Profile: Richard Chartres, Keeper of the flame

Told that there was no future for his traditional views in the modern Church of England, he left theological college to work in Sainsbury's. Now Bishop of London, with controversial opinions on gay priests, he is tipped as the church's future head.

As a teenager growing up in Hertfordshire in the early 60s, Richard Chartres set out to conduct "a personal Which? report" on comparative religions. He says his background was very conventional, "not actively Christian, but not interestingly anti-Christian either", so he visited the conventional churches: Roman Catholic, various free churches and then the Church of England. The reasons behind his spiritual quest are, of course, complicated. Life at home certainly was not easy. His younger brother had been born brain damaged and, as a consequence, the family had become increasingly socially isolated. Chartres was an earnest and clever boy who thought there must be more to life than these "flatlands" he inhabited; the mystery, as he calls it, of his brother's apparent happiness despite his severe disability was a source of intrigue. But whatever Chartres' reasons, when he arrived at the Church of England he was instantly greeted by "a friendly place full of good people". They included him in discussions, gave him things to do and quickly accepted him as a valued member of the community. Chartres acknowledges it as a model introduction to the church and a credit to the people who welcomed him.

"There is a strongly held doctrine in some quarters of our church which says that what puts people off is a frosty and distant church and what people want is the warm embrace of a small, Goddy group," he explains. "Well, all I can say is that when I was confronted by [the latter] I ran a mile. I went into this warm, loving, enthusiastic fellowship of Christians and my reaction was to flee. It was obviously my fault, not theirs, but I just couldn't deal with it."

Chartres has since made his accommodation with the C of E. He is a Right Reverend, a right honourable and the dean of the chapel royal at Windsor. As the Bishop of London he holds the third most important see in the church hierarchy, is on good terms with the royal family and is a strong candidate to succeed George Carey as Archbishop of Canterbury. And all this has been achieved with a personality that is often described as being closer to that of a 19th-century bishop rather than one from the 21st century. He has an unapologetic respect for tradition and a barely disguised contempt for attempts to modernise and, even worse, market the church.

This makes him a contentious figure to many fellow Anglicans. His reluctance to ordain women priests places him, not for the first time, out of sync with prevailing orthodoxies. His traditional stance on gay priests - being gay in itself is not a sin but the only two "life projects" open to a priest are celibacy or lifelong, faithful, heterosexual marriage - mean he is not liked by more radical elements. Add to this his domed head, beard and sonorous voice, and what you have is something far more like an Orthodox patriarch than a well-meaning but ineffectual C of E vicar. It seems this is just the way he likes it.

"If you look at the representations of the clergy in Punch cartoons through the 20th century it makes for interesting reading," he says. "At the beginning they might have been generally portrayed as black-coated and threatening, but they were never seen as negligible or easily dismissed figures. But as you go on through the century they become these rather pathetic characters in badly fitting sports jackets. Although I believe Marx wasn't wrong about everything, I do think that, far from being a mould that grows on the rock of economics, the spiritual life is actually fundamental. So of course I think it is a pity if the people who in some way symbolise that dimension are universally regarded as wet."

One man who never thought Chartres was wet was Robert Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury who died earlier this year. Chartres was his chaplain for eight years. "He had an ability to listen and to communicate without a dangerously uncritical or humourless deference to his boss," said Runcie. Reflecting on their relationship in his retirement, Runcie acknowledged that, theologically, the liberal Runcie "clashed completely" with Chartres the traditionalist, "but he greatly influenced me more than I him. He moderated my liberal position, and nourished the roots of my innate conservatism."

Pete Broadbent, a former Islington Labour councillor, is now archdeacon of Northolt. He says that while Chartres is obviously conservative, people would misread him if they thought of him as only conservative. "He does have those trappings and he does work well with the establishment, but he is a radical thinker and his approach to life is much more pragmatic than people might think at first sight." He is also widely regarded, by all shades of church opinion, as a gen uinely holy man. "He is undoubtedly one of the brainiest people in the church," says one observer, "but he is not a theological technocrat and he has an authentic spirituality. When you are with him you do think he is the real thing."

