Resist the oppression of British Christians

Mild, non-clinical depression is my main reaction to a new survey showing that not only church of england attendance is falling, but that his clergy seem to have largely deserted him.

There are the findings of the inquiry: that less than a quarter of Church of England priests think Britain can be described today as a Christian country, that a third of them have considered resigning in the last five years, and 67 percent believe that efforts to reverse the Church’s decline will fail, which depresses me. One way or another, we’ve heard it all before.
It is the attitudes that this survey evokes in its conclusive comments. It’s that we need to be relevant to current social mores and we need to be more popular. Paraphrasing, we have to stick with the program.

I’m not some old white-knuckle reactionary. But I don’t want to be relevant; I want to be true. I was not called to be ordained in order to be popular. I don’t chase votes like a politician who seeks elections. I am totally interested in the Truth, although I know that I am not the only keeper of it.

So I don’t want Church doctrine to be decided by a focus group. And I’m not interested in marketing. We are not a club for the enlightened; I would rather we were an extinguished candle in the darkness of the world, as the gospel has proven to be so successful throughout its history.

But this means being courageous and standing up for what that gospel means to us, as well as accepting that it means different things to other people. Unlike Roman Catholics, we Anglicans in the Reformed tradition do not have a centralized catechetical authority and that, in turn, means relying on (and investing in) widely diverse institutions and, in some cases, atomized parishes.

To do so is to go against polarized, entrenched and, more often today, fashionable opinion and rejoice in our plurality, and that includes embracing our secularism as well. And that makes the statutory Church of England less of the socially affluent institution it once was, and even less of “the Conservative Party at prayer”, and more of a resistance movement against correct thinking and the culture of the cancellation. .

We cannot, as a Church, tolerate circumstances in which A local Northamptonshire councillor, Anthony Stevens, was arrested earlier this month., later released on bail, for an alleged hate crime after posting a video of the heavy-handed arrest of a preacher. Or the cancellation of Anglican priest Richard Fothergill, who accused the Yorkshire Building Society of closing his account for opposing his transgender promotional material.

Nor can we tolerate the arrest of a Wolverhampton Catholic priest, Father Sean Gough, and his fellow charity volunteer, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce. for silently praying outside an abortion clinic – charges that were fortunately dropped.
You may not agree with everything these people have to say, or even with any of it. But I respect your right to say it peacefully in a free society.

At the heart of much of the reaction to the latest survey of Anglican clergy is the acceptance that there is a right way to think about the social issues of the day. And if we go down that road, the Church of England will start to be a dangerous place if you don’t have an approved opinion. And that is a form of oppression.

This is not an “anything goes” card. I am vehemently opposed to expressions of racism and sexism, many of which I have heard in church circles. I vigorously oppose those views when I encounter them. But I hope it’s always in terms of not recognizing the gospel in them, rather than despising the person expressing the opinion.

In this model, the Church of England could develop an alternative role, as oases of peace in the culture wars, rather than simply wearing out and accepting mainstream contemporary culture.

It is the latter, and depressing, direction that his clergy seem to be contemplating in this latest investigation. But we are better than that. We only need to see the world through the prism of our faith, and not the other way around.

We are not a supermarket that responds to customer demand. We are a sanctuary for the disillusioned, the disenfranchised, the unpopular and, yes, the downtrodden. If we stick to that gospel imperative, we can once again be a beacon of hope, rather than a snuffed out candle.

Reverend George Pitcher is an Anglican priest.