Learning from Langland: theo-poetic resources for the post-Hind ...

The challenge to the Hind regional settlement
However, despite the positive rhetoric of Drawn Together, the Hind project of regional co-
operation has not proved uniformly capable of implementation. The proposed re-
organisation confronted at the outset a set of interconnected problems to do with the
dispersed authority structures of the Church of England. The first was to do with the fact
that the regions as decided by the Regions Task Group did not necessarily reflect
geographical realities and allegiances, and required the co-operation of diocesan bishops in
order to work. 15 Some regions worked hard towards common validation of courses and
greater sharing of resources, whilst others struggled to find any common focus. 16
Secondly, standing as a challenge to any centrally devised solution is the fact that there is
no commonly held ‘ethos’ of theological education within the Church of England, let alone
such a thing held in common with other denominations (‘ecumenical partners’).
Theological education, as David Kelsey points out, does not exist as a disembodied abstract,
but in the form of institutions and communities of teaching and learning: always concrete,
always situated, always particular. 17 It is the stubborn persistence of particularity within a
wider national picture which in part gives rise to the problems that have arisen in trying to
implement Hind’s proposals.
15 The proposed regions are set out in a bulletin of 27 May 2004, ‘Regional training
partnerships offer creative potential’, to be found at
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/regional_training_parternships_offer_creative.html.
Accessed on 15.3.2011.
16 For example, the website for the Eastern Region Training Partnership has a clear
statement of purposes and principles (http:/www.ertp.org.uk/about us/). Other regions, such
as the south west, have found other ways of continuing to serve geographically distinct
areas and dispersed populations.
17 Kelsey, To Understand God Truly, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky,
1992, p. 16.
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