General Synod Speech ‘LLF Debate’ February 2023

(This was the original text of my Synod speech for the Living in Love and Debate (Same-Sex Blessings etc) at the February 2023 Groupof Sessions. I used elements of it, along with additional improvised elements in my speech against Amendment 57.)

Thank you for calling me, Chair.

‘The Kingdom of God is not a press conference, or a resolution, or a short course in how to be eloquently indignant. It is a table laden with grace, at which the social maps are all redrawn’. In writing this speech those words of the Jewish biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine kept coming back to me. I want to use them as a guide to why I think we, as a synod, should warmly support the motion before us.

In recent months, our episcopal colleagues have undertaken an extraordinary work of leadership and discernment. Do their proposals entirely satisfy my instincts for a new settlement in our understanding of same-sex relationships or LGBTQI+ lives? No. Do I long for a deeper dive into the theological architecture of the proposals or for bolder, braver, more beautiful prayers? Yes. Still, I greet this motion with gladness. Why? Because behind the clatter of our deeply felt disagreements and the temptation to speak out of wounds rather than scars, I hear in them a call to dwell in the kingdom of God. It is a call to stay at a table laden with grace. Jesus’s table. Where even people such as us, the General Synod, are fed. 

Yes, I want us to find a deepening clarity and precision about what our episcopal friends are bringing forward. And we shall find it. Not on the bruising floor of a debating chamber but in that covenantal wrestling and conversation to which we as people of God are called in coming months and years. We don’t do that in the airlessness of abstractions, but amidst what George Eliot called ‘the dim lights and tangled circumstances of the world’. If LLF has taught us anything it is that our work of love and grace is about indwelling and relationship rather than logic-crunching.

I commend this motion to you not because it is easy, but because it is costly; not because it has the cleanliness of defined positions attractive to philosophers or lawyers proving a point, but because we are called to meet our god in the rich and beautiful messiness of human relationships; the motion before us is not about fudge, but about this truth: that God is in the facts. God does seemingly impossible things in the midst of the facts. I want to stay close to the god who abides with us in the dust of our real lives and offers love, reconciliation and, yes, blessing. I sense God in the bishops’ discernment. Our God is one who walks the costly path to good news at the pace of the one who bears the stripes of the church’s wounds and its woundings. He does not crunch logic at the speed of a supercomputer that can game all the outcomes in a split second. Fr Herbert McCabe once said that sin is a distortion which leads us, when we encounter love, to crucify it. Synod, I ask that we stick with love today, in all its simplicity and indwelling; Let’s look for the table laden with grace. Let’s back this motion.

‘The Gospel of Eve’ GIVEAWAY ... the small print ...

 I’m thrilled to announce that I shall be giving away a copy of ‘The Gospel of Eve’ via twitter ...

Just so we’re all on the same page, here is the (not so) small print:

Terms and conditions:

We are offering one copy of The Gospel of Eve to one randomly drawn individual. The winner will be notified typically within five (5) business days of the drawing. Prize(s) will be fulfilled by DLT, and if you are a winner, you will be contacted for the shipping address. A prize is typically shipped within a week of receiving a shipping address.

The odds of being selected as a winner depend on the number of entries received.

You must be older than 13 years of age or the legal age of majority in your state or jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry. 

Rachel Mann reserves the right to cancel or modify this promotion at any time.

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‘The Gospel of Eve’ Q & A Part Two ...

 

Here is Part Two of the Author’s Questionnaire I began yesterday. I hope you enjoy it and also encouraged to join me at the Virtual Launch on November 04th at 06.30pm:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-gospel-of-eve-virtual-book-launch-tickets-122211747627

You can pre-order the book at all good booksellers, but CH Books is sponsoring the launch. Pre-order here: 

https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780232534603/gospel-of-eve

6.    The Gospel of Eve has been compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History meets A.N. Wilson’s Unguarded Hours. Were you inspired by particular books or authors during the writing process?

