The enthusiasm vaccine at work. Photo: GARETH FULLER/AFP via Getty Images
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The Church of England is on its knees, and not in a good way. Before the pandemic, physical congregations were already sparse, and getting sparser: in 2019, estimates put the average Sunday service attendance at just 27 people. When Covid-19 reached these shores, the Anglican leadership responded by closing churches even for private prayer, and they’ve issued barely a squeak for months on end. No one knows whether physical congregations will ever recover.
Nonbelievers may be tempted to celebrate this prospect. They shouldn’t. In pulling loose the religious thread in our national settlement, we’ll unravel the whole fabric — and we may not like what’s underneath.
Though I wasn’t raised in a churchgoing family, my husband and I joined our small-town Anglican church when we moved here. I’ve come to treasure it: the slow turn of the liturgical year, the opportunity to sing with others (a rare pleasure in the age of headphones and Spotify) and space to be serious with no particular goal in mind.
I was surprised at my own grief and anger when we were locked out of all this. In Mexico, worship mattered to large enough groups of people that clandestine lockdown services were organised, their times and locations passed on by word of mouth like illegal raves. But in Britain, faith is not considered worth the risk of illness — even by the church itself. Nevertheless, lockdown seems to have given faith a boost, at least in its ersatz digital form: a quarter of Britons attended some form of online religious service during lockdown.
No one knows, though, if that revive the fortunes of in-person Sunday services in Britain – or kill them dead. If the latter, it will be the culmination of a long-term trend. From a peak of over 10 million in the 1930s (then some 35% of the population), the proportion of Britons who are church members has been declining steadily. And the slump is not just in active church members, but believers in general. A 2019 British Social Attitudes poll suggested only 38% of Britons today even describe themselves as Christian, down from 66% in 1983. This fall is especially steep among the young: 2018 research shows that only 22% of UK young people today describe themselves as Christian.
This rings true. When we returned to church last Sunday, for the first time since lockdown, our daughter was the only child there — in fact, she was the only person under 40. This is par for the course. Parents keen to get their young children into the attached Church of England school show up once a month to the religion-lite family service (which is mostly biscuits and Pritt Stick) and otherwise on Christmas Day at a pinch. There are never any teenagers. Twenty-somethings turn up sometimes, but generally only for a few weeks as the banns for their wedding are read.
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Subscribe“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
‘The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.’ (G.K. Chesterton)
There are a couple of arguments within this article which appear based on the writers assumptions but those assumptions don’t hold true. The first is that Christian faith and attending the Church of England has a direct relationship. This is untrue. One of the noticeable trends amount the young is they are going to more “traditional”
or “conservative” churches, who practice a more evangelical form of Christianity which is often very like the way the CofE used to do in the middle ages! This flows into the next assumption that the CofE is centrists. It isn’t! The CofE is unrelentingly woke with a left wing clergy. From the imposition of Woman Priests and woman bishops through to Bishops offering overtly political attacks on the government and leaving the EU, etc. The CofE has become tone deaf to its a parishioners and the lockdown has given them the opportunity to close their ears to the small c conservative congregation. Now a Bishop can get on with the political activism and enjoy his church without those pesky religious lot getting in their way!
Bang on!!
I totally agree. I’m in my late 20’s and didn’t grow up in a Christian household. I’d been wanting to see what it would be like to go to Church and a friend of mine recommended one nearby. I think I must have fallen on my feet; it’s a seemingly rare traditional, evangelical CofE church where my young children are welcome. Pre-lockdown it was always full and is attended by many families with children of all ages. I hope I’ll start being able to attend as usual again soon.
How wonderful
The C of E didn’t exist in the Middle Ages.
Anybody avowing the thoughts of what would become the Co E in the Middle Ages, normally ended up on the BBQ.
Until fairly recently, if you ordered a steak in the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, you would be asked ” do you want it Latimer, Cranmer, or Ridley, Sir?
An oblique reference to those happy days of heretic burning.
Reminiscent of Joan of Arc, who was an unusual child – she was rare, who heard voices, and was a medium. Thanks to the Burgundians and the English, she was finally well done.
Too soon! 😉
It’s been all down hill since we gave up those traditional values.
Unless the traditional values have a sound basis they have no point.
Then pre and post civil war?
I think it did. Henry VIII only cut the obeisance to Rome, otherwise the established church remained largely the same.
Very interesting that an article on religion provokes such an enormous response; religion still fascinates, but the institution seems almost terminally decayed. It need not be so; look at the crowds that flock to the mosques, seeking solace and explanation and guidance.
