Project Spire is the name that has been given to the Church Commissioner’s decision to put aside £100m of their investments to be directed to
working with and for communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery, with the intention that it creates a lasting legacy. The £100 million, which will be built up over the 9-year period of the three triennia through to 2031, sits alongside the £3.6 billion indicative distributions that the Commissioners have articulated for the corresponding periods.
I commented on this last year, noting the lack of evidence, the racist assumptions behind the goals of the project, and the way that this has been driven by ideology instead of Christian theology. For my troubles, I was identified in the Fifth Report of the Racial Justice Group as an ‘Anglican blogger’ who puts out a ‘false narrative’ that must be ‘suppressed’ (p 23). Actually engaging with the issues raised might have been more productive!
In February, the think tank Policy Exchange published a more detailed critique by four people: politician Lord Tony Sewell, Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at Oxford, Charles Wide KC, a retired Old Bailey Judge, and Dr Alka Seghal-Cuthbert, director of the race advocacy group Don’t Divide Us.
The executive summary offers a disturbing assessment of what Project Spire is doing and the way it has gone about it:
Collectively, these [papers] argue that the Church of England’s programme of reparations is problematic for two reasons:
(a) Firstly, it represents a departure by the Church Commissioners from their core duties, of which international reparatory justice is not one, however worthy or not it might be in the abstract; and a diversion of funds intended for the good of parishes to a purpose for which they were not intended.
(b) Secondly, that this specific act of reparatory justice is poorly justified, historically uninformed and overall inadvisable.
The reason for these claims is set out in the detailed problems with the Project’s approach:
It is contended that Project Spire is based on:
• insufficiently examined preconceptions and contentious moral and political theory,
• flawed, narrowly selective, anachronistic historical understanding,
• a defective process which:• embedded activism rather than balance,
• paid insufficient regard to legal or ethical propriety, at the outset or later,
• lacked transparency, true accountability, and breadth of reference,
• failed to address authoritative critique,
• failed to consider competing views about the principles of, and criteria for, reparation and failed to justify the project by reference to those principles and criteria,
• was/is racially discriminatory in formulation and outcome,
• failed to consider the risks of division and to the reputation and authority of the leadership of the Church in the eyes of its members and the wider public,
• breached Charity Commission guidance on decision-making,
• lacked due consideration of the legitimate prior claims on the money entrusted to the Commissioners – especially those of parishes, where preaching the Christian gospel and performing pastoral acts of charity most effectively take place and which should be the Commissioners’ highest priority.
These are serious charges; if they have any basis in truth, then it means that those working with the Commissioners fund are responsible for serious misuse of funds.
The first of the three essays, by Charles Wide, looks in detail at the process by which the project was developed, and the response to subsequent questions. In some ways, this feels like an odd place to start—until you recognise how important due process is, especially in relation to decision making in connection with substantial funds. Due process, including openness to questions, challenges, and alternative points of view, is the way in which we guard against the abuse of power, and it is something which has been perceived to be lacking in the Church of England leading to a serious erosion of trust.
Wide meticulously traces the process by which the fund was initiated, including the wider questions about race both within the Church and in wider society. In general terms, Wide notes:
It can therefore be seen how ingrained are the presuppositions and particular political stances amongst the Church elite and the way in which
those presuppositions and stances are perpetuated and advanced by embedding activism in the Church’s processes. It can also be seen that, in terms of governance, there is substantial overlap between the institutional Church and the Church Commissioners (p 14).
Wide then goes on to explore the claims made in relation to the Queen Anne’s Bounty, and its involvement in the South Sea Company, which is the primary way in which it is claimed that the Commissioners assets ‘benefitted’ from slavery. He notes the detailed refutation of the claims of the Commissioners’ report by historians Robert Tombs and Lawrence Goldman, who comment:
However, while the connection of the Bounty with the slave trade was reprehensible and a proper cause of regret, it was certainly not the source of ‘a historic pool of capital’. The South Sea Company never made any profit from slave trading, and the Bounty did not derive any income from slave trading during the brief period when it held shares in the Company. On the contrary, its 1720 investment in shares made a disastrous loss, equal to 14 percent of its total portfolio.
There was and is therefore no ‘historic pool of capital’ derived from slave trading from which reparations today could reasonably be paid.
But, says Wide, these challenges have simply not been engaged with.
The Board did not cause the research and its conclusions to be reviewed or subjected to any external critical scrutiny. Had it done so, the flaws,
which have since been revealed, would have become apparent. Nor did it conduct any wider consultation. Furthermore, it seems that the Board leapt straight to proposing reparations, without pausing to consider the competing theological and secular arguments relating to a fraught, contentious issue, about which sincere Christians disagree (p 18).
He then traces the failure to respond to questions and engage with critique, including the failure to give clear answers to questions asked in Synod. The most disturbing of these is the failure to address the question of the Commissioners’ charitable status, and the fact that the proposals are not legally allowable in the light of the Commissioners’ stated charitable aims. This has been important enough to have been raised in Parliament, by Katie Lam MP:
The funds that have been committed to projects via the Church of England’s reparations project are in fact for the upkeep of parish churches and the provision of salaries for the clergy. I know that the Second Church Estates Commissioner is dedicated to our parish churches and would not support anything unlawful, so will the hon. Lady please provide the grounds on which the Church Commissioners are authorised to allocate this money to aims for which it was not intended? What details can she share of the conversations that she has had with the Charity Commission to determine whether they can do this, as it seems to be unlawful?
The second essay in the paper is by Nigel Biggar, and explores the wider arguments about the need for reparation, in which he engages with the recent arguments from Michael Banner. He offers a robust assessment of the complexities in all of these debates:
History is replete with wrongs from which we now benefit. Little or nothing that we inherit is without historic taint. The present Church of England occupies cathedrals and churches seized by the state from Rome during the Reformation. Some of its present wealth was almost certainly squeezed out of overworked and under-rewarded medieval serfs and 19th century industrial workers.
So, the question of which past wrongs to address and how best to address them is a complicated one that needs a careful answer. Yet, nowhere have the Church Commissioners felt it necessary to give one (p 35).
In turn, he then explores the questions of African complicity in the slave trade, the nature of British slavery, the extent to which the British economy benefitted from slavery, the significance of abolition, the role of colonialism, and subsequent post-colonial developments. At one level, addressing these question can feel like cool detachment—but in fact Biggar is offering a response to the specific claims that have been made in support of the case for reparations.
Some of his most striking material comes in the assessment of the ‘credit’ side of the debate—the role of Britain in suppressing the slave trade, and the relation of missionary work to the elimination of slavery.
It is not true that slavery-suppression was simply a pretext for colonial expansion. While there were often multiple motives for that expansion, sincere humanitarian ones were certainly among them. The strength of abolitionist feeling in Britain in the early 1800s was so great that it did not relax after Parliament had been persuaded to abolish the slave trade and slavery within the British Empire; it went on to persuade the imperial government to adopt a permanent policy of trying to suppress both the trade and the institution worldwide…
In addition to the diplomatic velvet glove, the British also deployed the naval hard fist. The Royal Navy deployed up to 13 per cent of its total
manpower in the West Africa Station, in order to stop slave-trading with the Americas…Chaim Kaufmann and Robert Pape…“estimate the economic cost to British metropolitan society of the anti-slave trade effort at roughly 1.8 per cent of national income over sixty years from 1808 to 1867”.112 Although the comparisons are not exact, they do illuminate: in 2021 the UK spent 0.5 per cent of GDP on international aid and just over 2 per cent on national defence. Kaufmann and Pape conclude that Britain’s effort to suppress the Atlantic slave trade (alone) in 1807–67 was “the most expensive example [of costly international moral action] recorded in modern history” (p 43).
In May 2024, Justin Welby visited Zanzibar, and in a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral criticised missionaries for treating Africans as inferior, and claimed that ‘we must repent and look at what we did in Zanzibar.’ Alexander Chula, who taught in Malawi for three years, commented:
I am curious to know who exactly the former Archbishop had in mind. [Anglican bishop John] Mackenzie’s successors gave everything they had to the region, and their graves litter Malawi, still venerated today. They committed to sharing the lives of local peoples and … approached their cultures with a curiosity and respect seldom matched by Western visitors today. The imputation that they treated Africans as inferior dishonours men who died precisely because they considered Africans as worthy of that sacrifice as anyone.
The final essay in the report is by Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, and she simply sets out how divisive is the kind of approach the Commissioners are taking to race and history.
Many people find it hard to speak freely, to question or to raise criticisms about demands made in the name of social justice. Often it is because they fear the consequences of being labelled as racist (p 53).
When the main message is that virtue and vice track skin colour rather than individual agency and intentionality, the results can only strengthen anti-democratic practices which divide us along lines of race. Worryingly, what we see in the calls for reparations today is not a call for justice to be applied, but the opposite. To accept the claims of the reparations lobby is to entrench the principle of injustice, or at least of partial justice. It is to entrench a vision of ourselves as fundamentally unequal and as such, represents a backwards step politically and morally (p 55).
