Shortly after the film was released, the question emerged: ‘What’s the difference between Jurassic Park and bench of bishops?’ ‘One is a group of dangerous creatures charging around doing vast amounts of damage, and the other is a Hollywood film’. On the whole Anglicans don’t have a great deal of respect for their bishops – because they don’t deserve it.
Until 50 years ago bishops were largely invisible. Parishes were self supporting; their parochial endowments paid for their clergy and the role of the bishops was, like the monarch in the political realm, to provide the dignified bits of the Church of England – to look worthy on state occasions, to produce largely anodyne speeches on occasions where they had to say something, and on the whole not to be much involved in the real operation of the Church. Parishes got on with the real work, and the wider structures of the CofE only really got involved when something went horribly wrong. Each group within the church had its own parishes, protected by patronage, ministered to by clergy who were ordinands from those parishes who were trained in the group’s own theological colleges. Most significantly, parishes had their own endowments, which paid clergy at rates that differed between parishes. Once a clergyman had the living, he was almost impossible to remove, but therefore free to innovate in any way that appealed. However in practice, most did what was required of them, parishioners didn’t expect much, people felt a social obligation to come to church, but didn’t have to offer much in the collection because the endowment provided most of the income.
Bishops emerged from discussions between Downing Street and the hierarchy. They were mostly academics with limited pastoral experience. Their watchword was ‘oversight’ rather than leadership or management – they largely left things alone in the parishes because they had remarkably little power over their priests; they couldn’t move them, and they couldn’t sack them except with GREAT difficulty.
The economic, social and religious changes of the past 50 years made much of this model unsustainable. Economically, the post war inflation, allowed by the government to run down the National Debt, hit the church hard because much of its income was in fixed income sources; ground rents, permanent bonds and the like; this meant that many incumbents were unable to realistically survive on their salary and ‘something had to be done’. So most endowments were centralised into the control of the Church Commissioners, who were able to maximise the income and capital growth and provided, for some decades, significant financial support for paying the clergy. Meanwhile, the remaining gap was addressed by expecting parishes to pay into a diocesan pot to support ministry in other parishes. Over the decades, as the value of the Church Commissioners’ income only grew steadily but demands on it, particularly for pensions, exploded, with the result that the transfers to dioceses faded out; in effect the parishes of England had been expropriated of their assets.
Social change meant that the church could no longer expect people to come along regardless. The peak attendance at the Church of England was in the 1950s, and the trend has been steadily downwards ever since. In each generation, many local churches tended to fail the ‘teenager test’, with young people giving up on boring services as soon as they could bully their parents into letting them do so. Of course this actually revealed that the faith of parents was probably limited, and the next generation were now, as a result of the growing emphasis on individualism, willing to tell the emperor that he had no clothes. This has the virtue of honesty, but it forces the Emperor to respond.
So the bishops, slowly, began to think that ought to become a part of the efficient part of the church. As ever with such shifts, the process began slowly, with dioceses managing the necessary reorganisation of parishes as buildings became beyond repair and populations moved away. Thus Manchester’s city centre was largely stripped of its parish churches as the population moved out – in contrast to London and Norwich where the far older church buildings have survived. And elsewhere the creation of the diocese of Manchester had led to the provision of parishes to the burgeoning population of the suburbs. Sometimes they got it right; the creation of the united benefice of St James and Emmanuel in Didsbury brought together the reasonably healthy church of St James with the nearly dead Emmanuel. Under its first joint Rector, what was in effect a church plant from St James into Emmanuel initiated the rapid growth of a new congregation to the point where Emmanuel was bulging at the seams on a Sunday morning; the important thing here was that the Emmanuel congregation surrendered entirely to what was happening, and so there was the freedom to do something very different. But elsewhere the same strategy – bring two churches of somewhat different parties together under a single Rector – has tended to result in continued genteel decline; the separate parishes are constrained by a leader who is not fully in tune with them, whilst the incumbent has to try to keep everyone happy. A specific problem will be that developments that might make sense and be welcome in one of the parishes are seen as weird and unacceptable in the other; if the incumbent endorses them, they lose status in the disaffected parish, whilst the proposing parish feels put upon if they are blocked. However the solution of ‘doing nothing’ has the benefit of keeping the show on the road for a little bit longer, and, if the incumbent is lucky, they can retire or move on before their cowardice bears its fruit.
