“Call me Ishmael,” begins the narrator of Moby Dick. Not because it’s necessarily his name, but Ishmael because he’s a wild ass of a man with his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him. Possibly because he’s living at odds with all his kin. Or because he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the harpoon. Or because God was with him and he survives to tell the tale. “Call me Alice,” I say, “Everything’s simpler that way.” My family, for the most part, calls me Alice. So do my parishioners and the children at our schools. The schools themselves encourage the children to call me “Reverend Alice,” to go with their policy of adults being given titles of respect. I haven’t asked them to call me “Lady Hill,” which is my most respectable title of respect. “Alice” is better: in a school setting it’s subversive.
When I was first ordained it was fun to know exactly how to address someone in Holy Orders. A bishop was “Bishop,” or “My Lord Bishop,” or “Your Grace,” or, if in Scotland, “Primus,” depending on their importance. A dean was “Mr Dean.” Archdeacons and canons were addressed as—you guessed it—"Archdeacon” and “Canon.” If you were writing to them, you could refer to the section in the front of Crockford’s Clerical Directory, “How to Address the Clergy”. Barsetshire didn’t seem either far away or fictional when you were playing that game.
Call me Ishmael. I mean, call me Alice. One morning recently I woke up and knew that never again would I call a bishop of the Church of England, or an archdeacon, or a dean or rural dean or a canon or any other member of clergy by anything beyond their Christian name. So if they were waiting for “Honey Pie” or “Sweetcakes” or “Bishop First Name” they could just go on waiting. It wasn’t that I had woken up a Quaker. Pope Leo XIV would still be “Your Holiness” if I met him, and if by some extraordinary chance I ran into Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch, I would say “Hello, Your All-Holiness,” as a sign of ecumenical respect.
In my own church though, the use of titles in conversation has got out of hand. When I was a curate, my bishops were “Peter” and “David.” Their successors are “Bishop Hugh” and “Bishop Martin.” The new rule is title plus first name. We have “Archbishop Sarah” on the throne of Augustine, which is a source of rejoicing, but I remember when Archbishop Ramsey (not “Archbishop Michael”) sat there. Someone explained to me that we use titles to address our ecclesiastical superiors “for the sake of the dignity of the office.” I have two quibbles here. The first is that you only do things for “the dignity of the office” when that dignity has been comprehensively shredded. Amidst the ass-covering over clerical abuse, and the cruel and shameful treatment of LGBTQ people in the Church of England, “the dignity of the office” of the House of Bishops looks like the emperor’s new clothes. The second quibble is the way that the “Title + First Name” pattern has flowed downstream like agricultural runoff in a Welsh river. A cathedral dean isn’t “Mr Dean” anymore. He’s “Dean Mark” or “Dean Jessica”. An archdeacon isn’t “Archdeacon”. He’s “Archdeacon Richard” or ”Archdeacon Kate.” I recently heard a newly-appointed member of my deanery referred to as “Rector Virginia.” Honour is sucked upwards in this world, in the draft of “the dignity of the office.” When you’re addressed by a senior colleague, you’ll be called by your first name. This gives the appearance of a friendly familiarity; we are brothers and sisters in Christ. And so we would be, were it not for the need to maintain a rigid hierarchy where everyone expects those lower in the ranks to address them by their title. This expectation, like the British constitution, remains uncodified. It’s not in the front section of Crockford’s Clerical Directory anyway. And yet, for the last fifteen years or so, everyone’s been observing it.
When I was learning hospital chaplaincy in the States back before the turn of the millennium, one of the vital things to remember was that you gave patients every possible respect. You called them “Mrs Jones,” not “Mary.” You knocked before you came in. You didn’t sit on their beds. The poorer and sicker they were, the more dignity you accorded them. Honour and dignity flowed downward from the top, and, since it was a Catholic hospital, the top was understood to be Christ. Or, as I like to call him, Jesus.