John Root, who has long experience in leading and planting multi-ethic churches, is not uncritical of the tone of the report, but believes its key arguments are vital:
‘The Case Against Reparations: Why the Church Commissioners for England must think again’, by Charles Wide KC, the Rev’d Professor Lord Biggar and Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert’ is the first coherent and thorough push-back against the archiepiscopally inspired and Synod agreed ‘Project Spire’ to make reparatory payments to Caribbean or Caribbean-descended people for the evils of Britain’s importation and enslavement of African peoples in our Caribbean colonies.
We do need to find a better way to address these issues; this was the speech I wrote for the debate on race in Synod, but was not called to speak:
I am associate minister at a city centre church in a city which is highly ethnically mixed. Around the time of the Black Lives Matter movement, we realized that the ethnic mix of those ‘up front’ did not match the ethnic mix of those ‘in the pews’. We knew change had to happen. So we listened, we observed, and we encouraged.
We now have a very diverse group of leaders (you can check online); we have welcomed refugees and asylum seekers from Hong Kong, from Iran, from central America in particular. Our clergy team is white, black, Chinese, and Chinese American. In our services on Sundays we often have readings in four languages. We have a Spanish-speaking pastor funding through central funds. Last Sunday the sermon wasn’t even in English!
We celebrate our diversity and unity in Christ and we stand against racism wherever we find it. But we did it without ‘deconstructing whiteness’. We did it without using the language of ‘GMH’. We did it without specifying quotas. Rather, we did it by being captured again by the biblical vision of diversity we find in Acts 13, in Rom 16, and of course particularly Rev 7.9 (all the answers are found in the book of Revelation).
Our current course is damaging, divisive, and will not deliver. Lord Boating talked about theology; the theology we currently have in place is deeply damaging. The Formularies of the Church are claimed to be ‘inherently racist’. Taking the gospel to Africa is described as Afrophobic. This will not do—and it will not deliver what is needed.
The bishop of Dover is right: We need to take action, but we need to do it in a better way.
Finding a better way is now imperative for the Commissioners themselves. And it is deeply worrying that Synod and other bodies in the Church have not been able to ask effective questions about this.
In his introduction, Tony Sewell makes an urgent plea:
The Church of England’s leadership wished to find a way to turbocharge itself to the top of the race agenda. What better way than to offer an arbitrary figure like 100 million in reparations and link this to slavery. No one, from the Archbishop of Canterbury down, had the moral courage to stand up to the vagaries of the ‘diversity and inclusion’ propaganda. In many ways I have seen the way that activists have distorted the facts around transatlantic slavery to build careers, hustle grants and seek false compensation. This has been bolstered by universities, school curriculum and diversity agendas. Similarly, the Church of England avoids the deeper reflection required and has dived into the river, desperate to be seen as an institution that has been baptised and cleansed from the sins of institutional racism.
No! This is a Vanity Project. William Wilberforce fought hard for the abolition of slavery and was joined by John Newton of Amazing Grace fame who was a former slave ship Captain. When the Abolition was made law the Royal Navy became the police for stopping the trade. We need money for our own ancient parish churches.
What a strange man is Justin Welby: a child and man of privilege, over-promoted yet twice rejected for ordination, then propelled into prelacy, then catapulted into Canterbury, where he proceeded to spend all his time seeking the approval of Guardian readers. At no point has he ever shown (as his predecessors did) some theological depth or even curiosity.
He evaded responsibility for his safeguarding failures on the grounds that ‘there was too much work to do.’ But he still found time to jaunt around the world, spreading his historical ignorance.
Having lambasted ‘privilege’, he retires on the millions he inherited from his mother.
If he feels any pangs about the slave trade, let him give away his unearned inheritance, while the Church Commissioners look after poor clergyman.
He has sided with every movement that hates England even as he headed its national church.
That last is a good idea…
If this is illegal, that will be an end to it. The question is who will test this? And how grievous it is when the world has higher standards of propriety than the nation’s church.
Well it’s a pretty low bar, Anton. If you can stomach it, watch Katie Lam MP (mentioned by Ian above) putting the dire moral state of the UK’s authorities under the spotlight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfknCBMG2xU
I read that judgement against Mohammed Karrah a while ago. It would have been better if whoever uploaded this parliamentary exchange had let us hear Jess Phillips’ inadequate response in her own words:
I thank the hon. Lady; I think it is a shame that she referred to only one sort of child abuse victim, when the statement is clearly about all child abuse victims. There should be no hierarchy; we are also talking about children raped by their fathers or raped in other circumstances, such as in children’s homes and institutions, over many years. It is a shame that she did not speak about any of their experiences, notwithstanding the very graphic and upsetting stories that she did tell.
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Obviously, I have worked for many years with the exact girls that the hon. Lady talked about. Much of what she already knows is because of the inquiries that have already occurred, such as in Rotherham and in Rochdale. She did not refer at all to the two-year inquiry that was part of the IICSA panel. That was a statutory inquiry that looked into lots of areas, and I wonder if she maybe wants to reacquaint herself with the 200 pages of that report.
I understand the hon. Lady’s sense of anger and urgency about the issue. None of this is her fault—she was not here at the time—but she worked with the then Minister, who sat in offices where I now sit and did not lift a single finger on any of the recommendations contained in the Jay inquiry. The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), spent almost two years as Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire. During his time in that role, he held 352 external meetings, including 23 separate meetings on the policing of protests, but not once did he hold a discussion on grooming gangs or what the police were doing to investigate them. He did not have one meeting with the police, victims, local authorities or Alexis Jay, who had some choice words to say about some of the special advisers—I do not know if the hon. Lady knows who they were—in the Department when Alexis Jay was trying to get her requirements across the line.
Today, the Government have published a detailed and systematic action plan for the future. It is not about headlines; it is about the frontline. It is about how these things are going to take time in lots and lots of areas of our country. This does not happen overnight because somebody wins a political argument. It is going to take work, and I very much welcome the hon. Lady joining me, unlike in the years when I was the Opposition spokesperson, when the current shadow Home Secretary never bothered to involve me.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-04-08/debates/4FDDC9A4-1AC6-4F34-8E6B-3DF6CC2C981A/TacklingChildSexualAbuse
NB I gave a link to Katie Lam asking a further pointed question in Parliament about the subject of the present thread on Psephizo’s April 2 thread.
“For my troubles, I was identified in the Fifth Report of the Racial Justice Group as an ‘Anglican blogger’ who puts out a ‘false narrative’ that must be ‘suppressed’ (p 23).”
That is actually pretty outrageous, and I hope they get called out on it.
One interesting aspect of this though, is when you go to the Appendix 3 of the Fifth Report, for their counter to the ‘false narrative’ you see that the argument has shifted quite significantly. Reference to Queen Anne’s Bounty having shares in the South Sea Company, originally meant to be the link between the Church and slavery, is entirely missing. Instead it’s an argument about what individual Anglicans did or didn’t do – how many slaveowners were lay Anglicans? Were the Bishops of the 1830s sufficiently swift to denounce slavery? Did the UK as a whole derive economic benefit from slavery? etc. This is a very different reasoning and suggests those of us who questioned the South Sea argument were probably onto something. But it raises more questions. Even if you think Victorian Britain’s economic success is best attributed to slavery in US cotton plantations (rather than technological innovation in the Industrial Revolution and being the Saudi Arabia of coal) how does that lead to you saying the CofE Church Commissioners ought to hand over £100m?
Well spotted, AJB. Since nearly everyone at that time in that place was a “member” of the Church of England (by virtue of Anglican baptism), all the evils of that period can be blamed on “the Church”. I look forward to reparations from the German Lutheran and Catholic Churches for the World Wars.
I hope GS members who read this blog will vigorously contest this misuse of the CC money, which is the support of parishes and clergy, not race-hustling grifters.
I agree, James, but the following link gives information not in the 2023 report titled “Church Commissioners’ Research into Historic Links to Transatlantic Chattel Slavery”:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/25/revealed-how-church-of-englands-ties-to-chattel-slavery-went-to-top-of-hierarchy
While Thomas Secker was Archbishop of Canterbury (1758-68), he personally approved payments to buy slaves for sugar plantations in Barbados. These plantations had been left to the (Anglican) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts a lifetime earlier in a will stipulating that they should be worked by 300 slaves and a college founded on the estate. Slaves on these plantations were branded on the chest with “Society” and worked under threat of being whipped.
It is obvious that the CoE should not have behaved as it did, but it is less obvious what it should have done about these plantations then, and perhaps now.
Of the two great preachers of the 18th century, George Whitefield shockingly owned plantations and dealt in slaves for them, whereas John Wesley deplored slavery. It is no excuse (even though true) to say that slavery was part of all cultures before the 18th century, for Christians are held to God’s standards, not man’s, and “Do to others as you would have them do to you” is perfectly clear.