 

Unlike many, I do enjoy Tartt’s almost Dickensian narrative excesses, and the college settings of both The Secret History and Unguarded Hours receive important ‘hat-tips’ in The Gospel of Eve. Wilson’s capacity to hold comedy and pathos, sometimes in a single sentence, also provides a backcloth for my work. However, I am also a huge fan of detective fiction and Eco’s The Name of the Rose sits benignly in the background, along with P.D James and Dorothy L. Sayers. I adore John Le Carre’s taut style as well as the picaresque comedy of Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers. The careful reader will find nods to their work in The Gospel of Eve.

 

7.    The book follows Catherine Bolton’s obsession for possessing rare books. As a collector yourself, have you made any interesting discoveries? Are there any particular books in your own collection that are of personal value?

 

I’m never going to be in Kitty’s league, either in terms of the books she finds or her levels of obsession! I’m usually on the lookout for curios or copies of books I’ve loved for years. I’ve come across one or two wonders from time to time, but they’re not the sort of things which are going to set that many people’s pulses racing. I do have one or two books which, in financial terms, are quite valuable, but the rare books I truly love are curiosities – early Penguin First Editions, especially the Green Crime novels. I do have some lovely Christie, Sayers and Marsh First Editions, including some hilariously over-the-top Book Club versions with lurid covers. These are books which bring a smile to my face.

 

8.    The Gospel of Eve explores human vulnerability and our need to be liked and accepted by our peers. Why do you think we become so much more open and vulnerable to risk when we are in the company of those we find glamorous or fascinating?

It is a curious phenomenon. One thing I am sure about is that humans are mysteries to each other. I think that in the gap between who others are and how we see them, all sorts of strange and fascinating things emerge. One looks across at another person and projects onto them all of the things we want or fear or hate. We see glamour or celebrity or talent or beauty, and we want what we see or we are repelled by it. We want other people to complete us or fulfil us and then we pour our vulnerabilities or our hopes into the space we see. In The Gospel of Eve, I guess a number of characters confuse talent or good looks for goodness and virtue, partly because they struggle to see beyond the surface. Or don’t want to. Or perhaps because they’re not prepared to really wrestle with who they are. It’s the sort of thing that can happen to us at any age, although when I was young I had a talent for it. It’s very much the sort of thing which can be exploited by the wicked or unscrupulous, and, oh, how they exploit it!

 

9.    What aspects of your own life inspired this book?

I think The Gospel of Eve especially channels a mood or an emotional theme from my youth. That mood is one in which the urge to belong to a group (which is also the urge to exclude, I think) can lead you to bully or mistrust people who are not anywhere near as bad or threatening or intimidating as they seem. One of the things with which I struggled when I was young, especially as a young and secretly anxious LGBT+ person, was the desire to be part of a group so that I could hide aspects of myself which scared me; at the same time, I wanted to occupy a ‘special’ place in that group.

Of course, The Gospel of Eve channels other aspects of my life, though in a distinctively fictional direction! For example, like Kitty I am a priest, of course, as well as a scholar. I also come from a rural background. However, I am nowhere near as academically able as Kitty, or as successful at concealing my emotional temperature. Equally, unlike her I am immensely proud of my family and background.

1              What is your favourite passage in the book and why?

I do love the Common Room scene, early in the book, where we witness the reason why Kitty is so fascinated with Evie. It’s a bit of an outrageous scene, deliberately comedic, but not without heart, I hope. I love it precisely because we see and understand why Evie’s composure and power is both intellectually and emotionally compelling for Kitty: For, as Evie coolly handles the sexist and boorish behaviour of a male seminarian, we witness Kitty’s inner response. We get to join the dots, becoming both more sympathetic to Kitty’s emerging obsessions and yet troubled by them. Of course, I’m also pleased with some of the closing scenes where the truths behind the characters’ obsessions are fully unveiled. I hope those scenes are quietly terrifying, without ever being tasteless. One of the reasons I think The Gospel of Eve is, ultimately, a fun read is that it holds some its bleaker elements in check against the picaresque.

‘The Gospel of Eve’ Q & A Part One ...

The Gospel of Eve - Q & A Part One

Hannah, who is handling the PR for my debut novel The Gospel of Eve, invited me to answer a few questions about the novel’s genesis, themes and characters.

This is Part One of two.

I hope you enjoy the read!