But does any of this really matter? A recent survey revealed that only 25% of the British people even nominally call themselves C of E. Mainstream religion is increasingly marginalised, with a hotchpotch of more or less idiosyncratic versions of spirituality apparently making a stronger pitch. In recent years newspapers have traded astrologers for vast sums of money, an England football coach has been sacked for his views on karma, and rearranging the furniture has been widely accepted as a more effective route to spiritual fulfilment than going to church.

"Any trip to Waterstone's proves there is a strong sense of spiritual awareness," says Chartres. "And yes, it is all very à la carte and wacky. But the message is that the country is not atheist. The problem is that when people are disengaged from any major religion they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything. You cannot combat this à la carte religiosity by abdicating or refusing to enter the contest. The great spiritual problem is that many people are in touch with their ideas about God rather than helped in a tradition of spiritual discipline to be in a communication with the living God." There is a huge difference between these two, he maintains. "What we can do is actually say what spiritual practice looks like, and the way we can serve in the present situation is by making sure there is a new, fresh, vigorous and beautiful presentation of the classic Christian narrative."

Such matters were of little interest in Chartres' home when he was growing up. He was born in Hertfordshire in 1947. His ancestors were Huguenots from near Chartres in France who settled in Ireland in the early 17th century, and he is related to an Irish republican mayor of Cork who died on a hunger strike in 1921. His branch of the family moved to England in the 1920s and his parents, Richard and Charlotte, lived near the Ware pharmaceutical company where Richard senior was the works manager. The birth of his younger brother, Stephen, two years after Richard, was to be the defining moment of his childhood.

Stephen was born with a serious thyroid deficiency that left him brain damaged. He never lived independently and died aged 27. Chartres says his parents' Christianity, "poorly articulated and poorly taught", couldn't stand up to a combination of the war and this personal tragedy. "They had had a torrid time and the way Christianity was presented offered them little. It was a rather bland statement that God would look after his own, which of course he does, but sometimes in a very sharp and painful way."

But Richard took a different message from Stephen's short life. "It wasn't a tragedy," he says. "He had the most extraordinary quality of happiness, which was a great blessing. And the mystery of that, of why he was so free even though he was excluded from the race for glittering prizes that for most of us makes life worth living, is really where I started."

After school at Hertford Grammar, Chartres won a place at Trinity College, Cambridge - on his father's advice, because his grandfather had been to Trinity - to read history. The family had been very socially isolated because of his brother's condition and, he says, it was not until he went to Cambridge that he discovered that people actually stayed at each other's houses. It was not until he left university that he discovered that his father had actually meant Trinity College, Dublin, and not Cambridge. "He was a very laconic man," he explains.

Chartres describes himself as a student as "extraordinarily naive. I really must have been a bit odd". Christopher Courtauld, the chaplain of Trinity, remembers him as "one of the more striking undergraduates. He was very much his own man and I seem to remember him in a bowler hat, which shows he wasn't a slave to any sort of fashion." Courtauld says Chartres was part of a group of what would later be called young fogeys. "They were an attractive group of young men who stood out for a more traditional way of life and values as against the modernising tendency of the student majority."

One of Chartres' friends was Robert Woods, who now works for the container shipping firm P&O Nedlloyd. "Richard was very bright and able, and full of vigour and enthusiasm. He very much wanted to preserve what was best in the church from all ages, but he wasn't immune to the radicalism of the time. He listened and understood what was going, and while he didn't really sympathise he could comprehend it."

Chartres says now: "I saw absolutely no need for all of the turmoil in the 60s. While I never joined the Conservative party - I've never had much time for party politics - I was deeply conservative. Under the influence of a religion and the Christian gospel I have changed some of my ideas. But I've always had a great sense of what is good about the national story, for instance." At Cambridge he came into contact with this national story in human form when he met and became friends with Prince Charles. He says their meeting did not present any difficulties in terms of being outside his social sphere, "because I never had a social sphere. In some ways I was and am déclassé . I was incredibly ignorant." The links with Prince Charles have endured. Chartres was chosen to confirm Prince William - in what was seen by some at the time as a snub to the Archbishop of Canterbury - and was made an executor of Princess Diana's will.

Chartres was confirmed at Cambridge and says the university and the chapel were two important intellectual poles for him. "There seemed to be something real there I could engage with." He says there was no single moment when he knew he wanted to become a priest. "The Book of Common Prayer, with its sobriety and clarity, was certainly important in my joining the Church of England, and I wish I could say there was one great figure who exercised a mesmerising effect on me, but there wasn't."

