Gary Jenkins has previously written on this website about the Church of England and its struggle to engage with the working class. In 2020, following a debate in General Synod, he concluded with this comment:
The really strange thing about the problem of the church’s relationship with the working class is that it is simply not perceived as a problem at all. The issue of class is scarcely on the agenda, but if we recall the famous saying of Archbishop Temple that the church is the only society that exists for the benefit of its non-members, the church will do well to reconsider its most enduring problem of the cities—its relationship with the working class—because in many areas those are the people most likely to be its non-members.
So much Christian effort is devoted to being fairer to the church’s existing members. It’s about dividing up the cake more equally amongst those who gather round the table but in the process a whole group is being forgotten, a massive group, comprising millions of people. They are not even at the table.
He has recently written an excellent Grove booklet called A Forgotten People: Mission, Evangelism and the Working Class. The first chapter sets the scene by exploring the place of the working class in our context.
2025 marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the seminal report Faith in the City: A Call for Action by Church and Nation from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas. It noted then:
The Church of England’s most enduring ‘problem of the city’ has been its relationship with the urban working class.
Forty years on the challenge remains, although in the last decade there have been growing signs of a renewed interest in urban mission, in work on social housing estates and low-income communities and in the issue of class.
The mission challenge is huge. Working-class people (however defined) make up a large, neglected and often forgotten group in the population. Working-class culture is frequently viewed in negative terms, with a focus on its problems and weaknesses, especially in the most socially deprived communities.
But what are the positives of working-class culture, and what are the biblical resonances with it? What methods, strategies and presentations of the gospel can enable a mainly middle-class church to engage in cross-cultural mission to and with working-class people? How can working-class people be equipped for leadership and mission in the church? How can the church receive their gifts? The book will aim to address these issues.
There is the danger of stereotyping. What may be said of a group generally may not apply to all. Nonetheless there are recognizable patterns that can be discerned in communities and cultures and it is helpful to consider these in order to enable mutual understanding and to engage profitably in mission. In that spirit, I offer these thoughts as a personal view from my own experience of growing up in a working-class family, from ministry in four south London parishes, and from my present role as Dean of Estates Ministry in the Diocese of Southwark. I aim to offer an affectionate but not uncritical view of the people from whom I come.
Who are Working-class People?
Some people think they no longer exist. It is suggested today that either no one is working class and, therefore, the term is an anachronism, or everyone is working class and therefore the term is meaningless. Although precise definitions are difficult, most working-class people react positively to the term and even embrace it with pride (a favourite working-class term—see below).
Some use the term too narrowly to refer only to the very poorest and most vulnerable in society, the people who, in one social classification, are referred to as ‘the precariat’ (‘the most deprived class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital’). The most enduring classification of social class employed in the UK, however, is that produced by the National Reader Survey which divides the population into the following six social grades:
| Class | Occupations | % of UK population in 2016 |
| A | Higher managerial, administrative and professional | 4 |
| B | Intermediate managerial, administrative and professional | 23 |
| C1 | Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial, administrative and professional | 28 |
| C2 | Skilled manual workers | 20 |
| D | Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers | 15 |
| E | State pensioners, casual and low-grade workers, unemployed with state benefits only | 10 |
Grades C2, D and E, which make up 45% of the population, comprise the working class. It is this group that is the concern of this booklet. This is a large group in society. It includes the poor, but not just the poor. It includes those with few or no academic qualifications, although many working-class people are highly trained and highly skilled. It includes families that are broken and in disarray, although many working-class families are together and function well.
Class is an important issue for the church to think about in terms of its mission ‘to all people everywhere’ (Matt 28.19 (GNB)). The working class are a missiologically discrete but diverse group, with particular values and outlooks on life. In any work of mission, it is important to take seriously matters of culture, but especially so in the case of working-class people because the church so often is a predominantly middle-class institution. Working-class people can be overlooked or problematized or the victim of stigma and prejudice.
Dagenham-born trade unionist Paul Embery has written about ‘why the modern left loathes the working class.’ He argues that the Labour Party has lost touch and sympathy with working-class people. He maintains that, though it is a diverse group:
There is a common thread running through most of the working class—one that is patriotic, often socially conservative, communitarian, rooted, and which places a high value on family, place, social solidarity and cultural stability.
Embery is a member of the Blue Labour movement whose leader, Maurice Glasman, believes that Labour has largely rejected the leadership of working-class people. For the church, another institution with a weak connection with the working class, some of the analysis coming from Blue Labour writers is very pertinent to our own situation.
