By all accounts, Philip North is a very nice man. In fact, the Church of England, which appointed him as Bishop of Blackburn in January 2022, contains a lot of decent, well-meaning people. Unfortunately many of them are rather upset, because Philip North is opposed to the ordination of women priests.
Apparently he does not object to women having authority over men, and has no problem working with women priests. But he does not think the Church of England should unilaterally take decisions which should be made together with the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and other Anglican churches. This is 30 years after the Church first accepted women priests, and seven years after it appointed its first female bishop.
Just after North’s appointment came the recommendations from a five-year study by Church of England bishops, supported by its General Synod after an emotional debate, that the Church should continue to deny church marriages to same-sex couples, but instead “lament and repent of the failure… to be welcoming to LGBTQI+ people” and provide “prayers of thanksgiving, dedication and for God’s blessing” for same-sex couples married in civil ceremonies. At the same time, they voted to reaffirm the doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, also leads the global Anglican Communion, where “The average Anglican is a woman in sub-Saharan Africa in her thirties”. Anglican churches in the global south are vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage. He avoided a schism at the Communion’s 2022 Lambeth Conference by persuading delegates to agree to disagree, while reaffirming a 1998 statement “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture”. After the Synod’s “blessings” decision, he said he would not be giving any personally, and made emollient remarks to African bishops.
It was not enough. The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, which represents 10 of the 42 provinces in the Anglican Communion, responded by withdrawing its recognition of Justin Welby as the Communion’s leader, stating that the Church of England was “disqualified” as their historic “Mother Church”.
And the problem will not go away within the Church of England itself. “We love and bless you, but your relationships are second class” is not a sustainable message.
These are not the only ethical challenges facing the Church. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse reported in 2020 that it had failed to protect children. More abuse revelations surfaced in 2022. It also has an ethnic issue. According to Mike Royal, the Pentecostal head of Churches Together in England: “Urban Anglican Churches depend on black membership for their backbone.” Yet a report on the General Synod early in 2022 was headed: “Lord Boateng holds Synod’s feet to the fire over Church’s racism record.”
A cliff edge
You may think, “So what if the Church ties itself in knots?” But these are symptoms of a bigger underlying issue which affects us all. To understand it, we need to look behind the “Less than half of England and Wales population identifies as Christian” headlines which accompanied the 2021 Census results. The Census is unrivalled when it comes to local detail, but provides no analysis of “Christian”. Fortunately we have the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS), which asks a more refined question about religious belonging, and provides a denominational breakdown.
What it tells us is that Anglican identity is falling off a cliff. In the mid-1980s, around two in five British adults considered themselves Anglican. Now, half of British adults have no religious identity. Of the 40 per cent identifying as Christian, only a third are Anglicans. Around a fifth are Catholics, with the rest a mix of declining Nonconformist churches, and growing Orthodox, Pentecostal and smaller denominations.
On the face of it, the Church has massive potential influence over the country’s young people. It controls a quarter of England’s state-funded primary schools, and some secondaries. Often they have faith-based admission criteria, and in many places the Church primary school is the only practical option for parents. A few years ago, the then chair of the Church’s board of education, John Pritchard, called for clergy to be trained to use its schools to extend the Church’s mission: “The clergy ought to have a camp bed in there.”
But it is not working. The main driver of decline is not Anglicans leaving, but children of Anglicans not carrying on with the faith. While a third of people aged 75 and over identify with the Church, only one in a hundred under-25s do. One per cent. English Anglicanism is literally dying.
Looking at practice rather than identity, the mathematician John Hayward applied the “R number” methodology familiar from Covid-19 to church attendance data, and concluded that the Church of England would become extinct around 2060. The response from Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, was that “the church of Jesus Christ is not an organisation that lives or dies by graphs going up and down”. This is the man who, in 2021, proposed a new growth strategy involving the establishment of 10,000 new lay-led churches over 10 years – around three a day – a plan which led Canon Angela Tilby to wonder whether “in a desperate attempt to avoid facing… reality, we have entered a state of corporate psychosis: a leap into false consciousness”.
Speaking in tongues
As well as shrinking, the Church is changing. For some time, it has been moving in an evangelical, and especially “charismatic” direction: the form of Christianity featuring personal experiences of the Holy Spirt, healing miracles, and speaking in tongues, a practice which Justin Welby says he began aged 19.
A key vehicle has been the Alpha Course, which began at the – very posh – Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) Anglican Church in Kensington. It spread rapidly in the 1990s across the Church of England, and to other denominations and other countries, promising “an opportunity to explore the meaning of life”. HTB is now a major force in the Church, with nearly 100 churches in its network. But it has not stemmed the Church’s overall decline.
To understand this decline, it’s useful to make a distinction between “societal” and “congregational” religion. In the past, the Church of England was “societal”: some people went to services, others just on special occasions. But most people felt they somehow belonged. That no longer applies. Evangelical Anglicanism is “congregational”. Its members are aware that many others think some of their practices bizarre, or their views strange. But they’ve come to Jesus, and face a sinful world together.
Yet, as we shall see, there are reasons why this smaller, increasingly evangelical, less “white” and more female entity will not simply take its place among others as it sinks into our diverse religion and belief landscape. The Church’s “established” status is under increasing pressure, both because of its decline and because of its position on same-sex marriage. Yet Justin Welby still wants to keep the privileges that establishment brings, including 26 bishops in the House of Lords.
