Twaddle-riven. Credit: John Stillwell - WPA Pool/Getty
No one in their right mind should want to be a bishop. It’s a terrible, terrible job. You spend half of your life in pointless meetings reading screeds of minutes covered in ghastly acronyms, and the other half going round the Diocese doing confirmations and ordinations, again and again on some kind of continual liturgical merry-go-round. While vicars have a base, and they can get to know their people over time, Bishops see new people every day, and their relationships can often be little more than meet and greet.
Spiritually it is extremely bad for you; people are either too nice or too horrible. Expectations are unrealistic: you are a fantasy of projection and a lightning-rod for disappointment. And every day having to put up with jokes about actresses and only being able to move diagonally… The golden rule is: if you really want to be a bishop, you almost certainly shouldn’t be one.
Things are about to get a whole lot worse. Bishops are the latest part of the church now slated for reinvention — part of the twaddle-riven Welby-era revolution that is totally transforming church structures.
Traditionally, the role of the bishop is to be a vicar to the vicars, to support the frontline pastorally, and to maintain sound doctrine within the church. They are pastors who know what good theology looks like. They carry a shepherd’s crook to indicate that they have authority over their flock, to direct the wayward sheep. But for the most part, the sheep still do as they please. And for those on the more catholic end of the spectrum, they exist to maintain an unbroken link of continuity with the early church – one bishop passing on the faith to another through the laying on of hands. They have lots of symbolic responsibility and little executive authority. These days, we would call it soft power.
They have a significant role in recruitment. But when a vicar gets handed the keys to his or her church, the bishop has less power to direct what goes on there than most people imagine. Subsidiarity in the Church of England — pushing control down to the parishes — was established to maintain the balance of power within that unique ecclesiological experiment that is the Church of England: a church that is both Catholic and Protestant at the same time. Subsidiarity, and the legal freehold for vicars that has been put place to protect it, exists to make sure a catholic-minded bishop won’t go round sacking evangelical clergy, or the other way round. It’s the same basic structure that exists to guarantee freedom of thought for academics who have tenure.
But, of course, the more you protect the freedom of the parish clergy, the less authority the bishop has over them. So, whereas a Roman Catholic Bishop could ring up one of his priests and ask him — require him — to move to a new parish, a Church of England bishop could do no such thing. Which is why the CofE is a good place to be a vicar and a bad place to be a bishop. And you can understand the frustration of the bishops. They get the blame for all the bad stuff and don’t have enough authority to change it. Even more so, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Little wonder, over the past few years, the steady stream of bishops going over to Rome now seems more like a Biblical flood. They have proper bishops over there, so goes the thought, and with enough authority to resist all the things that a retired Church of England bishop hasn’t been able to put a stop to.
The higher-ups in the Welby era have a different plan, and it is clever. Instead of seeing the administrative burden being imposed on the church as some sort of dead weight, they see it as an opportunity, as a route to power. These people no longer talk of bishops as being pastors or of the job being about ministry, they talk of “leadership” and “mission”. How my heart sinks when I hear those words.
They will absolutely deny this, of course, but the current travails of the Church of England, and the source of its internal acrimony, is that bishops – now recast as leaders — who have often only spent five minutes as parish priests, think that they know far better how to do the job. They are using the whole apparatus of the administrative church to find ways round the historic and legal protections that exist to defend the central model of a priest in their parish. In effect, they have decided to let the old model wither on the vine — by amalgamating parishes, cutting clergy posts when they become vacant — and redirecting funds to a whole new structure based on modern and secular lines of responsibility. The old church is too well protected legally, so they want to build a para church beside it, much better funded, but without the old legal protections. And one that is far more responsive to the “leadership”.
The cover for this transformation is the “let many flowers bloom” line. New ways can flourish alongside the old, they say. It’s a mixed economy. In some Dioceses — mine, in fact — this is how it is being played out. I’m lucky. But in others, the bishop has come to be seen as the enemy of traditional church structures i.e. the parish. That is what happened recently in Winchester, for example, where the bishop was forced to quit after an unprecedented rebellion by the parish clergy against his authoritarian manner and hostility to the old ways of doing church. And as bishops seek to use different channels to express their authority, parish clergy are joining unions — generally Unite — as never before. The old pastoral relationship between clergy and their bishop is being transformed into a business model, with more than a whiff of the acrimony that can exist between the boss class and the workers. “Save the Parish” is the fastest growing organisation in the church, and the mood is becoming more and more that of the awkward squad.