The church is run by middle-class people for middle-class people and it thinks, operates and communicates in middle-class ways, almost without realizing it. The gospel is viewed from a middle-class perspective and is framed in ways that appeal to middle-class people and answer the questions they have. Paul Brown describes his early experience as a Christian as encountering an alien culture:
When I…first walked into a church meeting it was difficult to find people like me. People with similar values and interests, a similar accent and job. I quickly realized that this church was very middle class: middle-class attitudes, middle-class values and middle-class social circles all dominated. I have learnt over the years that my initial experience of church is far from unique. In fact, the dominant culture of the church in the UK typically reflects a middle-class life.
Similarly, a recent study found Church of England clergy from a working-class background experienced ‘discomfort and feelings of alienation manifest in different ways but often described as a vague sense of being out of place.’
Working-class people are overlooked because they are a very small group within most congregations and unrepresented in most church structures. They are overlooked because many live on estates which are geographically distinct and separate from the surrounding community. They are overlooked because they have proved difficult to reach and incorporate into the life of a largely middle-class church. They are overlooked when a church focusing too much on results goes for the easier to reach groups: students (in particular), some minority groups, and middle-class families.
They are overlooked because of (largely unspoken) prejudice towards working-class people. They are overlooked because they are seen as racists or the holders of unpopular opinions, for example, voting for Brexit, or believing that council houses should be sold to their occupants. They are the white van men. They are the people who display England flags on their houses or cars. They are proud of their country. They feel strangely victimized and they cannot work out why.
Very often the working class are simply absent from the church and its councils. They are not there to plead their cause, and few others are prepared to speak on their behalf and perhaps even fewer are prepared to listen. It is strange that so little recognition is given of that fact that the working class of England is so sparsely represented not just in the national church’s leadership, but in its congregations, too.
In my last parish the local football team, Millwall, famously has the slogan ‘Nobody likes us and we don’t care.’ This may say something about the (somewhat undeserved) reputation of Millwall fans but to turn the disdain of your detractors on its head by chanting ‘Nobody likes us’ with a kind of pride is a wonderful piece of working-class defiance and humour.
Of course, really, they do care and they are furious about it.
In the second chapter of the booklet, Gary explores the distinctive values of working-class culture:
Of course, there is the danger of stereotyping. Inevitably I am painting with broad brushstrokes, making generalizations about a large and diverse group in our society, but I aim to give something of the flavour of working-class culture seen from the perspective of my own experience of growing up in a working-class family.
He then goes on, in chapter 3, to consider how the gospel both affirms and challenges working-class culture, and in chapter 4, looks at some principles for and examples of good engagement with the working class, including from his own ministry. The final chapter ends with a call to action and engagement:
It is time for the humble to be lifted up. It is time for a new movement of mission to and with working-class people. It is time for a middle-class church to intentionally engage in cross-cultural mission with working-class people. It is time to redeploy the workers to the harder areas. It is time to direct financial resources to new and creative ways of working-class mission. It is time for the church to find new ways of working alongside working-class communities. It is time for the church to invest in the overlooked and disregarded. It is time to train and equip working class Christians to take the message of God’s love to their own communities and beyond. It is to time to repent of anti-working class prejudice and to find a new ‘epistemology of love’ that appreciates, understands, and celebrates what is good in working-class communities.
This is an excellent study—challenging, engaging, drawing from practical experience and offering possibilities for action.
You can order it in print or electronic format from the Grove website here. It deserves to be widely read.
Gary Jenkins is Dean of Estates Ministry in the Diocese of Southwark. He was previously the Vicar of St James and St Anne, Bermondsey in south London and Area Dean of Bermondsey. He is a member of the General Synod.
-Based on a very outdated and unreliable classification system : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tactical-voting-blog/election-polls-working-class-voters-party-yougov-a9217676.html
-Ignores intersectionality.
I am glad that it ignores intersectionality, since I consider that a misleading ideological concept.
Drawing attention to intersectionality is an entirely middle-class profession. There is no grass-roots working-class version of it.
Joe
Working class and Black is intersectionality.
It just means that people often belong to more than one demographic class and that the features of one can exacerbate problems in another
No, intersectionality has much more ideology to it than that. It effectively claims that being gay is an ethnicity.
Tim Chester has written an excellent book, Unreached, about the need to reach out to working class and deprived areas, and things to help us do so; it is important to realise that we need to be culturally appropriate, just as in any outreach – for example bearing in mind that bible study will look different in a non-book culture.
I have also been very struck by a talk by Danielle Strickland (Salvation Army, Canada and international speaker) about a mission set up on a council estate and how over time it foundered because people who came to faith often restructured their lives and moved to different areas, not seeing their mission to the place they came from.
Thanks for these helpful pointers.
An excellent piece; thank you, Gary.
I offer two thoughts for reflection:
1. The influence of contemporary hymnody’s emphasis addressing God in the first-person singular, rather than in the first-person plural.