Following his graduation in 1968 he enrolled at Cuddesdon theological college in Oxford. It was not a happy experience and he left, his course unfinished, after 18 months. A period of spiritual doubt? "No," he roars, "precisely the opposite. I had no doubts whatsoever; that was the problem." Chartres was a controversial figure at Cuddesdon. The ripples of late-60s radicalism had already reached the theological colleges and he found himself in a tiny minority voting against virtually all change. "I thought it was all dumbing down and chucking everything out of the window. I still think I was right but I was less than charitable to those with whom I disagreed. I do now think they were doing their best."

He was told that "there would be no future for a person of my views in the modern church of England". When the principal - Robert Runcie, who had been indulgent of Chartres - left, he thought it was best that he should withdraw too. "It was my decision but I did so under a cloud. It would have been more interesting on my CV to have been expelled but that wasn't the case."

He then entered what he calls his "university of life" phase. He taught ancient history at the international school in Seville, sold Christmas trees and was an extra-orders clerk in the Sainsbury's wine and spirits depot. In the mid-80s he had a second crack at a career outside the church when he was briefly made religious correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

"Everyone liked having him around," says Evening Standard editor Max Hastings, who was the editor at the Telegraph at the time, "but, and I think he would agree, he didn't really have a very highly developed news sense. When I first met him as Bishop of London some years later he said, 'You may have forgotten, but the last time we met you sacked me.' But he's always been terribly nice about it and as far as I know no divine curses have been heaped on me."

In 1972 Chartres entered the theological college at Lincoln. While there he spent a lot of time at the Samaritans centre. "I learned you should never assume that you can help someone or not help them. When a student would come in with some existential problem I thought I could deal with it, but I was hopeless and Vera [a fellow volunteer], who would sit there with her knitting saying, 'Oh yes, oh yes,' was immensely helpful. Then a woman whose experience of life was completely different to my own, beaten by her husband, for some extraordinary reason found it possible to talk to me. It was an important education and gave me an insight into the quiet despair of so many people's lives."

This time he finished the course, and he was ordained in Bedford in 1973. During the ordination retreat he was so obviously disabled by nerves that Robert Runcie, who was conducting the ordination as the Bishop of St Albans, was asked whether it was wise to continue. Runcie said he believed "that the grace of holy orders will work well on him", and went ahead anyway. Chartres says that his intense response to aspects of his calling has not changed. "I'm not easy and content with the world," he explains. "I'm not at home in this dispensation, as TS Eliot puts it. It can be a terrifying thought to be a priest. You are trusted beyond your deserts. People relate to the role and that is a considerable responsibility."

In 1975, much to the consternation of the rest of the diocese staff, Runcie asked Chartres to become his chaplain. Chartres says the relationship was less like a French king and his confessor and more like a minister and his civil-service private secretary. "I was Bernard in Yes Minister," he explains. "Mostly administrative, but it was a very good education. I discovered how the church worked."

He says the setup at St Albans was very old-fashioned. His bedroom was also his office and he had meals with the Runcie family. Crucially he struck up a good relationship with Runcie's wife, Lindy. "He's one of my favourite people," she says. "Very amusing and very clever. He helped me with my Italian A-level."

When Runcie was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1980, Chartres moved with him to Lambeth Palace. In his controversial biography of the archbishop, Humphrey Carpenter recorded Runcie's views on Chartres' influence. Runcie said he was "very powerful. He seemed to know what was going on in one's mind. I mean, if somebody had been to visit me, Richard would say four things about that person which I hadn't noticed at all. And for the first time in my life, perhaps, I had an inferiority complex, which I never overcame. Yes, I think that he did have a sort of mastery over me."

It was Chartres who drafted Runcie's controversial Falklands sermon that so annoyed Mrs Thatcher with its reference to the Argentine as well as the British dead. "But by the time he said it he had internalised it and was committed to it," says Chartres. "He was always his own man and knew exactly what would wash and what he could say. If you read it now it is very modest, basic Christianity that teaches that war, while it might occasionally be the lesser of two evils, is always a failure. He said it as a person who had seen war at first hand and thank God he did say it."