This is the context into which the Church of England now announces that it is considering a cabinet of senior bishops, with responsibility built around roles – Brexit bishop, Covid bishop and so on. The more Right-wing press thinks this is a foray into politics and that, as they are constantly saying, the church should stay out of it. But the church is intrinsically political because the Bible is. And there is no way a good Christian can stay out politics any more than they can stay out of pastoral care or worship. But the way the church approaches the political must be distinctive and grow out of its core convictions. Neither Right nor Left, the church isn’t party political. What is so utterly ridiculous about the idea of a Brexit bishop is that it gives the impression that the church tracks the secular way of politics, following it issue by issue. It is of a piece with the whole secularisation of the church that is now in full swing.
Yes, the secularisation of the church. It’s almost as if our bishops have been to a half-day management seminar at McKinsey and have suddenly seen the light as to how the church should be more efficiently run. Every day there is a new flowchart, a new initiative from head office. Most of the clergy I know inwardly grown and — because of their legal protections — just get on doing the stuff they have been called to do. We tend to ignore many of the smiley management-clergy who sit behind their Macs and offer structural and paper-based solutions to the tide going out on the sea of faith.
It is understandable that organisations that are under pressure – not least financially – can turn in on themselves, and think reorganisation is the answer to wider cultural changes. But for the Church of England to abandon its traditional shape, thinking that some corporate model will serve the preaching of the good news better, is for the church to commit a kind of suicide. The legal checks and balances within the CofE have been build up for a good reason: to hold us together, to make sure no one part of the Anglican compromise can hold sway over another. The cynic in me now contends that we are increasing becoming a church held together by a pension fund — that’s why so many bishops go to Rome as soon as they retire.
The fear is that this new non-parish-based para-church structure will grow rapidly, but will not be able to survive the forces that have always threatened to tear us apart, and that bishops (not leaders) have long kept together. The para church will be like the wheat thrown on stony ground, that rises up rapidly because the soil is shallow — which will look impressive on all those spreadsheets — but that ultimately cannot survive the heat of the midday sun because it has no roots.
Bishops root the church in history and in place. They hold it together as the focus of unity. When their job description starts getting played about with, the end feels close for the church that I dearly love.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI once worked for a highly successful company that was brought to Administration by a new CEO. From the minute this ego arrived, head office visibly detached from the business.
Meetings we had about the service we sold were replaced with meetings about management. The top management board became dominated by the functions (HR, IT, Finance) with Profit Centre heads relegated to secondary committees. Sorry ladies but, as an aside, all these functional heads were women, who were visibly adept at managing this ego and not much else.
It seems to me we live in an age where people are starting to realise something is missing. There must be an opening for any organisation that can offer a sense of community and something worthwhile to believe in.
That may well need modern input. Any debate about how to reach inner city kids, develop localised community structures or just find and support the needy, must include people who understand social media and changing societal expectations. That’s just methodology. The core principle is to keep the organisation close to the people it serves.
It looks like the CofE is going the way of my old company. I hope Giles and his peers can find a way of turning it round.
“Most of the clergy I know inwardly grown and — because of their legal protections — just get on doing the stuff they have been called to do. We tend to ignore many of the smiley management-clergy who sit behind their Macs and offer structural and paper-based solutions to the tide going out on the sea of faith.” Mad but I think this basically reflects the corporate environment. Most people just try to stay quiet and do their jobs amidst a tidal wave of BS.
We were required to submit complex monthly reports for the board pack. These reports had to include action plans to get back on budget.
Since the budget had been inflated into la la land, any such plans were always just works of imagination. On page 5, under “other comments” I wrote “creating this fantasy has wasted another 2 hours of productive time.”
I submitted that every month for 4 months before anybody noticed. Fortunately I was close enough to retirement to not care.
Pity, it was a great place to work before the “heavy hitter” was parachuted in. Needless to say he went on to another captain of industry type job. Abject failure is never an obstacle once you’re in that magic circle.
Targets, action plans, breakdowns of weekly/daily/hourly activity and similar horrors are simply failures of those higher up the hierarchy in middle/senior management to inspire and educate the workforce below them directly, by force of their own success/insights/skills.
The introduction of modern management practices can be seen, in hindsight, as the first stage in a process of dehumanisation of the workforce, of divorcing people from any sense of personal devotion, caring, responsibility or accountability for the work they do. A satanic keyword in this process is “flexibility”—tearing people out of any sense of individual control over some substantive meaningful content of their labour. From a spiritual point of view, this practice can be seen as stealing a person’s soul. Loss of soul = loss of human status.
The second stage of this dehumanisation is now well under way: the delegation by management of command and control to computerised systems designed to deliver authoritarian one-way diktat to an enslaved population.