 

 
1.    Why did you write The Gospel of Eve?

The novel rather walked out towards me and said, ‘Shall we?’ I mean, I’d been thinking about writing a novel for a while, and as part of my planning I’d made a lot of notes about characters and plot lines; it was when I settled on its location in a theological college that it came alive. The location animated the plot and the characters found their shape, though as ever with these things, then the characters started answering back and sent me along quite unanticipated routes. I’m also profoundly grateful for conversations with my friends Daisy Black, a medievalist, and (the late) Michael Powell, Head Librarian at Chetham’s Library, who brought the strange and beautiful power of medieval Christianity to life.

2.    What is it about the historic church’s more taboo spiritual practices that fascinates you and led you to want to explore them in your novel?
 
As I’ve jokingly said in various places, The Gospel of Eve is about my three favourite subjects: sex, death and religion. These three things, ultimately, come down to the same thing: All are about losing oneself and self-emptying. So, insofar as I am fascinated by the church’s historic taboos, my fascination lies in what makes religion so strange, compelling and, at times, so very powerful: its alertness to the troubling lines between the holy and the unholy, and its need to police and regulate them.  
 
3.    How would you describe your writing style?

Perhaps as ‘a poet wrestling with the challenge of being a thriller writer, or a thriller writer trying to control her inner poet’. As a poet I’m always tempted to go for the striking or the disconcerting phrase; like all poets, I want to achieve a certain kind of intense wrestling with language itself. However, what one aims for in poetry, usually works less well in prose, certainly in the story-driven kind of prose that is found in The Gospel of Eve. I suspect some will want to code my approach to writing as ‘traditional’. That’s okay, if by it one means that I actually want the reader to enjoy a cracking read, with a lively, immersive and believable narrative. I want it to be a novel in which things happen, which sweeps the reader up with pleasure as much as challenge.

4.    Why did you select a Theological College as the setting for your novel?

Well, firstly, it’s a setting I know well, so in one sense it offered a safe place for me to explore the challenging stuff found in The Gospel of Eve. Of course, residential theological colleges and seminaries are also ripe for intense emotion and obsession, as well as farce. Comedy runs close to tragedy and vice versa in a seminarian’s life. Seminaries are, as a rule, small and insular places, especially a place like my fictional Littlemore College. In a sense, the theological college becomes a character in the narrative: it is an over-heated, isolated focus for some barely controlled human passions.

5.    What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

         I think it lay in trying to balance a thriller-like pace with plausible character development and, crucially, handling a whole load of stuff about the Medieval and theology in a genuinely entertaining and engaging way. It’s so tempting to indulge in a load of exposition for exposition’s sake. Perhaps that’s the academic or the teacher in me. I want to get a baseline level of  knowledge over so that the reader/student can begin to think confidently for themselves. As a novelist, however, I want the story to breathe. This means trying to ensure that the ‘information’ doesn’t get in the way of the entertainment but, rather, adds in unexpected and crucial layers of meaning and story.

A Sermon for Ascension Day

A Sermon for Ascension Day

 

Thursday, and I’m required to speak of heaven, of take-off,

First and final flight; my hand shakes, my pen breaks

Line of page, refuses ruler’s rule.

 

Does God break lines too?

Now that’s an image and an old one: God as poet –

First Transgressor, Bird who hovers over page’s

 

Unruly seas, endless white. That’s a bird I could love –

Greasy feathered, storm-bringer, O Petrel, come:

Land with filth and ink, stain your story on tree and linen.

 

Let me write of Word made bird-bone, feather

Made heaven-bound, made Heaven. Hollow me till

Word flies, till Ascension, till God, till unruled, broken lines.

Where do we go from here? Towards An Unknown Church ... Part Two ... REST

While this post should be able to stand alone, it may be helpful to read Part One on Fragility before plunging in to this offering. The previous post offers a rationale for my decision to blog about the future of the C of E.

It is, perhaps, a token of my need for extended rest that it has taken me a long-time to bring this post on ‘rest’ in to land. As ever, these thoughts are provisional and conversation starters. I suspect my ‘not-so-hot take’ shall be proven very wide of the mark as a post-COVID Church emerges ...

Made for Rest? Rest made for us?

