Could Bishop Cottrell save the church from the management department. Photo by OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images
Bradwell power station is a vast, concrete and partially decommissioned Magnox nuclear reactor set out on the flat windswept salt marches of the lonely Essex coastline. A few miles away sits the much more modestly sized St Peter’s Chapel. A simple stone structure, it is one of the oldest churches in England. This was where Bishop Cedd in the mid 7th century came down from Northumbria to evangelise the East Saxons.
This was also the place where Bishop Stephen Cottrell — Essex boy, born and bred — made his final pilgrimage as walked through the Diocese of Chelmsford, saying his goodbyes to the local churches. Today he officially takes up his new job as Archbishop of York, second-in-command of the Church of England.
And St Peter’s chapel was a highly symbolic place for him to visit. He had come here very early in the morning on the first day of his ministry as Bishop of Chelmsford. Found at the end of a muddy track, it could easily be mistaken for a cow shed. Yet it points beyond itself. The modesty of the structure serves to emphasise the vastness of the Essex sky and of the vulnerability to the elements of those who gather there. Marinated in centuries of silence, this little corner of the world invites even the most limited imagination to reach out into space and time. Its power is the very opposite to that of its brutal concrete nuclear neighbour.
Yet if England is one day to be re-evangelised, it will be because of the power of lonely places like this. Out in the stony beaches and agricultural flatlands of the Dingie peninsular, there is a compelling sense of life as having a vertical axis. Out here, God makes sense.
In truth, most bishops end up disappointing people. And archbishops more than most. It is an impossible job, especially in an age where Christianity feels like it is in retreat. Last month the Diocese of Chelmsford announced that due to financial pressures it has been forced to plan for a reduction of 60 clergy posts over the next 18 months. And such reductions may well be a thing of the future as the Church continues to contract.
But what is more dangerous to the overall mission and credibility of the church is the fearful reaction that often accompanies reductions and closures. Financial pressure stimulates panicky missionary initiatives with inviting sounding names dreamt up in the religious PR department. Bishop Ched managed with the Bible, faith in the living God and a good pair of shoes.
The Church of England has disappointed many people over these last few months. Many experiencing loneliness and confinement were looking for a finger that pointed to the divine, a reminder from their comforters-in-chief that God was present amidst it all. Yet as busy evangelical executives counted their increasing Zoom followers, the buildings of the church were abandoned by the very people whose job it was to keep them open.
Instead, the internet became the latest fresh expression of church, and — just whisper it — potential way of restructuring a Church with less clergy around to run it. On 29 May a number of senior churchmen wrote in the Church Times with this rather depressing vision for our future:
“Being prevented from ‘going to church’ might liberate us from our habitual routines to ‘become church’ all over again — or, perhaps, for the very first time. Such rejuvenation may help to release us, at last, from the prison of our church building, which, for many, have become shrines to the past which not only soak up energy and resources, but also perpetuate concepts of division and hierarchy harmful to a mature understanding of who we are.”
Closing the churches, even to the private prayer of the clergy themselves, was a terrible mistake. But so too was replacing the mysterium tremendum with a bit of soft-Left activism and the box-ticking language of health and safety.
And do not underestimate how health and safety-ism, as a distinctive moral philosophy, is now totally transforming the Church. Last week Bishop Stephen was himself forced to apologise for a lapse in judgment after it was discovered that a safeguarding matter he dealt with 10 years ago was not fully documented and the appropriate authorities were not properly informed. The issue looked like a minor mistake, and a mistake of process not intention.
But these days, when even previous senior bishops from George Bell to George Carey have been very publicly disgraced over their handling of the issue, the processes of the Church are where the real power now lies. Some see this as a welcome attempt at moral objectivity, indifferent to the status of offenders; others fear that it makes power inhuman, bureaucratic and dangerously beyond question.
Well over a century ago, the sociologist Max Weber was writing about how organisations are transformed by bureaucracy as a way of mediating authority. Traditionally, of course, the bishop is the supreme example of what Weber calls “charismatic” authority – and that does not mean they have authority because of their winning personalities, but because of the perceived presence of God in them. They are imbued with the charism of leadership, a gift of the holy spirit.
