Who wants to be an English Bishop?

The Christmas edition of the Church Times contained advertisements for no fewer than four suffragan bishops (Horsham, Lewes, Stafford and Sherwood).  In the past such advertisements were unheard of.  The idea of putting yourself forward for high office would have seemed like an act of hubris and that would immediately disqualify any applicant.  It was also believed that somewhere in the bowels of Lambeth Palace there were lists of likely clergy, suitable for preferment.  These had already been groomed for high office and were quietly waiting to be called.  Such candidates had probably attended one of the Windsor courses and an appointments secretary had been making discrete inquiries as to their suitability for promotion to episcopal purple.

The Church Times advertisements suggest that something may be changing within the system of appointments.  I may be wrong and the secret Lambeth list may still be alive and well.  But why advertise when the pool of all the good and suitable people is well known to those who are in charge?

I have, in what follows, a series of observations on this topic of appointments to high office in the Church of England.  This blog post consists of some speculative ideas about bishops based on observation of the Church of England over a fair number of years.  These observations do not of course have the same validity as properly conducted research.  I hope my reader will receive these speculations in the same spirit as they are shared. They may well be describing a problem that does not in fact exist.  But if there really is a problem of a shortage of suitable candidates for the post of bishop, we need to be aware of this and consider what the reasons for this might be.  I want to put forward two main ideas.  One is that the pool of qualified people from which to choose bishops has indeed shrunk.  The second possible factor is that the job of bishop is now far less attractive and rewarding than it used to be. 

Fifty years ago there were plenty of clergy in the Church to go round and even the tiniest of parishes would have numerous applicants when they became vacant.  I once heard a story from a priest, who later became an Archdeacon, who wanted to apply for a small parish in the Hereford diocese around 1962.  He never had a response to his letter and later he heard that there had been over 200 applications for the post.  The system of funding in the past meant that most clergy were trained residentially with the cost met by the Local Education Authority.  Because far more clergy started the training process in their twenties, there were many who were unmarried before training.  This meant that clergy training could be, for some, a more leisurely affair, with candidates often finding time to pursue special interests within the theological sphere.  I have referred, on this blog, to my own travels as a theological student in both Switzerland and Greece.    

After the boom years of the 50s and 60s the Church of England scored an own goal in its recruitment of ordinands.  The selection process began to discriminate in favour of older candidates, those with ‘life experience’.  The thinking behind this may have been sound but it deprived the church of many of its youthful candidates.  Many of those who were entering training were also likely to be married with children.  There was no incentive to lengthen the training beyond the absolute minimum.  At the same time, the Local Authorities started to drop their grants and this placed the financial burden for ordinands’ families on the Church itself.  Standards of training have been protected over the years but fewer ordinands have able to pursue the higher level of theological training that being a bishop might require.  It is always helpful for a bishop to have insight and expertise, not only in his own theological background tradition but also in the traditions of others who are Anglican in a different way.  That would be a theological task and it is hard to do this when money and time within the training process are in short supply.  There is also nothing in the current theological training process that would prepare a candidate to become a bishop.  Those who aspire to the distinct episcopal role should ideally be able to receive considerable support in terms of in-service training.  Perhaps there are some who are deemed episcopal material by putting over a display of solid competence and suitability for the role.  But, for whatever reason, the pool of theologically/administratively suitable candidates is likely to have shrunk considerably over the years. 

Moving from the thought that there are now fewer suitable candidates for the role of bishop, there is the other factor – a willingness to do the job.  Looking at the posts in the Church Times this week, I have come up with three possible reasons why there might now be an unwillingness to take on the role.  No doubt there could be others.

The first reason for being hesitant about becoming a bishop in the Church of England is the way that you are immediately thrust into being to all appearances a creature of a large institutional structure in a way that was not true before.  Many Vicars enjoy a large degree of freedom and independence.  If things are going well and the people follow your lead, it is a rewarding role.  As a bishop, particularly a Suffragan, your scope for free action seems often more limited.  You have a defined role within the structure and everything you say or do is subordinate to that role.  You become a company representative rather than a free agent.