And that surely is Anglicanism’s problem. It provides very little of the above (there are wonderful exceptions) and wraps its pathetic need to be loved in a touchy huggy feely wet comfort blanket.
The locking of the church doors seemed to me a sign that it was all over for the Church of England. Locking the faithful out seemed and seems somehow to represent the final failing. Oh, for a muscular Archbishop of simple strong faith who would have defied the government, even by just calling on congregations to meet outside and pray loudly together.
Good article, thank you
Excellent article, thank you Mary.
I pretty much agree with everything you’ve said, though I’m not sure about the idea that so-called British up-tightness is due to fear of another civil war. Does this reputation of ours even stand up to scrutiny ? Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff or any other city centre on a Saturday night (before lockdown) would indicate not.
But seriously, it is sad about the Church, though I think it has been it’s own worst enemy, trying to please everyone and seeming to have thrown away it’s moral agency and force, at the same time as being found to have let vulnerable children down. Many people blame either God or religion for these as well as wars, conveniently forgetting that God gave us free will to choose either good or evil, we are not puppets.
And along comes Marxism, Wokeness and BLM etc with no real moral framework at all, only religious fervour to fill the vacuum.
Prayer is my only answer. And argument, words are powerful.
I disagree that Marxism and its derivatives have no moral framework. They are about accusation, derision, shaming. Just as the Devil is in the Book of Job, the oldest book of the Christian Bible., “the Accuser”.
The C of E’s main problem is that it no longer does Christianity. Instead it’s become a fully paid up member of the International Church of Woke – most recently exemplified by Justin Welby’s attitude to the C of E’s own cultural legacy. Young woke people don’t care about the C of E, but why would a young non-woke person seeking spiritual guidance favour an organization that caves in to fashionable idiocy instead of concerning itself with the deep and difficult questions of existence? The ones that can’t be answered by brandishing placards, raising a fist or denouncing people you disagree with on Twitter.
Sadly true. The heart of the Church of England has never been very wholesome. A few inspections of its history, and an enjoyable read of Trollope’s novels tend to indicate this. By the same token, it’s all too easy to castigate the Catholic Church as well. I was brought up in the C of E and haven’t had much to do with it since I left school. I don’t think that I ever lost my faith and I doubt if this has altered very much. I have given this more thought in the last few years and I’d quite like to visit a church and just sit and spend a little time in prayer, if I could find one that’s open. I’m perfectly happy to dissociate the bleatings of woke priests and bishops from my religious beliefs as my own beliefs are quite personal.
Excellent article, thank you. I’m in a similar boat, only started attending when our local church was threatened with closure but found I actually enjoyed it. As you said, the chance to be serious, truly serious, at least once a week is of great value.
Not all C of E churches are in terminal decline. In “normal times” my own church regularly has a morning congregation of around 150, sometimes 200, including children and young adults, from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. And we’re not a happy-clappy evangelical church either, but a middle of the road, inclusive Anglican parish church. BCP Choral Evensong (most weeks) has a much smaller but devoted congregation while the monthly Taizé Prayer has its own following. We have a small but competent adult choir and recently started a children’s choir with about 20 enthusiastic young choristers.
During the past three years we have repaired the roof, installed new toilets, kitchen and disabled facilities, and replaced 200 chairs and an outdated sound system. The sudden and alarming appearance of a subsidence crack in the north wall became an opportunity to turn an underutilised stair well into two small meeting rooms. And the building is closed this week while new lighting is installed.
I suspect it’s partly due to leadership ““ all of the above projects have happened since our current Rector arrived (although some were already planned) ““ but basically the church is thriving because it’s a caring, committed community of faith.
I do realise a lot of rural churches are less fortunate, but it has more to do with numbers than lack of commitment. As a bell ringer I frequently (or did before lockdown) visit country churches on a Saturday, and there are always ladies arranging flowers and cleaning the brass and men mowing the churchyard. Clearly these churches are as loved and cherished as my own, and there is ample evidence (children’s drawings, creche etc.) that they are not merely kept going by a dwindling band of geriatrics.
There’s no denying that church attendances have declined considerably since, say, the 1950’s, but let’s not forget that the social pressures on people to attend church “because it was the done thing” don’t exist anymore. Those of us who still go do so because we want to. The Church of England may need to reorganise and re-purpose some of its beautiful buildings, but I think any reports of its imminent demise are grossly exaggerated.
In this rural parish (part of a group of nine) you will find about ten per cent of the population in church on a given Sunday. In addition there is serious goodwill towards the parish church, such that on Christmas Eve there is standing room only (i.e. at least half the civil parish population). I doubt if these proportions can be paralleled in cities – it is just that there are more actual people there !