That’s s matter for the USPG to sort out, if they haven’t already.
Surely it falls foul of the Unique Selling Point Group in the CoE! Didn’t think there was one, that is, point nor oversight/steering group.
Adam, I agree that is a good spot.
I noticed that the public statements shifted in a similar way…
The question of whether this is ultra vires would be determined by the Charities Commission.
A quick search would indicate that this matter could fall under the heading of reporting a serious issue.
Charles’ point (if you read the detail of the correspondence) is that there has been no openness on the correspondence there…
Thank you,Ian.
I have re-read Charles Wide’s points set out above, but must be missing something. Is the correspondence referred to with the Charities Commission? Or is it with the Church Commissioners?
His points seem to sidestep the main point, addressed in his conclusiono: is it legal for the Church Comms to do what is being proposed: that is entirely dependant on the purposes of the charity. If it outside the purposes it will be ultra virus and the trustees will be in breach of their fiduariay duty and personally liable. Processes, communications while they also may go towards determine whether the trustees are in breach in the exercise and discharge of their substantive duties, it is suggested they play no part in determining whether the act( ) of finicial reparation are in fact ultra vies. As Wide concludes the ‘proposals are not legally allowable”.That is the substance of any complaint to the Charities Commission, it is suggested.
Speaking as one from across the pond, the same nonsense is going on in The Episcopal Church. It is a lot of faux guilt, that not even millions of Black Christians are buying into. IT is white liberal guilt for the past that none were involved with. The good news is that the episcopal Church is dying and won’t be able to throw this money away as their parishes can barely pay their utility bills. Most parishes now have part time priests to save money.
Saying that you should be suppressed (rather than refuted) gives the game away.
Perhaps an equivalent sum could be set aside for the Dioceses covering Northern cities, many of whose working men and women were in effective wage slavery during the industrial revolution.
Or perhaps they should seek reparations from Normandy: “The Economist proposed in a 2017 article that the origins of the north–south divide could be traced back to the Norman Conquest, and the Harrying of the North in which William the Conqueror laid waste to many towns and estates in the North. This significantly reduced the wealth of the northern half of the country, laying the foundations for centuries of economic disadvantage.” (Wikipedia)
Once you start down this road, where do you stop?
Complex matters indeed. According to Daniel Hannan (in his book “How we invented freedom and why it matters”, p98), a study of family names between 1861 and 2011 found that bearers of Norman surnames were just over 10% wealthier than the average. On the other hand slavery – mostly of the ancient Britons – was Anglo-Saxon England’s dark side, inadequately publicised during the years of that study for obvious reasons. The Normans soon eradicated it. Although the Welsh fought the Normans they might have reason to be grateful in the longer term.
Traditionally… Watford
Thank you for allowing me to use my favourite bit of trivia:
The traditional point of the north-south divide is the Watford Gap, which is nowhere near the town of Watford in Hertfordshire, but the (less well known) village of Watford in Northamptonshire. It happens to coincide with linguistic divide between northern and southern English as well as hosting a motorway services station on the M1.
A closer example would be my ancestors who suffered from the potato famine in Ireland.
And since I am half Irish and half English, should one half of me compensate the other half?
Note that this all assumes some kind of racial purity. Ever heard that talked about before?
Meanwhile, 50% more people in Britain go to church than six years ago, with the largest uptick in the 18-24 age category! This is due to increases “particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism”. In other words, the great exception is the Church of England. Justin Welby must take personal responsibiilty for that (perhaps above all for his attempts to change the divine definition of right and wrong). Nevertheless, be glad! This is a pleasant surprise.
The link:
https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival
Similar picture in the States 2022-25, for some reason:
https://www.barna.com/trends/jesus-commitment/
I had wondered. Does anybody know if this movement is going on in continental Europe?
I have never been more glad to be wrong. But the new believers must be taught that dark times lie not far ahead.
There’s another big rise in adult baptisms into the RC church in France this Easter, its over 10k, after being roughly 4k a year for a while.
I’m not completely convinced by the Bible Society report. Based on their stats, there should be about 2m people in CofE churches every month, which is about 3x the actual figure!
PLease explain the error and where the info appears in the full report (which I printed). If you are right, they should know this.
It seems simple enough, Anton.
Page 16. The churchgoing population (at least once a month) is now 5.8m, representing 12% of the total.
Page 18. Whereas in 2018 Anglicans made up 41% of churchgoers, this has dropped to 34% in 2024, with Roman Catholics now close behind them with 31% (up from 23%).
34% of 5.8 million is 1,972,000 – hence David’s 2m. I agree with him that the figures do not seem credible. Twelve per cent of the population in England and Wales attend church at least once a month?
The US report also needs a caveat, as it is reporting those who ‘have made a personal commitment to follow Jesus that is still important in my life today’. As I read the summary (I might be wrong), this is not reflected in the number of people going to church regularly (which is where one learns what it means to follow Jesus).
While we’re on the subject of statistics, a recent survey found that only 29% of 18-24 year-olds said they would defend Britain in the event of an invasion (see today’s Daily Sceptic article ‘Why would anyone fight for Britain’). Another survey published in February found that only 11% of Generation Z, aged 18-27, said they would fight for Britain.
Author Joe Baron, a history teacher, points out that young people are being taught in today’s schools and universities to despise and even hate Britain. ‘From our schools to our universities, our televisions to our newspapers, and our politicians to our footballers, the British people have been force-fed a diet that – implicitly and often explicitly – accuses them of racism, sexism, transgenderism, ableism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and xenophobia. ‘ He could have written, ‘from our politicians to our bishops’.
The C of E elite too has been hell-bent on (mostly implicitly) accusing their heterosexual white parishioners of racism, sexism, transgenderism, Islamophobia, homophobia and xenophobia, and have been foisting new policies and doctrines on its dwindling membership accordingly. That’s precisely the spirit which feeds Project Spire, and it is demonic – something which the vast majority of Christians, alas, do not recognise.
Thank you Steven. I’ve emailed the Bible Society for an explanation.
It is not only the young who think that Britain is not worth fighting for. In 2006 the journalist Nicholas Pringle distributed widely a letter asking surviving World War 2 veterans to reply with, among other things, their “opinions of the country today… Is it a disappointment or are you happy with how your country turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st century Britain?” Not a few wondered why they had bothered. Their collected letters are edited by Pringle in a book called The Unknown Warriors.
Do let us know, at an opportune moment, the details of any reply from the Society. For completeness, the C of E stat for average adult attendance on a Sunday in 2023 was 498,000, a quarter of that inferred from the BS report.
C of E church marriages and funerals are also revealing. Marriages have fallen by half in the space of just 8 years, down to 23,800. Funerals less dramatically, down to 64,600.
Marriages involve two persons, funerals only one, so that accounts for most of the difference. But also, the decision whether or not to celebrate a marriage in a Christian setting is taken by a rather younger age group. The differing patterns of decline are striking.
Marriages are falling faster than attendance, confirming that the decline in Christian faith and influence has been greatest among young adults.
Go woke, go broke.
Marriages have fallen across the UK, whether in the C of E, other denominations or faiths and registry offices and hotels. Those complaining about same sex marriage need to recognise that it at least establishes legal stable relations, heterosexual rates of marriage in the UK have fallen far further than the percentage of same sex couples getting married (and of course the C of E still only allows PLF not same sex marriage in its churches anyway). The birth rate too is in decline.
29% of young people defending their nation in the event of an invasion it should be pointed out is also far bigger than the size of the current British army. Not taking account of our navy and nuclear deterrent either
Steven,
I heard from the lead author. She was not able to give a simple and immediate explanation of why the Bible Society survey figures are inconsistent with the Church of England’s by a factor of three. She pointed out that (1) the survey is self-reported whereas the CoE’s figures are presumably based on counts through church doors, and (2) some of the people surveyed might be attending places not picked up by parish counts such as online churches, cathedral worship or universities. I do not believe that point (2) is sufficient to explain a factor of 3 discrepancy. Are 2/3 of the people surveyed actually non-Christians who are lying that they are regular churchgoers? That would be weird but what other explanation can there be?
It is easy to find the Catholic church’s figures for attendance:
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/big-increase-in-mass-attendance-recorded-in-britain/
The survey states on p18 that 31% of those 5.8m churchgoers are Catholics, nearly 1.8 million, yet the Catholic church’s figures are a little over half a million. Same enormous discrepancy. We need to get to the bottom of this.
I can give one. Church attendance figures count people who are in churches, thus combining number of people with frequency. If you simply count the number of people who attend, and if people on average attend every other week, you immediate double that.
I think the quotes from Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert sum up this subject. It’s why any detailed and robust analysis will prove unpopular and be described as a “false narrative”. This whole scheme is most certainly driven by critical race theory, a derivative of the Frankfurt School’s neo-Marxism. As such, it reframes reality in terms of cultural concepts that maintain power for a dominant class, in this case white people over black, in others, men over women, heterosexuals over homosexuals, etc. It’s not about social justice; it’s about dismantling what is perceived to be a racist, white society that dominates and discriminates against black people.