The Church rather loves to talk about rest. The Bible is littered with injunctions to rest and Sabbath. The great spiritual writer Fr. Gerry Hughes even claims that we are made for rest. I think the stresses and pressures generated by coronavirus – a time when clergy can feel their ministry is both more weightless and more intensely stressful than at any time – require a re-start on, or, at least, a reassessment of the priority to rest.

I want to hedge this carefully. Someone in my position – a long-established incumbent, an Area Dean, an honorary Canon etc. – is, in ministry-terms, exceptionally privileged and I say what I’m about to say with caution. I am, like all my kind, inclined to overestimate the value of ordained ministry. I also always run the risk of smugness, delineating situations in such a way in which someone likes me pays little of the cost. (I hope my previous post shows that I want to avoid that tendency, but I suspect I fail …)

I also acknowledge that, while being a single person household has some profound downsides, I have considerable flexibility in the way I organise my daily life. Finally, I write as someone with considerable middle-class privilege. When I say, ‘we shall all wish to work less’ that may be true across a wide spectrum; the reality will almost certainly be that only those with considerable existing financial and social capital shall be able to do so.



It will come as little surprise, given what this time has revealed, that I think it’s clear that both clergy and laity need to work less, pray more deeply, and work in a more clearly delineated way. It’s time for a more sustainable pace. I love work and at heart I’m a workaholic, but I’m not sure I’ve ever achieved more as a result of working absurdly long hours, seven days a week. Indeed, one of the things revealed to me by this time is the personal unsustainability of endless, driven work. There was a time when I could be ‘on’ from 0630am through to 11pm at night. This now feels comedically, horrifically unsustainable.

The discovery of rest as vocation is surely going to a culture-wide thing. Friends, lay and ordained, with young family are simply utterly exhausted at the moment. To be a parent is surely one of the most extraordinary responsibilities and gifts a human can have, and it strikes me that there is no immediate prospect of a full return to school in a physical sense. Holidays will not provide a huge amount of respite in a time of coronavirus. This nation is going to be exhausted by this experience and the scars will be present for years.

I suspect we shall all want to work at a less fever-pitch pace. More to the point, we may have to. I think I’m going to have to. I’m a workaholic and I love being intensely involved in things. But I feel it in my bones: there is going to be a reaction in my body to this time of strain. I won’t simply be able to click back in to old ways of working. I have much less emotional and physical slack.

Soon (when?), everyone – of faith or none – who can afford it is going to want a holiday, maybe many holidays. However, the point of this post is not simply to say, ‘Moar Holidays’, though that may be welcome. I pray that we learn to work more slowly, carefully and kindly. Holidays – whatever they may come to mean – will be desirable, perhaps even necessary; a culture where rest becomes the defining characteristic will, I sense, be essential. Sabbath will need to be rediscovered.

What might happen?

I am ever hopeful. While it is dangerous to generalise from one’s own case, one of the curious side-effects of life under COVID-19, is how I’ve felt invited to pray and pray more richly. I’ve felt called to spend more time in God’s company. This has felt more like an invitation to rest with God rather than struggle with God. It is an invitation to mess-about in God’s company. Rowan Williams famously compared prayer to sunbathing. To sunbathe doesn’t take any great skill. One simply needs to be where the sun can get at you. Thus, with prayer. One simply needs to be where God can get at you. The limits on busyness and flashiness created by lockdown have placed me and many others in a situation where God can get at us a little more. I hope and pray this will have significant practical effects:

In the light of lockdown and its necessary rescopings, I sense (hope?) there will be an uptick in vocations to the religious life … both vocations to the religious life in ‘Third Order’ settings, as well as potentially in enclosed community. I certainly believe there will be an uptick in enquiries, as individuals consider the meaning and shape of their lives. Coronavirus has exposed the profound needs many of us feel for richer, deeper connection and life together. I hope and sense there might be exciting developments in both new, digital, and established religious communities.

In wider society, there could well be a profound reassessment of what is of value materially. There may be an uptick in interest in living in a more relational, slower way, as well as a diminished appetite for consumption. Rightly, I think one should approach the likelihood of this with caution. There will be many, both within the Church and without, who feel their futures are too intimately intertwined with unrestrained consumerism to even consider a rescoping. Those of us, for example, who draw ever closer to pensionable age and wish to receive a decent pension should not be naïve about the role of international capitalism in generating our future benefits.

