Lambeth Spouses

Lambeth Daily
Book Launch of 'Marriage, Mitres and Myself’ by Jane Williams

Jane Williams launched the book ‘Marriage, Mitres and Myself’ on Thursday 17 July at the Lambeth Conference. The Sports Hall, which has been transformed into the Spouses Venue, was filled with the members of the Spouses Conference and their spouses – the Bishops!

The book published by SPCK contains pieces from Bishops’ Spouses from around the world concerning what it is like to be married to a Bishop. Jane Williams explained that she had e-mailed all the Bishops’ Spouses to ask them to write something for her and many had responded. So, she said she hadn’t really written it but had simply drawn together all the material.

Reading extracts from the book Jane Williams told those present that this book was a celebration of all that the spouses do in their varied situations. Some run education and health care programmes and all offer hospitality to the many people who visit their homes.

The launch, sponsored by SPCK, offered refreshments and Divine Fairtrade Chocolate and Joanna Moriarty, from SPCK, said that the book was a best seller and had been reprinted twice. SPCK gave a copy of the book to all the spouses and queues gathered around the hall for their copy to be signed by Jane Williams and to have their photograph taken with her.


Marriage, Mitres and Being Myself
Jane Williams
SPCK £7.99 (978-0-281-06018-4)
Church Times Bookshop £7.20

ANYBODY who wants to know why the Lambeth Conference is necessary for the health of the Anglican Communion should read this little book.

Jane Williams, finding herself expected to mastermind the spouses’ conference that runs alongside the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in July, asked fellow bishops’ spouses to write about their lives. This is a collection of those contributions, linked by reflections from Jane Williams herself.

She says in the final chapter: “Christian ministry is incarnational. It matters that it is done by particular people in particular situations . . . there is really no alternative to meeting and talking and praying together.” So here are the stories of 21 particular spouses (mostly wives, though there are two Australian husbands) in particular situations, reporting on how they became Christians, the difference their spouses’ election has made to their lives and their families, and to their own faith journeys.

Not surprisingly, many of the issues raised are common to other spouses, especially other clergy spouses — public perceptions and expectations; tensions between their working lives and their roles as spouse, father being often absent at important family occasions or crises; the vagueness of boundaries between public and private life in a church-owned house.

Many find their position forces them to examine their own faith, and it is moving and encouraging to read their testimonies — “In faith, I try to balance all my roles, including being a bishop’s spouse, and I trust that that will put me where God wants me to be” (US). “Strangely enough, by the grace of God, I have found I can stretch myself to do more than I imagined” (UK). An African wife describes praying with her husband: “The strength received from these short devotions seems to equip the Bishop’s wife with a fortitude I am still yet to understand!”

The stories from areas in which Christianity is a minority religion, where the Christian community is sometimes under attack, and where the bishop’s job can bring him and his family into physical danger, are particularly striking to British readers, and lead Jane Williams to reflect on the roots of Christianity as a minority religion. It is not, she says, “in its heart, well designed for the ruling classes, with its subversive critique of power or its preaching of the God incarnate and crucified. . . Those of us who are able to live comfortable Christian lives have a lot to learn from our sisters in Pakistan, Taiwan and Myanmar.”

Those who have ambivalent attitudes to Lambeth have also much to learn from their Christian counterparts in Africa and Asia. As Jane Williams says: “It is not a luxury for Christian leaders to meet together. It is a simple necessity.” Amen to that.

Sarah Stancliffe is married to the Bishop of Salisbury.