Antonio Gramsci’s theory of “hegemony” proposes that oppression is a cultural phenomenon, not primarily an economic relationships. Citizens are relegated to the margin of society and experience “oppression”. The revolution will come not through violent struggle between classes, but through intellectuals within the “subaltern stratum” (the oppressed, e.g., people of colour, homosexuals, women, transsexuals) taking control of the cultural levers and undermining the dominant social constructs that support oppressive power. We see this taking place today in universities, in the media, in the churches, and in the political sphere – we call it “wokery”; it’s the new religion.
The old religion isn’t doing badly, Jack. See the link I posted above.
Yes, I noted that, Anton. Hopefully it’s a trend that will continue. Of particular interest was the figure for young black people and men. Maybe the “Age of Aquarius” has finally gone – but Satan will have another deception up his sleeve. Now we need to tackle the neo-Marxist ideology that has infested the elites in the institutions of cultural influence and state bureaucracies – “clean the Shire”, so to speak.
Isn’t it “scour the Shire”… Mr Baggins?
Blessings….
It was, Sir! The famous “Battle of Bywater”, leading to the final downfall of Saruman and the “Scouring of the Shire”. Practical action and application necessarily accompanies a moral success. It demonstrates how ordinary people stay silent and/or are beguiled by evil Never could understand why it was omitted from the Peter Jackson film.
Jack,
There might be longer scenes of that ilk in the extended version. I’ve been told that the wooings of Eowyn by Faramir and of Arwen the elf-maid by Aragorn, which are banal and brief in the cinema version, are given justice in the extended version. Maybe the scouring of the Shire too.
Thanks, Anton. Tom Bombadil was also left out of the film. I’ve been reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to my grandchildren. The films are inappropriate for children. Not a bad thing really.
I remember my youngest son saying to me before his confirmation when I asked how he was getting on with reading the New Testament: “I prefer the film.” We’d been watching ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ together.
There’s plenty of Tom Bombadil in the Amazon Prime series.
Peter Jackson is overrated. He was an unexceptional maker of splatter films and banal comedy before Lord of the Rings. I reckon any director with digital special effects, a huge budget and Tolkien’s excellent story, could have done at least as well.
The Lord of the Rings is a long tale with a dark plot, lightened by the interplay between its characters. But Jackson’s characterisation is weak – and weak compared to other films, not just the book. Without this lightening, and with the many supernatural happenings, these films are wantonly dark. This unpleasantness shows in his depiction of (for instance) the army of the dead. Likewise, the inn where the ring-bearers first meet Aragorn, in his disguise as ‘Strider,’ is portrayed by Jackson as a sinister place, whereas Tolkien wrote it as a merrie English tavern with one or two dark characters. You are right that should be more cautious of these films than of the books.
I wholeheartedly agree. Too much emphasis on ‘magic’ rather than on goodness and grace overcoming the deprivation of good or evil. That said, I thought Gollum faithfully represented the corruption and dehumanisation that can result from a life consumed by sin and addiction; how he became twisted and hideously deformed. We see repeated a glimpses of Gollum’s goodness shining through too in response to Frodo’s kindness. The light is shaded, not extinguished. Gollum is never quite totally devoured by the evil. Even as he plunges into the fires of Mount Doom the observer (well, me anyway) still hopes that he is not totally corrupted.
It’s reflects Tolkien’s view of original sin – we are created in the image of God, and whilst born in sin, the image of God is wounded, not erased. Man wants goodness; he wants God (if they only knew it); wants Love and Life, all things good, but seeks these in the wrong ways. Like Gollum, there is always a glimmer of goodness within us and grace gently blows life into us with the breath of the Holy Spirit.
This helps explains Frodo’s compassion on Gollum. He sees what Gollum was and what he still can be. Frodo knows the corrupting power of the ring. He’s seen how it nearly made a monster of Bilbo. How Gandalf was drawn to it and resisted. He sees how it’s made a monster of Smeagol and he understands how he himself is being pulled towards evil. This knowledge breeds compassion, not judgement in his heart and he looks on Gollum with pity not with blame.
It’s a very rich parable to teach children – and, for that matter, adults.
As a practising, traditional Roman Catholic, Tolkien believed that the Bible was truth. He was a university scholar of Anglo-Saxon and Old English who spent much of his life in Oxford. The Norse myths are a clear influence on Middle Earth. Tolkien’s love of languages led him to invent several tongues, used by the various races in The Lord of the Rings. He had loved the rural England of his childhood, and he wished to create a mythology for it. (King Arthur is England’s only major myth; Faust is Christianity’s.) That is partly what his writings about Middle Earth are; Tolkien insisted that The Lord of the Rings was not allegory, although in a letter he called it a fundamentally Catholic work in which “the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.” Perhaps he wished also to Christianise the Norse myths.
In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is a good wielder of magic. He is not a man, but one of the ‘Maiar’. (Angels do have supernatural powers.) The work never suggests that man has occult powers to be developed. Tolkien’s tale, like scripture and mythology, is nevertheless full of the supernatural, of sacraments (such as the sustaining bread, lembas, which echoes manna in the Exodus or the Catholic ‘blessed sacrament’). The tale is, overall, a triumph of good over evil on the grand scale, written in such a way as to suggest that this triumph is inevitable given sufficient valour and self-sacrifice – a Christian viewpoint that contrasts with the gloomy worldview of Norse and other pagan mythology. A theme common to The Lord of the Rings and Christianity is a group from different races called out of their normal lives to join together in the sole way to fight evil. (In Christianity the world has already been redeemed by the Crucifixion; in The Lord of the Rings the crucial action – destroying the Ring – *is* the quest.) Temptation is ever-present, to use the Ring against Sauron, but anybody who tries will be bent to his will, since evil cannot be fought with evil – as Boromir’s fate shows. The small and meek and those with least interest in worldly power, the hobbits, are best suited to carry the ring, and by their courage and self-sacrifice they bring victory over the will to power of Sauron and his minions – all of this is a parallel to Christianity. Gandalf confronts the Balrog to save the others in a supreme self-sacrifice and falls to the depths of the earth, a sort of hell, before being resurrected in white. Aragorn, like Christ, appears first to the world as a man of lowly rank with a mission against evil, but is revealed gradually to be king of men. The final part of the trilogy, The Return of the King, echoes Christian eschatology in which Christ returns in power to put the world right – for which it and we long (Romans 8:19-23); this lies behind the power of fantasy.
An excellent summary, Anton. God will make a Catholic of you one day!
Thank you for the compliment regarding the summary! It’s from a 2000-word essay I wrote and, as with many such, have progressively fine-tuned.
For my troubles, I was identified in the Fifth Report of the Racial Justice Group as an ‘Anglican blogger’ who puts out a ‘false narrative’ that must be ‘suppressed’ (p 23).
Ian, has the Fifth Report been revised at all? Unless I’m accessing the wrong report, I can’t see any specific mention of you on p. 23.
No, I am not named; but I don’t think there is any doubt who this is referring to:
Do you know of other blogging clergy….?
Don’t trust people who use the ghastly word ‘ongoing’. It reveals the managerial mindset. Four times out of five it can simply be dropped, and the fifth it can be replaced by ‘continuing’. We should be sensitive to such things as George Orwell.
“Going forward” is one of the worst linguistic ploys of new management speak.
Going backward would be a good move for the Church of England.
So trying to see different factors (deficits and gains) synoptically is now seen as a minus?? Whereas one-dimensional preconceived ideology is seen as a plus?
It is not worth reasoning with the Church Commissioners, just as it is not worth reasoning with liberal bishops. They are to be opposed, and all arguments agasint them are to sway others who might help rather than to change their own minds.
“Such writing and advocacy is a blatant attempt to construct a false narrative, in an attempt to influence Anglicans who know little about our Imperial past to ignore the complicity of both Church and State in the horrors of the slave era.”
Sheer projection going on here because this paragraph (and the rest) accurately describes just what the reparations grifters are up to: creating a false narrative of the past an an attempt to influence uninformed Anglicans about Britain’s past.
The lapse into judgmental and emotive language (‘blatant’, ‘false narrative’, ‘complicity’, ‘horrors’) shows that this exercise is not about uncovering the truth dispassionately but a political effort to stir up indignation in order to get their hands on other people’s money. This is the very language of student politicians who have imbibed a bit on Marxist rhetoric.
It also shows that the writers of this report and intellectually insecure. Real historians don’t need to use Marxist bullhorns, they simply present evidence.
James, it’s straight out of the Frankfurt School playbook. Accepted norms have to be deconstructed and replaced with a new “consciousness”. It goes all the way back to Eden. Slavery was a great evil, on a par with the Holocaust for industrial brutality and death. It has undoubtedly scarred generations of black people. Will this be solved by money? By engendering a sense of bitterness? The division over this is unseemly and divisive. How often does the document recommending financial reparations mention Christ and transformation of society, families and individuals by His saving grace?