I’ve never seen it as a spiritual issue, but you are right; a modern corporate is a soulless place to work. So much effort directed at meaningless activity.
…inwardly grown… no, this should read …inwardly groan…
It’s a typo in the original article, but when quoting the article, it helps to put sic after the mistake, viz. …inwardly grown [sic]…
This practice avoids passing on and perpetuating language errors, and serves to draw readers’ attention to the issue.
The core principle is to keep the organisation close to the people it serves.
No, the core principle is to keep the organisation close to God, or whatever name the Divine Source goes by in a particular place at a given time.
The organisation has no other function than to connect that Divine Source to the individuals who together comprise the people.
The organisation has no inherent core principle in and of itself. It is purely a more or less functional connector.
Management is not only the major parasitic blight affecting today’s secular world. It now infects the spiritual worlds too.
I don’t think we are disagreeing. If the mission of the church is to connect people with God then one of its overriding “operational” principles must be to maintain a strong connection with the people.
The church now exists in an unbelieving society. How did the missionaries convert the unbelieving? I don’t know but it was certainly done by the missionaries on the ground connecting with local populations and not by the church bureaucracy.
There is a school of thought that says companies go through three phases – they are run by marketing entrepreneurs, then by accountants, and almost immediately thereafter by liquidators.
Though speaking from personal observation, I would run a mile from any company that put any value on its managers having an MBA. Pretending that ‘management’ is a stand-alone skill has been catastrophic for the NHS – it will be interesting to see how long it takes to bring the church of England to its knees as well. (no pun intended!)
Yep absolutely my experience. Charismatic entrepreneur, accountant with an MBA, Administration.
The difference between the impact of charismatic leadership, and dreary managerialism on the morale of staff, even before the impact of the latter was fully felt, was interesting to observe
Me too, already doing my best.
The religious census carried out in England on Sunday 30 March 1851 recorded 5.3 million attendances at Church of England services that day across the country. Today, weekly church attendance is well below 1 million. But there are a lot more bishops.
5.3m out of, what 14m or 15m population. Now 1m out of 55m or so.
Indeed. How on Earth or in Heaven can there be a Christian position on Brexit?
The worst thing about it is you can be pretty certain the Brexit Bishop isn’t in favour of it.
Because people say “Jesus Christ!” every time it is brought up………
What the CofE is doing is, to me, very reminiscent of the Conservative Party say 20 years ago. Although, I’ve never seen it written, my view is that the Conservative Party Central Office decided that the grassroots could “go hang”. Out went various local powers (eg to choose their MP) in came a lot of policies that the membership (had they been asked, would not have agreed with (eg mass immigration, LGBT agenda etc). The result is that once thriving local Conservative branches are now shells of their former glory – many simply do not exist. The Conservative Party may think they are doing well enough without their grassroots, but it is another step away from some sort of accountability.
This reminds me of the time when I was a factory manager. Lots of flowcharts, jargon, TLAs and nonsense but nothing about the customers.
Surely, any church is about the punters and only the punters? Isn’t the clergy there to help the people who turn up at the services? And only that single thing? There was not one word about the punters in the whole article.
William Temple said the Church ( Universal) is the only organization that primarily exsists for the benefit of others. There is a story in the Scottish section of the Times about withdrawing funding from 16 year olds in care. Where are the modern Barnado’s, Mary Sumners and others. Chad Varrah and the Samaritans? Rampton Hospital began as a Cof E charity. The big hospitals such as Barts. and St Thomas’s. Educating the poor, the prison visitors of the 19 th century. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were Methodist local preachers. Love thy neighbour as yourself. The hated and reviled Samaritan put compassion ahead of religious duty.
Not just those who turn up at services, but those who believe or would like to, who appreciate spiritual support or comfort from a person of faith. But that is simple at parish level, that is why the system has worked for so long, until Mr Welby left middle management in BP and introduced corporatism in the C of E
I think you may have hit on one of the problems – once the local parish only cares for the people who turn up at services the rot has set in.
Some forty years ago, when I moved into a house on a housing estate, there came a knock on the door one day : “Hello, I’m the local vicar. I don’t really care if you are a churchgoer or not, but we at the church see ourselves as something of a hub for the community – we run mothers and toddlers, a scheme to borrow gardening equipment, various clubs, and we house the scouts, guides and brownies. You are welcome to visit and make use of these facilities, without any pressure to become a churchgoer” (I paraphrase.) People went there : some went to services, some only to regular fetes, concerts etc. I went there occasionally – I ended up being on the PCC. I know for a fact that the vicar kept his ear to the grond, and if there was an old or sick person in the parish – not a churchgoer – he would drop round. He actually cared
.
