London’s Burning?

Isaiah 2 makes the contrast between the glorious vision of the ‘mountain of the Lord’ (vv.1-4) and the day to day reality that will provoke the judgement of the ‘day of the Lord’ (vv6-9).

The mountain has all the nations flocking to it, with people pilgriming to Zion to be taught God’s ways and learn the obedience of walking in his ways. Zion, the mountain of the Lord, is the place that God’s law and God’s word goes out from with the result that God’s people live under God’s rule in God’s place and the nations have their disputes resolved too. In the most famed phrase ‘swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks’ as war is no more. The plea of verse 4 is for Israel to walk in the light of this eschatological dream.

The day to day reality in vv6-9 reverses each and every attribute of Zion. Instead of divine law, there is a searching after things from the East, warmongering, and intermarrying with the cultures that surround them. So much so that Isaiah despairs in v.9 crying out to God ‘do not forgive them’, as he sees a deeper need for his generation: ‘to be humbled and brought low.’ Self-sufficiency and pursuit of self-fulfilment ends up in self-reliance and the seeds of destruction. The chapter finishes by pointing out that we only have breath for as long as God wills it, so why run around trying to please each other/gratify self…: ‘stop regarding humans in who’s nostrils are breath, for of what account are they?’ (v.22) It is only in judgment as expanded on in vv10-21 that we can be saved now, and expel our idols.

These are the verses I was pondering in one hand while wrestling with David Goodhew’s analysis of the Church of England and London Diocese in the other. David’s article analyses the statistics in mission for the CoE up to autumn 2022 is more than a bit depressing, and I’m told that the yet to be published 2023 figures show a slight improvement but not enough to change any of his analysis.

What’s striking for those of us in London Diocese though is the we get a mention. In the last couple of decades we’ve got used to London featuring in similar reports – as an anomaly. London bucks the trend. London shows signs of growth. Saying London is Mt Zion may be a massive overstatement but certainly London is its very own ecosystem (despite or even exemplified by the fact that the southern half of London represented by the liberally minded Southwark diocese broadly followed national trends).

And we had some great stories to tell of why that is. Most notably Bishop Richard Chartres’ October 2015 Lambeth Lecture as featured on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website tells of how the diocese had ‘significantly reduced diocesan advisors in the belief that financial resources were better deployed in local mission initiatives’. This ‘eschewing of add-on initiatives‘ and reduction to their ‘bare bones’ of Diocesan House, went along with ‘investing in the local‘ and ‘encouraging life in its diversity‘ meaning that multiple strong opinions and models of church could coexist within the diocese. “Everyone should have a spoon in the soup, thereby avoiding the polarisation that often arises from subordinating the appointments processes to the will of transient synodical majorities or — even worse — ideologically driven bishops.”

But in the 2022 analysis London Diocese features in a different way.

From trend bucker, to trend setter, haemorrhaging the highest number (10,000) of worshippers in a 3 year period. If Ely Diocese had lost that many they would be down to just an average of 10 people in each of their 334 churches instead of the 34 they now have. But London still averages 100 worshippers per parish (reduced to an average of 88 if you take out the big three churches).

David Goodhew’s analysis is partly about the impact of COVID, and it would be no surprise if COVID hit London churches hardest. The escape to the country in Covid drove some out of the capital and others even out of the country. In our own church a family vacationing in Spain as COVID broke out decided to relocate there for the duration of the pandemic. They only returned to London a few months ago. Others never returned. The lure of garden space vs the cost of rental or house buying for the lucky few has driven a demographic change outside all control.

But there’s something in David’s analysis worth taking on the chin. He writes:

COVID was bad for the Church of England. And new data show just how bad. Overall, the church lost one in five of its Sunday worshipers during COVID. For children at worship, it’s worse. Long-term decline coupled with COVID has left much of the church in deep trouble. Yes, there are wonderful pockets of vitality, but their number is shrinking. The new data show that, during COVID, the condition of much of the church has moved from serious to critical.

This is in some ways a historical anomaly. Usually the church thrives when a nation is faced with an existential threat. The reason? It has a story to tell of a hope beyond this world. An eschatological dream like Isaiah’s to call people up to. An eternity to inspire. And passionate priests/church members willing to get mucky in the trenches while the horrors of war, famine, disease or persecution prevail around them.

Others have argued convincingly that the ‘close the churches, lock the priests up’ approach was a futile bit of managerialism that even Justin Welby secretly resisted as he went around his local hospital as a chaplain while other priests were told to stay at home, wash their hands and recite the Lord’s Prayer while doing so. What has been less articulated is how off-message we were. How a church with an eternal hope, whose priests are trained to prepare people for judgment day, put off any talk of that in favour of bland articulations on anxiety. We did the social worker job par excellence and loved our neighbour, and even had a go at being the ‘poor man’s therapist’ with soundbites on mental health learnt on internet memes. But did we present a compelling reason to turn to Christ at all?