Weber argued that charismatic authority is transformed by routine into something very different: bureaucratic authority. The hallmarks of this distinctively modernist system of authority are the specialisation of labour, a reliance on rules and regulations, technical competence guidelines, a reliance on written rather than verbal communications, record keeping and above all impersonality and personal indifference.
You may believe that this “professionalisation” is a good thing — but it is extraordinary that the Church has been transformed by it with very little reflection as to its virtues. And there are some of us who think it is proving to be a disaster, with the Church of England now going the way of the University, gradually being strangled by risk assessments, impact reports, and HR departments warning against “reputational risk”. Weber called it an “iron cage” and that is how it feels.
Bishop Stephen talks just about enough of this new Church management-speak to make the true believers think that he gets it. And perhaps he does — you can’t get on in the Church these days without genuflecting to secular management processes. And indeed, he was the Diocesan Missioner in Wakefield, one of those non parish jobs that is all about inventing vacuous vision statements and planning meaningless days of action.
But I can forgive him all of that, because what I really like about Bishop Stephen is that bit of him we get to see when he puts up his out-of-office sign and steps away from the endless round of Church committees. Some bishops look like they were purpose built for synods; they find the kingdom of God in the minutes of the last meeting. Not Stephen Cottrell.
Bishop Stephen’s pilgrimage to Bradwell was not a one-off. The theme of walking is a favourite of his. Travelling Well was one of his books, as was Walking backwards to Christmas. He also contributed to Walking the Way of the Cross and Pilgrim: A course for the Christian journey, while in 2016 he walked part of the famous Camino, the pilgrimage to Santiago in northern Spain. “Our forebears knew the truth we have neglected,” he wrote: “that all the important things are learned on the road.”
Like Cedd, Cottrell’s primary task is the evangelisation of England. And I am strangely encouraged by this simple emphasis on walking as it relates to the task of spreading the word in a post-Christian society. The Church is not a business. It does not need to be a model of efficiency. Indeed, it should look completely different to the secular organisations that demand our day-to-day allegiance.
To walk is to break free from the iron cage. You can’t take much with you, and you have to trust yourself to the elements — and often to the simple charity of strangers. Keep walking Bishop, and avoid as many meetings as you can. Walk the Yorkshire Dales. Pray along its highways and byways. And on the way you will meet people and explain the Gospel to them. That’s what the Church needs from its leadership.
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Subscribe“Indeed, it should look completely different to the secular organisations that demand our day-to-day allegiance.” In this basically admirable article, I did hesitate at the thought that the church should look completely different from all secular organisations.
Until very recently, when in the wake of the Thatcherite reforms it became an article of secular “faith” that all institutions were businesses by any other name and all therefore should be models of efficiency, it was widely accepted that there were many types of organisation that should look different from the business model.
A hospital, a school or a university, a museum or an art gallery, even an institution like the BBC – all these used to conduct themselves with the assumption that they were engaged in a task that was, in a certain sense, priceless. One hesitates to use the word “sacred”, since in the literal sense it would come across as idolatrous in this context. But we lose the sense that our earthly undertakings might embody values beyond the purely material at our peril.
The old motto of the American University of Beirut (founded by a Protestant missionary, but non-sectarian) was “That They May Have Life And Have It More Abundantly”. That’s a Christian sentiment, of course, but our society would be in a much better place if the goal of all our institutions was to enable people to “live abundantly”.
