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| All Saints Bakewell, a parish church in Derbyshire Source: Wikipedia. Photo: Bert Camenbert |
From CIVITAS
Restoring the Value of Parishes: The foundations of welfare, community, and spiritual belonging in England
Esme Partridge, November 2024
The parish church has been a foundational part of cultural life in England for hundreds of years. England’s 12,500 parish churches are ‘treasure houses’ of national history, containing the memories of our ancestors as well as the rich architectural and musical heritage of Anglicanism. Parishes also bring together local communities, providing charitable services – including food banks, childcare and counselling – worth billions of pounds per year.
Yet parish churches across the country are now in crisis. Crumbling buildings, declining attendance, and sharp reductions in clergy all pose a considerable threat to their survival. In the past 50 years, over 2,000 churches have been made redundant, with some 300 of these closing between 2016 and 2021 alone. Congregations have been shrinking in size since the 1960s, but fell by a further 19 per cent following the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of stipendiary clergy in the Church of England has almost halved since 1959, leaving many churches without a priest dedicated to the parish.
Though this decline can to some extent be attributed to lower levels of religiosity and community attachment in today’s Britain, this report argues that management decisions made by the Church of England itself have also played a major role. These include moves to cut funding to local churches and ministers – in some cases merging up to 23 parishes into one ‘mega-parish’ served by a single team of clergy – and instead directing resources towards central bureaucracy: on average, the Church now employs one administrator for every three and a half priests. Hundreds of millions of pounds have also been funnelled into ‘strategic development funding’, intended to experiment with radical new ways of attracting people to the Church. These have mixed results and, according to some critics, often represent a departure from Anglican traditions and belief.
Restoring the Value of Parishes diagnoses what has gone wrong with the Church of England in recent years, and makes the case for returning to what works: supporting local clergy to continue serving their communities via parish churches. This will require Church management to restore its confidence in the parish as an institution that is uniquely placed to provide a refuge from the challenges of modernity. At a time when the public sector is diminished and invisible in many communities, the parish can be an ideal starting point for the renewal of civic life. If the Church wants to be more ‘relevant’, the author argues, it should stop trying to reinvent itself and instead embrace its unique position as a source of tradition, sanctity, and community solidarity in an uncertain world.
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Of one thing everyone can be certain.
ReplyDeletePriestesses and feminists have been the kiss of death for the Church.
I strongly disagree, and your comment cannot be substantiated. You may say, "the churches have declined since women were ordained", and that is true. But you cannot say, "the churches have declined because women were ordained" as that decline might have occurred anyway. Indeed, with insufficient male ordinands coming forward, it could well be that the churches would have declined even more if women had not been admitted to the priesthood.
DeleteIt is your prerogative to strongly disagree, BT, but for those of us inside the Anglican tent, we can name churches that were numerically strong, which then had women clergy appointed, and saw rapid decline as a result. Our local church has numerous 'refugees' from a neighbouring parish, who escaped a woman priest who could not be contacted from one Sunday to the next, not even by funeral directors. In the end, she was encouraged to move by her archdeacon to stop the flood of complaints.
DeleteIn the run-up to the vote on women's priestly ordination, the argument was always used that women would bring a whole new impetus to the mission of the Church. It was a lie.
The Loose Canon
Pity you Baptists didn't stick to your own denomination and terminally declining Chapels.
DeleteI neither mentioned "churches" nor did I mention "decline".
I can say whatever the hell I like and you cannot stop me.
The one thing I cannot do is name a single Church or Parish that has improved, grown or in any way flourished in which a Priestess has infiltrated and taken over.
Not one.
As for 'insufficient male priests', I know several young men who would have liked to go into the priesthood, but for women priestesses and bishopettes.
DeleteInstead they have joined the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
It seems more than likely that this pattern is repeated throughout the country.
I know dozens who walked away from the "church" because of wimmin priestesses and bishopettes.