Meanwhile – back at the diocese
What were the diocescan structures doing? The growth of diocescan quota (a term which bishops hate and try to avoid) meant that parishes started to ask what they were getting for their money. Specifically a new generation of bishops with pastoral experience were appointed – so that they could provide meaningful leadership and input to their clergy; these bishops had a sense of responsibility for what was going on their diocese that a previous generation did not. But because the dioceses are so large, that was unrealistic, so a whole panoply of new diocescan officers emerged to provide help with communications, youth work, ecumenical issues, interfaith relationships, post ordination training, even evangelism. These posts came to be largely dominated by liberals; evangelicals, despite the odds, were more often seeing real fruit from their endeavours at the coal face, whilst liberals were looking for an escape from the desolate scenes that they experienced. Similar effects marked the operation of the democratic structures of the church; if you are a busy incumbent, seeing people become Christians and growing in the faith, the idea of time on synods is an anathema… In many ways these diocescan officers replicated services historically provided by partisan groups, which meant that Evangelicals disdained diocescan provision, and the provision did not take the Evangelical agendas seriously…
Over the years the scale of the crisis in attendance at the church of England finally sank in to even the most resistant head: ‘I had no idea congregations were so sparse’, it is alleged one bishop commented after retirement when visiting parishes as an ordinary punter; he, of course, had seen them when people turned out for the special event he was ministering at. So naturally the bishops began to think they ‘really ought to do something’. So they tried. At this point the problems begin. Noone knows what the Church of England believes any more; if you are an incumbent and admit from the pulpit that you are an atheist, you may, possibly, get eased out, and if you baptise as an adult a person who was baptised as a child, your marching orders will be in the post. But otherwise? Effective evangelism requires a clear message; ‘if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle’? Yet much of what passes for Christianity today in the CofE is well summarised as ‘ is just being nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbours’ – as Terry Pratchett painfully describes it. Yet if you try to put much content into a diocescan initiative, someone will sulk – and we can’t have that. So much sound, too often signifying nothing, is too often the order of the day.
There are areas of hope; a reform in canon law has introduced the concept of ‘Bishop’s mission orders’. Historically parishes felt constrained not to do anything across a parish boundary; at one stage even house groups hosted in a neighbouring parish were a no-no, let alone church plants. Such crassitude has been described as a condom on church growth; however in recent years bishops have been given the power to authorise such invasions of your neighbour’s patch over local opposition. Of course the effect is that they are seldom needed – if you know you can be overruled, you’re more likely to accept the proposal than kick up a fuss. And the CofE has got the concept of church planting; churches such as Holy Trinity Brompton have done major plants in a number of cities around England, whilst local parishes have been eyeing up opportunities where their congregations are in a position to support such developments. Despite these flecks of light however, the general experience is of continuing decline, and a demographic timebomb – the youngest generation in too many churches is in the process of dying off of old age – means that the expectation is of precipitate numerical decline over the next few years.
And there is one dark spot; there are several groups pounding on the doors of the church desperate to get in. One which has long been accepted is the divorced and remarried; although the CofE in theory held out for many years against such marriages, in the past two decades the temptation to ‘welcome these into the fold’ has proved too strong. Of course given that both Prince Charles and Princess Ann are in such irregular relationships, it is problematic for the church to pretend to too hard a line.
Another group currently looking to beat the door down are members of the homosexual community in gay relationships. It’s an open secret that the church has been hospitable to many in such relationships over the years in many parishes, and there can be no doubt many would welcome such a move. For homosexual people, the church’s endorsement of value because it helps them to bury their awareness that gay sex is WRONG. Yet Jesus calls to live by His standards, and, sadly, for our gay brothers and sisters, that means living celibately unless you are in a heterosexual marriage. Of course it’s nice to be nice – but if we thereby betray our core duty to call all ‘to OBEY all that I have COMMANDED you’ (Mt 28), we’re not in a good place. Do we fear God enough to preach His truth?
Which brings us back to the core of the problem: the CofE doesn’t know what it believes about far too many things, given that it doesn’t any diocescan project is almost inevitably an unhappy compromise. Whilst there may be a role for them in enabling plants and growing churches to grow more by providing additional staffing, and encouraging dying churches to admit their need to stop pretending that it’s worthwhile to go on for another year, on the whole they should aim to keep out of the way. There is a useful – but very boring – role for dioceses in providing administrative functions – payroll, circulating jobs, legal support, balancing the need to change building with the demands of conservationist, and safeguarding. But line management? Appraisals? Stop it. Now.
A specific demonstration of the fatuousness of the present system is the number of hoops that ordination candidates have to go through these days. Once upon a time, when bishops knew their people, they would have chosen for themselves. This is impossible once dioceses become too big, so ‘examining chaplains’ emerged. Then there came into being ‘Diocescan Directors of Ordinands’. Add in a committee interviewing candidates at a residential stay, and voting on party lines who to recommend, and you have the recipe for the present clergy of the CofE. Yes, the Rolls Royce approach of 3 years residential training followed by 3 years as a curate and then a period as a ‘team vicar’ is a very good training. At least in theory. Looking at the products? Probably not.
Our God is gracious and works at times despite our attempts to stop him. Sadly most bishops think they have a useful role – and they don’t. George Carey’s teaching missions in Bath and Wells before his translation to Canterbury were perhaps one of the few useful things that a bishop has done recently. Otherwise – please revert to your traditional role of being part of the dignified church, not pretending you can be part of the efficient.
Bruce Blogs 