The second reason for potential difficulties with the role of bishop is in managing the network of new relationships you find yourself in.  Within church life, it seems extremely common for individuals to have volatile interactions with those placed over them or alongside them.  Sometimes there are complete break-downs of communication which are never resolved until one party either leaves or dies.  This will be an especially serious matter if it happens among the hierarchy of the Church. Failures of communication can have the effect of paralysing the work of a Cathedral or even a diocese.  For every Lincoln Cathedral scenario in the 90s there must be other equally painful break-downs of relationship within the hierarchy of the Church.  To suggest that Christian leaders set an example of peaceful cooperation with one another is probably unrealistic to say the least.  What is true, as we have discovered in our examination of power struggles among senior churchmen and churchwomen, is that complex institutional structures like cathedrals or dioceses can often be unrewarding places to work.  The potential risk of division and conflict is high.  Where there is such conflict, the cost to be borne by those who work there is high in terms of compromised health and happiness.  

The third area of real anxiety is what I call the filing cabinet of past horrors.  The safeguarding issues of the past decade have begun to take the lid off secrets that apparently seem to lurk inside every diocesan office and bishop’s palace.  The Archbishop of York designate will have heard about files that disappeared in the ‘flood’ of 2015.  He may choose to leave such files buried or to seek them out.  Safeguarding is the single word that has done much to take the shine off every bishop’s role since around 2015.  Computers and filing cabinets containing information that most normal people would simply not want to face must now haunt every bishop in the Church.  What was formerly someone else’s responsibility now is suddenly yours.  Within these files are pressing pastoral issues, financial demands and the simple requirement to do the right thing at the level of humanity.  The latest revelations of the past week connected with ‘Safe Spaces’ and the apparent wastage of considerable sums of money designated for survivors, is yet another issue to keep some bishops awake at night.  What normal person would want to get involved with such responsibilities, ones that touch the happiness and well-being of real people including themselves?

The advertising of four bishop’s posts at once may have a perfectly innocent explanation but it may represent a shift in the Church for the reasons I have been exploring.  The great illness of society from which the Church is not exempt, is stress.  Stress of relationships and dealing with issues of the past safeguarding horrors are clearly among the possible reasons for the Church of England to have to search beyond the lists of safe candidates who have been groomed for preferment over the decades.

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

40 thoughts on “Who wants to be an English Bishop?

  1. It’s a miserable job being a diocesan bishop because the church today is like what a child does with a finished boiled egg. Although it looks sound, it is an inverted shell, full of structures like Boards of Responsibility but empty of people. So said the bishop, memorably, during a talk in around 1990.

  2. I suspect that the adverts are to make it seem more open. Being a cynic, I’m inclined to the opinion that it won’t be, really! I’ve seen that happen at parish level, and for non clerical appointments. Usually, someone has their dibs on it. As for the list, I do know of one now retired Bishop, who went twice for interview at Church House before being put on it. This was over ten years ago, so may have changed. The trouble is, a Diocesan Bishop’s job is mostly endless committees, interspersed with “having a word” with people. No nice person enjoys the discipline stuff. So you always run the risk of appointing people who do! Or at least are prepared to put up with it for the power, rank and status that goes with it. A suffragan is just the Diocesan’s curate. Why ANYONE would want that, for around £25,000 a year, I couldn’t say! 😀

  3. As you say the pool of people to choose from has got a lot smaller as has the size of church membership generally which suggests that those currently called to lead the church are not doing a good job. If the trappings of power were taken away and leadership was only awarded to those with the real skills to carry it out you may very well see a different pool of candidates emerge which may lead to a church led properly and fairly. I have known quite a few bishops in my career and of them, in my opinion, only two were worthy of their position, and only one is still in an exclusively episcopal role.
    You mention Lincoln from the 1990’s but it might be worth looking at that diocese now in its current crises in both diocese and cathedral and the leadership vacuum left when senior suspensions happen.

