In his
first interview since resigning, the Rev Giles Fraser says: 'I get fitted up as
Wat Tyler, but I'm no radical'
 |
Giles Fraser rejects the 'radical' tag that's often applied to him, saying
he thinks Jesus would be more extreme than him on the shape of modern
capitalism. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian |
The
recently resigned canon chancellor of St Paul's arrives in a black T–shirt,
jeans and stubble. He had slipped out of his 17th-century grace and favour
house in the shadow of Wren's cathedral before the media arrived without
thought to shaving or dress code. He's now regretting this: "I want to
look like a priest, not a protester."
The Rev
Giles Fraser – matey, warm, a ready, raucous laugh – could easily pass for a
protester. It's easier in some ways to imagine him arguing over a beer with the
campaigners sleeping outside his cathedral than engaged in debate with the
scarlet, purple and black-frocked colleagues of the bishop, dean and chapter.
But in the
past few days he has spent very little time with the protesters – despite
sympathising with much that they stand for – and a great deal of time with his
colleagues discussing the health and safety issues that led to the cathedral
closing its doors.
As those
discussions continued – totally without acrimony, Fraser insists – he became
aware that he would have to resign. That moment arrived on Wednesday when
"the course we were set upon" led him to ask to see the dean, the Rt
Rev Graeme Knowles, and quit.
Fraser, 46,
will not be drawn on the exact "course of action" that provoked his
decision, but says "my red line was about using violence in the name of
the church to clear people on. It has been very peaceful, the camp, and I feel
that the church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence".
He
acknowledges the issues are complex. There is a right to worship, which has
been disrupted. The cathedral has been unable to continue with its
"mission and ministry". There has been a loss of income, not only to
the church coffers but to the people running the Crypt cafe.
He respects
his colleagues who took a different view and says that the discussions over
recent days have been some of the best he has been involved in the church since
being ordained in 1993. Everyone has followed their own consciences.
"We're a big tent. Tony Blair didn't invent the big tent," he roars
with laughter. "We invented the big tent."
But his
mood becomes more sober as he describes his growing realisation that he
couldn't stay. Once it became apparent that eviction – involving police and
bailiffs – was on the cards, he knew he could no longer continue. "I could
not countenance the idea that we would have the sort of scenes we had at Dale
Farm done in the name of the church on the steps of St Paul's."
It is clear
he is ambivalent about some of the health and safety grounds that led to the
decision to close to the cathedral in the first place. He says that people feel
"intimidated" by the health and safety experts – a view which would
surely find some sympathy from the Daily Mail.
He says
that the Corporation of London, which co-owns some of the land occupied by the
protesters, was "clearer" than the church about the wish to move the
protesters. And the clergy received strong legal advice that they could not
negotiate with the protesters, since that might imply consent to them staying.
How would
he have done things differently? "I would have wanted to negotiate down
the size of the camp and to have appealed to people to help us keep the
cathedral going … and if that meant that I was thereby granting them some legal
right to stay then that is the position that I would have to wear."
There are
tears in his eyes as he talks through his decision to depart St Paul's, where
he moved two years ago after nine years as the vicar of Putney in south-west
London. He emphasises: "I loved my time here."
There was,
he says, absolutely no hint of a divide between a troublesome priest and more
conservative colleagues. He rejects the "radical" tag that's often
applied to him, saying he thinks Jesus would be more extreme than him on the
shape of modern capitalism. "I get fitted up as Wat Tyler."
So what
does he make of the protest on his doorstep? "The camp is a complex and
interesting mixture of such a divergent range of views – united largely by what
it's against, which is a very legitimate anger about the way in which wealth
has been distributed and the way in which capitalism is currently seen to
benefit just a very few people. I think that is very legitimate anxiety.
"I
think there's an irony that we are having this conversation today, on the 25th
anniversary of Big Bang, the deregulation of the Stock Exchange, liberalisation
of the rules and regulations regulating the City and so forth … I mean, it
seems to me quite clear that markets were made for man and not man for market.
"I am
not against capitalism. I am not one of these people who thinks that capitalism
is inherently wicked."
Though
that's what he used to think? He nods.
"I
used to be a socialist and for a long time I did have the view that there was
something intrinsically immoral about capitalism. I changed my mind quite
fundamentally about that quite a few years ago. I had a conversion sitting in
Notting Hill market, reading the chief rabbi on the subject – an essay called
'the moral case for market economy'.