The problem for the CofE is that during the 1950’s to 60’s the positions of power that ran it, aka politicians in frocks, were all socialists.
Younger folk are perceptive enough to recognise the difference between a monkey and an organ grinder, so those young folk started to become socialists, rather than Anglicans.
Job done.
Archbish Fish a socialist ? Really ? M. Ramsey one recalls as a serious theologian and a man of real holiness (like Rowan Williams – travestied by the Press). Coggan well-meaning but rather forgettable. Who were these “politicians in frocks” who were in positions of power in the C of E in the Fifties and Sixties ? Please enlighten us.
To go into this just by dropping a couple of names as you have just done is easily refuted with names such as those who were open members of the CPGB, there were a good number of these, including the Dean of Canterbury Cathederal.
Mervyn Stockwood and David Sheppard come to mind, as rather loud socialists both very adept at manipulating the BBC.
But that is not to mention all the little people that just had the single parish and preached one or more of the various strands of socialism, as though everyone knows that socialism = compassion, even though that compassion has led to over 100 million deaths during the 20th C.
Oh and I haven’t even mentioned the current incumbent.
The effect of 100 years of this is to hollow out the institution and make it meaningless, which is precisely what I described in my comment.
You referred to “the positions of power that ran it, aka politicians in frocks, were all socialists”. I assume you mean “those in positions of power”. I enumerated the archbishops of the time. That is scarcely “dropping a couple of names”. There was no shortage of prelates in the Fifties and Sixties who were anything but socialists.
I agree entirely. At a time when many people would find comfort in a church they are all locked out. It feels like an abdication of responsibility and moral cowardice. And the worrying thing is what is going to fill the void.
Protecting others isn’t cowardice. The article thinks people were afraid to die. In reality they were afraid to kill.
Accurate
A very good essay, Mary. Thank you.
As a Reader (licensed lay minister) in the Church of England, I find this one of the more penetrating and thoughtful observations on the condition of the Church of England. I am far from being alone in finding it hard to contain my anger at the church’s leadership ” which in effect has proved lack of leadership. The failure to act and to speak out is far more than a lost opportunity. It is a serious dereliction of duty.
The Bible tells us that the citizenship of followers of Jesus Christ is in heaven. The House of Bishops seems to believe that the best Christian witness lies in being an impeccable citizen of the UK; and that means we must worship at the shrine of the new national religion ” Safety.
Good column. With a few exceptions, the youngest people in my Anglican congregation are myself and my husband and our contemporaries, in our 60s – the last generation to go to school when a ‘daily act of Christian worship’ was compulsory, the last to absorb the sense of Christianity as something normal, part of our culture. As Tom Holland points out in his brilliant book ‘Dominion’, Western liberals are in denial about the extent to which their values depend on Christianity – and the extent to which the rug will be pulled from under them once Christianity finally dies.
Absolutely true. I come from a non church going family but like all in our generation had compulsory morning assembles and weekly RE classes for my entire education. I don’t have any religious belief but know the words of most common homes, carols and prayers. I’m also a “friend” of my local church which basically means raising money for the upkeep of a beautiful twelve hundred year old building. I don’t know how anyone can live in this county without some knowledge of the underpinnings of its culture.
Interesting. I also wonder what is already filling the void that various forms of community, like religious ones, once held. I fear the newer ‘enthusiastic’ forms will be much worse.
A perceptive take on a serious issue. I believe that part or the blame must rest with evangelism and ‘charismatic’ Christianity, e.g. the Alpha course, which the C of E has had to accommodate. But this acquiescence has led to a loss of nuance and much of what many of us have loved about the C of E (Larkin put his finger on it: ‘that vast, moth-eaten musical brocade’.) The result has been a sad rejection by many mainstreamers who didn’t go to church for literalism.
Complete nonsense. People like you are part of the problem.
What rubbish; you don’t know what you are talking about!
Jesus told us to make disciples and I believe that is called evangelism. Did he want a church that don’t believe his teachings? He knew this would happen and told us that the way is narrow and there would be few that find it. Thank you Jesus for your sacrifice and warnings.
This seems unlikely: last I checked, the congregations in the C of E that are growing are the evangelical (or anglo-Catholic) end of things, not the middle of the road.
The problem is that the C of E should have been showing the world hope, not fear – it’s one of the principle messages of Christianity. Those who run the Church have been hastening its eventual demise. I’m not sure we’ll miss the Church as it’s become. It’s been several decades that I’ve missed the Church as it used to be
“In Mexico, worship mattered to large enough groups of people that clandestine lockdown services were organised.”
They sound suspiciously like Christians.