  4. Absent your good self and a vanishingly small number of idealists the ‘talent’ has not gone into the Church since the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The reason for this is simple: clerical incomes collapsed with the price of English corn once it could be imported cheaply under free trade conditions from the North American prairies and the Russian ‘black earth’ regions. Also, the secularisation of the universities (and, after an interval, the schools) eliminated some of the old paths to preferment. The rise of ‘doubt’ was ancillary to that process.

    Guy Shrubsole’s recent book on landownership in England has pointed to the fact that in 1900 the Church owned about 2m acres; now it has about 75k. Why? Although this radical change has not been researched, he suggests it is due to the fact that freehold incumbents sold glebe to support themselves. In other words, once income from commuted tithe collapsed in real terms clergy had to fall back on their glebes (if they had them), but with agricultural prices being so low until the late 1940s they had to sell their glebe in order to subsist (i.e., burn the furniture to keep warm).

    You write of 50 years ago. What has happened since then? Real clerical incomes were gutted in the 1970s by two factors: (i) rapid house price inflation after 1968 (i.e., after the abolition of Schedule A and the liberalisation of mortgage credit); and (ii) rapid retail price inflation. These factors cast a very long shadow: they explain why the Commissioners over-extended themselves in the 1980s and why there has been an absurd over-reaction to the mistakes of the Lovelock years (that over-reaction being enshrined in the Pensions Measure 1997).

    So, people could no longer afford the profession, especially if they were to be thrown onto the housing market after retirement (after the 1975 Measure). Not unless they had a spouse with a decent income or the prospect of an inheritance. This remains the case, what with the rampant house price inflation since the 1970s; the emphasis on late ordination naturally flows from this wider change. Absent the deluded idealism of a small minority, people will only enter into full-time ministry if they can afford it. Few can.

    Also, clergy pensions are now based on a pay-as-you-go arrangement (the parish share system) which is funded by a vanishing demographic, and is thus doomed. Only a fool or a member of the Archbishops’ Council would believe that increasing the number of paid clergy (relative to the current bulge in retirees) is sensible in that context.

    If anyone wants to know why the talent pool has evaporated then, as is so often the case, ‘follow the money’.

    1. Also, the collapse in attendance (and, with it, the gnawing insecurity about prospective revenues) means that being a bishop is increasingly stressful. S/he must always have the bottom line in mind, but it is hard to exercise an effective pastorate in that context. Indeed, the two imperatives (solvency and salvation) are perhaps mutually exclusive.

      In my view the administrative and financial characteristics of the dioceses should be eliminated. The Commissioners should lose the bulk of their current assets; the money confiscated from them should form a dowry which would fund the greater portion of the current stock of church buildings which would be vested in a national agency. The Commissioners would be compensated by arrogating to them all diocesan and glebe assets. The dioceses would cease to have any administrative or financial role, which would be centralised. The dioceses would still exist, but merely as pastoral agencies. Bishops and archdeacons could then concentrate on their primary roles, as missioners and as pastors to their clergy and laity. I suspect that, for some of them, this would be a relief (since they are not trained to be administrators or financiers).

      A corollary of this is that there would be a single national safeguarding team, rather than a plethora of small (and inconsistently funded) safeguarding agencies with the highly variable outcomes we have all had cause to grieve.

      1. Happy Christmas Froghole, and Happy New Year when it comes! Good to see you again. Your argument sounds convincing to me, anyway. And I like the idea that Dioceses should be pastoral rather than administrative very much. Once something like this starts to happen, you also have the phenomenon of not very bright clergy favouring only those less able themselves. So the downward slide accelerates. Worker priests and the increase of roles for the laity are also part of the solution. But too many clergy in my experience, talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. So they make large promises which are never fulfilled.

        1. I think that the phenomenon of ‘ not very bright clergy favouring only those less able themselves’ has already occurred. Bishops and Archdeacons being pastoral is an interesting thought and a fairly novel idea in my experience. As for a national Safeguarding team, it would need to be a lot better than the existing one, but preferably IICSA will recommend independent Safeguarding oversight alongside mandatory reporting anyway.