In Carpenter's biography Chartres was called both Svengali and Rasputin. "Far too generous," he laughs. "One would have been praise, but both is really too much." But the Russian allusion is based on more than just his appearance and influence. He is the C of E's link to orthodoxy and has a strong emotional attachment to Russia in particular. He befriended and subsequently baptised a communist editor of Pravda. The man, whose name he would rather keep private to protect his children, later became a godfather to one of Chartres' children before being murdered by the Russian Mafia. He is deeply moved by the suffering of the Russian people during the last century and is fascinated by the role of the Russian church. "Despite the terrible and huge-scale experiment of godless materialism, a way forward has been found. And Russian orthodoxy is of enormous significance for European peace. The Russian orthodox church has 70m believers and plays an enormously important part in the recovery of identity for the Russian people."

After Chartres and Runcie had left Canterbury another chapter of global politics ensured that Chartres was called back for one piece of unfinished business. They had both worked closely with Terry Waite at Lambeth Palace, but by the time Waite was released from captivity in Lebanon in 1995 there were comparatively few people there who knew him, so Chartres was sent to Syria to bring him home. Waite sees him as "the very best kind of English cleric in that he has scholarship and spirituality. He could dig out the most obscure historical references. When Robert Runcie was under some political attack or other, Richard pointed out that this was nothing, 'Archbishop Alfege was beaten to death with mutton bones. That was real trouble.' "

Chartres says that being Runcie's chaplain changed everything for him in that it gave him all sorts of experience, but after eight years he wanted to become a priest, "to hear people's stories. Also it was a job only an unmarried person could have done because you worked round the clock." In 1982 he married Caroline McLintock and in 1984 he left Runcie to become the vicar of St Stephen with St John in Westminster. Chartres had met Caroline when she was his secretary. Her father, Alan McLintock, chairs the audit committee of the Church Commissioners. She is a universally popular figure in the church for her good humour, energy and common sense. The general consensus is that she has humanised Chartres and saved him from any propensity he might have had since childhood to melancholia. She recently completed a postgraduate diploma in special needs education and teaches three days a week. She is also a freelance journalist and contributes a diary column to Church Times. Paul Handley, its editor, praises her lightness of touch in mocking the formal side of the life of a bishop's wife. "She has a finely judged line in exasperation with bits of the lifestyle, and the readers love her."

Chartres and his wife have two boys and two girls aged between seven and 13 and live in a flat above the Old Deanery opposite St Paul's. There was some grumbling when Chartres moved into this apparently grand home following his promotion to London, but the bulk of the building is office and meeting space. "I can look the most junior curate in the Stepney area in the face and say that probably his accommodation is in many ways superior to ours. Their children might have some space to run around, while mine don't."

He says he now knows about Pokémon but probably could not name all the Spice Girls. And, of course, he has read Harry Potter. Some Christians have raised objections to its portrayal of magic. Does he have any theological problems with it? "Oh, come off it," he guffaws. "Children's stories have always been full of magic and marvels and here is an attractive group of three children having adventures in a fantasy environment which involves giving the evil lord a bloody nose. That seems to me rather good news. I've never had any difficulty in reading fairy stories to my children and I'd happily supply a chaplain to Hogwarts for next term."

Chartres was made Bishop of Stepney in 1992 and then stepped up to the London job, unexpectedly quickly, in 1995. He was seen as a continuity candidate in the diocese, although he is "perfectly well aware that there are people who think still that there is no future for a person of my views in the Church of England". London is an extremely difficult diocese to manage and there is criticism from some frontline priests who think he has ducked administrative decisions which has resulted in unwanted City churches staying open while priests in poorer areas are denied resources.

But his diocese is bucking the national trend by increasing congregations and Chartres declares himself "more and more excited by the room for manoeuvre and the potential in this job. I'm overworked, I'm tired, I'm sponsored by Nurofen. But I'm not despondent. I have been gloomy for much of my life but I have been rescued. I tended to see myself as Cassandra, fated to speak the truth but never to be believed. But that is a cop-out and an indulgence. In the second half of my life I have said to myself, 'Come on, you could really make this work.' " That also means dealing with a series of highly sensitive theological and political conundrums. Richard Kirker is the director of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in London. He says that "homosexuality and the Church of England are linked in a generally unhealthy and destructive relationship. And Richard has as unhealthy a relationship to lesbians and gay people as does almost every other bishop. There is a huge level of denial at the highest levels, as they all know there are a large number of homosexuals working for the church, and if you removed all homosexual priests from London, for example, you would only have a third to a half of the clergy left."

