C of E is bewitched by bureaucratic distractions
Tim Bradshaw
Our poor old Church of England seems to find itself in a permanent state of crisis and for reasons that the average parishioner finds difficult to understand. It is a place of ‘little ease’ at least in its upper echelons and ruling agencies. Alas our bench of bishops, for all their strengths, come across as “bewitched, bothered and bewildered” to quote Ella Fitzgerald.
It is true that the Blairite changes visited on the church, placing it under the Charity Commission and a panoply of regulative agencies has dented its self-confidence and opened it up to secular activist movements which buzz around it like a cloud of mosquitoes. Archbishop Welby has gone and Archbishop Cottrell is under severe pressure to go. Tony Blair’s reign constitutionally imposed a very powerful quangocracy over all our institutions, the latest neuralgic example being the Sentencing Commission’s instruction to magistrates that ethnicity and religion be a required factor in sentencing convicted criminals, in effect a double standard or ‘two-tier’ justice.
It turns out that Blair’s constitutional changes gave this Commission total power to issue such dictats over and above governmental powers. The police and judiciary seem to have integrated the progressive political orthodoxy, as against the old assumption of neutrality avoiding fear and favour, indulging certain causes and cracking down on others, as alleged over the government reaction to the Southport stabbings.
Quangos affecting all areas of life, staffed by ‘progressives’, now regulate society, education, culture including churches. The Established Church of England has lost confidence in itself to run itself without external regulation. Accusations of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia continue to pour down, and will continue as nothing will satisfy the activist regulating powers.
The current sense of vacancy in the episcopal trustees of Christian doctrine and practice dribbles down to parish level where it seems anarchy can take over. The furore at the ancient parish church of St Nicholas in Leicester is fuelled by the grotesque capture of the altar by a huge LGBT+ flag draped over it. As the Sunday Telegraph reported, Karen Rooms, the priest, has said that the Pride altar “is about pastoral care and a simple statement of welcome and safety”.
The sacralisation of homo- erotic sex on what was a Christian altar for the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the Eucharist would have seemed a gross idolatry and has reportedly produced fear and the reverse of a sense of safety in the congregation. The Diocese of Leicester has a bishop, the trustee of Christian doctrine, ethics and pastoral care of the flock, standing in the shoes of the missionaries who had converted the pagan Vikings in the East Midlands. Does he approve this sexual appropriation of St Nicholas?
The Christian Gospel cannot be coordinated with ideologies without distorting it, however sincere and well-meaning its devotees.
The feminist agenda is likewise absorbing much time and focus. The ordination of women was not undertaken as a move to increase female power and kudos surely, but entrusting women to preach, teach and enact the Christian faith? It is a mistake to coordinate other agendas, however sincerely held, with the Gospel.
Lichfield Diocese is reportedly £2m in debt but advertising for a £40k pa net zero activist. Norwich Diocese is likewise funding a conscious-raising eco- activist and has issued an anti- racist toolkit for prayers, declaring that Eurocentric language could be offensive to outsiders and indeed redolent of white supremacist attitudes in worshippers. But Christian prayer is freely guided by the Spirit, not dictated by bureaucratic regulation and identity politics. Christians pray rooted in Christ to the Father in the Spirit (Galatians 4.6). Christ is our one identity, reconciled in one body by the cross. It might be worth reminding our next Archbishop that the Christian faith led to the reconciliation of tribes in Britain, to the ending of slavery, to the recognition of women as equal to men, to the rule of law, to education, to health services and democracy. We need a confident theologically focused Christian leader, protecting the flock from being ‘gaslit’ by guilt-inducing secular identity politics.