        2. Many thanks, English Athena – and very best wishes for 2020 (I very much value your contributions here). I think that my comments above were somewhat uncharitable, but I have my own taxonomy of the English clergy: about a third are brilliant (and I would go ‘over the top’ for them); about a third are mediocre and have long since lost their initial spark; and about a third do active harm to the congregations they purport to lead (or they are luckless and their congregations do harm to them).

          On the whole I fear that SSM clergy (and, indeed, many readers and pastoral assistants) sometimes provide as much, or better, value added than a good proportion of their stipendiary counterparts. However, in some places they are still treated as being second class clergy, who must defer to their stipendiary colleagues, and can be shut out of any decision making process.

          What this, admittedly personal experience, indicates to me is that for a good proportion of the profession it is as much a career as a vocation, and that for mediocre clergy it is a career/vocation that offers a certain security without much corresponding financial recompense (a reasonable trade-off for them). However, if even the modest levels of security vanish with the unfolding death-spiral (I mean in attendance, with the inevitable and immediate impact that has on the parish share system), it will be interesting to see what happens to the numbers of candidates coming forward for ordination.

    2. That’s an interesting historical perspective but I disagree with your conclusion. The stipend is adequate and while Anglican ministry is not a route to riches, that would be a lousy motive to enter it anyway. It’s been my privilege to know a number of gifted and dedicated clergy and they do still exist.

      Retirement housing has certainly been a problem, but there has been the CHARM scheme to assist retired clergy. I rent a house from the Pensions Board under the scheme and am happy with it – though I have to say the process of dealing with the PB to get it was a nightmare.

      One reason for the declining quality of bishops has been the long delay in appointing women to this role. With fewer clergy over all, and nearly half of us disqualified by reason of our sex, the pool from which to make senior appointments was simply too small.

      I think there are still some clergy who aspire to the episcopacy – if only because of the desperation to escape parish ministry which has become impossible to do well. And of course there are some who crave the status, though these are the wrong ones to appoint.

      1. Many thanks – I was aware that retirement housing is made available to some clergy by the Pensions Board, but I have spoken to some clergy who have a real sense of anxiety (and, in a few cases, panic) about what will happen to them once they hit retirement and/or if their post-retirement stints in house-for-duty posts come to an end. Will they be eligible for support (they wonder)? Where might they be housed? Even if they themselves are sanguine about being sent somewhere completely different, how will their husbands/wives/partners view that prospect?

        Some older clergy have told me that the system is OK, because when you are in the initial part of your career you can scrape together a deposit (especially if the partner/spouse is in work), and the unit purchased can be let throughout the career of the stipendiary parson in question which helps redeem the mortgage. This overlooks the fact that some clergy will have domestic commitments which make accumulating a deposit impossible; the fact that house price inflation has advanced to the extent that very large deposits are the norm in much of the country; and that there is often a real risk that the liabilities will not be redeemed by the time the mortgagor retires. So this model might have worked in the 1980s and 1990s (especially for that cohort of young clergy who obtained mortgages in the pit of the market in the 1990s), but it is uncertain that it still holds true.

        As to the declining quality of the episcopate, I suppose that many of us still don’t know what a bishop should be, or what the office is really for: ought s/he to be a pastor, a prophet, a politician, an administrator, a scholar, a saint, a magnate/leader or an impossible combination of these attributes? At various times in the history of the Church one or more of these characteristics has come to the fore. The current premium has been put on administration – perhaps an inevitable corollary in a Church were there is an increasing scarcity of resources, which must be husbanded carefully.

        Although money is undoubtedly a ‘lousy’ motive for ordination, for much of the time in the life of the Church of England it has been a significant – if not overriding – factor (cf. the diaries of Joseph Price, James Woodforde or any other eighteenth century parson for whom orders were intended to be a path to comparative comfort, one rather less hazardous than, say, the navy, and one requiring relatively less industry than, say, the bar). However, was their mission and witness necessarily the less legitimate for that?

