As the faithful look forward to Easter and the Archbishop of
Canterbury prepares to officiate at the wedding of Prince William and
Kate Middleton, it may seem inappropriate to be discussing the future of
his Church.
But this Easter week, I can't help feeling – more than ever
– that the Church of England will not survive my children's lifetime
and quite possibly not even my own.
It's not the archaism of state occasions that makes me doubt the relevance of
the CofE, nor the sight this Lent of a dozen or more clergy crossing the
floor to join the Roman Catholics that has made me despair of its future.
Nor is it the statistics showing an ever-diminishing number of English
attending their services, although these are bad enough.
It's not even the
spectacle of the Church wrapping itself in knots around the issues of
ordaining women and gay bishops.
These are certainly signals of an institution in decline; a community turning
in on itself as its relevance diminishes. But the Church has been here
before and revived.
If that were all, one might envision – some of its members do – a leadership
coming in to revive its fortunes, re-energise its priests and refresh its
doctrines, as happened in Victorian times when Darwinian science and atheism
threatened to overwhelm it.
No, the real problem of the Church of England is the factor which no-one seems
ready to discuss in public – its role as the established church of the
country.
For humanists and atheists, this is an outrage; a remnant of a
political past that should be dispensed with as soon as possible.
To the broader mass of an increasingly secular public, it means very little –
some exotic clothes and ritual prayers on state occasions.
What is really worrying for the future of the Church, however, is that its
leaders themselves seem to have ceased to believe in it.
A sizable number of
clergy and several bishops, would be much happier without the burden of
establishment.
Free of it, they feel the Church has a better chance to reach
out to the young and claim its relevance to modern life.
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury and very likely the Archbishop of York, I
suspect, are half, if not wholly, of this view. As for Prince Charles, who
will become head of the Church when (and if) he succeeds to the throne, he
seems thoroughly uncomfortable with the role in his search to be a popular
figurehead for all religions and none.
You can see the temptation.
In a multi-cultural Britain, why not a head of
state that represents all religions?
And in a secular nation, why not a
church that can battle for souls without the encumbrance of all the
conservative connotations of being the established church?
I can see Prince
Charles inducing a sigh of relief among the bishops – and a cheer from many
vicars – if he announced he wanted to do away with the whole thing.
Only that begs the awkward question of what then does the Anglican Church in
Britain amount to if it is not the established church?
To listen to some in
the Church, you would think it a thriving community that is only being held
back by its political branding.
The truth may well be the opposite.
It is
only its position as the established church of the country that keeps it
going at all.
Born out of political necessity (as Henry VIII saw it), it has survived by
reasserting itself constantly as a nationalist bastion against Roman
Catholic Europe in its early centuries; as an arm of imperial ambitions in
the 19th century and as a spirit of Britishness during the wars of the 20th
century.
It was what made us different and decent.
That is not to underestimate its social contribution. As the established
church it offers the services of priest and place for the rites of passage –
birth, baptism, marriage and death – which remain fundamental needs for
people, church-going or not.
When tragedy hits a community; there is a
killing, an accident, a natural disaster, it is still to the church that
people go.
Nor is it to deny that in urban parishes there aren't priests who have manage
to reinvigorate their congregations through updated services and community
action, or that in rural communities the church does not continue to act as
a the focal point of village life.
It may not be any longer the "establishment
at prayer" that it once was, but it remains the "The Archers at
prayer" still.
The CofE, as with the Anglican communities in Scotland,
Wales and Ireland, has long been associated with class and tied to
privilege, but it has had a presence throughout society and that has
mattered.
However, it is no good any longer pretending that this is good
enough to enable it to survive into this century.
Rather like the monarchy itself, it has survived less out of the enthusiasm of
the public at large, or its affection, but out of a general sense that,
given the alternatives, abolition would seem more trouble than it was worth.
So with the Church. The majority of people are quite happy to profess
themselves Christian and Anglican. It's easier to accept than asserting a
different faith.
But they are not so happy to go to church services or take
an active part in its activities.
The figures are truly dire.
While non-Christian faiths have grown stronger and
the evangelical Christian churches flourish, the story in the Church of
England has been one of almost continuous decline since the war.
Despite a series of initiatives such as Back to Church Sunday and some
improvement in the numbers of young people participating in church
activities, attendance figures amongst Anglicans have dropped by some 10 per
cent over the last decade.
Only 1.1m people, some 2 per cent of the
population, attend church on a weekly basis, and only 1.7m, or 3 per cent,
once a month.
This in spite of the fact that around half the population
still profess themselves Anglicans.
The decline in paid clergy has been even more rapid.
On the Church's own
statistics, the beginning of the new millennium has already seen a fall in
over 20 per cent to barely 8,000.
On present trends clergy would disappear
altogether within half a century.
Yet the number of parishes remains set at
13,000 and the total of Anglican churches is little altered at around
16,000.
The result is there for all to see: a vicious circle of declining
congregations, higher pension and maintenance costs and fewer helpers all
sustained on a diminishing revenue base.
In my own rural parish, nine churches have been combined into a single team of
one permanent priest and one retired.