And if you are shy a few Anglicans in the UK you ought to import some Chinese churchgoers, like here in Australia. Protestant business is booming out east.
Not English, nor even British here.
However, I think the author has pointed to a malaise common to all of “mainstream” Christianity in the West. We’re sentimental for a lost civility and community; but I hear nothing of a great God or redeeming Christ in either this article or in many “mainstream” churches. As an urban person, I’m thrown out into a world of flux, a cult of “revolution” (which ends up the mere right of the strongest), and a rudderless “morality” which changes with every wind.
What does Anglicanism (or, for that matter, the Evangelische Kirchen in Germany, or the “Seven Sisters” denominations in America) have for me that I cannot find somewhere else?
As for “bourgeois morality” (quite compatible for me), could it not be that one reason it is in decline is because its stress on family life, honesty in business, respect for neighbors, etc., was itself the product of Christianity; and without a robust Christian faith, it will not survive. As for the community, it is held together by faith, and without it, disintegrates.
To all those fond of their churches while “not believing a word of the creed”, you are part of the problem. You will be indifferent if the clergy can or cannot teach the faith, and are allowing your community to sicken and die.
A good and readable article – thank you Mary. I’ve been surprised how bereaved and at times angry I have felt during lockdown at the near total absence of anglican Christianity. Churches barred and shut down even for private prayer, the Archbishop leading online worship from his flat on an ipad. I do think that the way churches were shut down and its leadership, catholic as well as anglican, became silent was a big mistake, as you seem to imply in what you wrote.
Muddled and split though the C of E seems, it represents so much that is kind, gentle and learned in English culture. I’m sure it will continue to survive and even thrive in city centre churches amongst the young and evangelical. But in Cornwall where we spend most of our time, its survival is hanging by a thread.
Much of what Mary says applies also to the Catholic church here. Many “parishioners” are cultural Catholics – keen for the church to provide the backdrop to their hatching, matching, and dispatching, and a traditional Catholic education, much less keen to help to support or maintain it. A church without active believers is not a living entity and the Catholic church here (and in other places) is going the same way as the CoE. However, the Catholic church did not abandon its adherents during lockdown in the way that the hierarchy of the CoE seemed to do. It did not bar its clergy from entering their churches and online mass and other services were encouraged and facilitated throughout lockdown. I “attended” parishes all over the UK (as well as further afield). Priests around the world continued to minister to the sick including Covid sufferers at considerable risk to themselves – over 120 priests died from the virus in Italy alone. In my own small city centre parish the parish priest served as best he could throughout. He kept in touch by email, telephoned parishioners every few weeks to check that all was well with them, and organised a group of parishioners to keep an eye on the vulnerable. He reopened the church for daily services as soon as permitted to do so. I’m sure that many CoE clergy were equally attentive to their congregation – in so far as the strictures placed upon them allowed. I would be sad for many reasons to see the CoE disestablished, but its hierarchy seems to have lost faith not only in its purpose but at times in Christianity itself. On reflection, perhaps that makes it the perfect established church for these times.
So … not belief in God and the redemptive powers of Christ then? You’re a sort of secular Christian with a soft spot for nice old buildings and a bit of community?
I’m sure a lot of us can all get behind that, but ought we be granting real political power to the quaint old hierarchy of odd ducks that run it?
To be honest as I age I soften towards the C of E. Where once I saw it as a religion with an unwarranted stranglehold on British society, it now appears a really rather benign institution compared to all the crazy zealotry that’s out there in the world. I’ll not be sad when it finally gets put out to pasture, but I’m not so keen to hurry it along as once I was.
Would be interesting to see an international perspective as to what the alternatives are? Religiosity of some kind is close to universal therefore each country must come to its own accommodation of this into it’s political space. e.g. Non established church in USA is far more prominent in its politics, appearing just as often as in overtly theocratic states.
With a common cultural heritage, I’d be more interested in comparisons with European states.
A very sensitive and well reasoned article. That said I’m not sure disestablishing the church would necessarily weaken it. Perhaps if it had to compete more the C of E would regain its core strengths more rapidly.
I am not religious at all (catholic by birth) but the problem with Christianity in the West is that it has lost the “fire & brimstone” part.
And CofE was always half baked…neither protestant nor catholic. And in questions of faith “middle of the road” doesn’t do it!
It wasn’t neither originally, but an uneasy amalgam of both.
I’m not sure I agree that “middle of the road doesn’t do it”. Hard-sell evangelism isn’t for everyone. One of the strengths of the CofE in my opinion is that it supports its members while they develop spiritually at their own pace (what a clerical friend once described as “gradually moving from doing church to knowing God”).