  5. I respectfully disagree about income being a major barrier. From where I sit clergy stipends (av. £26k + house) are above national av income (£29k) and well above poverty line (60% below average). This is not to say it is generous and for clergy with young families there can be financial hardship. But as someone who was a single parent for 17 years and currently lives on my partners state pension, whose 3 children all earn less, it represents a level of security many of us would like to have.
    Stephen’s points are closer to the truth, I think. It’s a thankless task at the moment and one clergy are ill-prepared for. I would love to work with a group of bishops, ordinands, laity , theol. colleges and clergy to create a National Leadership Academy for church. Open to both lay and ordained. Also as an ex Diocesan Officer, suggest a bigger and better lay leadership role might be do more to change leadership culture in church?

    1. Yeah, but you have to persuade the clergy to let their power go to the laity. They’re in charge at present, and have to vote themselves out! I agree about pay. I was in retail management, and I got sick of clergy moaning when they got twice what I did! But. I bought a house. For a good few years, clergy weren’t allowed to, and had to sell if they had one. That makes a difference.

    2. Many thanks. These are very good points. The slight (but tentative) rebuttal I would make is that the security is relatively temporary – some clergy are worried about what is to happen at retirement (a couple have complained to me about how strange it is to have to enter the open housing market at the end of a career, though I note Janet Fife’s comments above). Also, since the system of incomes and post-1998 accruals is based upon the parish share system (i.e., upon a demographic that is in deep, and seemingly, irretrievable decline), just how secure is it, really?

      As to your comments about training putative bishops, it was my understanding that Lord (Stephen) Green of Hurstpierpoint (ex-HSBC) was promoting the introduction of MBA-style training for clergy being directed to certain ‘leadership’ roles, and that this programme had either been implemented or was in the course of of being so. I recall it being subject to some sharp criticisms a few years ago.

      1. Let me clarify about the CHARM scheme. When I retired 6 years ago there were 2 options. If your savings were below a certain level you qualified to choose a house costing no more than £200k, which the Pensions Board would buy and you would rent off them. There was a long list of criteria for the house which was nearly impossible to meet, and the Pensions Board staff I dealt with were very difficult. The whole process was stressful and traumatic. Nevertheless since moving in to the house of my choice it has worked very well.

        I ought to add that I was ordained in 1987, am single, and being female did not get the full incumbent’s stipend until obtaining my first living in 2000. In addition I’ve usually had to spend some of my own money in getting the clergy house and garden liveable. I’ve been a saver all my life but the low interest rates in the last decade of my working life hit me hard. It’s been impossible to save enough for a deposit.

        A few months after the PB had bought my present home, they changed the rental scheme so that retiring clergy are only offered a choice of vacant homes the Board already own. They’ve done this to save money, but it must hit retiring clergy hard. Most of us want to retire near friends or family, or in a place we already know, and after working unsocial hours for most of your life it does seem unfair not to choose who your nearest contacts are on retirement.

        The second CHARM scheme is for those with more savings but not enough to buy outright. In this scheme the retiring clergy part-buy the house with the Pensions Board. I have yet to hear anything good about it from the clergy taking part.

        1. That is most helpful – thank you very much indeed for this information, which crystallises some of the hearsay I have encountered on my travels. No less significantly, I sorry that you had to endure that (presumably frightening) uncertainty and am glad to read that you have stable accommodation.

          1. Thank you, Froghole. It was certainly the last thing I needed at what was already an uncertain time – I had had to retire early for health reasons. It felt like being a supplicant at a Victorian workhouse.

            I feel sorry for those clergy retiring now who are unable to choose to live near their children and grandchildren.

            1. Janet the whole process sounds dreadful and quite unpastoral. I didn’t realise about the change in policy. It’s awful if people cannot retire near their families.

  6. Dear Froghole,
    You make a good point about security, although probably no different than any career nowadays.
    I didn’t know about the MBA style programme. Will investigate. Maybe I could offer a module in how to be trauma informed and survivor friendly?

