Is the Church of England's reputation at an all time low?
The above is a Tweet/X message posted last week by Revd Richard Coles - former instrumentalist of The Communards and retired vicar of the Church of England, now a writer, media commentator and Chancellor of the University of Northampton.
Note the caveat about this boy’s relationship with the Church of England, “…although he is [involved with the CofE] through that community project”. It was a slightly curious thing to add because it was clearly at odds with the boy’s mother’s understanding. At the very least the connection between the 'community project' and the parish church was not clear to her.
Doubtless, like anyone else, it can be said that Mr Coles has his own agenda, and he undoubtedly is something of a raconteur, with a good ear not only for a tune, but also for an anecdote. Nonetheless, there is no reason to doubt that he has not faithfully related what a member of the public thinks of the Church of the England.
This mother’s views may or may not be representative of the wider community but that such a thing can be reported at all is as alarming as it is not entirely surprising.
Not entirely surprising because, for example, a YouGov poll conducted shortly before Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury showed that fewer than one-third of Britons have a 'favourable' view of the Church of England and only 6% had a such a view of the former Primate. Despite all their woes, YouGov shows that the Prime Minister presently manages 27%, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer 18%.
While few would disagree that many local communities are served by diligent clergy and laity, who lead vibrant and viable congregations (which probably explains a good part of the 32% of the population with that favourable view), few would also disagree that the Church of England’s reputation is, rightly, or wrongly in decline. It is safe to say that it is the public’s opinion of the Church of England, and not merely the culture that is the problem because other Christian traditions are growing, despite the culture, while the CofE does the opposite. As Dr Hayward says, even on pre-Covid trends the Church of England, will be extinct by the middle years of this century. He says that is because it is not contagious enough. People nowadays, especially the young, literally, don’t get it.
It is a deep problem that those the Church of England most needs to rebuild itself are those who trust their own perception most and trust institutions least - demographics are destiny.
As The Independent reports this week, after a survey of 3,000 members of “Gen Z” “Gen Z curate their own understanding of ‘the truth’.” That is while the Most Trusted Brands report shows that across the board, “net trust is 10 points lower among Gen Z when compared to the general adult population”. Perhaps, most worryingly of all, the logical upshot is that in a poll of 1,644 (US) Gen Zers also just reported their number one priority in life is “to be safe.”
Where the Church of England needs to be able to give a t impression of being strong on trust and safety it is failing very badly.
Just think of the last week.
The Bishop of Liverpool, John Perumbulath resigned, having been enthroned by the Archbishop of York, despite the latter knowing that there had been complaints about the new bishop’s conduct. That makes Stephen Cottrell’s statement that he only knew of allegations after Perumbulath he had been "appointed" to Liverpool technically accurate, but by no means, the full picture - a picture that should include the Crown Nominations Committee (CNC) that selected the nominee for Liverpool knowing that his approach to safeguarding needed “development work.”
After resigning the former Bishop of Liverpool put out a statement, which was so tone deaf and self-pitying it rivalled Justin Welby’s speech in the same situation. In it Perumbulath describes the whole tragic episode as a “game”. That alone disqualifies the former bishop as someone with the wisdom and character to hold senior pastoral office.
Of course, it is now known that one of Perumbulath’s own suffragans, the Bishop of Warrington, the Right Revd Bev Mason, has endured more than 500 days away from her role due to her own complaint about him.
Cotterell then continued his own seemingly remorseless campaign, not least while he serves as its acting leader, to drag the Church’s reputation through the mud.
He told the Church Times that, “Bishop John’s resignation is the right thing to do, and therefore helps move things forward.” That being the case, it was also “the right thing to do” before the allegations became public, as nothing else had changed. And it was “the right thing to do” during all those days when the Bishop of Warrington was on 'leave' and 'things', especially for her, weren’t 'moving forward'.