I see no reason to concern ourselves with an institution that has over the years encouraged war, opposed universal franchise and in more recent times been found to have stayed silent about child abuse within its ranks. If all those that have spoken wish to believe in an unproven god please carry on. I find the idea that there is a benevolent, merciful, all seeing and all powerful entity unsustainable when it allows a big wave to kill just under a quarter of a million people on a boxing day.
It is undenyable that there are other pseudo religions waiting to take over if they can. We must be alert against the possibility of a theocracy as was the case here not so long ago and is the case in Iran, Pakistan and is becoming the case in Turkey etc. The USA supposedly has a division between church and state yet there will never be an atheist or agnostic president.
Nevertheless we should disestablish the C of E with all haste.
I find it interesting that the closer that various forms of the same religion are, the more likely they are to kill one another. Sunni and Shia, Catholic and Protestant. All say they believe in a peaceful religion yet rather than turning the other cheek they have fought for years and may well continue.
Good comment. Thanks!
Actually it has been said that the closer people are geographically the more likely they are to kill one another. It’s also been said that the more equal people are the easier it is for resentment to build up and so for violence to occur.
It’s an interesting topic: why wars begin; why violence occurs.
Having been ordained, you can’t call me Father I resigned as being on call morning, noon and night 24/365 wasn’t for me I soon realised, I’ve known a number of high church, and low church, clergy. The CCP virus has been damaging no doubt, and many parish clergy will have been put into a very difficult position, minister to their parishioners in person and risk spreading the virus, or shut up shop and await instructions from above, most understandably preferred the latter, due in no small part to their own advanced age many were and are deeply fearful.
Other Abrahamic faith leaders have publicly shown willing, closing their places of worship, but then held Friday prayers in large houses and sweatshop workplaces that never locked down. To find prayer mats hidden in Fire Escapes in ‘normal’ times in work places with dedicated prayer rooms even the ‘replacement’ for Christianity is a divided faith. A long time friend who’s church in Luton had a huge church hall rented it out to the local Imam, the Parish church was barely used, on a ‘good’ Sunday he might minister to 30-40, the hall was packed with 300-400 every Friday.
Locally churches have in limited ways reopened, but no singing and quietly spoken services don’t work for some communities, those whose faith is strong don’t ‘need’ a physical church, but for many the regular public reaffirmation not just of their own faith but those they live with and around is essential. The sooner the C of E and other Christian churches get themselves sorted, the better, if only to counter the new faith of neo-Marxism and Gramsci’s ghost that has been ‘demoralising’ the country, the next stages ‘destabilising’ followed by ‘crisis’ might then be averted. The final stage of ‘normalisation’, the ‘new normal’, is a truly frightening prospect.
The Church of England is dying, but as Mary says there’s no sign that religion is. What this means for our wonderful legacy of c.16,000 medieval parish churches, God (?) only knows. Incidentally, why illustrate an article about Anglicanism with a photo of (the Catholic) Westminster Cathedral?
Well spotted, I thought it must be “left footer” but couldn’t identify it.
Are sure about 16,000? I have it at about 9,000, plus off course, the 23 or so magnificent ‘Great Churches’, Cathedrals, Abbeys and Collegiate Churches.
Mea culpa. There there are over 16,000 Anglican church buildings in England (Church Buildings Council website) but I think your figure for those which are medieval is about right. Still quite a lot!
“Quite a lot “, indeed. In fact an architectural wonderland in many ways.
When one remembers that the Dissolution saw the destruction of about half of our Great Churches (about 25 of them), plus about another 550 outstanding, Abbey, Priories Friaries, not to mention the Hospitals, it amounted to the greatest act of artistic vandalism in English history, and perhaps a salutary warning.
Interesting. I spent most of my life in the Republic of Ireland, where a “left-footer” was a Protestant.
It is very much a British Army expression, so that no doubt explains the diametrically opposed meaning.
That sounds plausible. Thanks.
As I’ve been trying to post directly to Andrew Derrick, it is in fact at Canterbury Cathedral, at Archbishop Welby’s enthronement in 2013. I know Westminster Cathedral better than Canterbury, and could not make that photo fit what I knew.
In my reply to Andrew I tried to post the link to the original Getty Images source; but the infuriating comments behaviour of UnHerd has insisted that the comment had to await approval ” which in my experience means that the comment will never appear.
UnHerd changed the caption photograph after a few hours, as they frequently do, for some inexplicable reason.
The first one showed a near empty church with one woman, wearing a Cambridge blue mask, in the front pew. This was the one correctly identified by Andrew Derrick, as Westminster Cathedral.
The current one, as you have also correctly identified, is Canterbury Cathedral.
