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Farewell Justin Welby. (Credit: Leon Neal/Getty)
I love the Church of England. I love its liturgy, I love its glorious parish churches, I love its lack of ideological fervour, I love the gentle and inclusive way that it is porous to those outside of the Church, I love the inheritance of faith that it preserves. But things have not been well with the Church for quite some time, and the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury is a fork in the road. Either it grasps this opportunity for radical reform, or it will continue its slide — if not vertiginous collapse — into irrelevance.
The Church is in a desperate state. Covid was an absolute disaster. Being asked to close our churches — and to people in great need — sent a signal that we were not really there for our flocks in their hour of need. I was barred from entering my church to pray, but allowed in to check things for insurance purposes. So much for priorities. Understandably, people left in their droves. And many never came back. While the average weekly attendance in church rose by almost 5% in 2023 to 685,000, the third year of consecutive growth, we are still well below pre-Covid numbers. Might we recover? Perhaps. But it will be a struggle. Will the leadership heed my suggestions?
***
1. Burn down The Machine
Many of the clergy have burnt themselves out trying to arrest the death slide. In October, Dr Liz Graveling, senior researcher for clergy wellbeing at the Church of England, delivered a lecture to the Clergy Support Trust. The figures she outlined are staggering. More than one in five clergy is clinically depressed; one in three is mildly depressed. We are isolated, demoralised, knackered. We feel profoundly unattended to and are worried about our personal finances. As a vicar friend of mine commented with typical understatement: “It’s just not as much fun as it used to be.”
A big part of the reason for the demoralisation is the fact that, under Welby’s tenure, the Church has reinvented itself as a top-down bureaucracy. Evangelicals, like Welby, have always thought they know how to do evangelism best, because they have a number of large and numerically successful suburban churches. Welby took his big business experience, allied it to his very particular evangelical zeal, and set out to impose it on the rest of us. The churches that subscribed to the Welby formula got central funding, smaller and less evangelical ones didn’t. The problem is: what works in London suburbs doesn’t necessarily translate well to Little Snoring, or indeed inner city Leicester.
Whereas the Church was previously a model of subsidiarity — vicars were little Popes in our own parish, as detractors might say — we are now the little people fronting a burgeoning machine of impenetrable complexity. Work that was once done on the ground is now done in distant committees. Churches used to be like corner shops, all managed locally. We are now in danger of becoming a chain. It is called Vision and Strategy and comes with a whole new grammar of administrative Christianity we are now expected to know by heart.
So much of the local energy — and money — that was once spent on the ground is now taken up responding to the demands of the centre. This is what Welby and his followers call “the work”. And “protecting the work” was the reason for his initial refusal to resign. He knows the next Archbishop may well burn the whole thing down, as well she should.
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SubscribeBravo Giles! The C of E has become a top heavy management organisation that believes with the right ‘offer’ the punters will buy. So much time is now taken up on courses and the next new strategy that many of our vicars are not able to spend the time they need to in their parishes. And of course, many clergy now have more than one parish to look after to plug the recruitment gap. I agree the A of C should spend more time in England before he trots off to tell the rest of the World how to run itself. In fact Welby has visited a huge number of non Christian countries so what was his purpose there? The wonderful heritage of our faith is being lost, the wonder of the word is being downgraded to a package holiday tour. ‘Two thousand years of spectacular mysticism, prayer, worship, faithfulness, offering and love can all be experienced from the comfort of your all inclusive air conditioned coach, no reading required, you will be given a PowerPoint presentation at every stop‘. As for the sex thang: I said to someone who was saying gay marriage was a deal breaking problem for them ‘With all the troubles in the World perhaps people loving each other is not the biggest problem we face’.Our female, longest reigning monarch is the reason we still have a royal family, perhaps a glorious female Arch Bishop of Canterbury can restore trust and pride in the church
I think I agree with all of this. Though point 2 struck me as troublingly Bidenesque. You are probably correct though Giles. God bless and help us all.
He has a point though, given that male Archbishops have done such an appalling job of late.
What point do you conceive that to be? That they were failures by a virtue of their sex?
The fruits of the Spirit are not gendered. The sex of the primate seems irrelevant to me. What matters is character and the Godliness. Revd. Fraser starts off making that salient and important point – but then heads off wanting to have it both ways again.
Either superficialism is the problem and spiritual discernment is the soution – or its more the same but just try the other one.
He could hardly suggest an African: too much Christianity for the UK based bishops to cope with. 🙂
It may be that a female Archbishop might have a less conciliatory attitude to those who sexually abuse children. All the recent male Archbishops seem to have no problem at all with the conduct.
’The next Archbishop of Canterbury must make it clear that the church welcomes gay people.” There is a subtle bait and switch here. The church already welcomes gay people. What I suspect the author means is that the church should welcome gay activism and politics, with all the paraphernalia of pride flags, queer theology, ‘LGBT children’ and the breaking down of social structures. This is the ultimate desperate search for relevance, and is the thing that will lead to decline.
I couldn’t agree more. Giles has been advocating for this for decades. I’m sure he’ll say that he doesn’t want the ‘queer’ or ‘trans’ stuff, but you open the door to one, you open the door to all.
I quite agree. Giles is bonkers on this issue and if hugs views the Church’s side into irrelevance will be complete. His candidate for Archbishop, however, seems plausible, and his views on managerialism are excellent too.
I agree with Giles. As I understand the church is governed by God not Welby.
We should take the opposite approach. The Church of England should stand for unchanging traditional worship and morality in an uncertain world. We are crazy to throw away our birthright for the latest (imported) ethical and religious fashions. It is no wonder the English have an identity crisis if we deliberately jettison our heritage -which is, ironically, loved and prized overseas.
To take Holy Communion using the 1662 BCP in a 900 year old church in the middle of an English village is to commune with one’s ancestors. It is also a wonderful rite giving the congregation clear instructions in ethics (we are the only church which begins the service by reciting the 10 commandments), scripture and theology as well as being a beautiful service with language familiar even to those Englishmen and women hearing it for the first time. It even covers the politics:
The English like things done the way they have always been done and the Church of England has it in its power to offer them this and in doing so, bring them closer to God.
I pray we take the opportunity.
‘The English like things done the way they have always been done…’
Well not always. For a good few centuries the services in your 900-year old church would have been in Latin, probably the Sarum rite. How about bringing that back?
That’s right. I suppose you could say that Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer is pretty modern only being in use since 1549. I’m pretty conservative but I think one change in 900 years is permissible.
When I was a child, mass (Roman Catholic) was in Latin. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but it means I can follow the mass in other countries where they still have Latin masses.
As a Prayer Book congregant with a young family at BCP church I agree with you quite fulsomely. I can only speak for myself, of course, but Revd Fraser’s list of grievances sems frankly quite remote to my own religious life.
We come, we pray, we receive the sacraments and hear the Word and we go home in “that peace which passeth all understanding” and we try to live our lives in accordance with Gods intentions for us for the rest of the week.
“God gives the increase”.
Quite right William.
I have much sympathy for this view. The value of the Church is in its longevity and consistency. If we were speaking of the Roman Church I would wholeheartedly agree. For the CoE, it’s more reasonable to change and adapt to modern ways. Is that part of the story of its founding?
I agree with you Matt. I was born C of E but lived my entire life an atheist. Cancer and middle age has given me pause for thought. While I wrestle with the bearded man in the clouds, I also wrestle with the fact that a lack of religion is just that, a lack.
