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BISHOP OF BATH & WELLS, GEORGE CAREY

In preparation for his move to Canterbury, having been chosen as the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury in 1990, following the retirement of Robert Runcie, he visited churches around the diocese of Bath & Wells to say his farewells. He came to celebrate the 9.30am Holy Communion service on Sunday, 4th October, 1990, at All Saints’, when Derek Hooper was Rector, and Dennis Bennett was priest-in- charge of Christ Church, Redhill. Such a visitation ensured a large congregation, with hundreds making their communion. There are, therefore, too many familiar faces walking towards the camera as they returned to their places from the altar rail, for all to be named. Suffice it to say, the churchwardens were Andrew Densham and Ken Collins, the organist, Sue Clark, and the choir was directed by Ian Overington, with a performance of the Stanford Te Deum in B flat as a postlude. In those days, in addition to the adults, the choir had 8 junior members. This video can hardly be regarded as an adventurous production, because its operator being in the choir, it had to be ‘locked off’ on its tripod in the back of the vestry. It is unedited because most of those interested enough to want to see/hear the service all through, will be able to appreciate how fully the congregation of those days collaborated in worship with whoever was taking the service, the form of which came to be regarded by the powers-that-be of the Anglican church, to have become too in need of reform to be left alone. Suffice it to say, as with so many other changes which seek to keep up with the perceived changes in secular culture, we have been witnesses to a diminution both qualitative and quantitative, in collaborative worship. At the end of the service, the bishop consented willingly to be interviewed briefly, and that has been included here as a separate item. His remarks, unwittingly perhaps, have an enormous irony for 2015. He was succeeded as Archbishop by Rowan Williams, previously Archbishop of Wales, in 2002

INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP CAREY