I have been living in my present house (in a nice village, big enough not to be a multi-church ‘team’ ministry) for more than 25 years. Not once has anyone from the C of E knocked on the door to say hello. We do get the parish magazine through the letterbox every few months, though it doesn’t paint a picture of an organisation that welcomes people. I did once go there to hear an organ recital : there were refreshments afterwards, and two distinct groups of people eyeballing each other – the parish types, talking only to each other and glaring at the visitors, and the organ anoraks, again talking only to each other and glaring at the home team. I stood there for about twenty minutes, and no-one spoke to me (obviously I was not a known member of either team) and in the end I had to ‘gatecrash’ one of the groups to have a chat (it was the church group) – they so clearly didn’t want to know, so in the end I drank my tea, left, and haven’t been back since.
At the other end of the village is a Baptist Church – they turn up quite regularly at my door to tell me what they are doing, and to tell me I would be welcome to visit – not really my type of church, so I don’t. But it strikes me they are doing the right things, unlike the C of E (though I am sure the local C of E would happily bury me in due course – for a large fee.)
Possibly, but the fee is not large -the undertaker gets that .
Well, any Anglican who thinks Rome has “proper” bishops needs his lumps felt. We certainly USED to, but that day is done, at least for the moment. It looks to me like Welby has been doing an on-line course with the Jesuits. I suppose they’re as ecumenical in corrupting other churches as they are their own.
I find it interesting that throughout the article and discussion, that there is no mention of God? I read the comments with great interest and the oft used analogy of the Church of England as a “business”, led by CEO,’s rather fitting . As Chris Wheatley mentions in his response, this must be about shepherd’s leading their flock to the love and salvation of Christ and not the balance sheet, spreadsheet or internal politics surely? Is the Church of England a Church of God or an earthly bound plc?
No mention of God or of worshippers either. The entire organisation as described appears entirely inward looking because it has the funds, leisure, and surefire income to be so.
Parkinson’s First Law – people rise to their level of incompetence – is quite well known and clearly at work in the C of E. But so is his less well-known Law of 1,000: that any body numbering that size or more will find enough bureaucracy with which to preoccupy itself internally that it will detach from, and largely cease to engage with, the outside world. This article seems to describe such an organisation, to the point where it feels able to ignore both worshippers and worshipped.
Law of 1000 – thanks for that. I wasn’t aware of it, despite seeing it in action on a daily basis!
Parkinson’s less well known Law of 1000: I had not known of this. Thankyou for a really valuable piece of information.
Strikingly, it fits exactly with some informal ideas of my own which I had formulated when trying to come to terms with the question of when representative democracy ceases to represent.
I can assure you that in our parish, God is mentioned, and also Christ. Quite a lot, actually.
I can’t speak for Lambeth Palace of Church House. They are far away.
Our parish too.
It used to be said that “The Church of England was the Tory Party at prayer”.
Today only my Spaniel is a regular worshiper.
Giles is a godly man, he frequently muses upon Him (or Her or It) but his article here is to do with God’s servants on earth – the appointed type – and not so much about religion or faith. And that’s his point, the person in rectory worries about God, so does the person in the pew , but the staff at head office worry about systems and reporting and control and regulation and adherence to guidelines!
Giles highlights the Catholic v Protestant dynamic within the C of E but their is another axis, fittingly enough: state-authority moral authoriser, ‘The Established Church’ with HM, our constitutional head of state, at its helm, versus the Church as a site of individual experience, and fulfilment through, knowing God.
The ‘moral authority of the state’ vector has existed since pagan Roman times (indeed that was the objection of the Romans to Jews and Christians); the Roman Church inherited Zeus’s mantle.
Sad that, as I spend a lot of time trying to keep the rumour of God alive! Sorry not to have slipped it in earlier.
There’s an old saying that, once a man becomes a bishop, he’ll never eat a bad meal, sleep in an uncomfortable bed, or hear the truth. It’s a Catholic axiom, but true for every large denomination.
My parish is one of 5 in a ‘team ministry’ headed by one vicar at the largest church. When the previous ‘team’ vicar retired at the end of 2020 the new one was installed early this year – a gap of over twelve months. The other parishes in the ‘team’ are supposedly ‘run’ by ‘priests in charge’ who have no parson’s freehold and are appointed for a period of five years. They are people who have retired from other employment and are non-stipendiary, expected to work for sixteen hours a week in return for free accommodation and a small expense account.