I also realise that progressivism is just a bunch of mischief making mongrels who delight in constantly pulling the rug out from everyone’s feet. Progressivism is also a lack; which is why it is everchanging and will never settle on anything, ever.
Religious institutions don’t need to put women into men’s roles just as men don’t belong in women’s roles. Women have been the mainstay and important community leaders for ever and a day and somewhere along the line we forgot this. Just like leadership is more a shepherd and less a boss.
People like Giles Fraser will end up destroying the Church because they end up lacking. Religion needs the exact opposite of what he is proposing. Religion is supposed to be comforting like an old coat, not flashy and constantly changing like a new iPhone.
No need to change the wording of the 1660 Prayer Book.
I grew up on the Book of Common Prayer and eventually became tired of its wordiness. To attend an Anglican church is to be overwhelmed by words. Times of silence would be good. And physical gestures without words.
The C of E embodies a core problem of British politics: organisations that represent a tiny fraction of the population have influence on policy and access to funding that is out of all proportion to their size or relevance.
At least half of the families in our village will attend the Christmas carol service. Almost all of them with small children will attend the Nativity service. The pews will be full at midnight mass and on Christmas morning. We have a full church on Easter Sunday and Remembrance Sunday. We have had 20 couples marry in the church this year and a similar number of Baptisms. The local primary school has had 6 services with parents attending.
In short, in our parish, it is not a “tiny fraction” but a majority of the people attend some sort of service every year. I suspect if you took a survey as to whether the church should be closed down, 99% would say no.
In terms of funding, we are entirely funded by the congregation. In fact we submit a “parish share” back to the diocese.
Wow! Where is yr church? Sounds unique and very special. I do support Save the Parish. Giles is right about the need to strip out the managerialism and central bureaucracy.
Hampshire
See also political parties, trades unions, etc.
Despite all the Rector of Kew says about embracing difference and turning away from top-down management his personal view that the law of love (as he perceives it) abrogates the Moral Law would need to be handed down and enforced by the heavy hand of the very “machine” he decries.
And therin lies the Riddle of GIles Fraser.
Frankly, Revd Fraser has been caught in a cleft stick since his early encounter with the Occupy movement when he was Canon Chancellor of St Pauls. He wants to be both normative and subversive, an insider and an outsider, run with the foxes and hunt with the hounds. He expresses all the magisterial tendencies to ‘bind and loose’ of a Prince of the Church, yet professes to long for the dissolution of established norms. Dostoevsky knew the type well.
To cut the Gordion Knot on the Moral Law Revd. Frasers preferred Archbishop will need to wield the sword of the executive in its most naked form. It will mean a second Great Ejection. He seems aware of that, at least. It is the Benthamite heuristic, paring off and divesting that difficult part of our shared inheritance which is deemed to be offensive, as if it were a failing asset, and calling ourselves the richer for it.
The same applies to his view of Women Bishops. Does he really not see that it is a substantive and sincere issue for many by now? It is not for me, an issue, but I understand and sympathise with those for whom it is.
Then he talks of ‘leaning into the weird’ but his vision of a church that excludes those who take the Bible as authoratitive (‘literally’ as he uncharitably puts it) over experience will exclude both the Anglo Catholic and Laudian, and the Reformed Evangelical and Low-Prayer Book components of the Ecclesia Anglicana – some of her richest, most beautiful and spiritually fruitful branches.
His vision of diversity and inclusion is painfully familiar in its tiresome superficiality. “You can have it any colour you like as long as it’s Progressive”. And, as with many such apostles of ‘be nice’ he cannot see that the intolerant other face of the creed he espouses.
We would all choose to be defined by those we include but in any creedal church we will inevitably be defined by those we exclude. It is inescapable.
He will also, sooner or later, have to reckon with those parts of the Scriptures which frankly and plainly underlie the intepretative model he rejects. The talk of ‘Sodomy’ and ‘vile affections’ and ‘sin’ and such like. “Who will rid me of this turbulent book”, is the inevitable next act.
Some may not be aware but Nietzsche is the ghost at the feast here. Revd. Fraser has said publicly that he found his Christ reading backwards from Nietzsche and I fear the poor man has carried the Diabolical Saint on his back and the “Transvaluaion of all Values” in his head ever since.
Revd Fraser’s issue, then, is not with creed or churchmanship but with external authority of any kind. Scripture, Fathers, Tradition, Articles of Religion, Bishop or Creed, anything that interferes with ones own Radical spiritual self fulfillment. This has a long and, in its own way, respectable lineage in Church History. It is the Antinomianism which began with the early Gnostics, passed through Marcionism was encountered by Luther and found its best English expression in the Theology of John Milton who declared that
“No ordinance human or from heaven can bind against the good of man”.
Milton was willing to overturn Church and State to achieve this, his preferred Rule of Faith. Fraser would like to do it without the inconvenience of stepping outside the Anglican polity.
Revd Fraser, as ever since his story began, seems to want to have his church and subvert it at the same time.
Brilliant
Amen. Amen. Amen
An excellent unmasking, thank you.
An eloquent and comprehensive, if inadvertent, description of exactly the underlying problem. ‘We would all choose to be defined by those we include but in any creedal church we will inevitably be defined by those we exclude. It is inescapable’. I don’t recall that the Christ supposedly the foundation of Christianity excluded anyone, but you are quite clear that worship of the organisation and its ‘creed’ supersedes the worship of god. Which seems to be the case with all organised religions.
You don’t have to want the CoE to recognise gay marriage, to also recognise that modern fiat currencies – and the banks that produce them and are bailed out when their bets go South – are a plague on modern mankind.
I read it like this: If you think the church should not welcome gay people, then you’re in the wrong place. Hence shrink the big tent.
I don’t care who my co-congregants have sex with as long as its safe, sane and consensual. What i do not want is people being compartmentalised as “gays” or “ts” or “bame” etc. Fraser needs to learn that “gays” ( or Bame or Jews etc) are not an homogenous blob but a large spread of different people with different lives, opinions, good and bad points etc. It may surprise him to learn that the God he pupports to worship is said to believe: “We are God’s Children and His unique creation for who He has deep and undying love” – Book of John IIRC – no idea what chapter and verse. I interpret “unique creation” to mean all souls and their mortal vessels are unique. Note St John does not say: “We are God’s Children who he divided into groups by sexual preference and skin tone amongst other criteria though he doesn’t pick sides, honest”. I strongly suspect Giles is a pseudo-marxist with a bit of sympathy for Christianity. Perhaps he can take himself to the jungles of South America where he can “liberate” the locals from the yoke of Capitalism – obvs this trip is on a “bring your own bombs” basis lolz.
There are “gay people”, lesbians and gay men, whose relationships are with people of the same sex.
Then there are TQ people, trans and queer, who deny the importance of sex, preferring gender.
The two groups are miles apart. If the church welcomes TQ activism, then it must accept trans-ideology, which posits a gendered soul which can exist in a sexed body at odds with its soul. How to write a theology about TQ is quite a challenge.
The assimilation of TQ+ into CofE would be glorious entertainment.
I recently began attending a Catholic enquiry group. On the first day far more people turned up than the the priest running it had expected. I think quite a number of us have tired of the Church of England’s determined subservience to the prevailing cultural narrative.
I don’t understand why Vicars can’t just go out into the street, so to speak, and create their church there. If what they say resonates with people then their parish will grow. Someone explain to me why this is so difficult.
