-medical profession. Instead, we should see medicine as a para-nursing profession - in other words the human connection of nursing care is more central to healing than the technical interventions of medicine, necessary as these are.

Bishop Sarah is a person with a profound lived experience of nursing and of priesthood, and I rejoice in that. I believe that in the church we would do well to avoid hiding behind theologically technical, legal and procedural shields, and instead connect more transparently with one another. At least that would mean that our disagreements speak of Jesus rather than of the game-playing or posturing which marks the world Communion at this time. Perhaps Archbishop Sarah will be able to model that honesty for us all.

The political climate is particularly polarised at the present time – how can the central tenets of the Christian faith be repackaged and communicated to help try and heal some of these divisions and bring about a renewed sense of community?

Pope Francis refused to wear the snazzy red slippers that Popes had worn before him, and went about in his shabby old black shoes, getting them repaired when necessary. I believe in an old-black-shoes Christianity, which walks and lives and loves in its brokenness alongside people in their brokenness. Truthful Christianity, even if it’s shabby, will regain a place in people’s hearts and minds in a way that super-pure snazzy Christianity, shiny-red-slipper Christianity, can never begin to do.

Away from theology, Scripture and prayer, where do you find spiritual solace these days?

You’re asking the wrong guy! I read theology in the bath! But I also have children, grandchildren and friends to share with. Both books and people speak of the love of God. And I find spiritual solace in both.

Paul Bayes was the eighth Bishop of Liverpool in the Church of England before his retirement in 2022. He was previously Bishop of Hertford. As well as The Door, he has also written The Table: Knowing Jesus – Prayer, Friendship, Justice for DLT.

The Door: Fragments of the love of God is available now in paperback, priced £12.99.