Friends like these
Clerical life
by Alice Goodman
My friends and I have been checking in on one another. “How are you doing?”
I ask my two North American clerical friends in Cambridge. “Hanging on in there, people,” one of them messages back. The other one says he has either a very long answer or a very short one, but currently it’s ODTAA, and feels like an ecclesiastical version of Die Hard with clocks ticking. “Sending you love” another friend texted when the US election results were coming in. A fourth friend sends me a “good night” text every night, and we correspond as if by telegram about the day just past. On 6th November, we woke to the news that Donald Trump would be back in the White House. The next day, after years of delay and postponement, the Makin report into the Church of England’s response to allegations of serious abuse by the late John Smyth was published. Less than a week later, the archbishop of Canterbur y resigned.