He is not alone in wanting the Church to remain a part of the state. According to Bristol University’s Tariq Modood, minority faiths also like this arrangement, in the belief that it provides a “canopy” of respect for all people of religious faith. It may go further than respect. There was some discussion, after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, as to whether our new monarch should retain the role of Supreme Governor of the Church of England (see Andrew Copson in the Winter 2022 issue of New Humanist). Among the minority voices who spoke in favour of King Charles III’s taking on the “Defender of the Faith” title was (Lord) Daniel Finkelstein, who expressed his belief that the role did more than protect the Anglican community. “…as a Jew I feel I cannot be fully secure in respect for my own religion unless assurance is given by someone secure in what they themselves believe.”
In a recent survey for the think-tank Theos, a third of all non-religious people in the UK agreed that “Religion is comparable to the smallpox virus, but harder to eradicate” (it’s important to note that this doesn’t account for a third of all humanists.) That sounds like “contempt for all religion” – although, importantly, it does not mean “contempt for all religious people”. Meanwhile, there is no evidence that the established Church does anything to protect against antisemitism, or anti-Muslim prejudice.
Clearly we must be careful not to allow an uncomprehending religious/non-religious divide to damage the country. The end of establishment for the Church of England, when it comes, might usefully be accompanied by a reassurance that human rights, including freedom of religion or belief, remain protected.
Financial atonement
There are also the finances to consider. We still have 16,000 Anglican church buildings, nearly 80 per cent of them “listed” by Historic England, many with small congregations.
Operating and maintaining old buildings takes a lot of money. Fortunately, the Church has plenty of it. Unlike a company, with a Chief Executive and an annual report, the Church’s finances are complex. In 2016, Ed Moore, then Treasurer of the National Secular Society, attempted to estimate its total wealth. He came up with over £22 billion. Today, Church Commissioners manage £10 billion in assets, in addition to the £5 billion or so held by the 42 dioceses. Over the past 30 years, the Commissioners claim their average return has been an impressive 10 per cent. All of this is tax free (see Emma Park on page 42).
From a purely financial viewpoint, then, the Church Commissioners could carry on indefinitely. Meanwhile, its diminishing band of parishioners manage to raise £1 billion each year, but say they are desperately starved of funds. Although the Commissioners have recently increased their funding for the Church’s operations, Justin Welby says the purpose is to provide “support for mission so every person might hear the Good News of Jesus Christ… [and] support our aims to double the number of children and young disciples by 2030”.
The reaction from parish level was therefore predictable when the Church announced it would spend £100 million to atone for the fact that some of its wealth – equivalent to £1.4 billion in today’s money according to one calculation – can be traced back to investments in slavery in the 18th century. The money would go on a “programme of investment, research and engagement” including funding to support “communities affected by historic slavery”. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But Rev Marcus Walker, chairman of Save The Parish, was understandably upset: “After decades of telling us that there is no money to fund the churches and priests who keep the church alive on the front line, suddenly they’ve found £100 million behind the back of the sofa.”
There are no easy solutions to the problem of large numbers of listed buildings little used for their original purpose as places of worship. But a diminished Church cannot expect to protect a legacy of enormous wealth and tax-exempt investments, while at the same time starving its parishes and relying on charities, with a bit of government support, to conserve its estate.
One beneficial use is as a base for local social action, of which the Church is rightly proud. Yes, plenty of non-religious people make important contributions here, as do non-Christian faith groups. But the Church has a physical presence in a lot more places, providing the infrastructure for foodbanks, playgroups and places to go in emergencies. As the traditional model of churches and vicars becomes increasingly unsustainable, new solutions will be needed to keep the social action baby while the Anglican bathwater flows away.
Hollowed out
For the time being at least, the Church retains a carapace of a great national institution: massive wealth; still-significant power; a substantial bureaucracy, both centrally and duplicated across 42 dioceses (with more senior clergy now than 20 years ago); buildings in virtually every city, town and village, many of cultural importance; the Head of State as its Supreme Governor, reflecting its established status; and control over a quarter of the country’s state-funded primary schools.
But inside the carapace, it is hollowed out. While many appreciate its social work, musical tradition, buildings and people, a rapidly diminishing number identify with it, share its metaphysical beliefs, subscribe to its positions on LGBTQI+ equality – and still, in some places, gender equality – or attend its services.
You would not know that by reading its strategy. Its vision is still to be “A Church for the whole nation which is Jesus Christ centred, and shaped by, the five marks of mission”, the first two of which are all about evangelism and proselytisation. As well as becoming “younger and more diverse”, its strategic priorities are to become a church of “missionary disciples”, where “every person in England has access to an enriching and compelling community of faith by adding new churches and new forms of Church.”
This is the “corporate psychosis” speaking. Sooner or later, reality must strike, and the carapace adapt to its contents. The question is how this major transition will take place, over what period, and what sort of creature will emerge at the end. We all have an interest in the answer.
Whatever happens, there is no case for a diminished Church to have a privileged status in the constitution of a plural, and increasingly non-
religious, country. Establishment, and with it bishops in the House of Lords, needs to go. And an institution with an evangelical agenda overtly targeting young people should not be in control of state-funded schools.
Aside from that, maybe a values-based approach offers a way forward. Many people would agree with the other “Marks of Mission’’, which are about social justice, violence reduction, peace and reconciliation, and the environment. Instead of faith-based structures accommodating people with a range of values, could there be values-based structures accommodating people with a range of beliefs?
Maybe a new values-based body, or local community trusts, should take ownership of many of the buildings, and most of the wealth, with the Church becoming one of many users of its spaces. Perhaps such a body could find a way, without erasing the history, to provide a community focus without the religious baggage, where everyone locally could feel at home, irrespective of their beliefs, ethnicity, education or income – an increasingly important need in a fractured society.
But conversations about a realistic future are hard to envisage while Church leaders continue in their “state of false consciousness”. Accepting and managing decline is hard, especially when you think your mission is God-given. But at some stage, something has to give.
This piece is from the New Humanist summer 2023 edition. Subscribe here.