Those Sundays when there is a
Eucharist (not more than twice a month) attract an attendance of a dozen if
they are lucky.
The situation is not much better in London, where cavernous
buildings hold one or two services a week with perhaps 5 or 10 per cent of
the pews filled.
Against this dismal backdrop, the Anglican community has decided to rend its
own family asunder over the issues of women bishops and gay marriage.
Why
it's doing so is one of those mysteries to which religious institutions seem
particularly prone.
It's not just the classic battle between high church and
low church which have always been part of Anglican tradition.
Indeed some of
the evangelical sects are as against women priests as Anglo-Catholic vicars.
And they are certainly against same-sex marriages, the issue which has
broken up the global communion of Anglican churches.
It's not even as though the average Anglican celebrant feels strongly on the
issues.
I have come across precious few parishioners who are against women
priests or indeed same-sex marriage, although they might blanch at gay
vicars living in obvious partnerships.
But, talk to the priests now leaving
the Anglican Communion to take advantage of the Roman Catholic offer of
sanctuary and you'd think that male priesthood was a fundament of Christ's
teaching.
Every Synod is now largely devoted to debating and procrastinating on the
question (as the one last February did yet again), just as every meeting of
the wider international community spends its time discussing whether to
break or restore relations with their brethren over gay marriage and
priests.
The poor old Archbishop of Canterbury's job has become more and
more one of a nurse in the emergency ward, desperately trying to stick
plaster over a patient with hardly any blood left.
But then The Most Reverend, His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr
Rowan Williams, is part of the problem.
Just as Rome's prelates elected a
theologian and bureaucrat rather than a pastor to head the Roman Catholic
church, so Tony Blair chose a theologian and academic to head the Church of
England.
Why the Prime Minister should be in a position to appoint the spiritual head
of the country is one of those peculiarities of Britain's non-constitution.
Maggie Thatcher inserted her own prejudices when she chose a "muscular"
Christian from Bath and Wells, in preference to the more intellectual
Archbishop of York, with his liberal ideas on doctrine and more radical
ideas on politics.
Tony Blair, as a would-be Roman Catholic, wanted a man who would pronounce
spiritual truths to the nation.
He got the voice.
You can't stop Rowan
Williams pontificating on everything, from banking ethics to media
standards.
But the one thing the Anglican Church has needed was the one
thing that the PM wasn't interested in – and that was a pastor to feed his
flock.
Williams has the most limited experience as a parish priest.
It has
shown as he hunkers down in his palace at Lambeth, trusting only to a small
circle of intimates.
Something has to give.
So long as the Church has been an institution over and
above being simply a sect and so long as the Queen continues to exemplify
its virtues (she, at least, is a firm believer in her role as head of the
Church), it has been possible for it to totter on in gentle decline.
But
come her death; come the next Synod or a new, more radical Parliament where,
one asks, are the forces which are going to defend it?
Does it matter that much if it does go?
Not in a religious sense.
Christianity
has always had sects which have come and gone.
Presumably the active
churches on the evangelical wing will re-establish themselves as a separate
sect or join one of the similar Protestant groups.
The High Church clergy
will continue, in greater numbers, to move to the Roman Catholic Ordinariate
for ex-Anglicans set up in their honour, while those in the middle will
muddle on in some kind of rump of disestablished Anglican community attached
to the cathedrals.
There is, of course, a problem of what to do about the churches themselves.
But that is a problem whether the CofE survives or not.
They are part of the
country's architectural heritage.
Some may be preserved as multi-faith or
secular community centres; others as ancient monuments and still others will
be returned to Rome from whence they came.
Rather more difficult to answer is the question of whether the established
church will be much missed once it has gone?
In some ways the response is
yes, but not for reasons that are easy to explain in the present terms of
the debate – which in itself says something about the decline of religion in
this country.
The value of spiritual succour, or just plain caring, at times of grief as of
joy; the importance of the rites of passage should not underestimated.
Those who affect to despise them are often those who have never had cause to
call on them.
For those of strong faith in whatever religion will know where
to turn.
But for an overwhelming majority of people with weak or no
particular faith, the presence of an established church to provide these
services to the stricken, dying, marrying or proud with child, the Church of
England has been and is there, all the better for being, for the most part,
undemonstrative and unchurch-y.
That goes for its theology, as well. In an era of fundamentalism, in
Christianity as much as in Hinduism, Judaism or in Islam, the attractions of
doubt and openness are not readily applauded.
The kind of things that cause
the popular press to howl in derision at Anglican sermons – the readiness to
accept the miracles and even the Resurrection as a metaphor rather than
absolute truth; the willingness to reinterpret views and pronouncements
attributed to Christ in the Gospels – is what makes it attractive to those
who, in their search of a relationship with their God, try to do so in
humility and open-mindedness.
The same problems of the demand for absolutes afflicts almost every other
religion.
Having an established religion on the side not just of moderation,
but tentativeness, gives this strand some extra strength.
But it's not the
way faith is going at the moment.
Nor the Church's leadership.
The Church of England was founded as a political act against the wishes of
much of the population and is now dying out of political irrelevance and
popular unconcern.
History, as we know, moves on, taking no prisoners.