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William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago

I appreciate the space and time given over to Church of England topics on here and this was a particularly helpful gloss of many subjects and issues which are not readily explained to the neophyte and the uninitiated in our Church.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 month ago

Thanks for the article. The whole problem falls on attendance. Our small church was packed for the carol service (10% of the village population, people standing in the porch as there was no room inside, children in the choir stalls) but then the next Sunday only the 8 regulars. People think they have better things to do on a Sunday morning. Most have a lie in or spend time with their family and then wonder why there is no sense of community and they are depressed. The CoE has got to recognise that per capita cities/towns are not more valuable than rural areas. The two villages we are joined with have about 2% of the population attend on a regular Sunday. In town they would need more than 800 people at the services (I would be surprised if it broke the 100 mark). Their carol service in town would need about 4,000 people in attendance for the first comparison.

William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago
Reply to  Milton Gibbon

While an interest in attendance, even a concern, is understandable and even useful, it should never be an anxiety. A church that is administering the sacraments correctly and preaching the gospel is succeeding.
Take solace in focusing on what it is in your charge to do. “Presume not to number Israel”. The rest belongs to God, who gives the increase.

David Kingsworthy
David Kingsworthy
1 month ago

2 issues traceable to Welby but not seen in this piece:
1, The capitulation of the CofE to a highly diminished role as the state religion, along with the elevation of Islam as the protected faith; 2, The sale, donation? of church properties to Muslim or secular groups for other uses

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

The church where my family used to worship is now a mosque, and I pray there sometimes. The census shows that one in six hundred Britons now is a convert to Islam. God is giving our country a second chance.

Simon Baker
Simon Baker
1 month ago

46% are still Christian on last census, 6% Muslim. Most churches also have clauses they cannot be used for non Christian worship

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Not the main concern perhaps, but the author touches on the philosophy of funding: city (populous) vs rural (sparse). This fruit of Welby’s Church of Managerialism boils down to secular Benthamite utilitarian nonsense.
There are lots of reasons for targeting some more support to highly rural areas, one of which is moral: the CofE denuded rural parishes of their long term assets (given by benefactors to specific churches, realising that small churches would never be able to self-fund) in order to support new and/or poor urban parishes, so there should by rights be some quid pro quo!

Campbell P
Campbell P
1 month ago

Raised some excellent points – lack of theological education in many bishops, the need for personal pastoral presence at the local level if the Church in England is going to survive let alone grow, the abuse of and hoarding of funds meant for the parishes, etc, etc – all pretty much insoluble without a grass roots revolution BECAUSE the system is designed to treat its questioners as pariahs and promotes largely only yes men and women who will not rock the boat (known as the principle of collegiality from which among others the victims of abuse and of cowardly bishops have suffered so terribly). Need to address the way in which bishops are chosen, their track records in effective leadership, and their characters not just their academic qualifications or the number of committees they have been on.

Simon Baker
Simon Baker
1 month ago

More people attend churches in cities and towns as more people live there but per capita wise more people from rural churches go to church, especially at Christmas than do people living in cities and towns. Indeed the oldest C of E churches are almost all rural as before the industrial revolution most people lived in villages and hamlets. The C of E has billions in assets and should invest in and support its rural churches (indeed often rural churches include Catholics and evangelicals as no other denomination has a presence there)

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
1 month ago

Married to a lay clerk theologian, so plenty of exposure to CofE. Lack of scriptural knowledge is a major problem – the dumbing down of the average sermon with a consistent failure to identify the role of learnings in daily life. This is exaccerbated by the Church’s undermining of scripture. I left CofE after the trans priest general synod – my bishop, Stephen Croft, changed his views on the matter following his “lived experience” of meeting distressed men and women who believe they are member of the opposite sex.
Welby’s role in this has been to.create a top heavy system at thesxprnse of the parish.and to.favour “right on”.cultural messaging over.scripture. He was another metropolitan pick with no.understanding.of the country beyond Islington.
What to fix it? Priests are teacher, coaches, abd mentors. Go back to basics – inspirational teaching, pastoral care, and reachout Sunday schools which teach young British people about.the judeo christian tradition.

William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

If I can speak as what used to be called a Plain Churchman, I share all your reservations and frustrations about error in the Anglican church.
But may I ask why the modish errors around human sexuality and identity were your tipping point rather than, say, the widespread innovations around the ‘reservation of the sacrament’, or the 39 Article defying mummery of ‘Benediction’ (which carries on regularly ar ‘Father’ Marcus Walker’s Church), or the frank Mariolatry which has been winked at in the Anglo Catholic faction in the church for, presumably, as long as we have both been communicant?
I am less worried, scripturally speaking or salvifically speaking, about errors my bishop may have about fornication and personhood than the fact that she keeps and worships a wafer of toast like an idol in The Old Deanery near Pauls.
Is it not simply true that, in each generation, we are exposed to some new and tedious error? Transgender Priests? What about the so called Assumption of the Virgin? Sin, after all is said, is, at last, plainly ridiculous.
Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
I mean this sincerely, being a relatively young person and new to these generational controversies. Why this, why now?
Surely, as long as we have our Articles, our Creeds, and our Prayer Book there will always a Cave of Adullam, a ‘bower, kept quiet for us’ who try to be simple scriptural Christians in the Church of England, no?