They should be cut out of the equation altogether at once if they think, incredibly arrogantly, that they can bypass reasoned argument and debate.
It’s an appalling and insulting attack on your critique. I know who comes out worst…it’s not you Ian.
I’d treat it like a mention in dispatches… honourable… except to an enemy. It seems that they are sticking to the melting iceberg of their decided narrative. Never mind the facts… shout louder.
God’s blessing and prayer for you.
Not offhand, Ian; as far as blogs commenting on the state of the C of E, I only read yours and ViaMedia.News. I suppose I’m taking the comment ‘A number of clergy have been blogging articles and appearing in the press’ seriously – though I equally suppose ‘one specific member of clergy’ can be ‘a number’ (for ‘one’ is ‘a number’).
Anyway, you’ve answered my question; thanks.
It is thinly—very thinly—disguised. The one other person they might be thinking of is John Root.
Before embarking on any of this, time, effort, finances, the first question to be answered is the last one posed by Charles Wide are the proposal lawful for the charity of the Church Commissioners, to put into effect?
I find the whole thing hypocritical given that the CofE are happy for people to work for them without payment. There’s a fine line between modern slavery and house for duty. I wouldn’t wish to trivialise the horrors of slavery but I do wonder how history will judge ‘self supporting’ and ‘house for duty’ arrangements
I agree with the tone of the article, token woke slavery reparations costing millions could be better put into Parish ministry, including Parishes in inner cities with large Black British populations.
However most ‘self supporting’ priests in the C of E in my experience are retired or near retired after high earning careers in the private sector and really don’t need C of E funds to support them. I know an accountant who is a house for duty priest too to whom the same applies
Nigel Biggar’s opening paragraph hit on an issue that often troubles me. Have ‘reparations’ ever been made to those who helped pay the staggering cost of building our beautiful mediaeval cathedrals by falling for the lie that putting money in the coffer springs a soul from purgatory? I still feel uncomfortable seeing weekday notices on cathedral entrances demanding money for entry- charges that surely drive many away.
isnt going to a service in a cathedral free? I assume the charge is directed primarily at tourists who often want to visit cathedrals. Am I wrong?
There is no charge for attending a service in a cathedral. I went to evensong at St Paul’s in London during the Occupy protests, there was no charge, though if I’d been sightseeing during the week I’d have parted with over £20. The less tourist-y cathedrals still don’t charge at all: Bristol Cathedral (which was my home church when I lived there) only asks for donations.
I wonder what happens if you say you want to pray by someone’s tomb.
No, prayer outside abortion clinics is streng verboten in the Fourth Reich,
It isn’t. Breaching protection orders is.
Eeuch, how foul to say that transient changeable culture-by-culture bylaws, initiated in this case against the least criminal and most godly elements in the whole of society to silence the arguments and obvious realities that collapse the house of cards of the law-proposers, are more important than the lives of little humans. Beyond words.
Once again Penelope is completely wrong. Prayer outside abortion clinics is FORBIDDEN by English law and will get you arrested.
It has already for some people.
Penny obviously hasn’t been paying attention (again).
It’s not the prayer per se, it’s the breaching of a safe access zone.
Christopher
Godly people don’t harass vulnerable women.
Penelope,
Do you believe it is acceptable before God for a woman to put her unborn child of 23 weeks to death?
What do you consider to be harassment?
Anton
I think it is occasionally ‘acceptable’ for someone to abort a foetus at 23 weeks. Such cases are extreme and, fortunately, rare.
Whatever the circumstances, it is cruel to harass vulnerable women. If people want to pray, they can do so without parading their piety on street corners.
Penelope,
Rare at 23 weeks? Do you really think that medics are scrupulous about checking foetal development and backing up the word of the woman about the date of her last period?
I do feel sorry for women in that bind, but human rights don’t extend to the unborn, evidently. It’s an attempt at rescue, not parading one’s piety. I doubt that people were permitted to pray outside Auschwitz, either.
Anton
Yes, abortions after 20 weeks are very rare and often due to non viability of tye foetus. Of course it’s possible to criminalise all these as some US States have done, leading to women dying of sepsis. Just collateral damage I guess.
Yes. Standing completely still, not moving a muscle, and offering help, only if needed, is certainly what comes into one’s mind when the ubiquitous word ‘harassment’ is used.
What is priceless is what PCD says later. She thinks that when human lives are at stake, the main priority of the would be life savers is that they should make a show of piety. Saving the babies’ lives be blowed?
This is what you get with the secular and trivial point of view. Human death is just glossed over, and they are surprised when you bring it up, since clearly it is an insignificant matter.
Christopher
I see you’ve just glossed over the fact of women dying of sepsis because hospitals were afraid of treating them.
I see you’ve glossed over vulnerable women having to run the gauntlet of people weaponising prayer in a manner specifically criticised in scripture.
I am not the one glossing over human death here.
That is revolting. Firstly, you are not even talking on the topic of human deaths here – you are talking on a tiny minority of human deaths in ‘aboriton’ circumstances, far less than one percent of the deaths and glossing over the 99%+.
Second, why do you not care that post abortion sepsis is clearly more common than pre abortion sepsis? As in so much else, do not do this act and your health and life chances will automatically improve. It is hard to say what made people’s consciences deteriorate so markedly as to see something like that as even speakable or even an option, but it was presumably the thing that almost all have in common: nonmarital sex being the great conscience killer.
Penelope
There are difficult decisions to be made when the woman’s physical health is at risk and the criminal law should not be invoked in such cases. But everybody knows that most abortions are post-hoc contraception and I hereby return the subject to that, from your diversion.
Christopher
Yes, it is utterly revolting when women who have spontaneous partial abortions – otherwise known as partial miscarriages – or a dead or dying foetus in the uterus die of sepsis because of lack of medical care in the richest country in the world. It is more than revolting; it is evil. And yes, if you were paying attention, that *is* post abortion sepsis. The medical term for a miscarriage is abortion.
Your lack of care for women is deeply, misogynistic, hateful and unchristian.
Anton
‘everbody knows’. Care to offer some reasoning for that statement?
Christopher
And most of those dead women were married, longing for children.
So, drop your it’s all the fault of tue sexual revolution mantra. This is the fault of misogynistic, puritanical, hypocritical patriarchy.
I hope that on judgement day the bloodstained corpses of those women haunt the judges and legislators who sanctioned this.
Penelope,
Not to you.
Anton
Ah, you can’t. It’s just a crass assumption. Right.
I can, Penelope, but you don’t deserve it and I am confident that Ian’s readers are aware of the facts.
Anton
I don’t ‘deserve’ it. How will I ever recover from that piece of condescension.
I’m sure the readers of Psephizo know lots of facts. Sadly, many who comment here like their ‘ facts’ with a side helping of ideology.
Firstly – No, that is not the definition of post-abortion sepsis, which is a more general term. Sepsis can set in after miscarriage or intentional abortion alike – nature does not discriminate.So why is one scenario curtained off and the other broadcast?
Secondly – the collapsing together of miscarriage and abortion collapses together 2 diametric opposites (intentional and unintentional) in the hope of glossing over the scandalous one of the two. This does not look honest on that analysis, and obviously that will then lead readers to have a red light flash more generally.
Thirdly – you were treating part of our topic – and it is not against the stereotype, nor necessarily against one’s expectation, that that was the more feminist part – as though it were the whole.
Christopher
Medically, a miscarriage is an abortion.
If you had read my previous comment with any care you would have seen that i was commenting on women dying from sepsis after a partial miscarriage or from the retention of a dead or dying foetus. Untreated sepsis kills when doctors will not operate because they are frightened that they will be accused of carrying out an abortion, on states and countries where abortion is illegal.
You assumed that I was writing about elective abortion because you don’t read attentively and you assume, always, that I am acting in bad faith.
Absolute bans on abortion kill women. Moreover they tend to kill married women who are hoping and planning for a family. But, I suspect, that for people who see all abortion as intrinsically evil, such women (the sort you normally admire) are simply collateral damage in your fight.
Penelope,
Jesus suggested being cautious about whom you share information with.
Penelope, you say you ”suspect” I see certain women’s deaths as collateral damage. The reason you are forced to ”suspect” it is that there is no evidence for it for you to cite, secondly because that is a vanishingly unlikely thing for anyone to think, and thirdly because anything else would deprive one of anything to criticise, and that (I ”suspect”) would never do.
The overall pattern is erring on the side of being as critical as possible, almost as though one had a desire to do that (the source of that is an interesting question in itself) rather than judging with just judgment.
