I am here because God called me

Oct 27 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

In the first half of a two-part interview marking his 10th anniversary as Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones pledges the rest of his career to the city. David Charters reports

WELL, everyone knows that Liverpudlians are hard to please. After all, God gave us Paradise Street – so that we could walk down it, tut-tutting and looking depressed, especially in the rain.

“Could do with some improvements along here,” we say, from one to the other with ironic shrugs, before pausing beneath its black and white sign to mull over the problems of the world. You know – the cost of coffee, Cilla Black’s return for the Christmas panto at the Empire, or the fluctuating fortunes of Everton and Liverpool.

Maybe someone will hum a Beatles tune. George’s Here Comes the Sun has a near-Biblical certainty about it, befitting a city that takes Paradise in its stride.

That notion does not seem so ridiculous to the Right Reverend James Jones, in the neo-Gothic splendour of the cathedral at the Anglican end of Hope Street.

At the other end is the conical Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, home of the Catholics. There has been respect and affection between the two communities for many years now.

But, with the 10th anniversary of his enthronement coming on November 8, this moment should be dedicated to Bishop James of Liverpool, as he is known to friends and colleagues.

And this man of strong convictions believes that Liverpool, already the European Capital of Culture, has the potential to be the new Jerusalem.

It has been blessed with natural and man-made assets, which could make it a model for the rest of the world.

And, though his name has in the past been linked with the archbishoprics of York and Canterbury, Bishop James has pledged the rest of his career to Liverpool.

Does that make him a Scouser? Before posing the question, we should remember that Bishop James loves the imagery in words and that, surely, is a familiar local trait. It dresses his answers in poetic passion. Maybe this comes from his love of the Bible, where story-telling is supreme.

“One of the joys of reading it is seeing things you have not seen before, so they leap off the page,” he says.

But is he a Scouser?

“One of the really moving moments for me was chairing the New Deal for Communities (a government programme for tackling deprivation) in Kensington,” he says. “I learned more about Liverpool from that experience than anything else, more about community empowerment.

“Once we were visited by some high-powered team from London that was scrutinising New Deal programmes and they spoke to us in a really arrogant and high-handed way.

“I was angry that they could come and speak like that and I said, ‘please don’t come to us as if we know nothing about the communities in which we live’.

“Local members of the committee came and said, ‘Bishop, you’ve gone native. You’re a Scouser now’. I thought that I had arrived at that moment.”

What is the Scouse character like?

“Oh, I have thought about this a lot,” he says. “There is the most wonderful blend of optimism and pessimism in the city. If you go into a meeting and say, ‘ah, listen, I have got some really bad news’, they’ll say, ‘Oh, come on, it’s not as bad as all that’. But if you say, ‘Oh, I’ve got some great news’, they’ll say, ‘Hold on, it’s not as good as all that’. It is a curious blend.”

As an example, Bishop James recalls attending St Nick’s (Liverpool Parish Church on the Pier Head), after the success of La Machine – the huge mechanical spider, which had been paraded around the streets of Liverpool as a European Capital of Culture event.

With some friends, he then went to the Red Lion pub. “Everybody was saying how made up they were with La Machine,” he says. “I was waiting for the ‘but’ and it didn’t come.

“I don’t think there is too much elation now. Scousers have got their feet on the ground. This year has been a great boost to the city. The pitch being made was that, if Liverpool got the Capital of Culture, it would not just be high art of the elite, it would be for the people and that has happened (it is fair to say here that some won’t agree with the bishop on that).” But he continues.

“From the beginning, the churches and the two cathedrals have played a pivotal role – everything from the wonderful (John) Taverner Requiem (at the Catholic Cathedral), which was one of the most moving musical experiences I have ever been through.”

TAVERNER was the second half of the show, but Bishop James had actually gone for the Rachmaninov Vespers in the first half. “I love the Vespers,” he says. “But then Taverner started. It was mystical, spellbinding, transcendent – words fail me. In our Cathedral, we had Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with Wilfred Owen’s poetry (done in collaboration with Cologne). Sixty years ago, we were bombing each other to death and now we’re united in music and in poetry. That was also moving.”

How does Bishop James, a renowned campaigner for green causes, see Liverpool playing its part in the ecological challenges ahead?

“We all of us have a responsibility. We have to think of the next generation and we have to think what are we doing, each in our own field, to encourage the next generation of leaders.

“The city is addressing that and I think we need to address it energetically, but I know the city is also addressing the greening of Liverpool . . . We have got to move from a linear model to a circular model, so that the energy which becomes waste becomes energy again, a virtuous circle.”

Would he like to stay in Liverpool, as it faces the future? “I am here forever, this is me,” he says. “I am the Bishop of Liverpool until I retire by God’s grace. It is very interesting. Whenever I license a priest, it begins with saying, ‘I, James Stuart, by divine permission, Lord Bishop of Liverpool . . .’. Well, the ‘Lord Bishop’ sounds a bit grand. The words that make an impact on me are, ‘I, James Stuart, by divine permission’. I am here because God called me.

“This is a wonderful city. I came from Hull and I did wonder how people in Liverpool would receive someone as their bishop, coming from the other side of the Pennines, but I needn’t have worried at all because the great thing about this city is that if people believe that you are for them, they will take you to their heart.

“I feel the great privilege of being taken to people’s heart.”

Here is a man who once said a prayer for David Beckham’s foot before a Liverpool/Manchester United match, though, with a knowing smile and a dollop of priestly diplomacy, he declined to disclose the content of that prayer. But you could guess.

Another question with a football slant springs into mind.

As a man of mixed Scottish and Welsh ancestry living in England, for whom would he have played football, if his calling had been different?

One has to admit that the bishop, who boxed a bit as a young man, skipped that tackle with the skill of Georgie Best, an Irishman, by praising the Celtic nature of many Liverpudlians.

The bishop’s inspiration seems to come from Eden. Does he have apples in his own garden?

“We have some on a trellis,” he says. “There is no other apple to be eaten apart from the English apple.

“We have a cottage somewhere else in the North and we have just acquired a bit of land with it. Our intention is to grown an organic orchard. For my birthday this year, my three daughters bought me an apple tree, which is grafted, so it has three sorts of apples.”

Anglican clergy must retire at 70. Bishop James says he will stay here until his retirement.

How does he see the future of our great city? Here comes the new Jerusalem. “The Bible begins with a garden and ends with a garden city (The Book of Revelation),” he says. “Heaven comes down to Earth, the new Jerusalem. It is the city with the precious stones and the gold, but also the river running through it, the banks, the trees, the leaves and the healing of the nations.

“Actually, I find that very apposite. It is a garden city and, of course, Liverpool is a garden city by a river with beautiful parks.”

A picture of the future fills this man of words.

TOMORROW: The Bishop of Liverpool reveals his vision of God.

EXTRACTS from this interview can be heard at www.liverpool dailypost.co.uk/listen

davidcharters