However, we are first relational, affective beings and I sense – from my own case and those of others – that this time presents an opportunity to discover a truth and gift at the heart of the universe: each of us is in the hands of others. To live well, especially in a time of virus, requires a preparedness to treat with ‘handed-over-ness’. Given how dangerous ‘touch’ is right now, there is a certain irony in discovering we are ‘in the hands of others’.

I become ever more convinced we are not discrete individual units. We are in-dwellers. We dwell in and through each other. To note this and live this requires attention (and not simply ‘alertness’) and time. And if time is genuinely to be constructed on different terms, that requires community and political will. Otherwise it will simply be the case that those who can take more time and space shall, while an underprivileged lower class is left to cover the gaps. In short, a kind of theological reconstruction of cultural value (which may or may not be religious) is required.

Some Practical Possibilities?

Perhaps I only speak for myself, but I sense a real need to (re-)discover the joy and delight of play, ‘messing about’, and wasting time. If the world is genuinely gift and all we hold and receive is gift, then I see no imperative to construct everything in terms of achieving things or acquiring stuff, or of establishing effective programmes and proving outcomes. I feel we need to rediscover the open texture of God’s reality. Why the heck should our lives – religious and otherwise – be programmed out to the final detail? Maybe we should dare to enjoy God a little more. Maybe we should waste time. Maybe trying to be endless productive for the sake of what … the Church? the Kingdom? pleasing God? … might be a token of insecurity rather than trust or love …

Perhaps, then, when we seek to be agents of change and communities of goodness, we need to take time to discern, pray and listen. Perhaps it is a question of learning to slow down and spend more time with the questions. Perhaps the question we need to ask is, ‘What is the question or questions God wishes us to wrestle with?’ That is, what is the heartbeat of God in this time? And in the time which is to come? What is the single simple thing God is asking of us? I suspect the space will generate unexpected answers. Yes, the response shall entail activity and activism, but of a focussed, sustainable kind.

In a recent conversation with St Nick’s stipendiary curate, Andrew, we discussed the significance of the call to be a ‘watcher’ and ‘sentinel’ in one’s ordained identity. I’ve long considered it an unjustly overlooked and unglamorous dimension of pastoral ministry (‘See my previously published works …’ ;-)). If I understood Andrew aright, he suggested that to be a watcher entails an active attentiveness (an ‘alertness’? ;-)); this dimension of ordained ministry can feel especially acute And difficult when one feel one’s ministry is rather lacking in action. However, to be alert to the signs of the Kingdom and God’s abundant grace is always a dynamic vocation. It can be challenging, demanding and disturbing. It may become a defining characteristic of much ministry in the years to come. In watching and waiting, perhaps we may be better equipped to see what God is up to and get involved.


 … I know. That’s all very well and good, but it sounds rather airy … so, at a little more grounded level …

Beyond lockdown, I would hope for the establishment of a genuine commitment from senior leadership to a five-day pattern for ministry. This will require both a rescoping on the part of clergy at all levels – and as a parish priest I acknowledge we are our own worst enemies – as well as a profound level of honesty about relationships between lay and ordained. It will require a level of honesty about what actually can be achieved in local churches which I’ve rarely witnessed.

What do I mean? Well, as previously indicated, I think stipendiary ordained people are going to become scarcer. The risk is that either those remaining stipendiaries will be so loaded down that they burn out very quickly or SSMs and lay officers will feel like they must take on so much in addition to their day jobs that they will make themselves ill.

Clergy working shorter hours should not mean that small numbers of active laity work so hard at plugging holes they lose their own rest.

Discernment – prayerful discernment and practical discernment – will be crucial. It will not be the case that we can do all we did as the national church or the local church. We shall need to target and be focussed. If we are to remain sane and well, some things will just have to go. What those things are will most likely be discerned at the local and diocesan level.