Now – as to a miscarriage being an abortion, the three aspects of this have already been acknowledged, so what follows is a repetition. First, they are both untimely endings of pregnancy that does not complete its term. Hence they can – if people are being vague (always a suspicious thing, this unnecessary vagueness) – be referred to by the same term, since they have that one thing in common. Second, they cannot be in the same category in other ways, not generally, since one is deliberate and one accidental and that is a huge central matter. And of course third, the reason why people gloss over this way in which they are opposite to one another is to smuggle through the unacceptable one under the cover of the acceptable one because it has one thing in common with it, favouritising that one thing over whatever is *not* in common. A fourth point would be that the more distinctions are made, the more accurate things are. A fifth would be that if those who could make distinctions and be more precise are less precise one gets suspicious. And a sixth is that this is part of a wider pattern of being less precise when one is seeking to smuggle things through by pretending that quite different things are totally the same simply because thy are the same in just one of their many respects: e.g. a stepparent starts getting called a parent, thus giving an actual parent (a very common reality indeed) no word at all to call its own. And a seventh is that it tends to be the people who do this sort of thing (6) that also do the elision we are talking about, suggesting that the shared pattern is not a coincidence – though of course there was never any reason to think it was likely yo be.
Christopher
I don’t suspect that women’s deaths are due to new abortion laws. I know they are. What I suspect is that certain so called pro-life people consider these deaths collateral damage in their all out war against abortion.
Secondly, the removal of a dead or dying foetus, or the remaining foetus after a partial miscarriage is a deliberate act. You can’t make some spurious distinction between accidental and deliberate here. Well you can and you have. But it’s asinine.
Anton
I don’t know what you think I would do with your ‘information’, but you keep ot yo yourself pet.
It’s what Jesus would have wanted.
‘Spurious’ is rhetoric and adds nothing to ‘correct’/’incorrect’. ‘Asinine’ is also rhetoric.
If saying that opposites are not the same thing as each other is spurious, then black is now white, good is now evil, tall is now short.
Your central error was to say that an entire process was either deliberate or accidental. Which can of course be seen by everyone not to be true. For example, if someone deliberately seeks an ‘abortion’ and it accidentally goes wrong, then that is an example of an event part of which was deliberate and part of which was accidental.
Does anyone exist who holds the ‘collateral damage’ opinion of which you speak? If so, they can come forward, or you can conduct them forward.
Cut ‘abortion’ – cut sepsis. Regard ‘abortion’ as acceptable – increase sepsis. Don’t.
Much speech is rhetorical Christopher. I fond your reasoning spurious and your conclusions asinine. Is that better?
But again, you have completely missed the point. It is only when abortion is illegal that sepsis is untreated because of fear of breaking the law. And women die.
Those who enacted those laws in the US (and those who would like to see similar legislation here) are apparently content that women will likely die because of those laws.
And ot was you who first claimed one act was deliberate, the other accidental. Do take the trouble to read what you wrote.
Is it OK to be keener to use rhetorical words than to show your working or how you arrived at them?
The answer is obvious.
No-one wants deaths. Everyone hates deaths. We all try to minimise premature deaths. Killing little humans legally increases premature total deaths of mum and baby and also increases total instances of sepsis. So I with sensible people opt for ‘miscarriages only, not deliberate abortions’ option, which produces less sepsis and less death too. The alternative (which you back?) is ‘both miscarriages and deliberate abortions, which produces more sepsis and more death too. I cannot see how one can go for an option that actually increases not just one bad thing but two bad things, and obviously one goes for the option that decreases both overall.
As for deliberate and accidental, all I said was the truism that miscarriage is associated with the accidental (not sought) end of a baby’s life and ‘abortion’ with its deliberate ditto. That is the definition, more or less.
Christopher
Sepsis after legal abortions is so rare that figures aren’t published. Sepsis after partial miscarriage isn’t rare if left untreated. Banning abortion increases the likelihood of sepsis. It doesn’t reduce it. This isn’t an argument in favour of abortion. It’s a simple fact. You thought my raising this fact was revolting l. Which says a lot about you.
You mistook (or else misrepresented?) the train of thought. All true things should be factored in, spoken and raised. My point was 2 pronged: (a) you were sympathising with what you called ‘vulnerable women’ who are in fact at this point primarily individuals doing nothing less than setting out to kill their own daughter or son. Going against all that is right in that fashion, often also under coercion, will indeed leave one in an= vulnerable or conflicted state inside, one that it hard ever to heal later. The spectacle was of you showing greatest sympathy towards those with the most fatal intent. Hence my words. (b) What you call abortion is highly unnatural, invasive, and 100% of the time leaves a woman’s body in a worse and less healthy state (unless in cases where there have been complications). It is health of which we are talking, and my scenario where such things are not countenanced cuts out something unhealthy and raises the overall average standard of health thereby. I was objecting that you were failing to do this, and thus leaving the overall average standard of health lower when it could and should be higher. What that has to do with the obvious fact that women with sepsis should be treated, like everyone else (despite modern medical protestations), according to the Hippocratic oath, I do not know. Anyway we are off topic, and I only mention it because of the cosmic importance.
Christopher
I sympathise with women, who have often made a very difficult decision, who are then harassed outside medical facilities. If you want an image of harassment I refer you to the photo you posted on X today.
By all means oppose abortion on ethical grounds. I would probably agree with many of your reasons for doing so. But misrepresenting facts doesn’t strengthen your case. Most abortions do not damage women’s health. They are minor procedures. Most spontaneous abortions do not damage women’s health either. Ectopic pregnancy and partial miscarriage damage women’s health.
I generally refer to the idea that dead baby vs alive baby is a ‘difficult decision’ as not being one a mentally healthy person could possibly hold, but it goes beyond that, since for some reason the decision is being held to be the province of someone who is not the most affected, which in itself is additional sleight of hand.
And you ignored the fact that often the decision is that of family or selfish boyfriend. The reference to woman’s difficult decision is thus doubly a cliche not showing evidence of thought.
I do not have the technical ability to post photos but retweet many things.
Abortions are not going to cause mums to be more healthy, nor equally healthy to before. Though the fall off in health may be slight, it is hard to see that it is even in minor cases. Your body has been geared up for having a baby. So breast tissue has increased, as have milk ducts and cells, as have also hormones (prolactin, oxytoxin). If all of a sudden no baby comes, these are all left hanging with nowhere to go. Which is anything but smooth development, and physiologically difficult to return to normal. So – a backward step. Same applies to expansion of womb, and indeed all other things appertaining to the future birth of a baby. If this is cut off midstream, there will be all kinds of developments that suddenly have nowhere to go.
It is bad enough for that to happen unplanned (miscarriage). But to bring it on yourself? Against your own interests before one even gets on to how utterly totally it is against your child’s.
Christopher
I had a miscarriage. Well, technically, an abortion to remove a dead foetus. It hasn’t affected my physical health in any way. Indeed, pregnancy is thought to prevent some diseases.
Not an issue that I’ve ever encountered. One simply says you want to say a private pray. When working I travelled about a fair bit and always made a point of going to local Cathedrals to say a quiet prayer.
Excellent point, and an even better reply to Catholics who say “We want them back” than “they were built by English craftsmen with English money; what makes you think you own them?”
This Catholic says: you’re welcome to keep them – just foot the bill for their upkeep and stop charging for entry. Oh, and stop all the ludicrous funfairs, asparagus processions and lightshows. They’re numinous places of worship.
This Anglican agrees with you, Jack. The cathedrals have become ridiculous – as well as the main redoubts of partnered gay clergy who would never get jobs in normal parishes.
If half of them closed, the Christian cause would not be harmed one bit.
You clearly don’t know all the partnered gay clergy who have the cure of souls in ‘normal’ parishes. Which is, perhaps, jus as well.
Penelope, I know there are partnered gay clergy in normal parishes who are breaking church law and, more importantly, God’s law. Like the pre-Reformation church, the Church of England has always had sexually disobedient clergy, but today there is no legal compulsion to attend or pay. And so these churches are dying off as congregants age and are not replaced.
But cathedrals are in particular gay outposts because of their endowments and high level of autonomy over appointments. They don’t have to answer to pesky laymen and churchwardens.
Even so, some cathedrals in England are in dire economic straits and have resorted to weird stunts, like Canterbury Cathedral and its disco nights for aging hipsters. Somebody told me Canterbury Cathedral is £3 million in debt yet still employs about 180 people! Yet Canterbury diocese is closing parishes …. So much for the ‘cure of souls’.
Funny how the churches I’m thinking of have flourishing congregations. As have many cathedrals. And cathedral finances are separate from those of the diocese.
There are partnered gay clergy even in some rural Parishes, eg Richard Coles one examples. Most C of E congregations and wardens are no longer any more anti gay than the rest of the UK, after all it is established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal. The few hardline anti PLF evangelical churches are the exception.
The cathedrals of course are great tourist attractions for fee paying tourists and concerts, of architectural splendour as well as worship
They might better be run by English Heritage or the National Trust. I agree about the ridiculous pantomimes that go on in them.