I once saw a documentary on Mother Theresa discussing education in a small town/village. The local said they couldn’t do it because there was no available place to teach children. She pointed to a large tree with shade and said we can begin there.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses do this sort of thing.
At one time a vicar took some of his congregation to a local supermarket on Sunday, presumably with the manager’s permission, to hold a service.
I have tried to encourage our vicar to do this but with no luck. Being in the countryside it isn’t like you would get many passers-by but I like to think it shows willingness to engage with the community, rather than church being something that happens in that building up on the hill.
The Church of England is the most reformed of all the mainstream faiths in the UK. It is also the one in most serious decline, staring at an existential crisis.
Recent rises in weekly CoE attendence are driven by *very* conservative Anglican immigrants to the UK. The same conservative Anglican communion that Fraser wants to disassociate. An Anglican communion that has been far more successful than his own.
Meanwhile the Catholic Church has seen much reform but nothing on the scale of the CoE. The result? Far more now attend Catholic services than CoE services.
And the fastest growing churches and religions in the UK? All extremely conservative.
There is a trend here. A pattern. But none are so blind as those who will not see.
If your central offer is the everlasting grace of god, your articles of faith have to be reasonably everlasting. Constantly reforming a supposedly almighty god’s rules to suit current mores reveals a church and a belief system that isn’t everlasting and therefore cannot offer everlasting.
Faith needs a rock, not a windsock.
Whilst i agree, the most telling word in your comment is “offer”. That’s precisely what it is, yet it also undermines the whole edifice.
Which, unsurprisingly, i also agree with.
Where are you getting these facts from? If you are laying the increase in worshippers at the door of immigrants for the CoE then this is far more pronounced among Roman Catholics and always has been – there was a piece on Unherd not long ago about this. There are other denominations in far worse decline than Anglicanism – Church of Scotland currently selling off all its buildings, Methodism likely to have 0 (yes, an actual round number) adherents by the middle of the century. The old cannard of more RCs at services has always been disingenuous – it is an obligation for them. The case for an ever reforming church was the right one and supposed “eternal” claims by any denomination (mostly espoused by RC and Orthodox) should be mocked for their falsehoods – icon-worship (veneration), apostolic succession of the priesthood, Marian dogma, the list goes on.
With all goodwill, brother, many of us are persuaded that Christ is the Rock and we know him through the Scriptures.
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away”
Giles’ number two is quite literally a ‘number two’ in every possible way.
Of course the next Archbishop of Canterbury will be a woman or a liberal (but then I repeat myself), which Giles will be very happy about, but will only accelerate the decline of the Church of England. However, this is not a total loss – by the end of this decline, the only people left in the CofE will be the Anglo-Catholics and the Evangelicals, even if some of them leave due to the actions of Liberals like Giles.
No.1 surely has to be “Disestablish the Church”. Turn it back into a religious body again. Let its clergy focus on religion, and not climbing the greasy pole to seats in the House of Lords.
To disestablish the church is to remove one of the pillars upholding the British monarchy.
While all Christian churches eventually turned into another piece of political machinery in all political regimes ( radical reformation apart ), the CoE was established and intended as such from the very beginning, isn’t it its raison d’être? It was never intended as a fountain of spirituality but rather an upholder of the political regime. Isn’t it like reforming a bicycle to become a race car?
That is partly true, certainly the two Archbishop positions have always been as much political appointments as Christian ones, they act at the interface between the sacred and the secular. It is a balancing act which must always have been difficult, but perhaps in the 21st century uniquely challenging.
How much or how little parish priests were part of the poltical machinery depends on which part of history you’re looking at probably, eg, rigid in the 17th century but less so in the 18th.
Interface sounds like it makes sense however what about “my kingdom is not of this world “? Did the CoE stand to power in the 18 century? ( or any other time)
Sorry, I’m just not sure what either question means.
Perhaps with the first question you mean how can there be an “interface” between the world and the “not of this world” of God, but that is not quite what I meant. I was meaning the interface between the political world (originally the royal court, now Parliament and the public arena), and God’s Holy Church. I hope that makes better sense.
“Justin Welby introduced female bishops as soon as he could.”
Such was Welby’s enthusiasm for female bishops that he even approved of Paula Vennels as a candidate to become the Bishop of London.
Welby’s predecessor, Archbishop Rowan, gave the nod of approval to Sharia Law in the UK. I naively thought that Welby couldn’t sink any lower, but he has managed it.
I do agree that the media reported it like that. The impression taken away by the public seemed to be that Williams was somehow recommending that Sharia law should make a wholesale replacement of British laws.
Not so. The point he put up for discussion – expressed very cautiously and with all manner of reservations and caveats – was that since Jewish religious courts in Britain have long been allowed to decide certain religion-related matters, there was a case for similar provision for Islamic courts.
Such courts apply only to parties who voluntarily accept their jurisdiction, on restricted religion-based matters, and to nobody else. And those judgments remain subject to review by the ‘usual’ Courts under British law.
That, at least, is how I recall hearing it when sitting in the audience when Williams was speaking and taking questions.
His point was NOT “expressed very cautiously and with all manner of reservations and caveats”. He actually said that it was “unavoidable”.
The flaw in your argument is where you say “parties who voluntarily accept their jurisdiction”. One party, the woman, knows that she will be discriminated against by the sharia court (e.g. in disputes about wills). So if she agree to be subject to a sharia court does she “voluntarily accept their jurisdiction”? Or is she terrified of the consequences in her community if she refuses to accept their jurisdiction?
In woke-ridden Canada, Ontario and Quebec have banned faith-based arbitrations. A “progressive” politician wanted to allow sharia courts, but mercifully, someone had the sense to insist that muslim women should be consulted about this. Needless to say, they did not want sharia.
Archbishop Rowan would only have consulted cuddly muftis when he decided to make his pronouncement that sharia in the UK was “unavoidable”.
Thank you for your observations.
You refer to the flaw in my argument. I made no argument. In particular, I made no suggestion that Sharia courts would be a good idea. And I don’t make that suggestion now.
My post (see opening paragraph) was limited to correcting the impression wrongly given by the media at the time that Williams was proposing or acquiescing to general application of Sharia law throughout the land.
I chose the words ‘voluntarily accept their jurisdiction’ because the very issue you refer to (the possibility that a Muslim woman, for example a wife in a divorce, might be coerced into submission) was expressly considered as a concern during the talk. Hence also my reference to ‘reservations and caveats’.
As to Williams regarding the matter as ‘unavoidable’, your recollection of the speech is superior to mine.
And if Williams’s consultation was solely with ‘cuddly muftis’, that is something you know, but I unfortunately don’t.
I heard Rowan Williams make this observation on BBC Radio 4 current affairs panel. The previous speaker before Dr Williams, clained that our UK court system was clogged up with too many cases to manage, so Sharia courts could be used provide a greater throughput. The Archbishop thoght that Sharia courts would become an inevitable part of UK life. He did not mention that a Sharia court is a religious court presided over by mullahs on the basis of Islamic law. Nor that the testimony of a non-Muslim counts for less than that of a Muslim when there is a dispute, and a woman’s testimony less than a man’s. Nor did he mention that an accused person in a Sharia court is not allowed legal counsel in the court room. Nor did he explain that the Islamic penalty for apostacy is death. In fact no one in the panel discussion (Any Questions if I recall) made any reference to the details of how Sharia law would be implemented. The context of the discussion appeared to relate to the possibility of non-Muslims being tried in a Sharia court. In my memory, there was no proper discussion of the collision between the rights of a UK citizen under British law and the rights of a person in an Islamic court. Maybe I have blocked out some of the memories of the discussion in shock at the casual way that archbishop seemed to accept as inevitable that Magna Carta rights should be swept away by the imposition of Sharia law.