How can we begin to model this truth and husband our resources? Well, this is a formation as well as a commissioning issue. Stipendiaries are not contracted workers. We have terms and conditions but we often sit lightly to the rest and holiday aspects. This is a formational problem (which I believe has a gendered dynamic too) as well as a cultural issue. Stephen Cottrell has often spoken about how Jesus was ‘radically unavailable’. Those charged with the formation of clergy need to locate their work in this call to radical unavailability from the outset. In a world of serial overwork, an increased focus during formation and ongoing in-service training must be centred on rest, refreshment and retreat.

Our parochial lay officers, including church wardens, will need to begin to call their priests to account. At the point of commissioning or admission to office for lay officers, Archdeacons and Bishops will likely need to inscribe the imperative (!) to rest and holiday. These may even become part of the words of commissioning. At the very least, rest and refreshment might need to be almost agenda items on the table at PCCs, staff meetings, Deanery Synods.  Those who exercise leadership at all levels will need to start from rest rather than seeing it as an add-on.

It is a simple fact that lots of people, lay and ordained, are both knackered now and shall be for a while to come. Much as our senior leaders rightly emphasise the need for clergy to take rest days/days off and take leave at this time, frankly this is currently mostly meaningless. At the best of times, it is really difficult to take a staycation when one lives above the shop. Right now, I find it mostly meaningless. If too much has been made of comparisons between this time of COVID and war conditions, where I do think there is an intersection is in the bone-wearying effects of a life without proper rest and holiday. We, you, I … all of us are going to deeply worn-out at the end of this … if there is a defined end of this … the side-effects will be felt in our bodies for years to come …

While I sense that the Church will commend that clergy’s untaken leave should be carried over into the future, the only way many of us shall find the time and space to get the kind of restoration our bodies need will be if we learn to work less, prioritise the essentials and learn to let go of a whole bunch of stuff which looks important but probably ain’t.

I hope that the Church, locally and nationally, will find ways to hold fewer meetings. Clusters of parishes, clergy and lay leaders will increasingly find it necessary to develop administrative centres to coordinate occasional offices at a central point. Clergy and lay will need to be more integrated to ensure our Human Resources recover. This may mean fewer services, an end to the fetishisation of the Parish Eucharist and a honest, almost ruthless letting-go of the vestiges of the ‘we do everything’ Parish Church model.

In short, it may be time that the Church, finally, properly wrestles with an old question: what is God calling the Body of Christ to be, in this locale, with these profoundly limited but amazing human and financial resources? What, indeed, is the question God is inviting us to answer?

Where do we go from here? Towards an Unknown Church … Part One … FRAGILITY

‘O brave new world, that hath such people in’t …’

‘Our revels now are ended …’

I want to reflect on what kind of Church of England might emerge out of a time of Coronavirus. The two lines above, both from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, strike me as indicating two, simultaneous reactions to what we face: the voice of naivety, promise and innocence represented by Miranda, and the voice of experience, broken dreams and endings represented by Prospero.

Perhaps the C of E, indeed the wider Church, always lives between poles of innocence and experience, promise and cynicism. The emergent realities generated by a global pandemic have only brought them into sharper focus. In this short reflection, I want, provisionally, to speak into what I sense is the direction of travel for the Church of England in the light of pandemic. I want to set some hares coursing, in the knowledge that others will challenge, reform and add to my reflections.

At the ground of my thinking is two premises: firstly, you can’t keep a good God down. God is, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Secondly, the C of E is going to look very different in coming months and years (or, if you prefer, that which was already true of the emerging C of E is going to be foregrounded in startling ways).

Why reflect at this point? Well, in part, because that’s what I do. I think and reflect. I also want to participate in a conversation. Truth is, none of us has a working crystal ball. I fully expect most of my thoughts to end up being proven quite absurd. I also acknowledge that none of my thoughts is especially original. That’s good.That implies my thoughts are part of a discourse. I hope it’s one you want to contribute to.

Here are some of the things I hope we – in the church, both lay and ordained, senior and junior – can begin to take seriously.

The Fragility of Goodness? The Goodness of Fragility?

The church which comes out of lockdown will, I think, be digitally promising, physically smaller, more financially precarious and tentative, and potentially more flexible and interesting. (In a future post, I want to suggest we may be more restful.) Yes, there will be an uptick in bullishness – ‘Rejoice! Let’s get our programmes started! Let’s show everyone we’re open for ‘business’’ – and there will be many who, rightly, will wish to research whether there will be a ‘prayer premium’, in which those who have prayed and watched with us via digital means remain with us.