DeletePeggy "the taxman will never know" Pilate being the textbook example.
I don't know a single person who joined as a result of their ordinations.
I'm appalled to hear that the priest could not be contacted and quite understand why people moved - but that could have been the case with a male priest too! Her uncontactability (is there such a word?) has (or should have) nothing to do with her gender. Do you know why she behaved as she did?
ReplyDeleteOn a different topic, I have some sympathy with the "Save the Parish" movement and am no fan of "Resource churches". One problem with Ministry Areas and the like is that they remove the direct link between congregation and minister - I've seen this in the United Reformed Church as well, where one minister may serve several churches, appearing to lead Communion but not being very visible at other times. People then start questioning why they should pay their Parish Share, feeling they aren't getting "value for money", and giving goes down. This is exacerbated if they feel - rightly or wrongly - that there are too many Diocesan administrative staff or if most of the resources are going to a few favoured churches. Baptist churches are congregational and directly fund their minister. This model is no means perfect as it tends to leave small churches in deprived areas in the lurch, and it means that congregations or individuals can threaten the withdrawal of their offerings if they don't like or disagree with the minister. However it does tend to encourage giving by the congregation as their money isn't going to, and being administered by, some remote central organisation.
BT, if that had been a male priest, he would have been facing disciplinary action. The "powers that be" allow women to get away with murder.
DeleteIt is all very well, you being an outsider looking in, poo-pooing what people inside the tent are saying, but then, you do not have to live with it. The plank-sitters have brought the Church in Wales to crisis point, and like you, they are convinced that everything in the garden is rosy. Those of us down here on the ground know that it is not.
The Loose Canon
Absolutely right, Loose Canon.
DeleteWhere does the Baptist Union fit in.?
DeleteNowhere....
Delete🤣
Parish church closures? Evolution of socio-economic-demographic changes I am afraid but far less important to most than closure of community centres, village post offices and local pubs, the exodus of GP surgeries to city-centre health hubs, and even yes, the closure of Scout and Guide 'huts'. But part blame can be laid at the doors of our Cathedrals who - to fund their own extravagances - encourage congregants from the rural parishes to worship in their edifices. Its a bit like villages who drive to and shop at TESCO and ASDA town centre superstores, then whinge that their local bakery or butchers has been forced to close for lack of local business. How many of AB's contributors, I wonder, leap-frog over umpteen struggling Parishes to reach their 'cathedral' on Sunday rather than support their local vicar and his/her PCC efforts. Nothing to do with wimmin vicars ... just selfishness.
ReplyDeleteUnless your local vicarette is one of the wimmin.
DeleteStick to wearing your baggy, woolly 'Y'-Fronts over your head 1662 ... you'll get more laughs!
DeleteYou've resorted to the erudite deeply considered riposte once again.
DeleteAll too predictable and tedious, sadly.
Of far more interest would be some flesh on the bones provided by another contributor concerning the alleged latest goings-on in St. Deiniol's.
It is of note with regard to the above, that once again the female promoting male hating agenda appears to have been played out with disastrous unchecked effect at the self proclaimed heart of the CinW that is St P, with one tutor off with a psychological breakdown another suffering with burn out, one being sidetracked because of complaints abounding, one with Autism who cannot lead a flock of sheep let alone would be priests, one ‘tutor’ now being made to finish his curacy before attempting to follow his mother shady footsteps, one who is ‘commuting’ from Northern Ireland and so is relatively never there, joining the ever absent principal and the wanna be Bishop Dean who is dodging complaints of nepotism and favouritism bullying racism and self advancement, the place, it appears, is about to implode. Disgraceful behaviour from across my street.
ReplyDeleteDid other followers of this blog tune in to choral Evensong from Llandaff on Radio 3 this afternoon? I'm not sufficiently in touch with what goes on there nowadays to be up to date with the saga of the choir, organ and organist, but musically it was quite a treat. (And no, my other name isn't Ruth.)
ReplyDelete