Thank you for your comment.
My references were to the lecture given by Archbishop Williams at the Royal Courts of Justice. With help of your reference to BBC Radio 4 I have found a World at One conversation between Williams and one other person. Both of these talks were on 7 February 2008, and transcripts of both are available on the website I found.
You recall a current affairs panel at which other points were raised (or, as you point out, left unaddressed), so I imagine that represents yet another discussion, which obviously complicates things if there are three talks to assess.
I do appreciate the concerning points that you have raised. But at all events, my very quick skim of the pages generally supports my recollection that Williams was not advocating wholesale adoption of Sharia, and was very concerned about truly voluntary participation, the supremacy of the national law, and the need for safeguards.
For example, Williams says: ‘ … I think it would be quite wrong to say that we could ever licence so to speak a system of law for some community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are guaranteed to them as citizens in general, so that a woman in such circumstances would have to know that she was not signing away for good and all …’. And much besides.
No.1, sounds sensible, but No.2 . . . sorry Giles but I think that is delusional, making the next Archbishop of Canterbury a “she” will be the final nail in the C of E’s coffin. It does’nt matter how well-meaning or sincere or how clever ‘she’ may be, a female A of C will finish off the C of E. (I did’nt intend for that to rhyme.)
However, Thy Will be Done.
Whether it’s read as hieroglyph or as a literal depiction, the next female Archbishop of Canterbury could point for justification of her appointment to Jesus being depicted in Revelation i.13 wearing female garb; an ankle-length garment ‘tied about the paps’.
Rev Giles tries to allude to that grander faith of an earlier age. The saints were to eat from the tree of life and the hidden manna. They were to be pillars in the Temple. They were to sit on Christ’s throne. They were to be adjusted into harmony with and into the shape of Christ, as shockingly depicted with a countenance of ‘the sun in full strength’. The second death would not harm them and, standing on the sea of glass about the throne, they would have power over the nations.
The managerial approach could never convey that. Even as an arrangement to give legitimacy to an English monarchy, the Church of England will almost certainly not be called upon to officiate at the next coronation.
Thank you, interesting reply. I think you have to remember that the line about the “paps” is a translation into English from the Latin or Greek. I don’t know the words used in those classical languages in the original, but even in English “paps” means nip ples, usually female but not necessarily.
I don’t think we can reasonably say that line means a woman should become A of C.
Just checked the Greek text and you are correct.
Revelation 1:13: “… among the lampstands was someone like a son of man,dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest.” A robe reaching the feet was typical clothing for a man in the Middle East. Hardly an argument for a female A of C.
1. Stop talking about fashionable issues. Leave everything as it is. No gay marriage. No reparations. Drop all the talk about global warming. Congregations hate it all.
2. Revert back to the Book of Common Prayer. All liturgy should be 1662. All bishops and curates should say the daily offices.
3. Get a vicar in every parish church. The £100M currently earmarked for slavery reparations would go a long way.
4. Make monthly church attendance a requirement for a place in a C of E school. Make C of E schools traditionalist, academically rigorous and well disciplined. That will attract parents to send their kids there. That will, in turn, bring more people into church. Strengthen the links between the parish school and the parish church.
5. Reopen the church yard for funerals. Make baptism, marriage and burial in your parish church the normal thing to do. Again use the 1662 BCP services: people like things to be done properly, I.e. as they have always been done.
6. Have the bishops in the HofL stake out traditionalist and Christian positions – they should oppose fashionable wokeness and support King, Church and Country. For a start, they should come out unambiguously for supporting the maintenance of family farms.
7. Leave the rest in the hands of God.
Sound words …are you in line for being new Archbishop ???
Stop charging admission fees to visit cathedrals. If you’re actually the “Church of England” and not a tourist venue.
Kick all the bishops out of the Houe of Lords. Only allow them back if they’re elected.
If we can make the national museums free, you would think we could make our 42 cathedrals free to visit.
I disagree about bishops in the House of Lords. No Tory would ever make any constitutional change in that direction. What we should be doing is restoring the constitution. Start with getting rid of Blair’s 1990s constitutional vandalism.
The free museums are supported by the tax payer. Churches only have their attendees to provide funds (plus some Gift Aid from the state). If the cathedrals are to be a public amenity as well as a place of worship, should the public contribute to their running costs?
I don’t really see why our national cathedrals are any less worthy of public money than the Imperial War Museum, the National Gallery or the British Museum. They are places of deep cultural significance to all British people and beautiful and historically interesting places for tourists to get a sense of the country and her people.
Public money often comes with strings attached.
You don’thave to pay to enter cathedrals. Say you are there as a worshipper/congregant and they should waive the fee. As a long-time attendee of a cathedral at one point in my life it is a commonly-held falsehood that you have to pay to get in.
Westminster Abbey if free to enter if you want to go to a service. Which I do about once a year despite being an Atheist.
The church has allocated £100m for slavery reparations!! That’s the last time I put anything on a collection plate.
I think, to be fair, the £100 million was for a project investigating the church’s links with slavery rather than actually making reparations in the form of payments. Less dangerous, perhaps, but equally pointless, and makes one really angry when you see what hard-pressed parishes are having to do to stay afloat.
Hear! Hear!
Gerard Hughes expressed it well in God of Surprises. For him a truly all embracing Church needed to be a seemingly incompatible grouping of three traditions- the conservative/traditionalist, the socially active/caring and the mystic. They all look completely contradictory with their own priorities. But with them there exists an essential tension and diversity without which a church which is for everyone (which is what it should be) cannot properly function. It also has a name equally as good as subsidiarity- community.
What a fine perspective and one I heartily, if belatedly concur in.
Some men lean on the law and make an idol of fleshly ordnances. Some men deceive themselves and make a religion of will-worship.
Yet Christ is all and in all.
and some people are not men.
This! A thousand times, this.
Then, as Giles puts it in his essay: “if you can’t cope with that, well there are other churches.”
What will the CofE stand for if all it does is follow the decadence and collapse of British cultural morality? It is supposed to lead people to God and how can anyone believe in a God who keeps changing his mind let alone now praises those who were (are?) perverts.
Arguably the CoE is strongly identified as part of the Establishment… but the greater Establishment is under pressure from the ‘populists’ everywhere.
Hoping that the CoE will surrender the pomp of the Establishment seems unlikely, so I guess the CoE will have to rebuild itself from the ashes once the Establishment fails.
I am far from convinced that populists are against the Establishment.
Rather, they are against those (the élites, as they often call them) who infiltrate the Establishment, and then operate it for their own particular purposes. Especially when those purposes are utterly detached from the interests and concerns of the people that the Establishment should be serving.
In short, populists want the Establishment back.
There is a great deal of discussion about whether Britain is a secular state. In theory, it is secular because anyone can choose any religion. In practice the monarch begins his job in a C of E service.
IF it is secular, this article has no real place on UnHerd because there are far more important religions to talk about. We should be discussing first the Catholic version of Christianity or Islam before we worry about the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
IF it is not secular and the C of E is the official church of the country, the number of members is pathetic. 650,000 members is so small, when compared to Muslim numbers and even when compared to Catholics. It is just over 1% of the population. So why are we even talking about it?