I am excited about the virtual and streamed possibilities of church and I’m fascinated to see how the virtual church continues to grow and emerge. However, the materiality of the church matters and it will be different. I also think God calls us not to be fantasists.

Anyone who imagines that – come the end of lockdown – we shall, in the short to medium term, gather en masse together once again in church buildings is (in my view) losing the plot. Lockdown will, as the Bishops indicated, be phased.

Choirs (and congregational singing) may be banned for months; huge Cathedral and parish church gatherings (traditional ordinations etc) simply aren’t going to happen; there may be strict limits on how many people can be in a building at any one time. Also, those who are older or have limiting health conditions may effectively be barred from being in church for months, perhaps years.

There will be others who may take months and years to have the confidence to be in confined spaces.

There are going to be a number of people who will not be coming back to church in the physical sense again. Yes, there may be new people, but let’s not get too excited. I’d like to see the evidence trail from past upheavals to support the belief that there will be an upsurge of religiosity (rather than spiritual engagement).

Money will, almost certainly, be much tighter, not only in poorer ‘northern’ dioceses, but across the C of E. I sense that already difficult financial decisions will need to be brought forward.

What might happen practically?

N.B.: I don’t offer these thoughts as commendations, but - from my small perspective - reasonably likely outcomes of the situation we face ...

Those churches which can integrate their digital and physical offerings are likely to have great advantages … in a world where a person can ‘see’ (from their bed or sofa) what a church offers, those churches who can speak into this ‘marketisation’ are likely to see high engagement. This may … yes *may*… lead to increased physical attendance in due course … more likely, it will finally expose the Anglican parish system – based on physical territory – as humbug. Location will still matter, but the C of E will, finally, become a 21st century institution among 21st century institutions …

Given an increasingly precarious financial situation in parishes, dioceses and the national church, it is likely that trends in the national picture will be accelerated: churches which can afford to pay for their own minister will be the only ones which will be assured a full-time minister … churches will, increasingly, be led by lay people and non-stipendiary ministers … stipendiaries will become rarer and, in time, rarities (if they are not so already) …

Huge questions will be raised about the stewardship of buildings … which buildings will be required, which will not? I suspect we shall witness an enormous church closing programme … just as the need for office space in the secular world diminishes, the need for church real estate will diminish …

Some of our finer buildings (especially those with unsustainable finances and small congregations) may need to be offered to Trusts, including the National Trust (assuming the NT, which I adore!, will be in a financial position to take them on …) ... worship will continue within them, but on different terms ...

Older clergy will, I suspect, look to retire sooner than they might; indeed, from a financial and mission perspective, senior leaders are likely to be under pressure to encourage and incentivise those who can to retire, freeing up parishes for reorganisation …

Clergy, like me, in single parish benefices, will have to look hard at whether their parish can justify them; senior leaders may need to incentivise or – assuming Canon Law permits it – force us to move on, take on other parishes, or even leave parish ministry …

Given the likely shortage of money, senior leadership will probably need to work very hard to force a reordering of the Church along simpler, less geographically driven lines. Dioceses will almost certainly need to be amalgamated, as happened in the current Leeds Diocese. Liverpool and Chester might come together; Manchester, Blackburn and Carlisle might. Perhaps Liverpool and Manchester might join together with Chester …

We shall probably end up with dioceses that look much more like ancient sees, organised over large distances. Clergy will become scarcer and more scattered. Laity will take centre stage  …

From this summer, I could see a situation where leaders think is financially prudent to tell those going into training for ordained ministry that their future will not, in the medium term, likely be in stipendiary ministry. I can see a situation emerging where the assumption will be that most if not almost all will end up in mixed mode, part-time non-ministry job, part-time ministry …


I’m sure there will a range of opinions and responses to my speculations, including ‘Why speculate?’ I offer these thoughts as a kind of ‘conversation starter’. The Church may be led by bishops and governed by Synod, but we all have a stake in the future of our beloved institution. I should very much welcome your responses …

PART TWO: REST ... to follow (once I’ve had some rest ...)