0 0
0 0
1 month ago

The current (just) Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Martin Seeley, has taught theology at university level (Cambridge).

Peter B
Peter B
1 month ago

This confirms what many of us suspected – Justin Welby was really nothing more than a manager. Not a real leader.
There’s no chance of turning any declining company or organisation around without appointing a leader.
Recent history suggests that’s a risk the C of E aren’t prepared to take.
Just disestablish the thing (as was done in Wales in 1920). Then they got stop pretending to be all things to all people and get off the fence.

Matt Spinolo
Matt Spinolo
1 month ago
Reply to  Peter B

Justin Welby was a manager, not a man transformed by the love of Christ into an apostle who calls all to learn and follow the will of God. This is what is needed.

Simon Baker
Simon Baker
1 month ago
Reply to  Peter B

No as disestablishment ends the automatic right to marriage or burial in your local Parish church

jules Ritchie
jules Ritchie
1 month ago

This article reminds that since 1930’s there’s been a theory that the Soviet Communists had planted thousands of their young men into seminaries around the world so that they would grow through the church, become leaders and then destroy it from within. Maybe it’s more than a theory.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 month ago

UnHerd regularly publishes articles like this about the CoE: articles which treat the CoE as another contemporary business institution, with standard managerial problems – funding challenges, customer satisfaction, staffing problems, shifting priorities, conflicting strategic visions, etc. But it seems bloody obvious to me (and many others) that these are merely symptoms of the real problem – the refusal of the CoE (or UnHerd writers, for that matter) to take religious truth seriously. Christianity is not a form of therapy, but a set of factual claims about the world. Those claims must be tested and either accepted or found wanting. How silly to think we must remain studiously neutral about whether Christ was resurrected and whether Mohammed ascended and so forth… these claims – no less than claims about Boris Johnson’s lockdown parties or what happened in Wuhan in 2019 – have actual repercussions on how people live and govern themselves and evaluate their condition.

The CoE has been dying and dwindling for a very long time – loss of belief will do that to an institution whose motivating principle is (allegedly) belief. But it seems like a major tipping point, at least from CoE as ‘guardian of cultural heritage’ to CoE as ‘utterly irrelevant on every level,’ was the decision to admit hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims into the UK. That radically changed the dynamic of state-sponsored ecumenism that the CoE had come to represent. Previously the CoE’s official stance was something like uneasy but official broker among Christians of varying stripes who agreed on 95% of those truth claims and disagreed about some seemingly minor ones.

But after these demographic changes, the CoE had to balance it’s supposed role as bulwark of the faith with the its role as ‘national’ church to millions who don’t even accept its cultural role, much less any actual religious one. In other words, some modest percentage of native-English atheists, agnostics and ‘nones,’ still want to sing hymns on Christmas and Easter and talk about the nativity and the King’s role as Defender of the Faith. But a much much smaller percentage of Hindus and Muslims want to do that. On the contrary, they would like official recognition of the significance of their own mutually-exclusive religious celebrations. The result is a watering down of the meaning of Christian holidays, in a futile attempt to make them congruent with other faiths’ holidays – Christmas becomes ‘a season of reflecting with gratitude on our many blessings.’ This is representative of what has happened to all forms of Christian worship under the auspices of the CoE – note the comment here pointing out how grateful Hindus, Muslims and Jews are when bishops in the Lords speak about the importance of some non-specific ‘faith.’

The reality is you cannot have a state church in a state formally committed to religious neutrality. That should be pretty obvious. So the CoE will just continue to die off until it once again starts to do what it started off doing, so many years ago: actually converting people – something most CoE priests are embarrassed to even consider doing. It’s been a good ride, but so long and thanks for all the fish, CoE…

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago

The modern rush to big screens and drum kits is inadequate. There must be an electric keyboard in the mix and someone strumming a guitar. The pastor should be good at jokes.