This discussion is the key. Either the Church of England is important or it is irrelevant and it can’t be both. The idea that Welby is jetting about the world talking about the climate suggests that more than 1% of the country is interested in what he says and he clearly thinks that he’s extremely important. Also, we allow bishops to become part of our government and even give them more attention in the House of Lords. Why? If we are a secular country, why don’t we allow senior Muslim clerics into the House of Lords?
My household – but not myself – are members of the Church of Wales (essentially the C of E is disguise) and we have a lot of these discussions, which is healthy. I am quite clear in my belief. The Church of England/Wales is not sufficiently important to have a say in the running of the country, and the environment bit is especially silly. The Archbishop of Canterbury is of no importance and should stay that way. OR, we should allow other faiths in the Lords as well. And that would be interesting.
“Gay sex a gift from God – church needs to be badass” thats all you need to know. Maybe the next arch pervert should be a trans woman. Oh wait – much of the attraction of these proto kiddie fiddlers is that the clown outfits they wear is already an imitation of women’s clothing. Burn the whole foul evil edifice to the ground.
They wear the ceremonial male attire of the late Roman empire, not ‘an imitation of women’s clothing’.
Rev Giles is more than correct.
Gay marriage could have been introduced into the Church of England thirty years ago. At that time I heard a sermon preached in which the vicar thundered from the pulpit, “We must have gay marriage!”
The congregation met this with enthusiastic applause, complete with catcalls and whistles of approval. At that time, what other sermon met with that reaction? Sermons are usually the time when congregants think of the Sunday lunch.
This reaction by the greater part of this congregation – mostly middle class urbanites – demonstrated what the changed attitude was even at that time.
This new reformation has already been carried out almost to completion, as Rev Giles says, largely by the congregations. A priestess of the Church was welcomed into another church I attended, one which favoured ‘bells and smells’, and continued to do so after her appointment. No one left. And both these churches had gay people among the congregation. They just weren’t used as advertising.
Whether or not the Apostle Paul was ‘pale, male and stale’, he wouldn’t have endorsed the subclassification of the followers of Christ in any way. For him, this was evidence of the factionalism of ‘the flesh’. A Christian is a person who has a trusted Christ, whatever else they may be.
Do you think the measure of correct, Bible centred teaching, is that the congregation applause?
You seem to be confusing Christianity with liberal democracy there, extraordinary.
Foolish
I’m seriously concerned that any congregation would respond to a sermon with enthusiastic applause, catcalls and whistles of approval. A place of worship isn’t a place of entertainment and a sermon should be responded to in reflective silence, however much you approve.
Ditch the woke and go genially conservative.
So what’s been decided: is Jesus human or divine? Back to Nicea, I’m afraid.
Only one way to find out: FIGHT!
‘Diversity is fine, but too much of it can be exhausting.’
Tell us about it!
But in the context of the Rev Giles’s argument, this means that people of a certain diversity – the conservative evangelicals – are like a grain of sand in the oyster, irritating but without producing the pearl of great price.
These evangelicals are free to leave. If they do, the diversity really becomes a uniformity, with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet about gay sex, priestesses of the Church and so on. From absolute diversity to absolute uniformity.
They are leaving; Giles quoted figures at the start of his article.
It seems foolish to shape faith and knowledge of God according to changing cultural norms. We can simply choose to accept the Bible or to follow another faith.
This is definitely not what brought Welby down:
“Too busy being a global statesman, he had no time to follow up the letters he received from survivors of abuse. This is what brought him down.”
So, he “didn’t have time” ? Not once, during the 20 or so years he knew about John Smyth and other child abuse scandals in the CofE ?
I’m sick of this “he was a good man at heart, who was just a victim of events” whitewash. Yeah but, no but … . Just get off the fence and call it how it is. They’ll get no respect – and deserve none – until they do.
Glad someone loves it. I left it over trans clergy 18 months ago when my bishop, Stephen Croft,.changed his vote in synod based on his “lived experience” of meeting trans Christians. The predominance of culture over scripture under Welby, combined with managerialism, has been a disaster. As in business CofE has many ambitious clergy hungry for promotion (Lucy where are you?) – the stories my Lay Clerk husband tells me about rhe London clerical scene would give Succession a run for their money.
I lost.my religion, but ironically strengthened my faith. Whether or not I’m a “better” Christian is a whole other matter, but at least a more reflective, prayerful one. Wishing the church and particularly its choral tradition the best.
These are sad and confusing times with Christians desperately looking for a safe heaven where the Word is truly preached and a living fellowship exists. Last week our Lutheran national church employed their first non-binary priest. More than half of our priests are now female and we also got our first lesbian bishop in an open relationship. For some ‘strange’ reason the overseers are most vocal about the norwegian oil production, climate change and the wellbeing of the rainbow movement.
Heretic calls for more heresy to solve problems caused by heresy.
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside letting the door thud shut…
Except, there’s altogether too much going on ‘inside’ that shouldn’t be, and the inclination of the congregation is to to let the door thud shut on the sociopolitical lot of them, and stack faggots against the door.
Any of yous got a light?
Reverse the Reformation and re-join the Catholic Church; eject liberals everywhere
If you mean ‘re-join the Roman Catholic Church’, please be clearer.
The Church of England is catholic. (And protestant, of course.)
Further, in England, the Church of England is the Catholic Church. Official.
I have some sympathy for this suggestion. But the RC church is no better with its own idiot at the top of its organisation tree ruling ordained shepherds in its worldwide flocks, proclaiming the Woke dogma and eschewing tradition (e.g. Latin mass, creeping feminisation, etc.), not to mention its long (and continuing) habit of child abuse.
The simple things you see are all complicated……don’t get fooled again…
The church is, and should be, the body of Christ in a corrupt and disintegrating world. Like its members it should shine a light in this dark place, reflecting its head and overseer Jesus Christ. But in many places it no longer has any relevance. The bishops have grown corrupt, ushering in all trades of workers except those preaching the Word. The institution that should be the salt of this world is itself rotten to the core. But thank God, the true church isn’t a denomination, a building or a congregation. The true church are those who believe and are saved. Who hold on to Christ their Lord, and in all things look to Him who began a good work in them and will bring it to completion.
The character and values of the author himself is indicative of the so called “problem” in the church. The quality and character of men in general has declined and so, it’s common to find those who tickle ears and proclaim what is popular in the current age. Imagine Paul arguing in his day that it was ok for Christians to unite their bodies with the temple prostitutes in the sort of culture they were in, simply because it was popular and accepted by most in the society.
The bible is clear about the fact that things like adultery, or homosexual sex are sins, but here we have a man of God, who has one job, to be faithful to God and His Word, and to stand firm in whatever culture he in the times and places he finds himself in, and yet what does Giles do? He’s a compromiser, grasping onto the liberal and worldly positions of the Spirit of the age he is in.
Jesus said that they world would hate Christian’s like it hated him, but we can be sure that Giles would receive rewards and accolades for his progressive positions. So, the cure is to never darken the door of this mans church, at least if your eternal soul is of value to you. Let him fail as he should, and perhaps he can get a job selling used cars. Go to a church where the Word of God is faithfully proclaimed and exampled.
These “reforms” are really a death knell.
If I may question Justin Welby’s early career of a mere 11 years in the oil industry, that really does not amount to a fat lot of useful experience in managment or how to run things. But my main concern is that we have forgotten to reflect on what we see when we look at a person’s face. That would have told us what we were in for.