The priest in charge of my small parish and the adjacent smallish parish retired before the ‘team vicar’ retired and has not yet been replaced. We were told that this wouldn’t happen until the new team vicar had been appointed so that he/she could have a say in the appointment. A third parish in the team ministry is in the same position. Services are conducted by one or two retired parsons who have no income, no support and no expenses out of the goodness of their hearts. The two vicarages are meanwhile let with the proceeds going to the diocese which, at the same time, continues to demand a monthly revenue from the parish. No parochial work goes on unless a retired parson hears of and is prepared to respond to a particular need again out of the goodness of his or her heart.
The diocese has increased the number of rural deans who have a stipend, a car, an expense account and, presumably, free accommodation.
Parochial work these days is expected to be conducted by local authority workers who are probably better paid than old fashioned stipendiary parsons used to be but who probably change jobs fairly frequently and are never around long enough to get to know and be known by local people or to gain their respect.
I recognise the situation.
I always really enjoy reading Giles Fraser’s articles, despite being myself at best an agnostic. He writes very well. I find it astonishing that members of the clergy are joining unions; I thought it was all supposed to be a bit more transcendent than that.
I find it curious, too, but maybe part of the trend towards looking at the CofE as a corporation which hires and fires employees.
No doubt the time will come when bonuses based on complicated formulae are introduced (you know; based on diversity, sexuality, climate change, pay equality).
(From an unbeliever, of course!)
The Church of England can resemble a 1970s nationalised industry. The similarities are clear: confused leadership; apathetic middle-management; demoralised workforce; an air of indifference to customers; and all surrounded by enormous wasted capital. Notwithstanding Reverend Fraser, I find it hard to imagine that anyone inspired to preach the Christian Gospel would be drawn to the current Church of England. The answer to the Church’s problems, I suggest, would be as for British Leyland, British Steel, BT and the rest: privatisation.
Do you mean disestablishment?
Very true, we persist because we love the Lord and the people, and without ambition, we sit lightly to the institution.
‘inwardly grown’ Giles? I know you’re into psychoanalysis but surely you mean ‘inwardly groan? It’s what I did when I read there is to be a Brexit bishop. How ridiculously irrelevant can you get?
In business reorganisations are rarely successful without wholesale change first. There are too many existing managers maintaining their agendas and too many existing workers maintaining their Spanish practices. I don’t see why the Church should be any different.
So that Cof E can continue on its merry way offering a viable ponti scheme to heaven by constant messaging of salvation through obedience to God’s representatives on earth? Just coincidence Henry VIII powers reinstated not to the Monarch but to their Chief Servant including, it would seem, belief in ability to heal the sick, bring comfort and security to all, merely by their visible presence making their progress throughout the land. The former Church of England now the template for the PM’s Church of Public Relations, dare one presume?
I suspect the decline goes back to the dissolution of the monasteries – the monent the church secularised in the original sense.
Monasteries and other religious houses were corrupt, no doubt, but in principle they existed to nurture the roots, leaving the worry about fruits to the secular clergy.
The “ecclesiological experiment that is the Church of England” has been, therefore, haunted by withering from the start. As Roger Scruton once pointed out, a substitute secular vitality was first found by healing the nation after the civil war. Then another secular source to tap came with being the church of the empire. Now, though, with secularism actively rejecting its religious wellsprings, the graft is discarded and dying.
Only secularism is withering too. Therein lies a scary kind of hope…
“leaving the worry about fruits to the secular clergy.”
I think you will find that the Monasteries also had plenty to worry about ‘fruits’.
The 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus revealed that about 55%* of the wealth of the Church was in the hands of the Monasteries, which numbered just short of 900** establishments, of which 10 were Cathedral-Priories. By comparison the Secular Church numbered something like 9,000 Parish Churches, a small number of Collegiate Churches and 9 Secular Cathedrals.
As to corruption the Monastic Church was no more corrupt than the rest of the country. Thomas Cromwell overstated the case as a necessary tactic to discredit the Monasteries.
(* Essentially they owned about 4.5 million of the very best acres in England.)
(** Including the Mendicant Houses.)
Fascinating. Thankyou for the detail.
Yup, corrupt.
I must be getting old – or senile.
I actually agree with something written by Giles Fraser.
Mind you, I think his evaluation of the Roman Catholic bishops’ power over the clergy is tinted by the rose-coloured spectacles of the outsider – or perhaps based on watching Father Ted? (Ok, I admit that Lenny Brennan is my kind of bishop.)
I also felt there was a strong element of ‘leave me alone – I’m doing a good job’ and I had an uncomfortable feeling that the teachers took, and take, exactly the same view – irrespective of how badly (or sometimes well) they perform.
The power of RC bishops over their priests really is as absolute as Giles says. If anything he underplays it. Yes, the clergy do technically have the power to appeal to Rome but it’s unlikely to do them much good.