Chartres acknowledges that some of the most talented priests in the church are of homosexual orientation, but defends his insistence on either celibacy or marriage. "I'm not a maverick," he says. "I'm a bishop and I have a responsibility not to muse and attitudinise, but to simply say what is the position of the church." That said, he has gone out of his way to prevent witch-hunts of gay priests in a policy that has been called - not by him - "don't ask, don't tell". "I resist any attempt to make assumptions about people's friendships and relationships," he says. "There is a lot of damage done by an exaggeration of the place of sex in people's lives. I refuse to keep on assuming that people are not truthful and don't have friendships and companionships that need not necessarily amount to sexual relations."

While this issue is contentious, the question of women priests is far more important in terms of the church, and could prove an obstacle to Chartres promotion to Canterbury. While he ordains both women and men as deacons - the first stage of entering the priesthood - he has not ordained any women priests. "All priests, men and women, are ordained by the area bishops," he explains. "My duty is to secure unity but not uniformity. We have a cohort in this diocese of very able women priests, and I'm their bishop as well. I don't find it difficult to celebrate what an incredible contribution they make."

He says only a fool would argue for the inequality of men and women but adds that there is still a fascinating debate to be had around whether equality should be tantamount to interchangeability. "I'm not sure we as a society haven't really sorted out what the social consequences of that will be. Is Sir Charles Guthrie right that the British public is not yet ready for women to be bodies on the battlefield as frontline troops? But I'm not an impossibilist. Women priests have been ordained, I have stayed in the Church of England and I expect to die in it."

Christina Rees, the chair of Women and the Church, says that Chartres has been personally very supportive towards women in his diocese. "His compromise of not ordaining anyone can be seen as a generous gesture. And as he is not an impossibilist he may change his views. This is conjecture, but there are some people I can't imagine ever changing their views. He is actually one of the current bishops I can imagine changing his views."

As for the prospect of him going to Canterbury, he is sceptical without ruling it out. "When I say I'd be the first to join a 'stop Chartres' group it is not Uriah Heep-like abnegation. I have perhaps a unique insight into just how complex and difficult and burdensome the job is and I think I'm in the right place here, and I suspect the church needs some other type of person when the present incumbent retires."

In the meantime he is preparing to take his first three-month sabbatical leave for 25 years. But first is Christmas. "The reason why so many people are so bloody miserable at Christmas is that there has been no Advent in their lives," he says. "I found Christmas hell when I was growing up. The marvellous phrase, 'Why aren't you enjoying yourself?' can be terribly destructive." He explains that Advent is supposed to be a penitential time, like Lent, preparing for Christmas. "It is essential we spend time preparing, opening the doors and the windows to the soul. There can be no carnival without the ensuing Lent and without these rhythms life is a featureless flatland. But now, as one enters into the drama and pattern of a year with rhythm and shape, the incarnation - the birth of God - in the interior life of people is thrilling. That is Christmas. It is a wonderful season."

Life at a glance: Richard John Carew Chartres Born: July 11 1947, Hertfordshire. Education: Hertford Grammar School; Trinity College, Cambridge; Cuddesdon Theological College; Lincoln Theological College. Married: Caroline McLintock 1982 (four children). Church career: Ordained deacon 1973, priest 1974, assistant curate 1973-75; Bishop of St Albans' domestic chaplain 1975-80; Archbishop of Canterbury's chaplain 1980-84; vicar of St Stephen and St John, Westminster 1984-92; Area Bishop of Stepney 1992-95; Bishop of London 1995- present; dean of the chapel royal 1995-present. Awards: Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple, Liveryman of the Merchant Taylors' Company, Honorary Freeman of the Weavers' Company, Privy Counsellor. Publication: The History of Gresham College 1597-1997.

 

Nicholas Wroe, Special report: Religion in the UK
Saturday December 23, 2000, The Guardian

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