“The next Archbishop should be a woman,” says Giles. But doesn’t attempt to make any case for it. He does make a case for a specific woman, Bishop Guli. There’s no doubt that she is an admirable figure. But she stands out precisely by being quite unlike almost anyone else in the House of Bishops, whether male or female.
Giles says that a “company man in a purple shirt go[ing] on Newsnight to intone the party line is more depressing than I can possibly imagine. These men, their life force drained by time spent in artificially lit offices going through the minutes of the last meeting, have been terrible at communicating the excitement and phenomenal good news of the Gospel.” True enough. But does he really imagine that you couldn’t say exactly the same thing about the ”company women” who are increasingly to be found at every senior level of the CofE?
“another pale, male and stale company man”? Yes! you could choose one of the wimmen bishops that covered up the latest sex abuse scandal. what is the weird obsession with colour? all colours, bar white, are good; white very, very bad. why exactly? and following the ‘mainly muslim men’ sex abuse scandal covered up by a senior policeWOMAN, and the glorious Paula Vennells, why would being female automatically make you a good hire?
You lost me at: The next Archbishop needs to complete this, and make it clear that the Church does not think gay sex is sinful, indeed that it is every bit a gift from God as straight sex. The Church of England is already immersed in such neopaganism and that alone will continue her descent into irrelevance. So be it. England’s only hope, besides Christ himself, is Africa to repopulate her churches and re-establish orthodoxy for the faithful. Then, it won’t be evangelicals bailing, but hopefully the new pagans. If they will not repent, I say good riddance.
There was the opportunity to pick someone from the Indian subcontinent: it would have been increasing diversity, but the spiritual diversity was too much, he was a Christian, and Michael Nazir-Ali wasn’t picked.
But sourcing from Africa would give ‘African Missionary’ a new meaning. 🙂
The next Archbishop of Canterbury is not going to welcome gay people into the Church, because doing so would threaten his or her position as head of the imperial Anglican Church.
Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani is not going to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury because she is Iranian and her appointment would offend those Muslims who see their religion as a neo-imperialist ideology.
I hope GF isn’t prosecuted for inciting arson! (Ha ha)
I agree with GF about purging business models from church structures. He would no doubt be horrified, however, that I think it should go much farther. ‘The church’ has nothing to do with buildings, qualified priests or arcane rituals. ‘The church’ is simply the corporate body of those who put their trust in Jesus. Get rid of all the flim-flam!
I’ve given you an uptick, even though i’m atheist.
I am an atheist as well and I’ve given you a downtick. The C of E is of minor importance compared to the Roman Catholic faith. Where I live, chapels are more important as well. Just over 1% of the population are members of the C of E. So how is it ‘simply the corporate body of those who put their trust in Jesus’?
‘The church’ is not just CE or arc, Pentecostal, Baptist, or any other denomination or local church. It is the totality of all the members of these who have put their trust in Jesus. It does not include those who ‘belong’ to a denomination or local church or enter ‘Christian on a form’ unless they have put their trust in Jesus.
Of course, some people will disagree with me, and so be it! I’m certainly not going to become agitated!
Tempted to despair
I used to laugh at the eruvs of Stamford Hill and Golders Green, as Jews blithely sidestepped their own rules.
Plan for one of UK’s biggest Jewish ‘eruv’ zones that will ring Golders Green in North London with fishing wire to avoid Sabbath restrictions sparks fears of religious division : r/ukpolitics
Now the CoE is up to the same game. Giles tells us that the rules of the Christian religion regarding homosexuality, that have stood for over 2,000 years, should be ignored because they are out of step with current-day society. But if Christianity is to last another 2,000 years, today’s societal predilections must be ignored, otherwise it’s not a religion, it’s a club.
Personally, I’m not religious and have no problem with gays. But I can’t respect a religion that doesn’t want to believe in its fundamental beliefs. The CoE is doomed.
That’s a very fine article Giles. One of your best. There’s a lot of comments on here about how wonderful traditional BCP worship is, and so it is, but, if I may echo you, the point should be to build a decentralised commune of Christian groups, each free to go its own way and find its own way to worship God through Christ.
That requires understanding, tolerance, patience, love of others. That’s what Christians are supposed to do.
Abolish the centre, encourage diversity. Your nomination for Archbishop gets my vote. Except of course I don’t have one. It will be an establishment stitch up. That’s the first thing to change, power to the pews.
Though one can’t help feeling the Levellers had it right on this point: “No Bishops”. Or indeed arch deacons, diosacean bishops, advisory groups, committees….
The Church made a huge mistake in anointing Welby , much less divisive to have chosen one of the majority of bishops who like 95% of the Christians in the UK doesn’t really believe in a God.
Reading you article I am left with the thought that no wonder your church is failing. Welby may be failing it, but we are you are as well (in my humble opinion). What people are searching is for a solid foundation for faith, but my church (and yours) offer soft platitudes and yanking out off generations of doctrine with a shrug. The church is tossing out doctrine at a dizzying rate to satisfy modern attitudes. Women priests? Sure. Girl power. Acceptance of sinful actions? Why not? Because they mean well, right? Assist the dying to die? It is compassion. Never mind that God planned our death and suffering leads to something greater than ourselves. But we know better, because we are enlightened. No wonder the Muslim faith has such strong adherents. In its mildest form it has a base of faith. We want a comfortable religion that suits are present needs.
Whatever. Unless the Church is seen as approachable by future generations, most of whom will never have had instruction in bible stories, never mind the issues so beloved of many correspondents here, it will fail in every way.
If teaching the way, the truth and the life matters, then a lot of unresolvable argument has to dumped. By all means, those who are content in their learning and complacency, continue with your exclusive sects but anyone serious about widely spreading the Good News needs a place that’s unconcerned with sexual politics from which to start. And importantly, one that consistantly demonstrates the quality of humility.
I am a christian. the small “C” is deliberate. I was confirmed in the then new Guildford Cathedral. I talk to God anywhere and don’t expect anything from Him.
I don’t need a Church to be what I am, I’ve not been to a service in years, other than funerals. The modern Church has become a brutal franchise organisation, run like modern multinational business. The author is right, Mr Welby’s organization needs tearing down and a new start. But it won’t happen, there are to many vested interests.
My family is from Kansas. Some of them attend a local Anglican church now affiliated with the Church of Uganda because it is more conservative. The congregants are for the most part, white and middle-class. When I visit on Christmas the services are cheerful and divine. Others of my family attend the evangelical mega churches, which all seem to be founts of nepotism and business jargon. The slang word “cool” has exclusivity at its core. If you were cool, people admired you, could strive to be like you, but could never really reach the mark. Enter social activism, and snuff out any trace of awe and wonder.
“The next Archbishop should be a woman”
This was the exact reason Joe Biden gave for appointing Kamala Harris as Vice President (albeit shorn of the skin colour qualification). How about the next archbishop should be a divine apopointment? the most qualified person for the job? “Male, pale and stale” is not a logial argument, it is racist, sexist abuse.
I believe the Orthodox Church teaches that women cannot become priests, because their purpose is to ‘give life’. A priest ‘takes life’, in the form of sacrifice. Two sexes, two immutable purposes.
“… racist, sexist abuse.”
Absolutely! Well said! Now trot off to the Police and make a complaint you’ve been offended and they will recorded a secret Hon Crime Hate Incident report against him!
