Only turning to God can make CofE relevant
For too long senior clerics lacked the confidence of their religious convictions and thus drove away their congregations
As global conflicts intensify, the Church of England has begun preparing for a “serious” war involving the UK. Proposals before the church’s General Synod in York next month will make it simpler to appoint military chaplains and provide support for parishes to operate as “a church in a time of conflict” through the creation of “reflection and prayer spaces”. No doubt this will provide reassurance to regular churchgoers and troubled members of the armed forces.
Yet for all the earnest preparedness, the church is overlooking one crucial point. Many among the British public would not notice if their local vicar swapped cassock for fatigues and, broomstick over shoulder, re-formed the Home Guard. Offering succour amid conflict is all well and good but it helps if there is a flock in need of ministry.
Attendance at Church of England services is in long-term decline. Although there has been a slight rise over the past four years, congregations remain markedly smaller than before the Covid pandemic. Yet this decline comes against what the Bible Society has labelled a “quiet revival”. Young men in particular seem to be showing more interest in Christianity: 21 per cent of men aged 18-24 now claim to attend church at least monthly, compared with just 4 per cent in 2018. But the Anglican church is not benefiting from this revival; it is Roman Catholic and Pentecostal churches that have gained new members.
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Time and again, the Church of England misjudges the moment. Take the pandemic. At a time when people wanted the comfort and security of religion, churches locked their doors. It was impossible to enter a place of worship even for private, silent reflection. Although the announcement that churches were to close was made by the prime minister, archbishops and bishops urged clergy to comply. Not even funerals took place in church buildings.
The church was then assailed by a child abuse scandal. Senior figures, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, were accused of showing a “distinct lack of curiosity” in their handling of the case of John Smyth, a Christian barrister who brutally beat some 130 boys over several decades. It appeared to many as if the reputation of the church had been placed above safeguarding children, a view only reinforced by Welby’s tone-deaf final speech in the House of Lords.
Since Welby’s resignation, the church has shown an inability to separate worldly problems from spiritual concerns. I took my family to midnight mass at Canterbury Cathedral on Christmas Eve in the hope of a morally uplifting message amid the sloth and gluttony. What we got was a sermon on the evils of child abuse and the need for the church to repent and change. Few would disagree. But surely Christmas Eve could have been left to the baby Jesus rather than the church’s internal struggles.
Perhaps more than anything, it’s the failure of the church to stick to its core purpose — to put God and Christianity front and centre of all it does — that consigns the institution to irrelevance. Senior figures within the church have not only appeared to grapple openly with the physical resurrection of Jesus but also with a belief in God. From Welby down, bishops seem more comfortable discussing opposition to immigration controls, Brexit and welfare reform than scriptural matters.
Support for Black Lives Matter, the establishment of an anti-racism “task force”’ and a commitment to donate £100 million to slavery reparations all add to a sense that the Bible has been dumped for more fashionable causes. In adopting a pick ’n’ mix selection of woke values, the church, like many universities, museums and art galleries, becomes just another institution in search of a purpose.
Bureaucracy fills the moral vacuum. News that disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells was shortlisted to become the Bishop of London came as little surprise.
The interminable process of recruiting a new Archbishop of Canterbury crawls ever onwards. Anglicans can only look on with envy at Catholics who had a new pope in place within days. The empty chair at Lambeth Palace appears all too symbolic: no one seems to know what the Church of England is for any more, let alone who should lead it.
Sadly, as pews empty, the church compounds problems by showing a disregard for the religious and historical significance of its buildings. A recent report from the think tank Civitas highlights the crumbling state of many ancient churches as funding to parishes has been cut and resources directed to the institution’s central bureaucracy. Overly ambitious, centrally imposed net-zero targets are another headache for rural churches.
Living in Canterbury, I get to admire the stunning 16th-century Christ Church Gate, the entrance to the city’s cathedral precincts, daily. But news comes of plans to transform the gate into a one-bedroom apartment that could be let out, Airbnb-style, to holidaymakers. Last summer, the cathedral hosted a silent disco, a money-making event which looks set to return this August.
It would be easy to blame both the church’s moral woes and financial troubles on shrinking congregations. But the next archbishop needs to confront the fact that the precise opposite might be true: attendance is falling and budgets are in crisis because, for far too long, high-ups in the Church of England have lacked confidence in their religious conviction. Sadly, it seems to have taken the extreme threat of global conflict to prompt the search for a long-lost sense of purpose.
Originally published in The Times.