Don't tell me what to think
A new survey of Church of England clergy reveals a threat to my freedom, writes George Pitcher
Mild, non-clinical depression is my principal reaction to the new survey which shows that, not only is Church of England attendance falling, but that its clergy have largely given up on it.
It’s not the research findings themselves that get me down – most Church of England priests want to be able to marry gay couples, less than a quarter think Britain can be described as a Christian country today, while a third of them have considered quitting over the past five years and a whopping 67 per cent believe efforts to reverse church decline will fail.
Relevant to current social mores
No, it’s not all that, which in one form or another we’ve heard before. It’s the attitudes that this survey, conducted by The Times, sparks in its conclusive commentaries. It’s that we need to be relevant to current social mores and we need to be more popular. In paraphrase, we need to get with the programme.
I’m not a white-knuckled, old reactionary. But I don’t want to be relevant; I want to be true. I wasn’t called to be ordained in order to be popular. I don’t chase votes like a politician seeking election. I’m wholly interested in Truth, while knowing that I’m not the sole guardian of it.
So I don’t want Church doctrine decided by focus group. And I’m not interested in marketing. We’re not a club for the enlightened – I’d rather we were a guttering candle in the world’s darkness, as the gospel has proven to be so successfully throughout its history.
Being brave and standing up
But that means being brave and standing up for what that gospel means for us, as well as accepting that it means different things to other people. Unlike Roman Catholics, we Anglicans in the reformed tradition have no centralised, catechistic authority and that, in turn, means trusting (and investing in) very diverse and, in some cases, atomised parishes.
To do so is to fly in the face of polarised, entrenched and, more usually these days, fashionable opinion and rejoice in our plurality – and that includes embracing our secularism too. And that makes the Church of England, established in law, less of the socially well-to-do institution that it once was, still less “the Conservative Party at prayer”, and more of a resistance movement against right-think and cancel culture.
Heavy-handed arrest
We cannot, as a Church, tolerate circumstances in which a local councillor in Northamptonshire, Anthony Stevens, was arrested earlier this month for an alleged hate crime by posting a video of the heavy-handed arrest of a preacher demonstrating against Gay Pride. Or the cancellation of Anglican priest Richard Fothergill’s account at Yorkshire Building Society for objecting to its transgender promotional material.
Nor can we countenance the arrest of a Catholic priest from Wolverhampton, Fr Sean Gough, and his charity volunteer colleague, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, for praying silently outside an abortion clinic – charges that were thankfully dropped.
I may not agree with all of what these people have to say – or indeed with any of it. But I respect their right to say it peacefully in a free society.
A right way to think
At the heart of a lot of the reaction to the latest poll of Anglican clergy is an acceptance that there is a right way to think about social issues of the day. And, if we’re to go down that path, it starts to make the Church of England a dangerous place to be if you don’t hold an approved opinion. And that’s a form of oppression.
This is not a charter for “anything goes”. I am vehemently opposed to expressions of racism and sexism – plenty of which I have heard in church circles. I oppose those views vehemently when I encounter them. But I hope it’s always in terms that I don’t recognise the gospel in them, than that I despise the person expressing the opinion.
An oasis of peace
In this model, the Church of England could develop an alternative role, as an oasis of peace in the culture wars, rather than simply be worn down into an acceptance of prevailing contemporary culture.
It’s that latter, depressing course that its clergy seem to be contemplating in this latest piece of research. But we’re better than that. We just need to see the world through the prism of our faith, rather than the other way around.
We’re not a supermarket responding to customer demand. We’re a sanctuary, for the disillusioned, the marginalised, the unpopular and, yes, the oppressed. If we stick to that gospel imperative, we can be a beacon of hope again, rather than a guttering candle.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest
A version of this column appeared first in The Daily Telegraph
Great piece.