But Cottrell has given no explanation ast to why, as archbishop, he hadn’t taken the matter in hand, encouraging Perumbulath to resign earlier, or at least not made Bev Mason alone pay the price for the impasse. Instead he 'gaslit' the first complainant - blaming the breakdown of process on her for not bringing ‘a formal complaint'.
The Archbishop of York then claimed, in relation to Bishop Bev that, “Nobody asked or required [her], certainly not me… to take some extended sabbatical leave” - that may be strictly true but he did not explain how then the bishop came to have nearly 18 months paid “leave”- someone somewhere agreed to it. And even if, again technically accurate, if again not the full picture, his statement is unquestionably, pure sophistry. As Metropolitan, he was ultimately responsible for the bishop’s absence, and the reality is there was no need for her to be "asked or required”- the only choices she had other than going on 'leave' were to resign her job or work with the man she said had sexually harassed her.
Likewise, Stephen Cottrell’s claim that he did not bully a member of the Crown Nominations Commission in order to secure Perumbulath’s appointment lacks any credibility. That is due to both Cottrell’s history of bullying people when they have the temerity to disagree with him and his established record of not being fully adjacent to the truth in his public statements. What the archbishop said could be true (maybe he doesn’t even know when he is being a bully) but the fact that, given his past behaviour, it is so easy to believe the whistle-blower speaks volumes.
It was the estimable Cathy Newman of Channel 4 who again broke the story, and her source said he was, “shocked by this attitude to safeguarding: effectively that a candidate identified as a safeguarding risk is acceptable because Steven Cottrell says so.” Given Cottrell’s safeguarding record - from his self-apologia to clear the decks when elevated from Chelmsford to York, to his 'coercive' attempt to rehabilitate his predecessor, and his handling of the recent revelations concerning his enthusiasm for paedophile, but nonetheless “Rolls Royce priest”, David Tudor, the source is again all too easy to believe. Someone willing to treat Tudor as he did would seemingly have little problem promoting the case of a 'mere' suggested sexual harasser like Perumbulath.
Next to land was the Charity Commission’s missives to the bishops and many members of General Synod questioning whether “legal impediments” in “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” might be preventing dioceses from fulfilling their duty to protect people from harm . This is an important regulatory body, which thinks it needs to ask for trustees on the Synod to consider the extent to which any proposals before them, “… will enable you to comply with your duty to take reasonable steps to keep all who come into contact with your charity safe.” Surely the Church, of all charities, should not need such supervision, but, sadly, past failure justifies it.
Inevitably, the Archbishop of York intervening made a bad situation worse. He described the Charity Commission’s actions as a “wake-up call”. While it may be admirably honest of Cottrell to admit that after more than four years as the second most senior bishop in the CofE he’s been overseeing a church asleep on the safeguarding job, it is an unacceptable situation.
Lest it needs to be repeated, all these sorry events, all this reputation-shredding, took place in a single week. While the details will pass most by, little bits and much more importantly the overall impression, will lodge in the public mind. No wonder it was in the same week that a mother felt that she would prefer her son to enter the illegal drug scent than his local parish church.
And it is only going to get worse.
The past week could, and doubtless will be, any week for the Church’s diminishing reputation.
Next week, Cottrell is due to preside over General Synod, giving every appearance of believing he is the ideal person to do so. Given his long-term track record and especially recent stances, the media’s photographs and reporting will reek of complacent entitlement where sackcloth and ashes need to be seen. For such a man to be parading himself as the figurehead of the Church of England, to all intents and purposes as if it is 'business as usual', will strike many, even if it is the product of hapless ignorance, as showing contempt for the feelings of survivors and of the nation.
The idea that 'independent safeguarding', whether in fact genuinely so described, or one of two versions of shuffling the existing arrangements and some other measures being brought to Synod, will solve much is for all manner of reasons, for the birds. Cleansing the Church of England will not happen by trying to rebuild it mid-flight- it requires those who shape it to be able, godly people, willing to sacrifice power and prestige for the good of the vulnerable and voiceless. That is the work, be it possible at all, of a generation or more. It is simply not feasible to do it 'starting from here'. It needs good internal senior actors, not new police officers. But it won’t happen.
