Part of Parliament: Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin
6 min read
A Church of England priest who splits her time between Westminster and her City of London parish, Reverend Rose offers spiritual guidance and support to Parliamentarians as they contend with the pressures of political life
The role of Chaplain to the Speaker has been in existence for over 300 years. I am the 79th Chaplain and the first woman in the role. I lead prayers in the Chamber every day when the House is sitting. I don’t lead prayers in the Lords –they have the Bishops – but pastorally, I still look after those in the Lords who wish to have my pastoral care.
On weekends, I do weddings and baptisms in our beautiful chapel, St Mary Undercroft, and on Wednesdays we have services of Holy Communion: I do two in the morning, and Roman Catholics do one in the evening. Our services are generally 30 minutes. That’s important because, as I always say, Parliament is a place of work, not a church. What I hope we provide is a kind of oasis that people can dip into, and if they want to, they can just go down to the chapel by themselves and sit for five minutes and be quiet.
Even if people don’t physically go into the Chapel, wherever they have that moment of reflection the important thing is that they are not rushing to make big decisions but they take a moment to reflect on how they are going to vote and the impact this might have on ordinary people. Politicians are making huge decisions so I know for a fact they don’t take this lightly, whatever image the press might try to give. My role and responsibility is to pray for them as they wrestle – and I believe they genuinely wrestle – with those decisions.
I am very fortunate to have the support of Christians in Parliament. They also support and encourage Christians through the running of bible studies and prayer groups. On a Tuesday, they lead a service in the chapel that follows a variety of themes – all focusing on encouraging both members and staff in their faith.
Those working in parliament represents the diversity of the wider society. Apart from the chapel, we also set aside other spaces based in Milbank and off Westminster Hall for the purpose of those of other Faiths. The intention is for all those of faith and none to be able to find the space and the setting to pause and reflect on the many daily challenges of life.
When I was leaving my previous parish in Hackney I told the children at the primary school in my final assembly that I would be going to work in Parliament. This little seven-year-old boy popped his hand up and said: “Miss, is that the place where they shout at each other?” And I had to say to him, “Sadly, yes.” What I see in the Chamber – in particular at PMQs – I find to be most unattractive. We want to see our parliamentarians behaving as mature adults and the sort of school child jeering, goading and the constant personal laying into each other, apart from being deeply unkind, is just not acceptable or ideal.
I find filibustering very unhelpful and frankly, what happened with the ‘upskirting bill’, we must be able to, as a significant democracy, find better ways of dealing with these issues. That might have been the 18th & 19th century way of handling things. We are now in the 21st century and we want to see things done differently.
In our ‘game playing’ we can forget the human issues that people are attempting to deal with. So when we say we don’t like Private Members Bills, okay let’s find a grown-up, mature alternative way of handling these things. Don’t just treat it with such frivolity. We are a leading democracy – other parts of the world look to us.
I get invited out all over the country to speak on a variety of things but mostly people want to hear about faith and politics: do they really belong together? I obviously believe passionately that faith ought to be in the public arena, and it is part of the reason I applied for this role because I was excited about that mix of faith and politics. I wanted to encourage faith in the public square.
Was there ever a thought in my head somewhere, the thought that I’m not an establishment figure, so does not belong in this role? It’s not that I don’t think I belong. I grew up in the Caribbean, and the motto of Jamaica is: “Out of Many, One People.” So I grew up with a sense of belonging – I belonged everywhere and anywhere. Also as a Christian, I am entitled to be anywhere as a child of God. I had no hesitation, I never thought: “Oh no Rose, you couldn’t possibly belong in a place like that.” But I did hear, in my head, the voice that says: “You’re not an establishment figure –they may not want you.”
Because what is very clear is the establishment likes to see people like itself. Maybe it’s a human trait: people like people who look like them and sound like them. And then you couple that – let’s not pull any punches – with the underbelly that says, ‘if you’re black then you can’t possibly be as good as someone who is white’. This is not what I think – but I am consciously aware that this kind of thinking is still out there!
The deaths of PC Keith Palmer and Jo Cox were an absolutely traumatic time, but my whole focus then was on supporting PC Keith’s colleagues who lost someone very close to them. And when Jo was brutally murdered, again supporting her colleagues and praying because there is a lot of pain there. I really hope that her death was not in vain and that in the heat of the political debate, her colleagues will never forget how she died. I believe very strongly that the kind of debate we were having, that kind of unpleasant discourse, contributed towards her death. I think that we must carry some of that responsibility.
To do a job like this you have to have strong faith and a love of people because you are as a chaplain; in effect, in the caring profession. You are caring, not for cuts and bruises that can be seen, but for those wounds that are unseen, that we inflict on each other.
Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin is the Speaker’s Chaplain.
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