By contrast, while CofE clergy do take an oath of canonical obedience to their bishop, it is qualified by the phrase “in all things lawful and honest”. That gives plenty of scope for clergy to claim that the bishop is not lawfully empowered to impose his will, or that in doing so he is not acting “honestly”.
I stand corrected. Pity the bishops didn’t use that power to control the paedophile element, though (which I don’t believe is widespread, but one is too many.)
I can recall enough phrases from the old Common for Holy Bishops (used in Anglicism monastic worship) that I feel very sad, reading this. Possibly there was a fragment reading “…and in times of trouble, he was taken for the sins of the people…”? Rather a different view of the role than the current ideas about Brexit Bishop, Covid Bishop etc. Is it only because these posts are being created within the stained glass jungle that they are called Bishop, and not Commissar?
For an organisation headed by a supreme being with a 2000 year old workshop manual ignored and manned by gays and celibate socialist witch doctors it all seems an irrelevant contradictory club to me. What happened to the biker vicar who ran the youth club in the good old days?
What on earth is a Brexit bishop? If it’s not intended as irony, then may I assume it is intended as a counterweight to the anti-Brexit bishops?
(Post script; Brexit has been likened to the Reformation, so maybe there’s some sense in it after all.)
Traditionally, the role of the bishop is to be a vicar to the vicars, to support the frontline pastorally, and to maintain sound doctrine within the church.
Yes, the secularisation of the church. It’s almost as if our bishops have been to a half-day management seminar at McKinsey and have suddenly seen the light as to how the church should be more efficiently run.
…the smiley management-clergy who sit behind their Macs and offer structural and paper-based solutions to the tide going out on the sea of faith.
Rev Fraser raises the fundamental issue here. Let’s face some facts:
# Modern western democracies were founded on the principle of separation of Church and State. This was originally to protect the newly nascent state from domination, control and takeover by the previously ruling forces of religion. Today, the situation has reversed; separation of powers is now needed to prevent the dominant State from taking over the Church.
This separation of powers was never fully realised in Britain, since the CofE is still an established Church: politics and religion are intertwined here, and have always been so. It is incorrect to say that when the CofE was established, politics crept into the previously free sphere of religion. No. Rather, the reverse was the underlying truth: religion was constrained into the free sphere of politics. Thus, the CofE was founded for secular, political reasons: overtly, to satisfy the uncontrolled sexual lust of the monarch for exploiting women, but under the surface, to free up royal powers for an almighty land grab and the increased control that came with it. The secular was the power base. Religion was made to serve its ends.
What we are seeing today is nothing but the latest revamp of this ancient practice. The CofE is being remodelled to serve secular ends.
# To combat this takeover of religion by the materialistic secular mindset, Rev Fraser’s principle of subsidiarity is a necessary but not sufficient condition. On a material level, devo max will work. All power to the parish! Abolish the hierarchy of “smiley management-clergy” with their “structural and paper-based solutions”. Subsidiarity max will save the church buildings, the office of parish priest, and the funding of such.
But it won’t, in and of itself, stem the “tide going out on the sea of faith”. Here we must ask, what is to replace the traditional role of the bishop, who is a “vicar to the vicars”,”supporting the frontline pastorally”, “maintaining sound doctrine”? If we are to reestablish grassroots parish activity as primary, whence comes the spiritual authority to “guide the flock”?
It is here that the stream of modern esoteric Christianity may be able to offer some help. I work out of the modern spiritual path offered through the teachings of the late Dr Rudolf Steiner (1865–1925). Steiner was a high initiate in the western spiritual tradition. On this path, we are offered spiritual guidance—exoterically, via a “spiritual friend” or advisor, who is there for us should we ask for help, but who never imposes on our freedom to decide our life course for ourselves. But we are encouraged in every way to develop our own spiritual faculties, thus increasingly becoming able to receive inner guidance directly from spiritual sources. This is esoteric, as opposed to exoteric, guidance.
It has been my experience to note the sometimes radical discrepancy between the “corporate” initiation priests receive, via laying on of hands or similar means of direct transmission, and their corresponding level of personal initiation. I have listened to words of sublime wisdom issuing from the mouth of a guide who then reverted to a normal personality quite shocking in its lack of development. (In this distinction lies much of the explanation for the apparent cognitive dissonance of the priest who can conduct an efficacious mass then go on to abuse the altar boy.)
So perhaps the way forward here is to improve the level of personal spiritual achievement of the parish priest, who will then be better able to act as guide to his/her flock. Relying on corporate transmission of spiritual authority demands external hierarchy, which leads to current ills. A commensurate increased emphasis on personal spiritual practice might sit comfortably with enhanced abilities of the priest in this direction.