“Walking the job”, “doing the rounds”, “being seen to be seen” all of these used to be part of being a leader in any walk of life it was expected of them, and while for some it resembled an exercise in fear, for many a sign that the boss wanted to know what was actually happening on the ground. But sadly today, such simplicities are denied most leaders due to the process driven, meeting obsessed culture that now forms part of their daily routine. I remember a head teacher I once knew bemoaning the fact that if he got to walk around his school once a week to talk to the children whose education he was responsible for, he was lucky. Today our churches resemble corporate entities, remote from concerns of real people they are supposed to be serving but with a bit of charitable outreach thrown in so it looks like “we’re doing something to fulfil the gospel teachings”. If the Christian Church is to revitalise itself and to take advantage of the upsurge of interest in prayer since the pandemic, it needs its leaders both locally and nationally, to start getting out and about walking the parish streets and become less concerned about bureaucratic procedures. Support staff and volunteers are there to do these things, let the leaders lead by being seen and with that we may entice the curious, the un-churched and the de-churched to come on in and see the joyful existence a living faith in Christ can provide.
Hear hear. It’s a curious thing that as the number of churchgoers and priests has declined, the number of bishops and suffragan bishops has risen. I suppose it’s because they need someone to chair all those unnecessary meetings. Time for a cull. By the way, it’s the Dengie peninsula, and it’s anything but dingy
Well said. Notice too the burgeoning HQ bureaucracies in every diocese to support the increased number of bishops. Now I’m informed that senior clergy will meet with newly appointed incumbents to set targets for ministry. Thankfully I am retired.
I am surprised that Giles refers to Peter Ball as a previous Archbishop of Canterbury. Even I, as a Humanist, knew that he was a Bishop – of Gloucester and Lewes – as stated in the linked article.
I can’t see any such reference.
I can’t see any reference in the article to Bishop Peter Ball, only to George Bell.
The hierarchial structure of the cofe often seems to get in the way of evangelism. With people far outnumbering clergy, most good ideas come from the pews rather than the clergy. However, to get people ideas off the ground in the cofe requires supportive clergy. Unfortunately, that support is not always there for new ideas unless it comes from the top. From my experience cofe clergy are risk adverse for fear of upsetting the bishop. They go out of their way to avoid controversy rather than taking risks with new ideas from the pews. They are far more focused on pleasing the bishop than pleasing the people. I would go far as saying that from my experience clergy are at great risk of closing doors to evangelism rather than opening doors to evangelism.
Absolutely dead on.
Indeed the apostles gave us the truth of this in Acts 5:29 ‘Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than people.”’
They of course, said this in response to the surrounding society telling them their sharing of the gospel wasn’t wanted.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t listen to the any people (pews or Bishop), but any suggestion which is in line with the gospel is the one that should be pursued, and so often this is bottom-up. After all, and this probably feeds into another issue, it’s the congregants who are trying to share the truth as well as the clergy. It shouldn’t be surprising that maybe they do know best.
HR is the swiss army tool for the elites used by the big business to create barriers to entry for small business, used by the left to promote their ideology and keep the unions happy with a wink and a nod from CEO’s and their hedge fund owners as it is very useful to them and it creates whole industries in these regulations. Health & Safety, “diversity and inclusion” (Regardless of what damage it all does to social cohesion). The right are funded by these big business too and therefore are reluctant to do much about it.
If the Church seriously wants to recover perhaps it might show some courage, in confronting its own issues (paedophilia and snidey officious judgement come to mind) but also reconnecting with the poor who overwhelmingly voted brexit.
Perhaps it could start by saying emphatically with one voice that cancel culture is wrong and then maybe doing something with all its resources to fight this evil because like christianity is supposed to be about forgiveness and stuff.
I shan’t hold my breath.
A strong piece of writing that includes many things with which I agree, and others with which I disagree.
The way Rev. Fraser describes Bishop Cottrell would place the latter well within the categories of those in the Church of England whom I would most admire. But I cannot shake off less-favourable impressions formed by other things I have read, both about him and written by him, during his years as Bishop of Chelmsford. Most of those negative impressions are based on his implementation of policies founded on liberal theology.
That kind of mixed impression is inevitable in an institution populated by human beings, for it is fundamental to Christianity that we all are sinners in need of repentance, forgiveness and reformation. However, although Rev. Fraser’s discussion pivots around Bishop Stephen and around the inevitably mixed legacies left by any human being, his larger subject rightly focusses on tendencies that the Church of England shares with many other human organisations ” with the very strong aspiration that the church as an institution should not demonstrate these essentially secular, de-personalising characteristics.