Thank you! That explains a lot . . . . .
I know Westminster Cathedral, and could not make that photo line up with what I know. It is in fact Canterbury Cathedral; and here’s the original source of the photo, which was taken at Archbishop Welby’s enthronement in 2013.
Andrew, I’ve been trying to post in reply, citing the photo’s source; but it keeps getting placed “for approval”, which in my experience means it will never appear. The photo is of Canterbury Cathedral during Archbishop Welby’s enthronement in 2013. I know Westminster Cathedral, and could not make that photo fit with what I know. The source is from Getty Images.
Good point about reiigion not dying. Thanks.
I don’t think most of us will miss the CoE at all. Like all our institutions it has become completely unfit for purpose. Those churches that are not burned to the ground in the decades to come will be repurposed as mosques.
Would you really want to live in a Muslim polity ?
I’m a cultural Anglican I suppose. I don’t believe a word of the Creed but the last thing I want to witness before I die is the decline of the Anglican church. I am bewildered how it can be that the local Roman Catholic church remained open throughout (with sensible precautions – but it is open everyday Covid or not) yet the Anglican Churches are shut. I’ve had the feeling for along time that the greatest enemies of Christianity are Christians.
Interesting – I believe in the creed but Im sorry to say I stopped going. I can’t point to a specific reason but I just think in this age of ultra-consumerism and individual choice in trying to be all things to all people I just feel it has lost its way. This may have been a strength in the past but not now. The contrast with the Roman Catholics and orthodox churches of the East is painful and obvious. But then again it’s just another Western cultural institution under attack. A strong, charismatic leader who can confidently proclaim and defend its mission might give it a fighting chance but there us next to no hope of that. Maybe Im being too pessimistic.
If your local Catholic church remained open throughout the lockdown they were in defiance of their hierarchy (although unlike the Anglicans they did at least allow clergy into their churches to livestream services)
That is the difference !
The picture at the top is Westminster (Catholic) Cathedral. Strange choice!
Catholic architecture is far superior to the protestant one.
Could you expand on that a little?
By any measure the architecture of Westminster Cathedral is Byzantine, rather than Roman!
In para 13 s/b William III (of Orange) not William II (d.1100), if you please!
” I’ve seen no evidence to date that the decline in Christian belief and church membership is delivering a less credulous, less volatile, more rational and more measured public life.” As you imply, the opposite is true. It would have been apropos, I think, to expand this well-crafted, succinct thought to the ‘crisis du jour’. Is it any wonder that Britain seems to be in a perpetual crisis in the past few years? Brexit with a slathering of Covid icing on the national cake? Both times the establishment has reacted with incredulity, little reason and anything but a measured approach. Why? Because they lack the independence of individual courage that Christianity teaches when it puts a man, at his death, before his maker. Separation and/or death are directly addressed in the Christian scriptures. Both are seen as inconveniences, at worst, because man must face far larger consequences than Brussels trade policies or ‘novel’ snivels. The small travails of life are minuscule: the real reward is in the afterlife.
Stripped of its god and temporal power, the Anglican church can be seen as a contrivance of elements drawn from a peculiar construct combining celebration of meekness, poverty and simplicity with the opulence, ceremony and great halls of a Roman imperium, energised still by the intellectual zeal of its founder. In the space between floats an assortment of Judaic, Hellenistic and Pagan figures and ideas, and somewhere a small dark man credited with radical ideas and outrageous claims who has since been transformed out of recognition. None of this appears to sit uncomfortably with Anglo or wider European culture, maybe because that culture provided its blueprint. Whichever way round it goes, the church finds both its ends loose, relevant neither to most individuals’ lives nor to public occasions which increasingly look absurd when led by priests. Some church buildings have been successfully repurposed, though you wouldn’t want their heating bills. Others combine ‘worship’ with the beneficial role of social or art centre, but their upkeep will probably be unsustainable without subsidy. However, the same applies to most natural places according to our prevailing economic doctrine, as well as a whole lot of things we take for granted like libraries, museums, theatres, public infrastructure, children, education and old people. A sane society needs an anchor in history as well as in contemporary culture, institutions and nature.
What of ‘Christianity’? Was Jesus ‘Christ’? Recall that ‘Christos’ means ‘anointed’ as either a prophet or king. Did he believe he was fulfilling ancient prophecies and/or descended from king David, or was that a later invention? “The kingdom of God is within you” looks like an argument for dismissing organised religion not founding one, but a more recent translation reads “[already] in the midst of you”. There is no place in a representative democratic society for theocracy or autocracy let alone worshipping it. Nor is there any place for militant exceptionalism, so the haloed blond Viking hero who gazes into the distance as the faithful march against his enemies has to go too. Without the religion, what does Jesus say, or is attributed as saying, that is new now or in the first century? “Love your enemy” and “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” look like tactical ploys in the face of an unsympathetic power, and as a martyr standing up for right against tyranny he is one of a multitude, and maybe unexceptional in his own time until resurrected as a rallying symbol. With little concrete evidence, Jesus lives in the imagination and speaks through an epic movie script.