And what happened next? Even before we emerged from lockdown the national church, spearheaded by the hapless Bishop of London, spent countless hours attempting to answer the question posed in the Garden of Eden ‘Did God Really Say?’ through the Living in Love and Faith process. One side of the church said, “yes God really did say”, another side who had posed the question in the first place said, “why do we keep talking about this, we need to change to be relevant to the culture and get people back into church.” Civil war ensued, that is still playing out in messy ways, not least in the Diocese of London where all sorts of people have united in an Alliance that no-one saw coming, including the big three churches (All Souls Langham Place, St Helen’s Bishopsgate and HTB), and countless smaller churches, plants and many people of Global Majority heritage who can’t believe the ‘Mother’ Church of England could go this way.

Bishop Richard’s Chartres’ lecture seems prescient here. With his usual allergy to Synodical structures, Bishop Richard references the high hopes and ultimate futility of many campaigns he had experienced in turning around Church life.

Clergy and even bishops very often give their best years to campaigning for changes which seem to lie within the capacity of a particular synodical generation to effect. These are most often presented, in the early stages of the debate, as being crucial contributions to bringing the people of England back into church. Lay participation in church government, liturgical change, schemes of church union, reform of marriage discipline, and the ordination of women were all arguably sensible measures, but the idea that they would halt or reverse the decline in church membership failed to take into account the profound character of the social and intellectual changes which had led to the contraction of the church-going part of the population. Internal bickering over the changes did, however, waste energy, and played a further part in alienating some of the church’s traditional supporters.

Alongside the vast wasting of energy on the LLF process (think of all the hours that could have been spent elsewhere as the diocese/church tried to recover from COVID), the civil war has perpetuated a dash to the centre, and exhausted, priests who would rather be engaging in Mission

There have been highly admirable diversities in appointments in London, not least in minority ethnic and gender balance. But with new senior staff appointments it is not hard to argue that there has not been is a sense of ‘everyone having a spoon in the soup’ across the theological divides and thus the ‘polarisation that often arises from subordinating the appointments processes to the will of transient synodical majorities or — even worse — ideologically driven bishops‘ seems here to stay.

It’s fair to say, with Archbishop Rowan Williams, that most people’s definition of strong leadership is ‘someone we agree with speaking louder than we do on the issues we want them to’. And it is also fair to argue that there may not be a way of holding together a fractured Diocese/National Church where the fundamental religious positions face in different ways – not just on transient ethical considerations as these appear to be a tip of the iceberg, but on more fundamental terms such as the way of salvation (self-affirming or self-denying), necessity and uniqueness of Christ and the authority of the Scripture.

Maybe we can’t all have someone we agree with speaking more loudly than we do at the top table!

Perhaps the way of the centre is the best, where no-one with too strong views is in post with the hope that they can maintain some sort of Anglican via media. In this argument unity is the prize, and it is best achieved by innocuous technocrats administering culturally sensitive platitudes rather than more pastoral and prophetic voices operating at the edge.

But that’s not likely to inject much needed vision and energy and so meanwhile networks such as the Restoration Trust (formerly CRT) representing the HTB network are already operating as a proto-diocese of 189 well resourced churches, and well placed to cut an umbilical cord if it ever wanted/needed to. And the Alliance which includes Catholics groups, the Church of England Evangelical Council (made up of charismatic and conservative evangelicals) and the HTB network, and is backed by a substantial minority of Bishops, continues to push for institutional settlement where the ‘historically orthodox’ still have what Chartres called ‘a spoon in the soup,’ (albeit in a separate bowl).

[In historical terms I wonder if it will all be relevant anyway? A lot of energy will be spent on whether alternative episcopal structures will help in the days ahead, which will lead to more internal wrangling unless a quick settlement is found. Senior appointments will be made, sometimes including ‘tame evangelicals’ who can parle in ‘newspeak’, but increasingly requiring those appointed to undergo the ‘shibboleth’ test of supporting a LLF process pushed though on a shockingly low majority, and becoming part of a bland consensus].

And what will the result be: David Goodhew argues:

Where the C of E goes next can be seen by looking at other denominations in England. The United Reformed Church was the main home for Presbyterians and Congregationalists in England. It is leading the trend of mainline decline. In 1972 it had 192,000 members. By 2022 it had 37,000 members. In 50 years, it has shrunk by over 80 percent. The bulk of its existing churches are small and elderly. This is what ecclesial collapse looks like. British Methodism is on the same path.

The middle way is rarely the ‘way of the cross’ and as such the middle-ground Anglican’s energy will likely dissipate as it has for the seemingly terminal URC and Methodist denominations. Ironically central Anglicanism’s main hope of continuing has being ‘converting’ once radical Anglicans – ‘orthodox’ charismatics/evanglicals/catholics to its broader ways. What would happen when/if it cuts off those branches…?

But life will emerge on the edges… possibly through networks clinging on to such power as they have, but most likely through hidden cells of people drawn to pray for an eschatological hope to come on earth as in heaven. As a ‘generation is humbled and brought low’ there will be those who learn to contend on their knees, to pursue prayer, to seek first the Kingdom, to slow down and return to the ancient ways…

Renewal most likely happens at the edges as we radically return to theological roots exemplified by our almost forgotten Book of Common Prayer .

The question is how bad will it get before then?