What about preaching core Christianity: the Fall, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Crucifixion and Resurrection. All in the Old Testament and the New, especially in the Apostles Crede and the Our Father.
Christ on the Cross, says “forgive them, for they know not what they do”-the heart of our Christianity.
“Covid was an absolute disaster. Being asked to close our churches — and to people in great need — sent a signal that we were not really there for our flocks in their hour of need.” You’re in good(?) company: doctors, dentists, teachers, lawyers and other professionals all succumbed to the mass hysteria and betrayed their principles and their flocks.
I am not a Christian but I do love most of things you list about the Church of England.One you left out was its role as a focus of community activity.
I dearly hope the Church is able to recover its traditions including those peculiarly English virtues of porosity and subsidiarity. And a return to the King James Bible might help too!
> The next Archbishop needs to complete this, and make it clear that the Church does not think gay sex is sinful, indeed that it is every bit a gift from God as straight sex.
Awkwardly however the Almighty disagrees with you. Not that his opinion matters very much
A church is destroyed in France every two weeks, most by arson. In recent years, at least 20 churches in Canada have been destroyed by arson too. I know ‘burn it down’ is a hip phrase of the moment. But against a backdrop of churches literally being burnt to the ground, its metaphorical use here is startlingly insensitive.
Christianty is the most oppressed religion worldwide but of course, you’d never know from the BritBrainwashCorp. Not sure who’s responsible for arson in France and Canada but this is why the Muslim attacks on Israel are an attack on Christians alike.
Probably insurance jobs….
Did Giles Fraser have to study Christian theology in order to become a priest? He doesn’t seem to realise that its values are not those of modern secularism. He and others like him are the reason the Church of England is less and less relevant. They don’t seem to understand that truth has an eternal quality. Christianity has always welcomed everyone, but you do have to accept its beliefs and find your part in them.
The Church of England bishops need to understand that church actions should reflect the purpose of God’s wishes, His long term wishes, and take into account our human weaknesses.
Short term fixes, ignoring human limits, to feel virtuous, or to complete an ideological goal, will only destroy what previous generations have left us.
Currently they are ecclesiastical version of our current Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband.
.
I nearly gave up on this article at Welby’s replacement should be a woman and finally threw in the towel at the acceptance of homosexuality!
The Church should be a rock. Always there, never changing with each fad or fashion.
I note that Islam, Sikhism or other Religions are not changing with what they consider fashionable.
Catholicism has now gone down this same route and is hemorraging believers due to a woke Pope.
Not for long. Just wait them out, and the world will turn.
Nulli Secundus.. Francis Turner is ” me”!
Reading the many comments to this article, what an impossible job leading the nation’s Church will be! So many conflicting democratic positions on just about everything. Er, here’s another one . . . would it be the morally soundest thing to do to abandon this charade we call religion and be honest about life?
I think your comment applies not just to the Church but to all the large institutions embedded in our culture.
I imagine the problem with your suggestion (of which I entirely approve) is that most people need to believe in something – as the recent cults of pandemic, woke, global warming … have demonstrated.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we all believe in some moral code, even if it’s just ‘do as you would be done by’.
I would rather we had a cult with a fatherly and tolerant attitude to soak up those who can only operate by believing in some absolute authority.
Sure. Where are you going to find one of those?
Wind it down and reunite with the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I agree totally
Yeah. No problems whatsoever with that lot….
The Rev. Fraser commences his article by bemoaning the desperate state of the Church of England. He ascribes this situation to the leadership of Welby and his acolytes. “Understandably, people left in their droves” [after Covid – but how about in the decades before?].
Consider the following statements from Rev. Fraser’s article:
“The next Archbishop should be a woman. [Why? Surely appointments should be on merit, not race, sex, trans or any other identity characteristics.]
“gay sex is … is every bit a gift from God as straight sex. Conservative evangelicals will leave the Church over this, and so be it. [Emphasis mine. I thought the CoE had already warmly welcomed and embraced gay people into its fellowship. The arrogance of your ‘Foxtrot Oscar’ sentiments is mind-blowing!]
“… yet another pale, male and stale company man in a purple shirt …” [Do you people never tire of insulting, vilifying and offending white (heterosexual) men?]
“The next Archbishop must make it crystal clear that the Church of England welcomes gay people. And if you can’t cope with that, well there are other churches.” [Emphasis mine. More ‘Foxtrot Oscar’ attitude!]
Is it any wonder that the CoE is in the desperate state it is as portrayed by one of its reverend ordained? The arrogance and rank unpleasantness of such rank-and-file shepherds is more to blame for the depleted flock than the recent Woke meanderings of a global Archbishop and his echo chamber chums. I went to a CoE school and loved our daily chapel congregations each morning before classes, and the Sunday evening services. But I haven’t attended a CoE service (other than very few weddings and funerals – and many more in registry offices) for 50+ years. And I suspect there are scores if not hundreds of thousands like me.
If the church’s leaders, at parish and archbishopric level, and all in between, focus on, promote and cherish minorities, don’t whinge that the majority has moved to pastures new! If you [plural, please be assured) bray from your pulpits for ‘Majority Rule’ in foreign fields while abandoning your own majority flock back home, don’t wonder why they’ve rejected you in turn and consider you spiritually irrelevant!
The trouble with CofE is they don’t actually believe the Christian catechism. Plus they used to represent only one side of society – the “wit kant” as the legend Bongi Mbonambi might say. Now they represent no-one except the pseudo marxists and student trots and other variants on the trustafarian scene. Whilst these clowns are “wit” they are such a tiny % of the UK populace they cannot claim authority or leadership, moral or otherwise. I think the writer is missing the point here – the CofE like the BBC needs erased – sure we can have museums and scholarly articles like we can about Augustin of Hippo and the Volkischer Beobachter. The resultant largesse could be used for good causes (once the UK returns to a legitimate govt). Any true Christians can go elsewhere – High Church to Rome and the small % of Proddies in the CofE can take their pick – Presbytarian, Baptist, Methodist or even the Wee Free!!
Just reading down the comments i am reminded that GF was the cleric involved in the assault on St Pauls by commies after Gordon’s brown bubble burst – covering everyone in brown stuff. Now that’s not the only link to “brown” in the desecration done by fraser and his animals. Apparently as well as empty K cider and spesh cans his crew left a lot of dumped needles and syringes in their wake. Hey Giles – get yourself to Masjid Al Haram or An Nabawi and start chucking booze and junk ( and God knows what else these crusties are willing to crank up) and related paraphanalia around. Then you’ll get your fill and it will be deserved – God may forgive you but any honest decent person “Of the Book” will not. ( So thats all true Jews, Christians and Moslems – c 2bn souls) Desecration is both a particularly abhorrent crime and also a sign that the conflict cannot be wound back in – look at the actions of Hamas and IDF just now – both in the crosshairs of the ICC for just that crime as well as many others.
You had me until
2. The next Archbishop should be a woman.
and then I realized that you are just another part of the problem.
Giles’s comment about gay sex is important. In a sense, it doesn’t much matter whether the CoE says gay sex is fine or that it is wicked but come down one way or the other.
“We need to reclaim the difficult mysterious Jesus, the otherness of Jesus, the cosmic Jesus.” I agree, but He was very unforgiving about homosexuality and other sinful and unnatural practices. How do you square this circle in your own mind? I agree about Welby, he was a bean counter by nature and about as inspirational as a stale bag of crisps.
What did Jesus say about homosexuality?