It can be seen that this model sits in direct contrast to the current CofE model. This new model de-emphasises and devolves organisational structure and external authority to the parish level, while raising into prominence the spiritual teaching, practice and pastoral care. It enriches and renews from within. The latter current model hollows out existing external structures in order to pour into them a renewed and invigorated bureaucratic secularism. Spiritually, the pentecostal evangelical leanings of the current Archbishop of Canterbury are no more than the most fundamentalist, hence materialistic, form of would-be spirituality.
Traditionally, the role of the bishop is to be a vicar to the vicars, to support the frontline pastorally, and to maintain sound doctrine within the church.
Yes, the secularisation of the church. It’s almost as if our bishops have been to a half-day management seminar at McKinsey and have suddenly seen the light as to how the church should be more efficiently run.
…the smiley management-clergy who sit behind their Macs and offer structural and paper-based solutions to the tide going out on the sea of faith.
Rev Fraser raises the fundamental issue here. Let’s face some facts:
# Modern western democracies were founded on the principle of separation of Church and State. This was originally to protect the newly nascent state from domination, control and takeover by the previously ruling forces of religion. Today, the situation has reversed; separation of powers is now needed to prevent the dominant State from taking over the Church.
This separation of powers was never fully realised in Britain, since the CofE is still an established Church: politics and religion are intertwined here, and have always been so. It is incorrect to say that when the CofE was established, politics crept into the previously free sphere of religion. No. Rather, the reverse was the underlying truth: religion was constrained into the free sphere of politics. Thus, the CofE was founded for secular, political reasons: overtly, to satisfy the uncontrolled sexual lust of the monarch for exploiting women, but under the surface, to free up royal powers for an almighty land grab and the increased control that came with it. The secular was the power base. Religion was made to serve its ends.
What we are seeing today is nothing but the latest revamp of this ancient practice. The CofE is being remodelled to serve secular ends.
# To combat this takeover of religion by the materialistic secular mindset, Rev Fraser’s principle of subsidiarity is a necessary but not sufficient condition. On a material level, devo max will work. All power to the parish! Abolish the hierarchy of “smiley management-clergy” with their “structural and paper-based solutions”. Subsidiarity max will save the church buildings, the office of parish priest, and the funding of such.
But it won’t, in and of itself, stem the “tide going out on the sea of faith”. Here we must ask, what is to replace the traditional role of the bishop, who is a “vicar to the vicars”,”supporting the frontline pastorally”, “maintaining sound doctrine”? If we are to reestablish grassroots parish activity as primary, whence comes the spiritual authority to “guide the flock”?
It is here that the stream of modern esoteric Christianity may be able to offer some help. I work out of the modern spiritual path offered through the teachings of the late Dr Rudolf Steiner (1865–1925). Steiner was a high initiate in the western spiritual tradition. On this path, we are offered spiritual guidance—exoterically, via a “spiritual friend” or advisor, who is there for us should we ask for help, but who never imposes on our freedom to decide our life course for ourselves. But we are encouraged in every way to develop our own spiritual faculties, thus increasingly becoming able to receive inner guidance directly from spiritual sources. This is esoteric, as opposed to exoteric, guidance.
It has been my experience to note the sometimes radical discrepancy between the “corporate” initiation priests receive, via laying on of hands or similar means of direct transmission, and their corresponding level of personal initiation. I have listened to words of sublime wisdom issuing from the mouth of a guide who then reverted to a normal personality quite shocking in its lack of development. (In this distinction lies much of the explanation for the apparent cognitive dissonance of the priest who can conduct an efficacious mass then go on to abuse the altar boy.)
So perhaps the way forward here is to improve the level of personal spiritual achievement of the parish priest, who will then be better able to act as guide to his/her flock. Relying on corporate transmission of spiritual authority demands external hierarchy, which leads to current ills. A commensurate increased emphasis on personal spiritual practice might sit comfortably with enhanced abilities of the priest in this direction.
It can be seen that this model sits in direct contrast to the current CofE model. This new model de-emphasises and devolves organisational structure and external authority to the parish level, while raising into prominence the spiritual teaching, practice and pastoral care. It enriches and renews from within. The latter current model hollows out existing external structures in order to pour into them a renewed and invigorated bureaucratic secularism. Spiritually, the pentecostal evangelical leanings of the current Archbishop of Canterbury are no more than the most fundamentalist, hence materialistic, form of would-be spirituality.
Yo Giles, I need a list of your key deliverables on my desk 9 o’clock tomorrow morning.