The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie perfectly summed-up so many of these things in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. After describing, “… the genuinely good work done by the ordinary people of God on the ground in parishes” he writes,
“… our current bishops are not serving souls. They are theologically unimpressive, devoid of political nous and pastorally moribund. Worst of all is the visceral contempt in which they seem to hold the ordinary people of God. It is everywhere: from reports which brand them racist, via mission plans which wish them away in favour of imaginary new and trendier converts to the denouement of thinking they can be hoodwinked over abuse scandals”.
Which all leaves something of a conundrum. There will surely be a tipping point when that good local ministry can no longer justify the risk of being associated with the Church of England. A tipping point where the perception of the Church of England as untrustworthy and unsafe is so bad it is better for the ministry to enter into a clean break from the CofE.
Partial separation, for example those churches who declare 'broken fellowship', or the like, with their bishop won't work. Not while they sit on the Council of the very same bishop, the Diocesan Board of Finance, synods and take massive subsidies in the form of property that they could not otherwise afford, without huge disruption to the 'model' of church they operate. Doing that, they will not be practising differentiation that is visible to anyone outside of the CofE 'badgers' in their congregations and those who read blogs like this. Partial separation will not affect public perception positively at all - although it might do so negatively - buying into the view that at the heart of the CofE is a lack of integrity.
There will come a time, which may have already arrived, when the harm from the centre will so undermine the good on the ground, as to make actual separation a regrettable necessity. The reputational harm of being associated with the Church of England is a risk that will, everything suggests, ever more suffocate all else.
Experience suggests that Thomas Hardy was right when he wrote in 'Far From the Madding Crowd' that,
“There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.”
That inertia inclines churches to think primarily of what separation from the Church of England would mean for their existing work and ministry, how it might be harmed or lost. That is entirely understandable but in addition to the statistics cited above there is more important polling concerning the reputation of the Church.
It is a poll with a sample and methodology perfect in every, that is repeated endlessly and always showing the same outcome. It takes place each week, as over 99% of the population choose not to attend a Church of England service. Three years’ ago only 20% of the nation’s church-goers were worshipping in the Church of England . Post-“lockdown” that proportion is likely to have shrunk.
For all the realities of inertia, it should also be recognised that all the good work in parishes is touching hardly anyone. Even in the church-going community only one in five is engaged. And in respect of both groups attendance decline - about 1.5% a year since the 1950’s and a compounded 2.5% during Justin Welby’s tenure and Dr Heyward’s work shows the CofE to be ever less attractive.
Gospel-hearted Church of England churches are going to have to weigh-up if they have a better chance of reaching and serving the 99% by risking the 1%, which might turn out to be no risk at all.
There will be concerns about viability apart from the Church of England, but presently unviable churches are seeing what their future is going to be like - team ministries, huge combined benefices, PCC amalgamations, 'mass priests', all amidst ever greater demands - financial and regulatory - being placed upon them. Such churches may well be better off taking their chances outside the dead hand of the diocese. Globally, it is common for Anglican churches to each pay their own way. In the UK, whole denominations, growing ones, support their own work, and most decidedly not only in prosperous places. If English Anglican churches can’t do the same, even if it requires huge upheaval, then they will have to ask some serious questions, and perhaps they do not deserve to survive.
One hundred Anglican churches are already in the Anglican Network in Europe. Most are far from wealthy, but they are viable. Others have left the Church of England for the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, different strains of Presbyterianism and other safe harbours away from the CofE. They haven’t done it for fun but of necessity. In years to come they might well be recognised as pioneers- those who realised first that, in the words of The Communards, their churches couldn’t “survive” or “stay alive” any other way.
With thanks to Jonathan Gonzalez of Unsplash for the image
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