“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary” could have been spoken by Jesus, but was already famous a century earlier. Aphorisms like ‘the first shall be last’ or ‘the slave of all’, ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘forgive your enemies’ may be seen as good advice for peace-lovers and to avoid hubris and escalation, not always observed by professed Christians in positions of power. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” says it all about not being judgmental or misogynistic. However, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” is good advice for a mystic but terrible advice for anyone else. “Tear down the temple and I will rebuild it in three days” might appeal to some evangelicals and Extinction Rebellion but probably not to the Synod and most taxpayers. No wonder Christianity, when not condemning heretics, veers between confusion and ‘make it up as you go along’. When I began writing this comment, I was thinking we can save Christianity by stripping away ‘Christ’ and making Jesus a humanist, but now I am not sure. Still, keep the churches and celebrate the eclecticism of the influences, for there is nothing more dangerous than a single big idea, except a vacuum waiting to be filled by one.
The Church theoretically believes that a man who lived around 2000 years ago was not only a charismatic leader, but was sent by God to save the world from sin. That he took on the sin of the world when he was crucified, that he rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and that as a result it is possible for each individual devoted to him to be forgiven for and cleansed of any sin. It takes serious commitment and sustained mental effort to get the brain to live with such notions. It takes the zeal of the convert and the zealous evangelists who convert them. Those who go through the motions for the social life and aesthetically pleasing trappings are too embarrassed to talk about what they theoretically believe, so their sort of church is bound to fade away over time.
This maudlin introspection is pointless. As the English abandon their cities these churches are perfectly positioned in location and numbers to be repurposed as mosques or branches of some African christianity.
Really interesting article, but I think some folk on here miss the issues when it comes to the smaller local rural churches. We’d love to open the buildings to the public again so they can wander in and seek solace and take photos etc, but we opening to government covid-cleanliness standards isn’t easy. Typically it would mean deep-cleaning the building every day, and we don’t have the time, people or financial resource to do it.
We can manage a weekly dust and clean up of bat droppings, but wiping down every hard surface every day is a mammoth task that would mean asking people to leave important tasks like caring for each other, running local food banks and helping hands schemes etc, to come and clean hard surfaces to keep the heritage buffs who are missing their free cultural excursions happy.
Good essay. Thanks! As I see it, the problem lies at the core of religion itself. The coupling of supernatural superstition to morality means something will have to give when the lights come on. Ultimately, the philosophy of Empiricism / the scientific method undermined all the supernatural superstitions that held religion together. Unfortunately, when many people threw out their belief in magic along went morality out the window as well. It’s community and a common cause that people want and need. Old-timey religion provided just that.
I think the problem is in the denomination rather than in religion itself. While the Anglican church has been in decline, other Christian denominations have grown and outside GB the church is growing rapidly. Religion and science are certainly not in competition; one answers questions about meaning while the other answers questions about how the world works. (Brian Greene, a theoretical phyicist at Columbia University and a secular Jew, explains this well in several of his talks on YouTube).
The church I go to has held services on Zoom and YouTube and attendance has increased during the pandemic. A year ago we moved into new premises having outgrown our previous and another church in the same Presbyterian denomination is also looking for new premises having outgrown the present ones,
I’ve read the comments with great interest. Though for all the problems the Bishops fail to act on I reckon it’s all the Roman’s fault. They ran out of lions:-)
The point of society having an anchor chain is that it leads to an anchor. It is not a good idea to all have our own chain and try throwing it in the water in the hope of finding an anchor.
For me, the bible and Christianity in general have lost relevance because they are too anthropocentric. For me, the future with the greatest good is ecological justice and the church is only really interested in social justice. In this respect, the only person relevant in Christianity is st Francis of Assisi who as you know is the patron Saint of ecology.
I say this because I believe the only way to avert the human growth crisis is ecocentrism.
I feel your pain that churches are closing but in truth they no longer provide a solution to our problems. The ten commandments have failed to save humanity and so has Jesus’s crucifixion.
I recently had an epithany that We need to deeply appreciate Nature and find a sustainable balance between human animals, tamed animals and wild animals, otherwise we are heading towards an increasingly synthetic existence.