    1. Yes, there is a training programme for senior appointments. Libby Lane was the first person to be appointed bishop after completing it.

      It does make me wonder why these suffragan posts have been advertised, since I gather they only appoint nowadays from those who have completed the scheme – and you have to be selected to join it.

  7. Interesting discussion – thank you.
    I found myself imagining what I would do if I was put in charge. I regret the way following Jesus has become a religion, as I see no hint of that in the Gospels. So I would close all church buildings and sell them off, rather as Henry the Eighth dissolved the monasteries, pension off all paid staff, and encourage people to meet in homes with the aim of carrying out what Jesus wanted, that is to obey him and spread the good news. No hymns or songs or prayer meetings!
    As well as getting closer to the original spirit, a lot of the problems outlined in our discussion would dissolve away if this course were followed.

    1. There may be no hint of it in the Gospels, but there’s plenty in Acts and the Epistles. For instance, St. Paul argued that those who preach the gospel ought to be able to live by it; and we see structures of ministry. One of the spiritual gifts Paul mentions is the top administration – and indeed, that’s what deacons were appointed to do. Widows were also appointed, and probably paid, to do what was effectively social work among women and children.

      But you’re right that New Testament writers don’t seem to have envisaged churches having their own buildings, and denominational structures are a post-New Testament development. I think we can blame Constantine for much of the way the Church has developed. When he made Christianity an official religion a lot of Roman concepts and structures were imported into it.

  8. Yes, current problems have to be addressed, and we all hope for a renewal within the C of E, but I respectfully suggest that this should not be brought about by closing churches and abandoning liturgy. The housing position facing retired clergy seems scandalous, but surely the church can address this in other ways

    Jesus taught in the Synagogue – recognisably a structure and place of communal worship then – and still so. Christianity (or most of it) adopted the Old Testament which is rich in references to praise with music – see Psalm 150, and many more! And I recall a New Testament reference to the disciples singing a hymn. Don’t let’s lose our magnificent musical heritage.

    1. Oh yes. And some of my best religious experiences have been in secular surroundings, singing the great classical requiems and the like. Let’s not throw out the baby….!

    2. Thanks Rowland. Your argument is helpfully brief and to the point, and I would have agreed with it thirty years ago without hesitation.
      I changed my mind for two reasons. One was that a senior diocesan bishop, who had treated a vicar disgracefully in my view, wrote that the church is a worshipping community. I found myself wondering, if that is what he thinks, suppose the opposite is true? Secondly, when I was appointed curate in charge of a village church in 1988, I announced that while I was leader, the aim of the church would be to discover the will of God and do it. The people were happy with that, but when after two or three years I stood up one Sunday morning, following eighteen months of prayer and thought, and said that I believed it was God’s will that we keep the church building open during the coming winter for homeless people who had nowhere else to go, not a single person supported the idea. Plenty of people voiced objections, none of which were that I had misheard from God.
      This showed me the hollowness of our worship – it was little more than lip service. We were fans of Jesus until something challenging came along. Then we backed off.
      It’s hardly surprising that people think so highly of worship, having grown up surrounded by forty or fifty thousand church buildings dedicated to worship in our country. And have you noticed how the call for worship pervades all religions worldwide? It seems that worshipping the deity has a strong appeal to human nature.
      If worship is so vital, why did Jesus never mention it? Was he a poor teacher? He told us to obey all his commands (Matt 28:20) but he did not raise the subject of worship with his disciples. My belief is that it was not something he wanted his followers to do.
      Finally, I have attempted to answer the points you raise at http://www.diychurch.co.uk in the videos, but I will answer just one here.
      Yes, you are quite right: ‘when they had sung a hymn’, they went out to the mount of Olives (Matt 26:30). This phrase is one word in the Greek – humnesantes – and the gospels are about ten thousand words long. So I take it that this throwaway remark does indicate that hymn singing is about one ten thousandth part of the gospel. Hardly a ringing endorsement for church music! In contrast, Jesus spent much time and energy casting out demons, and encouraged the twelve to do this, and us by extension. Now, during the past sixty years, I must have sung and accompanied over twenty thousand hymns and spiritual songs in church, but I have only attempted to free less than a hundred people from demonisation. Shouldn’t those numbers strike us as strange in one who wants to follow Jesus?
      I am still hoping to be part of what I regard as a real church one day, where we follow all of Jesus’ commands and nothing but his commands. If you know of such a church, either now or in history, please let me know! There is nothing like it in my area as far as I know.
      Thanks for reading. Happy new decade.