"I
think there is a very clear question here to be addressed," he continues,
"and the reason that the protesters have captured some of the public
imagination is because a great many people think that something has gone wrong
in the City of London and that the wealth generated by the City does not exist
for the benefit of us all.
"So,
yes, I am sympathetic to that extent. I am not sympathetic to the extent of
self-righteous 'bash the banker' rhetoric, I am not sympathetic to 'let's bring
down capitalism'. I really think there is a moral self-righteousness about
saying what you are against but not saying what you are for."
These are,
he thinks, "centrist" views of the sort that Jesus would have found
unremarkable.
"I
mean, Jesus is very clear that the love of money is the root of all evil …
Jesus wants to point us to a bigger picture of the world than simply shopping.
"The
interesting thing about the protest camp for me is that St Paul's is very, very
good at doing the grandeur and otherness of God. You can do fantastic sermons
in it about creation, mystery, otherness, grandeur. But Christopher Wren's
forte was not Jesus born in a stable, the sort of church that exists for the
poor and for the marginalised."
He says
that last Sunday, because St Paul's was closed, he went to worship in Bethnal
Green in the East End of London. "It was the most beautiful service. I was
at the back, it was really quite full up. They hadn't got an organ. It was
catholic, inner city worship and for me it caught a particular aspect of what I
believe, which is, as it were, more 'incarnation' than Wren ever tried to do.
"And I
think that, in a sense what the camp does is that it challenges the church with
the problem of the Incarnation – that you have God, who is grand and almighty,
[who] gets born in a stable, in a tent. You know, St Paul was a tent maker. I
mean, if you looked around and you tried to recreate where Jesus would be born
– for me, I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp."
He says it
is "sad that the protesters came to occupy the Stock Exchange and ended
closing down a cathedral". But he concedes that the church could have done
better to engage with the issues the protestors are raising.
"Money
is the number one moral issue in the Bible and the way the Church of England
goes on you would think it was sex," he says. "It's easily the number
one issue in the Bible … but how many sermons do you get about that? Very
few."
He is at
pains to scotch the suggestion that there was any pressure applied to the
cathedral by wealthy corporate or banking interests in the City. And he also
wants to emphasise that, while he expressed support for the right to protest
and asked the police to move aside on the first Sunday, "what I didn't do is
say 'the protesters are very welcome to camp here'. I didn't say that".
The past 10
days have been stressful, he says. "It's at times of stress when you don't
read the Bible but the Bible reads you and that sometimes it doesn't need too
much interpretative sauce."
On the
first Sunday of the protest he preached to the preordained text of the day,
which was "render unto Caesar" from St Matthew's Gospel.
"It
plunges you right into the issues in St Matthew's Gospel that are related to
the Sermon on the Mount – you cannot serve God and money and all those sort of
things. I extemporised. Of course what Matthew says earlier in the Sermon on
the Mount, in Chapter 6, is you can't just say 'let money, let the state, let
all those issues stay on one side and let you do your piety on another'.
"As
Christians, you're called to engage with the world: that's the whole nature of
the Incarnation. That means that you have to talk about stocks and shares, and
you have to talk about a sort of very raw, incarnational, practical faith.
Christianity is one of the most materialistic of the world's religions. It
can't be indifferent to the physical circumstances in which people live. It's
not some abstract piety. So that was the stuff of the sermon really."
What did
the dean say when he handed in his resignation?
"Uhm,
he has written a very nice piece saying that he is sad to see me go."
And has
Archbishop Rowan Williams been in touch?
"He
sent me a little note saying that I was in his prayers."
Will he
return to the cathedral – or does the curtain come down abruptly?
"Oh
no! I have to work out my notice. I am very much looking forward to standing
with my colleagues. When we have the opening Eucharist I will definitely stand
with them. I leave with absolutely no sense of acrimony or bad feeling towards
my colleagues."
And then?
He shrugs.
"I
have absolutely no idea! I mean these things happen so quickly. I have a family
and kids. I am terrified. I mean I have no other job to go to … there's nothing
else that's there!"
Where does
this leave his position in the church? "I am absolutely and completely
committed to the Church of England … there is absolutely no way I would leave
the Church of England."
He
reluctantly agrees to be photographed. He borrows an electric razor and a white
shirt, roaring with laughter as he strips to the waist in the editor's office.
He pulls on his jacket. And, for the first time today, the Rev Dr Giles Fraser
begins to look a little less like a protester and a touch more like the canon
of England's most majestic cathedral. Albeit an unemployed one.