James S: I used to know an honorary canon of Canterbury Cathedral who made that very point to me: that it was built on the ‘offerings’ of ignorant pilgrims seeking a miracle from the holy martyr.
Well (true story) this “ignorant pilgrim” made a special trip to Chichester Cathedral fin 1983/4 to ask for the intercession of Our Lady and St Richard. My wife and I had been attending a fertility clinic after 5 years of attempting to have children and we’d been advised it was unlikely we could could conceive naturally. My wife had blocked fallopian tubes and I had a very low sperm count. A year later, she gave birth to our first child – and two more swiftly followed. My family thereafter gave me the nick-name “dyno-rod” but I’ve always believed St Richard, known as the healing saint, helped us.
His famous prayer:
I bet you love that song from “Godspell”, Jack.
I give thanks that God blessed your wife and you with three children.
And grandchildren?
Thank you, James. Yes, the song means a great deal. Coincidentally, I saw the original “Godspell” at Camden Roundhouse back in 1971 when Julie Covington sang it. Wasn’t impressed with anything else, but that song stuck. Even though a “sleeper Catholic” at the time, I thought it infantile, disrespectful and cringe worthy!
Yes we are blessed with two wonderful grandchildren. At my age, one learns so much seeing the world afresh through the eyes of children.
I always liked that song (not the stupid water pistol fight that was supposed to be the ministry of John the Baptist – his baptism was a serious business) – probably the only thing I liked about that musical.
Services are free but cathedrals cost to maintain and it is right tourists have to pay an entry fee to visit them
No, as most of them who made such reparations were very wealthy merchants and nobleman anyway and at the time those newly built medieval cathedrals were Roman Catholic as it was pre Reformation. So even if reparations were paid to their descendants that would be a matter for the Vatican not Lambeth Palace and Synod and the Church commissioners
I wonder if St. Paul felt that by collecting money for Jerusalem’s poor he was putting right the wrong he did to many of them? Sad that by the time he arrived with the gift many of them had either left or had died.
Somewhat surprisingly Sean Winters of there National Catholic Reporter describes the advocates for slavery reparations as being “knee deep in the language of grievance”. adding that such an approach, whilst understandable, is “political suicide”.
In his short article he explores the question: “What kind of justice is being achieved”? He compares “commutative”, “distributive” and the recent, novel idea of “transformational” justice, and correctly sees in the political calls, and by implication, victimology and virtue signalling, for reparative justice a “conflation of politics and justice”.
My main interest in the slavery issue has been related to the idea of ‘redemptive arc hermeneutics’ – broadly the idea that through the Bible story God starts where people are, which is not always satisfactory(!), and then leads them gradually to a better place. A classic case here is the impracticality of telling people to ‘turn the other cheek’ BEFORE they have the clear example of God in Jesus effectively turning the other cheek and it working out well….
Slavery is a case where back around the time of the Exodus and for some time after there simply wasn’t the economic infrastructure in areas like money supply for modern (relatively) free employment to work easily. That factor was added to the simple ‘all have sinned’ and general greed issues.
So though God put down quite a marker against slavery by freeing the Israelites, the next step wasn’t a simple abolition of slavery but an intermediate practical stage of “You may have slaves but you must treat them humanely – eg, slaves got to share in sabbath rest rather than being exploited to work while masters rested.
I understand that by NT times slavery in Israel was significantly less severe than in surrounding paganism, and the ‘new covenant’ changed things further, though we only see the beginnings of it in the NT period itself, for example in the story of Onesimus. A recognition that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, application of the idea of treating others as you would like to be treated, the anomaly when a Christian master might in the Church be under the authority of a slave who was an elder/bishop …. things of that kind plus a more suitable economic infrastructure seem to have led to a changed Christian attitude to slavery, including freeing slaves/buying slaves out slavery becoming regular Christian acts.
While Christians followed the original church/state relationship of an independent counterculture, this would be largely a private act by Christians, though influential like their different attitude to exposing female infants.
However, this different approach to slavery seems to have come to a bit of a dead stop in the Imperial church, and in the successor states where slavery continued despite the supposed Christianisation, and as we know centuries later supposed Christians were arguing that slavery was OK. In England it took the changed labour market following the Black Death to make ongoing serfdom-slavery impractical. To put it another way, establishment o churches in various forms including the Anglican distorted the ‘redemptive arc’ and perpetuated slavery among ‘Christians’ centuries longer than need have been. The issues the CofE now faces are part off that distortion.
I’m not sure whether some kind of reparations is the, or part of the, way to go at this point; but add the needless perpetuation of slavery in ‘Christendom’ to all the other reasons why the CoE should get itself out of ‘establishment’ and go back to a more NT approach to Church/state relations ……
It was of course leading C of E Anglicans like Wilberforce who led the way in abolishing slavery. We don’t need this being used for yet another of your rants to try and disestablish and convert the C of E into a Baptist church in all but name
Actually, T1, Wilberforce led the political facet of the movement to abolish slavery. Its other wing comprised the nonconformists who preached to the slaves and saws them as brethren. Preaching to them was something the Church of England declined to do. Abolition required both facets.
T1/Simon
Yebbutt – only after centuries in which various versions of established church perpetuated slavery – and I think you’ll find the non-conformists got there first and led the antislavery movement.
You still haven’t explained where God himself, Jesus, or the apostles tell us to have an established church, against the MANY places in the NT teaching otherwise …..
The C of E grew out of the Roman Catholic church at the Reformation when Henry VIII broke with Rome and still has bishops of apostolic succession and Jesus himself anointed St Peter the first Pope to build the church on.
T1/Simon
If the RCs, Anglicans and Orthodox built on Peter, they would not have done the ‘establishment’ thing as they all did and do. See I Peter …
You still haven’t explained what is the value o an ‘apostolic succession’ in which those supposedly in the succession nevertheless contradict the apostles, and in areas like sexuality you seem to want the successors to disagree even more with the actual apostles …. Sorry but that really doesn’t make sense ….
(PS after initially seeing Peter as the rock, Augustine changed his mind – check it out ….)
The Roman Catholic church is not an established church outside Vatican city and nor is the Orthodox church outside Greece.
There doesn’t need to be value in apostolic succession beyond direct descent from St Peter of its bishops, the Church of England also interprets the word of God via Synod, established or not.
Whether Augustine was a Roman Catholic or not is of course irrelevant to St Peter being the first Pope. Though I would not expect a nonconformist low church Baptist like you to understand that!
T1/Simon
I put ‘establishment’ in ‘….’ to make the point that whatever name it is given, whatever the exact details, state entanglement, effectively entanglement with the world, is wrong and unbiblical and opposed to God. The only proper way to do state and church is the way the Bible teaches, which is a free church not entangled with the state. As taught by the alleged ‘first pope’ Peter….. And twisted by later popes….
“There doesn’t need to be value in apostolic succession beyond direct descent from St Peter of its bishops…” You basically confirm what I’ve said along; apostolic succession is empty and meaningless – unless you can show some concrete tangible value to it, which so far you haven’t. What does Peter as first Pope count for if you nearly 2000
years later, see fit to contradict his indisputable teaching in that first epistle and give priority apparently to a mere king of England – and one of the worst and most despotic at that?
Augustine was a ‘Doctor of the (RC) Church’ – a massive and important theologian whose opinions count for something.
Yet another reason why a nonconformist Baptist like you has no place commenting on the Church of England, for the Church of England was created precisely to be the established church of England in the 16th century. If you just want to attend a free church you should be Baptist, as you are, or Pentecostal or independent anyway, you certainly should not be in the Church of England. .
The fact you continue to reject the doctrine of bishops of apostolic succession, one of the core defining principles of global Anglican churches as well as the Book of Common Prayer, just confirms that.
T1/Simon
Yes, we all know that “the Church of England was created precisely to be the established church of England in the 16th century….”
The rather important question is whether that creation is a valid creation in line with the Word of God and the teaching of that word about church and state relations, or whether it is an invalid creation by a mere king of England who had no special authority in God’s Church and certainly no possible authority to contradict the teaching of the Divine Word. Since the teaching of the NT Word contradicts any and every idea of a ‘state church’, the CofE cannot be a valid creation ….. whether you like that or not ….. Simply to keep asserting otherwise proves nothing …..
As for ‘apostolic succession’, sure it is easy to show a chain of ‘succession’ from the early church to modern bishops. But two rather simple questions
1) RC, Orthodox and Anglican all claim ‘apostolic succession’ yet so contradict one another’s teaching that they cannot all have true ‘apostolic succession’ – and for sure RC and Orthodox do not recognise the Anglican succession ….
2) Can the apostolic succession be meaningful if at the end of the line of succession are bishops who clearly reject or deny the teachings of the actual original apostles as attested by the NT? And
a) since the Roman Imperial hijacking of the church in the 300sCE, all three of RC, Anglican and Orthodox have contradicted the apostolic teaching on state/Church relationships.
b) it is currently very obvious that many Anglican bishops, despite their place in the ‘succession’ are very much contradicting apostolic teaching on sexuality. How meaningful/useful is a succession that does not secure reliable apostolic teaching? Just repeating the phrase proves nothing….