      1. Thank you for that lengthy and courteous reply. The closest I can get is my brief response below to Father Stanley’s (seemingly) either or question, to which I come down firmly with the answer ‘both’.

  9. I speak as a sometimes very disappointed church musician, but that is not the real subject here. I greatly respect his views, but on this occasion don’t support David Pennant’s suggestion. I think that the point about continuity in liturgy from Old Testament times is a valid one – the psalms in particular epitomise that continuity. Of course individual religious experiences are important and valuable anywhere, but I was referring to music in collective acts of worship in churches and the churches themselves as something to be cherished.

  10. Fascinating stuff on the history Froghole. I have often wondered where the C of Es money went after the reforms of the 1830s had put them on a better basis. The real issue is that militant Dissent in the 19c meant church rate went, concurrent endowment was a non starter yet campaigns for disestablishment also failed. Leaving a National Church in an increasingly pluralist society which had to finance itself as a voluntary organisation. Can you have a viable National Church with out a church tax (like Scandinavia) ? Or the situation in Germany or Belgium where buildings and clergy pay are government funded or France where the older buildings are looked after? The C of E has ended up with the worst of all worlds. Not least as clergy seem divided btw wanting to continue to “work the parish”or minister to a gathered congregation.

    1. Many thanks, Dr Butler!

      I am not certain that the reforms initiated by the ‘liberal Anglicans’ of the 1830s made as much of a transformative difference as is often suggested: there was some leavening at the top, and the expropriated episcopal and capitular capital was redistributed via the Bounty to the other end of the clerical income scale. Let’s say that Althorp, Graham, Peel, etc., started a process of incremental equalisation of clerical incomes that took nearly a century and a half to complete. The move for efficiency fell far short of expectations.

      The Chandler continuation of Best’s history deals with the centre, but I have not yet encountered a cogent history of modern diocesan and parochial finances (this is especially surprising in view of the lakes of ink that have been spilt analysing the finances of the late medieval and early modern Church). Instead I have had to rely on annual reports (and I am no accountant).

      You mention compulsory church rate (and you will know far more about Gladstone’s role in its abolition that I will ever hope to); my understanding is that PCCs can levy a voluntary rate, but none do. Pew rents were also gone by 1900 (though they still charge 2p in Sark!). Church rate was essential for the upkeep of naves; tithe rentcharge was vital for the clergy. Commuted tithe was supposed to be terminated in 1996 under the terms of the Tithe Act 1936, but Healey abolished it in 1977 (note the coincidence with the Endowment and Glebe Measure 1976 and the Age Limit Measure 1975). The 1976 Measure, allowing DBFs to expropriate parochial assets, permitted them to burn the furniture in lieu of freeholders.

      So the Church has been getting by for two generations without the sources of sustenance on which the parochial system was founded. It has placed reliance on voluntarism – a tender reed – and on furniture burning. That strategy is close to being played out (having attended everywhere in Canterbury diocese in 2009-13 I counted barely five truly viable churches out of almost the whole stock); the last few grains of sand are slipping through the hourglass.

      In France the system is less clear-cut and satisfactory than many people imagine; Briand’s several laws (1905ff) are quite confusing. The main issue is that the parish churches were vested in the communes, over a quarter of which are minute and barely solvent; this is a major problem, since economies of scale in the procurement of materials and labour cannot therefore be realised. The greater churches are a charge to the culture (i.e., finance) ministry and therefore a Cinderella as evidenced by Notre-Dame.