The instinct for bureaucratization is buried deep in the human DNA.
The instinct for bureaucratization is buried deep in the human DNA.
“Inwardly grown”?
I think he meant ‘groan’, but it added mystery.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Apologies for the bluntness& ignorance – it’s been a while since I attended a local church regularly – but is it not just a case of ‘needs must’? Would not a ‘para-church’ be doing more for local people by ‘getting out there’? Of course a local parish church is not analogous to an outlet of a high street brand, but if they – the buildings, what they represent – are irrelevant to many, or worse, repellant, the ‘overseers’ have a duty to make the Faith known in other ways, don’t they?
Of course the decline has been happening for ages and as we know, the CofE has suffered more in comparison with other denominations because of its ‘latitudinarianism’, arguably. Therefore can Archbishop Welby be blamed for utilising his background administrative skills to the full?
(What, priests joining Unite – talk about ‘political’?)
What makes you think that Welby has any administrative skills? All I’m aware of is that ‘they’ ordered my parish church, which is normally unlocked every day, to be locked up for a very long time.
Should an archbishop’s appointment be based on administrative skills? I believe not, and nor on political skills.
What administrative skills are required by the archbishop? My parish is autonomous, except that almost all of its income is transferred to the dioceses. It’s ‘voluntary’, but isn’t. The rector must be paid, but (a) he’s now divided between six parishes, and (b), if we had to become self-sufficient, then let’s have back all the resources accumulated to our parish over hundreds of years be given back to us.
Some of the administration of the church is conducted by the Church Commissioners, which were established in 1948. I’ll say no more, but more could be said. Some administration and records which used to be the responsibility of the parish were transferred to the diocese, but subsequent enquiries couldn’t be answered because none of the records could be located.
What has clearly happened is that a bureaucrat paid out of pooled funds justifies his/her existence by suggesting that something which has evolved and worked should be ‘modernised’, and become consistent and logical. Staff are recruited. Changes are made. But then mistakes are made, and not noticed, because the people who care are no longer involved.
(Surley even a priest, let alone an archbishop, should not be appointed without administrative and ‘political’ skills?) I am out of my depth here, with a hazy grasp of CofE history, but I’d say with its ancient heritage, its understanding of ‘Church’ as the ‘body of Christ’, individual parish churches have never been self-reliant autonomous organisations. If an archbishop should not be a ‘CEO’, should individual parishes behave like little ‘papacies’ or ‘mamacies’, where it’s ‘luck of the draw’; that he or she presiding, is either overly ritualistic or dumbed-down Bible-mesmerised?
They were indeed little kingdoms of their own. If the parish felt that the vicar wasn’t any good (incompetent, wrong sort of vicar) then they chucked him out and got another. There were a series of others involved, Churchwardens and a Parochial Parish Council. Technically, I believe, below the vicar but with ways of dealing with issues.
Wow! You have actually let this comment stand! Bravo!
There’s nothing inherently “political” about clergy joining a union. Just a matter of ensuring that one has proper protections at a time when it appears that certain bishops are intent on eroding or bypassing the ones that have historically existed. (If you’re balking at the fact that it’s Unite – well, that happens to be the union which has an organised and resourced clergy division.)
It’s all very well, but who cares, and why?
People who read articles like this, as well as the kind of people who write them. In short, people who belive there is a God. Is there anything else we can help you with?
Yes, yes. My point is why would anyone who believes there is a God bother with the Church of England. It’s a leftist salariat patently uninterested in God or His worshippers. It could scarcely be less numinous; it’s a feuding bureaucracy.
It’s as though there were a society for the preservation of HMS Victory. The ship is crumbling into dust and visitor numbers are falling off a cliff, but the SPHMSV spends its energies and money feuding and squabbling, on reforming and redesigning and realigning itself, on apologising for the history of the ship, and on lecturing actual and potential visitors about their privilege, racism, and carbon footprint.
Preserving, nourishing and expanding interest in the nation’s naval history, or even just increasing visitor numbers, are nowhere among its objectives or actions.
If we had 1,000 words here on the internal machinations of the SPHMSV, I would also have commented “who cares, and why?” and this would not be a comment on the obvious unimportance of HMS Victory, either.
Are you with me?
I am now, since you’ve made your point clearer. I imagine some people DO think the C of E is important. Roger Scruton wrote an entire book on this. It’s called “Our Church” and it’s quite small and readable. I recommend it, even though I’m Catholic.
“the obvious unimportance of HMS Victory,”
Particularly as only about 3% of what we see today was actually at Trafalgar*.
(* An unnecessary naval skirmish off the coast of Spain in 1805, for those unaware of the event.)