No it is irrelevant whether Baptists like you think it is a creation in line with the word of God or more specifically don’t as it was created precisely to be the established church of England interpreting the Word of God via its Bishops, priests and laity now through Synod. The King of England of course is Supreme Governor of the C of E and has been since its foundation and if you refuse to accept that you have no place in the C of E either.
RC, Orthodox and Anglican churches all share bishops of apostolic succession yes as do Lutherans but that doesn’t mean they are identical. Anglican churches have women priests and don’t believe in transubstantiation unlike unlike the first two and uniquely base their doctrine on the Book of Common Prayer.
If you followed every word of scripture as I told you to be perfect you would have given away all your possessions to follow Christ which Jesus did mention while he never mentioned faithful same sex relationships being wrong, only Paul did.
T1/Simon
You still haven’t even begun to answer the simple question of how Henry VIII or any other English monarch can claim authority to ‘establish’ the CofE when God’s own Word, including the first epistle of ‘Pope’ Peter, teaches a very different way to do things. Henry and his successors are not God but must be subject to God; and if they or other human rulers disobey God, Christians are required to ‘obey God rather than man’.
You also fail to show any value to an apostolic succession which far from bringing unity has actually led to the different churches with such supposed succession actually fighting wars with each other…!!!!!
And yet again – Paul was an apostle, an appointed ambassador of Jesus; do you really believe his teaching on sexuality contradicted Jesus? Such contradiction would surely cast doubt on the concept of apostles as speaking for their Lord. Your whole position is increasingly incoherent …..
As they are King by divine right as any genuine member of the Church of England unlike a nonconformist Baptist like you would affirm.
Apostolic succession doesn’t need to have value even if it does, it just is the natural succession of all such Bishops from St Peter.
Given you reject Jesus’ own commandment to give away all your possessions to be perfect, to focus mainly on Paul’s opposition to same sex acts is of course pure hypocrisy
T1/Simon
“As they (English monarchs) are King by divine right as any genuine member of the Church of England unlike a nonconformist Baptist like you would affirm.”
There are NO “Kings by divine right” in a sense that would give them authority over the Church or authority to entangle state and Church. Sure we are required to be ‘subject to’ all secular rulers, even the Neros, Stalins, Hitlers and Trumps; but that subjection has clear limits and does not require us to obey rulers who go against God’s Word (as ‘establishment’ of the church in the state does).
https://stevesfreechurchblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/but-seriously-5-the-divine-right-or-wrong-of-kings/
‘Apostolic succession’ is of no use unless it secures the successors following apostolic teaching; and right now around about half of the CofE’s bishops are not following the teaching, and if you are right the vast majority of past CofE bishops have presumably been wrong because they have opposed homosexuality.
I do not ‘reject’ Jesus’ teaching; I do interpret it in a wider context which suggests that command was not absolute for all but specific to the rich young ruler. I hope you have sold all your possessions and given to the poor or you would decidedly be a hypocrite ….
Nor do I by a long way “focus mainly on Paul’s opposition to same sex acts” ; I focus on that topic here because it is often the main topic of threads on this blog. It is so because it is currently a very active controversy between Church and World.
The King of England is anointed by divine right, that is one of the core doctrines of the Church of England and if you refuse to accept that you have no place in the C of E. Apostolic succession and the BCP being the others, you rejection of 2/3 of them is exactly why nonconformist Baptists like you have no right interfering in C of E business
T1/Simon
The idea that “The King of England is anointed by divine right” may indeed be one of the core doctrines of the Church of England. The bigger question is whether it is a core doctrine of the wider Christian Church. And bluntly, it isn’t – the biblical ( = apostolic, remember) teaching on the place of rulers is very different, and must raise a serious question how far the CofE is or can be Christian when it goes against wider Christian teaching.
I reject an ‘apostolic succession” in which the successors are in practice defying apostolic doctrines; for me, a person who follows apostolic teaching ( = Jesus’ teaching) in the NT is a better successor of the apostles than a person on a long chain of ‘laying on of hands’ but who defies apostolic/NT teaching.
As for the BCP, the 39 Articles therein are clear that the ultimate source and standard of CofE teaching is the Bible – and in my experience I actually often believe more of the (mostly scriptural) Articles than are believed by most ‘liberal’ Anglicans. Where I diverge from Anglicanism is precisely in following the Bible (and therefore the apostles and Jesus) more closely – which is what the CofE itself ought to do if it really believes the Bible has supreme doctrinal authority …..
It is irrelevant whether it is a core doctrine of the wider Christian church, there are umpteen Christian denomonations but only ONE Church of England which was uniquely set up to be a church with the King as its Supreme Governor (with the only close parallel a few European Lutheran churches).
You are a nonconformist Baptist so you rejecting apostolic succession is irrelevant as you are in an evangelical church not even a church with Bishops of apostolic succession anyway.
The Bible is a source for any old Christian church from Orthodox to Roman Catholic, Lutheran to Baptist and Anglican, Pentecostal to Methodist or Presbyterian and Calvinist. There is nothing distinctly Anglican about the Bible being a source. The BCP however is unique to Anglicanism and the guiding source of Anglican doctrine
T1/Simon
And in the BCP I find the 39 Articles one of which states clearly
“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation”.
Another Article tells me
“The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation”.
So in effect the BCP admits the superior authority of the Bible, which in turn means that other beliefs of the CofE should be checked against the Bible and if necessary changed to agree with Scripture. And as it happens it is particularly in relation to its ‘establishment’ that the CofE does in fact fail to agree with Scripture and needs therefore to change in order to be true to the BCP basic teaching. If the CofE is ‘unique’ in ways which contradict Scripture it is to that extent not a true Church….
An Article also makes clear ‘The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction.’ So affirming the C of E’s role as the established church with the King as its Supreme Governor.
Indeed one of the very core prayers of the BCP affirms the King’s role as C of E governor
‘Almighty and everlasting God,
we are taught by thy holy Word,
that the hearts of kings are in thy rule and governance,
and that thou dost dispose and turn them
as it seemeth best to thy godly wisdom:
we humbly beseech thee so to dispose and govern the heart of
Charles thy Servant, our King and Governor,
that, in all his thoughts, words, and works,
he may ever seek thy honour and glory,
and study to preserve thy people committed to his charge,
in wealth, peace, and godliness:
grant this, O merciful Father, for thy dear Son’s sake,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
What is the Word of God and the meaning of scripture is also of course interpreted for the Church of England by Synod.
1) While it is ‘official’ in the Articles that the Bible is the authority and the Church has to follow the Word, one of the implications hasto be that even the other Articles are subject to and must agree with the Bible. The Article you quote about the King’s place is in fact in disagreement with the Bible. Same goes for the prayer you quote – the Bible gives no special place to the kings of England. These are not truly Christian doctrines but the self-serving ideas of the kings.
And likewise to be valid, Synod’s conclusions must be Biblical, which in so world-entangled a body as the CofE is increasingly doubtful. Many leaders appear to be consciously going against Scripture and so actually against the Church’s own teaching…..
Ian’s article and the individuals quoted make some excellent points.
This is not a minor issue. In essence, what Project Spire does is model how, in the opinion of the leadership, we should repent for other people’s sins. Like ‘safeguarding’, a PR disaster. The growing perception is that the Church is now primarily concerned about guarding its flock against predatory in-house sexual perverts, declassifying the sin of homosexual relations (having long since declassified M/F cohabitation) and digging up the sins of its slave-owning ancestors.
The gospel calls us to repent for our own sins and in so doing ‘put to death what is earthly in you: fornication [porneia], impurity, passion, evil desire…’. It is not evident that the Church of England elite, with the bandwagon their preferred mode of transport, understand anything of this.
Jesus also calls to love your neighbour as yourselves
“Silver and gold have I none and boy, doesn’t it make life easier!”
Superb article and please continue to be that ‘anglican blogger’. What is most striking—and troubling is not just the questionable historical and theological basis of the project, but the broader failure of due process, transparency, and open debate within the Church’s leadership structures. See also LLF/PLF and Safeguarding. I also sense an overlap between the reparations project and the carbon neutrality agenda, especially when you look at how both are often driven by institutional signalling, ideological pressure, and a willingness to spend other people’s money on highly debatable causes, often without proper accountability or measurable outcomes. It’s as if institutions, under pressure to appear “morally relevant,” are grasping at big symbolic gestures—whether it’s £100 million for historic sins, or committing to carbon neutrality by 2030—while basic, everyday responsibilities are neglected. You might even say both agendas reflect a kind of secular repentance theatre: showy, costly, and ultimately disconnected from the gospel’s call to personal transformation, justice grounded in truth, and care for the least among us—not ideological grandstanding.