      Nevertheless, as Paul Binski and others have suggested, there is no solution without the state. The question is how to persuade the state to assume liability for the buildings; as I see it, that cannot happen without confiscating the capital the Commissioners have implicitly and regressively expropriated from the parishes further to the Pensions…

  11. A fascinating, insightful and depressing discussion – especially from Janet and “Froghole”. Coincidentally on Thinking Anglicans is a similar thread on which I ask the question alluded to by “Froghole”: I still don’t know what bishops are actually for, and nobody has ever told me. Regarding points raised by David T and Rowland W, I wonder if the issue comes down to the search for Jesus on the one hand, and the search for G-d, the Divine, on the other?

    1. Hans Kung? To paraphrase, in a large organisation, someone always ends up “in charge”. Even if you try to make the structure flat.

    2. You make some very telling comments (as usual) on TA about the reduction in the number of dioceses. Of course, it has been a feature of the CofI for centuries; it was tried with Gloucester and Bristol (1836-97) and mooted for Bangor/St Asaph and Carlisle/Sodor & Man. As I see it the purpose of Leeds was to rationalise the administrative layer and reduce the wage bill; that the number of dignitaries has not declined proportionately is regrettable but unsurprising: the liquidation of Ripon & Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield was presumably intended to make senior clergy feel less uncomfortable about budgetary problems. There is little plausible justification for dioceses like Rochester (where the bishop was once commonly deputy to Canterbury) or Portsmouth (the 2nd earl of Selborne’s folly).

      The existence of 40 petty bureaucracies is a relic of episcopacy-as-barony (bishops with bureaucratic retinues). It is expensive and does not yield economies of scale. Why not eliminate diocesan administrations and transfer their functions wholesale to the Commissioners, leaving only the pastoral responsibilities to the bishops and archdeacons?

      PS, I hope you are enjoying retirement; I attended an 11 AM service at St Modwen’s before you finished, but I don’t think you were taking it.

    3. I am finding it difficult to answer David Tennant’s lengthy and courteous post in reply to my very brief one. I can understand his disappointment when his congregation did not support his charitable proposals. I would experience – and to some extent already do – similar disappointment that my humble music offerings in the liturgy were thought redundant (this comment purely for Father Stanley: England “das Land ohne Musik”?)

      But I don’t see the two ‘searches’ which you mention as being in any way exclusive alternatives. My answer would be both. The words of Charles Wesley’s hymn “Love divine, all loves excelling” answer the question as ‘both’. For people who regularly recite the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, this distinction seems artificial to me.

      I know of churches involved in night shelters (even in the relatively prosperous part of the world where I live). One church with which I was associated (this was last century) had a close link with a church in Nigeria and sent a large and regular proportion of its income there. Possibly vicarious missionary work, but nevertheless a generous Christian act. I encountered a loving and closely-knit (Anglican) church community in rural Pennsylvania. These are as close as I can get.

      1. There’s a church used as a night shelter near me. And regular breakfasts, in a Methodist church, but run ecumenically. Talking of safeguarding, that’s an issue with opening churches at night.

        1. I’ve recently retired from S Paul’s Burton on Trent. That church hosts the homeless shelter Dec – March inclusive, but it’s run by YMCA. so they do all the admin, and safeguarding is their responsibility. Win-win.

  12. Voluntary Church rate is levied by a few central London churches e.g. St Giles in the Fields. Of course a lot of churches have Friends..and this does bring in some money for building work. A full scale economic history of the C of E in the modern era is much needed! And what about the financial implications of safeguarding!

  13. An inspiring discussion, thank you all! I think David has made the most telling point. The church has become what should be a marginal activity, gathering in a building for fellowship, teaching and prayer. As a musician, yes please with some music! But really the church should be us working together in our community, feeding the hungry, heading the sick etc. I think the community of my survivors group is the nearest to church I have in my life at the moment. It’s where I go for unconditional love, active support and fellowship.

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