Mike Starkey
Mike Starkey
30 days ago

“Take the purchase of a former Chinese takeaway in Manchester,” comments a priest in the city. “At least £7 million was spent on this venture. Several clergy and a youth worker were recruited. Yet it was only a few minutes’ walk from the 12th century parish church, where the incumbent would have given an arm and a leg for investment on that scale.”
This is factually untrue in several ways. I know, because I was the person who wrote the bid and oversaw the project. It was in Rochdale, not Manchester. Yes, the new church was close to the historic parish church. But it was set up with that incumbent’s full blessing, and with the blessing of the Bishop and Archdeacon, none of whom were remotely evangelical in tradition. Rochdale Council were delighted because we refurbished a historic former Victorian temperance billiard hall in their Conservation Zone (which was only briefly a Chinese restaurant).
It wasn’t £7 million. The whole bid was for £4.9 million, across three big mission projects in Manchester Diocese: so the Rochdale part of the bid was a third of that. The result is that there is now a thriving church in an area where church attendance was previously 0.1 per cent of the population. Nelson Street Church in Rochdale is an extraordinary story of new life and hope for the community, and rare collaboration across church traditions.

Roland Jeffery
Roland Jeffery
4 days ago
Reply to  Mike Starkey

Surely with £5m start-up money most churches could become a centre of ‘new life and hope’ for their communities, at least for a while. But wouldnt it be better for that to be achieved through existing parishes – or at least those of them with an appetite for organic growth. That would be a win-win. £5m is, in most parishes’ terms, a HUGE sum.

Last edited 4 days ago by Roland Jeffery
Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
1 month ago

The Church isn’t a source of social capital. It’s the Body of Christ, the continuation of His incarnation.

The Church needs to be otherworldly, to live up to the description given by the Prince of Rus on witnessing the Divine Liturgy in Constantinople: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendour or beauty anywhere on earth. We cannot describe it to you; we only know that God dwells there among men.”

As much as the CofE helps the poor and needy, it’s clear that it’s long since abandoned its Orthodox roots and now sees itself as a kind of special charity or NGO.

People can already get the world in the world. The church, like Christ, needs to show that it’s overcome the world.

Phil Richardson
Phil Richardson
1 month ago

“The Church isn’t a source of social capital. It’s the Body of Christ, the continuation of His incarnation.”
At different levels, obviously, it’s both. Shortt’s is a good analysis, I think.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
1 month ago

Looking at how the CofE communicates and operates, the sheer worldliness of its approach, it’s not “obvious” that this balance is maintained.
Of course, Christians are called to do good works, to love our neighbour. I don’t doubt that. But when I look at the CofE, I see an organisation that prioritises being a community hub, food bank provider, and so on, over its role as a hospital for sinners.
Then again, I don’t think the CofE, as a schismatic body, possesses the sacramental means to truly purify the human heart. Perhaps this is why its priorities tend towards the worldly.

William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago

I wish that you had been with us on Wednesday when 5 of us took The Lords Supper quietly at lunchtime in a said service of Holy Communion according to the Book of Common Prayer in our beautiful metropolitan church in London.
Perhaps you would not have felt able to share the sacrament but I think you would have felt it a God facing and other-wordly rite.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
1 month ago
Reply to  William Amos

I’ve taken communion in the Church of England before, in the years when I was still Anglican. The service has many beautiful elements, to be sure. It is, after all, derived from apostolic liturgy.
The question remains, however: is the CofE part of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church? If you subscribe to “branch theory”, then I suppose you can consider it so. My studies of church history and theology have led me to conclude that branch theory is an untenable position.
All the same, I suspect that debating this is a task unsuited to the UnHerd comments section.

Michael Smith
Michael Smith
1 month ago

“Orthodox roots”?

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
1 month ago
Reply to  Michael Smith

The Church of England was Orthodox for many centuries before the East-West schism.
King Alfred wasn’t a Protestant, you know…

William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago

With respect to your undoubted deep reading on the subject, Alfred was, perhaps, orthodox but surely not “Orthodox” as the term is understood today?
Or are you in earnest?
By your rules could I not equally claim Christ as the first Protestant –
“And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?”
Matthew 21:23

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
1 month ago
Reply to  William Amos

When I say Orthodox, I mean belonging to the undivided Body of Christ. Before the 1054 schism, there was no need to use that term. Today’s proliferation of heretical sects makes the term necessary.

The Body itself can’t be divided. But people and groups can break off from it. That’s what the Pope did, taking all of Western Europe with him. Then the Protestants broke off from that and went further into schism. Then the Protestants fragmented into thousands of sects, of which the CofE is merely one.

If anyone deserves the title of the first Protestant, it is most certainly not our Lord and Saviour, who delivered one faith to the apostles and established one Church, against which the gates of Hades will not prevail. No, the title must surely go to the Pope, who decided that the West’s theological innovations and his own desire for temporal power superceded the conciliar wisdom of the Church. The Protestants, and indeed today’s atheistic postmodernists, are merely following the pattern established by the schismatic papacy.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago

Which simply demonstrates that you (still) don’t understand atheism.