I’m sorry, but a woman arch bishop would just finish it off completely.
Gays have been welcome in church for ages now.
God please help us, we your flock are scattered, confused, frightened, in despair. The Church of England are like bickering parents only interested in point scoring and promotion. Guide us, comfort us, give me hope. Please!
Speaking as an atheist, I have always wondered why, given that Jesus preached love and tolerance, the Christian Churches have always been so full of hatred and intolerance.
Human nature in a fallen/broken world.
I don’t regularly read church news and opinions, being of the atheist persuasion I find the most banal comments about different gods and nations incomprehensible. The problem with the CofE is not that it is well or badly run but that it is a church. Once Galileo and his peers opened the Pandoras Box of the Scientific Method the game was up even if it has taken hundreds of years so far, with little sign of success, to get that across to the bishops on the Clapham Omnibus. Unsupported belief has been around since man first started guessing that the Universe was something to ponder, and religious thinking is pretty well understood by psychologist today. This ‘who is the right archbishop?’ question is as daft as the old angels dancing on the head of a pin debate all those years ago.
Giles seems to be saying that if we want to grow our market we need to make our product more acceptable. (While dinging the AoC for going down the same path.)
I suppose for those who want moral clarity there will always be Islam.
For everyone else there will be Stonewall in old buildings.
Storming, Giles, and I agree with every word. Especially your pick for Archbishop. Our only hope is that too many of the potential Cantuars are tainted by association with the scandal that brought Welby down; more resignations please.
Reactivate parishes by allowing Communion services to happen without any involvement of a priesthood. I’ve no problem with employing people with biblical knowledge or pastoral skills but most of us can read Common Worship or the BCP and thus have the skills. None of the Apostles were priests. They were introduced to enforce central power.
Briefly and crudely as possible: Get back to Christian doctrine and practice or pack that thing up before the wind blows it away. The C of E is merely muddying the waters of spiritual life with irrelevant political blather. It was the original example of “Go woke or go broke”.
The churches that are in growth, all over the world, are those that adhere to biblical orthodoxy.
Years ago we rented a flat in Oxford. On the day we moved in the local vicar turned up on the doorstep to welcome us to his community. I would have asked him in if I hadn’t been up to my neck in kitchen filth (the flat had been ‘professionally cleaned’, of course) No such visitation when we moved to rural Wales. Nor when we moved to rural Cotswolds. Come to think of it, didn’t happen anywhere else when we moved. People come where they are invited and stay where they are made welcome. Does the CofE understand that?
Giles, you were not barred. I kept mine open from day one because Welby did not have the right. The problem was that too many tame clergy closed theirs for fear of their promotion prospects or because they simply lacked a spine. It’s the same attitude in the House of Bishops with their pernicious doctrine of ‘collegiality’ – disastrous for those on the receiving end such as the abuse victims – which states ‘As an Anglican bishop thou shalt not rock the boat or spill the beans but instead close ranks and present a united front for the sake of the institution’. The essential problem here is the pool from which new bishops are chosen and the criteria for this. It has resulted in large part – with a few glowing exceptions – in ‘company’ men and women – poodles and catspaws who ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Giles, Addendum. I am with you on bishop Guli, or what about Jill Duff? But please stop tarring all Evangelicals with the same brush; it’s as bad as suggesting all Liberals don’t believe in the orthodox Christian God when it’s obvious a handful still do.
It’s interesting that, at least in North America where I know the stats, churches with a traditional message are growing again. Whereas those with pride flags in the window and gay atheist ministers are dying.
Giles should, but doesn’t, know this. And my guess is that if he did, he wouldn’t care. He comes across as an idealogue. Just like Joe Biden picked a black woman as his vice prez, and the Dems went down as a result, Giles says the next Archbishop should be a woman. To hell with meritocracy. It’s the vagina that matters.
Giles will only succeed in making the church more irrelevant. And what a loss that will be.
“Watching yet another pale, male and stale company man in a purple shirt go on Newsnight to intone the party line is more depressing than I can possibly imagine.”
This sentence tells you everything you need to know about Giles Fraser’s values. There’s nothing Christian here. It’s woke progressivism/identity politics (or whatever you want to call it). With CofE representatives spouting this lazy, sneery stuff, no wonder it’s dying. And deservedly so.
Lazy, sneery stuff. I find Giles viewpoint is spot on, as I usually do. To say “There is nothing Christian here” seems ignorant to those who do really study their Bibles as opposed to focussing myopically on a few verses here and there.
Of course I can’t know, but your comment like many others below seems to come from the very conservative evangelicals he criticises, concentrated in wealthy areas rather than the parts of the country impoverished by globalism and metropolitan-conditioned bad government.
There is everything Christian here. Conservative evangelicals have diminished the meaning of the word into legalistic propositions which deservedly attract very few other than those not bright enough to see through it at university.
How is it that what should be a simple formula for a faith with simple, straightforward instructions to live a better life as a human being has become so convoluted? Ah, yes……Organisations that have power structures and dogmas that can’t be changed without traumatic overhauls. A structure involving layers of synods and management that dilute any efforts to simplify the essential message of Christ; live with respect of others, obey the lessons he set down for living a decent and be wary of a multitude of man made rules/regulations. Reading some the very erudite comments on this article, goes a long way in explaining the tangle that the C of E is in.
It is called Vision and Strategy ……
As Hugh Kingsmill said : “Where there is Vision the people perish. I admit they also perish where there is no vision. Either way, in fact, their situation appears to be damnably awkward!!”
As for leaning into the Weird, Mary Wakefield has a timely article on exactly this in the current Spectator magazine: “We need to learn to pray again”.
An impassioned post for sure.But not very convincing when the author approvingly quotes this: “Too secular in its thinking… as if the success of the Church were down to us and not down to God.” Is the author using this standard for his own analysis/critique, I wonder. Is it not just another version of what he criticizes Welby for?
“…[I do] not think gay sex is sinful, indeed that it is every bit a gift from God as straight sex”
Giles, could you tell us more about this?
What do you base this on, from any end of the spectrum such as from a biblical basis, a sociological basis, a biological basis, et. al.?
Also, why do you begin with “I love the church”? Is that your primary emphasis? What basis or call is there, anywhere, for this to be your highest good?
Jeese Louise Giles, sometimes you really can’t see the forest for the trees.
Clearly the managerialism is a problem, the parish must be the fundamental unit and the diocese a subsidiary of that.
But as for the next archbishop, perhaps that person ought to be drawn from the parts of the CofE, or Anglican Communion more generally, that aren’t in their death throes?
I’m paradoxically glad the author and the CofE are so out of touch as to recommend going further down the wrong path. It means that church adherents will continue to leave a dying spineless institution that refuses to stand up for itself, and more of them will flock to the final Abrahamic religion, the perfected form of monotheism: Islam.
Keep it up, if that’s what you want, CofE. More gay, more women priests, even archbishops, more woke, more raves in churches, more DEI-style policies. It’s a shame because it’s the death of your culture and it’s a beautiful culture. I have precious memories of singing Christian hymns as a Muslim schoolboy in a state primary in Brighton, and of the gentle culture of parish churches I indirectly came across up and down the south. But a religion that blows with the changing winds simply cannot survive. The whole raison d’etre of a religion is to provide an unchanging connection with the transcendent aspect of existence amid the shifting sands of profane life, especially in these times.
All praises due to Almighty God, who has protected His final revelation from such tribulations.