That will be the anthropocentric evolutionary pathway which synthetically tries to adapt to our next human growth crisis or whatever you want to call it. This pathway will see the end of wild Nature since humans will kill it as the human population grows.
Social justice is primarily an anthropocentric endeavour which is underpinned by eco-modernism.
Ecological justice is primarily an ecocentric endeavour which is underpinned by deep ecology and human ecology (with a Marxist variant called social ecology).
If St Francis of Assisi can be venerated above Jesus Christ as the most recent messiah then maybe Christianity will have a chance. If not it will just become increasingly woke and irrelevant. In this respect, fragmenting into sects would probably be a good thing. At least then there will be a sect that venerates Francis of Assisi 😊💮🌺🌸🌼ðŸµï¸
N. B have you heard of a Forest Church
All of your wish list can be traced back to an enculturated Xtianity; and, even achieved formalisation as recently as Liberation Theology. These are most often not positivist, but moral concerns. And once you posit a transcendental dimension -the good- you’ve posited God. Anthropomorphism is only a childish conception. The West’s Xtianity -the Bible, the doctrinal tradition, philosophy, poetry, music, art, saints, thinkers and heroes- is a 3K yr effort to find the meaning of things, the “Why are we here?” of the catechism. That there is an answer to the overarching question of the meaning of being is the faith of “The Christian Church”. Darwin & co. is the answer to the all too familiar grosser part.
Man made climate change is a myth.
Relax. Enjoy your life.
When I look at twerps like Wobbly, I don’t know how anyone can take the CofE seriously.
For all the beauty and uplift of such cultural jewels as Choral Evensong (which I never miss on Radio Three) it is increasingly intellectually vacant.
A house built on fudge cannot stand…
I see a lot of people in the comments here think this is another opportunity to settle some political scores with the CofE to do with “woke” or “Marxism” or “women bishops”. The reality is more to do with the cultural shift that has taken place in society. Churches were meant to inspire religiosity and for centuries they did. But what worked in the past does not work today, like with many things.
Like the author I regret the passing of the church, even though in my case I would never go to a church service.
If the CofE does become extinct i am sure the gap will be filled by a mass of similar followers of the Spaghetti Monster, ranging from the Sean Moon gunslingers (google it) to a bunch of “pacifist maoist” types with the same approach as the incumbent CofE. The only thing they’ll have in common with the old order are safeguarding issues and deep belief in their various “one true god”.
It seems to me the answer is for each of us, individually, to become better, more authentically spiritual Christians. No government, and no Church hierarchy can prevent that.
The biggest favour the CofE could do before it goes would be to replace itself with a vibrant institution that champions the benefits of strong Ethics – without requiring people to believe in all the deity baggage …
England will suffer .. I doubt it ……neither will the rest of Great Britain if it goes down the tubes long with all other religions that are used by a few to impose their views on others & to control them .
I’m of caveman stock , I need to get along with others for an easier life , I need to be able to trust others for a better life . I predate all religions and all such fabricated nonsense .
I’m more interested in being the best I can and where I’m heading than beating myself & others up about a few fairy story’s of mythical entities & beasts . .
Is there any evidence of a direct impact (positive or negative) of the CofE and the behaviour of society in the last 50 years? It’s also complete nonsense to suggest that the chruch provides any kind of moral guidance for society. The Bible is unchanging, and changes in societal norms get reverse shoehorned by theologians into Christian teachings. These changes do not come from religion, but rather change the way Christians interpret their faith. Don’t mention it.
I fully accept the importance of the need for strong communities, but are humans really so shallow that they need to structure it around a sky fairy? I think we can do better, and this kind of handwringing by otherwise intelligent people (who surely can’t really believe the stuff they hear) doesn’t help us get there.
If the best argument you have for the preservation of Anglicansim is the one made in this article, then it will be no loss at all to the 21st Century.
In fact, the disappearance of religious belief (not the same thing as the disappearance of specifically Anglicanism, I know) will be very welcome. It can’t come soon enough for me, and I do not at all think that we shall regret it.
You won’t get rid of superstition by getting rid of faith. I prefer a committed Anglican to a committed Communist.
Hear, hear; even if I am neither English nor Anglican. Rather, I was raised to honor SCIENCE (hush, hush, genuflect), even if it told my teenaged self we’d freeze in 20 years and my current self that we’re roasting ( a lot of other things as well on which it “changed it’s mind”, suggesting it isn’t quite worthy of being the fancy Latinate term for “knowledge” that it cranks itself up to be). Indeed, the 20th century alone killed more people in the names of scientific progress and soial justice than suffered for heresy in 15 centuries between Constantine and Joe Bonaparte closing down the Spanish Inqisition.