Damon is an apprentice devil tasked with learning to undermine and weaken the Church of England and wider Anglicanism. Lucius is a senior devil mentoring apprentices overseeing the work on all denominations. Lucius refers to the Church of England as the ‘English Patient’. Lucius is particularly keen to encourage the Church of England’s peculiar ecclesionomics, bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats. Lucius draws on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, published in 1942. These letters are published by Lucius for the benefit of new apprentices. – Lucius. 

Graduation

Dear Lucius

Well, it looks like I might have passed all my modules with flying colours, and I am now ready to wing out on my own following the end of my apprenticeship. So let me say ‘thank you’ for all your support over these past few years.  This has been a steep learning curve, but I think what I have gained from your mentorship is that if the English Patient is digging a deep hole for themselves, it’s best to not say much, and let them carry on.

In actual fact, you have taught me that to intervene might distract the church leadership, so it is sometimes better to say nothing. They are so focused on digging themselves out of a hole, that they have lost any sense of the fact that the hole was started by them in the first place.

So, all being well I graduate in a few weeks, and I have been promised that I can move on from this rather minor denomination to a more mainstream one. Of course, the English Patient doesn’t see itself as ‘minor’ at all, and that kind of hubris has really helped us here.

The English Patient is fully inured to its VIABLE – Very Important and Awfully Big identity – and thinks it is the best-placed people to resolve crises of their own making. They believe and act as though they are a law unto themselves. You have taught me that the longer this continues, the faster they will decline.  It all seems to be moving in the right way. So, thank you for all your mentoring and oversight. It is truly appreciated.

Your Servant, Damon.

Dear Damon

Mentoring you has been my pleasure.  Sometimes the hardest lessons we have to learn in the art of subversion is that less is more. There is no point in coming up with new wheezes to defeat the English Patient if they are so obviously capable of doing it to themselves. As they do this in spades, it is best to let them get on with it.

I’ve been mulling this over on areas like safeguarding, equal marriage, gender and governance. To be frank, the English Patient will inflict more wounds on itself than we could possibly compete with.  That they show themselves unfit to be followed, and unworthy of trust and confidence is not even to our credit. They really do this to themselves!

I know you are graduating and moving on to bigger projects. But I did wonder if some final reflections might be of help as you go to your new role?

The first thing to note is that the enemy teaches it’s faithful that pride comes before a fall. So it is wise of us to invest in that sense of pride, and do all we can to inflate the sense of self-importance and hubris that the English Patient has. This denomination is so set on its pre-eminence that it cannot see the levels of contempt this conveys to other denominations and people. That means that few will be inclined to help when the fall eventually comes.

The second point I want to raise relates to this. The English Patient is gripped by spiritual smugness. It thinks it is the best of all worlds. Catholic and Protestant. Reformed and Traditional. Liturgical and Free. It revels in its hybridity, with little notion that this assemblage of ‘treasures’ it has amassed is more like a magpie’s nest. The English Patient just steals and borrows from other denominations, so it has no sense of coherence anymore. 

Third, and related to the other two points, being an Anglican can mean almost anything these days. That is a terminal weakness, not a strength. We keep putting out new shiny things for the proverbial magpies to take. Corporate strategies – the English Patient is a sucker for those! How about a shiny now vision statement, just like a global company has? A sucker for those too. What about some more management, comms and PR. The English Patient can’t get enough of the stuff. It is very telling.

It is ironic that vanity, insecurity, pride and avarice combine to produce the fatal blow to the English Patient, and that they do it to themselves. The want to be bigger, stronger, better, demonstrate growth, expand…so they’ll literally take anything that delivers those results, regardless of their core values and historic traditions. Of course, in pursuing this path, they just sound like a desperately obese corporation from the 1980s that is either about to go bust, or be taken over by a small group of venture-capitalists who will take on the debt, leverage the land and the buildings, sell off unwanted churches and vicarages, and then cash out by selling what’s left to a bargain chain-store-faith-expression.

Who knows where the English Patient will end up? Not in recovery, I think.  They have too much self-belief to get the right help, and still believe they know best.  If I have taught you anything, Damon, it is that when a denomination gets into this state, you need do little else other than watch.

Your Mentor, Lucius.