His mention of Max Weber in this context made me aware of how impeccably that great thinker’s concepts expand the extraordinarily prophetic observations made some 90 years earlier by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835″“1840). De Tocqueville predicted the rise, within democratic societies, of rules and of a class of people necessary to administer them. It would produce, he said, a “soft despotism” that would not be recognised as despotic because it would seem to be for people’s benefit. But it would be much harder to deal with than the hard despotism of pre-democratic systems, partly because there was no head that could be cut off.
The Kingdom of God is not a democracy; but it is inevitable that any institution will share some of the characteristics of the society around it, for good or for ill. Any church body should ensure that its characteristics have as few of the ill as possible. So the characteristics that Rev. Fraser describes so well, via Weber’s penetrating analysis stand out for being, in just about every respect, exactly what the church should NOT be:
Why can those charged with running the Church of England as an institution not see that the inevitable consequences of the very systems that they believe are the best ” those that promote “safety”, accountability and all the other “whatever…ties ” on which their systems feed ” are having so many bad effects? (I am not claiming that safety and accountability are bad in themselves. Rather the opposite.) The Apostle Paul urged the believers in Rome in these terms:
[Romans 12:2]
This is primarily an injunction aimed at the individual believer. But the critique it invites should be applied to everything that goes under the name Christian. Rev. Fraser is right: by conforming itself to this world, via that that primary tool of modern managerialism, HR think and action, the Church of England is strangling itself.
Once the C of E have got rid of the cumbersome buildings, along with the cumbersome beliefs and the cumbersome responsibility of saving souls, they can get on with their real work. Whatever that will be.
Another excellent article, hitting the spot exactly. The C of E has become deeply depressing and uninspiring; may the new Ebor push back to a simple non-political God facing faith.
His predecessor at York – a good and popular man who should have gone to Canterbury to replace Archbishop Wobbly, also did a lot of walking so the boots and crook, metaphorically, are waiting.
But maybe it is time to send to Canterbury our very own Mr Fraser. That really would be a signal of hope.
The CoE seems to have decided the best way to advance religion is to chuck it over the side.
My Father was a vicar. Just one parish, a village with cows that plodded to and fro when they needed to be milked. And in those days he would visit his parishioners, not, I think making any distinction between those who went to church and those that didn’t. All that seems to have passed. Now the clergy have too many parishes and probably too many meetings to attend.
Wow. Ask any muslim if joining in prayer with others at his mosque helps his faith and he will answer with a resounding “Yes!”
They have taken away the beauty of language of the book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, they have taken away our traditional hymns and given us guitars and pop songs, They have taken away moral guidance and substituted progressivism. They have contaminated places of worship with cafes, shops and helter skelters. They have closed the churches in a time when many required succor and comfort. And now our pathetic churchmen want to be “liberated ” from prayer and regard their churches as “prisons”
The last nail in the C of E coffin
It would have been reassuring to hear some promising news of the new Archbishop of York but now he has said that Jesus was a black man all credibility has gone. Jesus was a Jew. His forbears were semitic people from northern Mesopotamia.
Dear Giles,
George Kennedy Alan Bell, Bishop of Chichester , was never Archbishop of Canterbury. The presumption is that Churchill could not stand the man who spoke against Bomber Commands mass destruction of German cities. Owen
ore importantly however is that Bishop Stephen when Bishop of Reading enchanted Primary School children by showing his colourful socks!
Interesting, but:-
“Its power is the very opposite to that of its brutal concrete nuclear neighbour.”
Not really. Unless Rev. Fraser has something against electricity. Or is this just another fashionable dig at nuclear power?
In what other organisation would a departmental manager whose department was bringing in insufficient revenue and about to lay off a significant portion of its staff promote the departmental manager and put him in charge or reviewing the whole organisational structure? Only in the CofE…