2. In this country, politics, regardless of which of the main UK parties, has bought hook, line and sinker into the neo/con economic theory of the supremacy of the market, which results in directing wealth upwards whilst professing the lie of trickle-down monies. That leads me to ask the question whether this philosophy holds power in the upper echelons of the CofE; my sense is that it may well do so.
Therefore, if our worship is to reflect our theology, spirituality and be expressed outwardly in service and in how we fulfil God’s purposes, then perhaps those two thoughts may offer a corrective starting line.
Has anyone surveyed whether the Church of England does noticeably better or worse in this area than (a) the Catholics and/or (b) the other protestant denominations and/or (c) the black-majority churches?
Nobody has surveyed this. What would be the point?
The CofE is no longer confident that it can ‘reach’ anyone – or even ask the right questions about belief. It’s on the same trajectory as Methodism.
I think this is a real question. Why are we developing creative plans to reach other groups when we are in such serious decline?
In hope of arresting the decline, presumably. But the core problem is liberal theology, which is living death to the body of Christ (and is why Welby’s successor is unlikely to be better).
Not quite, the C of E has £8 billion of assets and investments built up over centuries the Methodists don’t. It also still does not perform same sex marriages in its churches unlike the Methodists
Assets, investments and SSM are not major factors in belief – the making sense of reality that is at the heart of any religion.
Good luck finding a Methodist church to perform a SSM when there are no longer any Methodists.
You can believe and read the bible at home, it doesn’t keep churches open unless you give weekly sums to a church you attend at its collection on Sundays or online. Or said church has large numbers of assets and investments built up to sustain it
Acts 3:6
A fine miracle for the beggar in person but still does not fund the churches to stay open, unlike weekly collections and built up assets
It’s (another) problem of church hierarchy. The CoE’s hierarchy is inevitably middle class or yet further still from the working class – look at Bash Nash’s strategy to put into leadership men from the top public schools – and it will inevitably patronise the working class. If the set of congregations in a town is autonomous, which I take to be the NT model once the founding apostolos is gone, then leadership will by with the right people.
The nonconformists are the movement who did their best among the new working class of the burgeoning towns of the Industrial Revolution. EP Thompson didn’t think much of them in his sprawling book, but he was a man of blood at heart.
I think you have mistaken Bash Nash’s strategy. He saw his mission field as the Public Schools of England. Almost by definition, the pupils from these schools become, for better or worse, the leaders in the country. Consider just how many Prime Ministers were at Eton! He saw in the 1930’s the dismal state of Christianity in these schools. There was no recognisable preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How good would it be if some of these boys who were so likely to become leaders where brought to be followers of Jesus Christ.
I can think of one counter-example to the thesis about patronising the working class. He was the one who, at university, helped me become a Christian and in my first faltering step. He had been at one of the top public schools, and was, I think, converted at Iwerne. He had spent his gap year (not called that then) at a youth club in a northern inner city, also working at a regular job. After university he trained and was ordained and will have just retired having his spent his entire ministry in that same northern inner city. I don’t think he patronised them. He would not have lasted.
I think you have mistaken Bash Nash’s strategy. He saw his mission field as the Public Schools of England. Almost by definition, the pupils from these schools become, for better or worse, the leaders in the country.
But it wasn’t a mission field. As I understand it, Iwerne was for those young men who were *already* believers. Nash also looked only to the major public schools – John Smyth reportedly had a chip on his shoulder about having been at only a minor one. So I defend my original assertion. And I doubt that Smyth would have got so far with boys from day schools…
Iwerne was not entirely for those who were already believers or that way inclined. There was sometimes a fine line in terms of actual belief; some people were unreflective, or green, or were convinced in some ways and not others. Some invited friends to the school CUs and the friends, with the flimsiest Christian connection, could sometimes then get a camp invitation on that basis, especially if they were seen as a likely leader of the future. Camp leaders would in fact have tabs on who had and had not made a commitment, and there were a few who had not, for whom prayers were a priority behind the scenes.
“And I doubt that Smyth would have got so far with boys from day schools…”
Good point. They were an odd mix of privileged and vulnerable.
“The Making of Them” by Nick Duffell…
There is no longer much of a working-class in church on Sunday to patronise. They have left. They only show up for weddings and funerals (where their uncouth ways are often sneered at by middle-class officials). They know they are not welcome/wanted in numbers that would change the culture of the church. Matters of leadership and hierarchy are completely off the radar. They don’t “feel at home” in the pews.
Yes. I would say that they do.
Evangelical churches (inside and outside, but inside certainly true) of the CoE are very heavily dominated by middle-class and upper middle class people & I think the concerns and focus of these groups are not those of working people. I don’t think I have ever heard prayers offered for those worried about job losses, worried about making ends meet and so on. I’ve heard plenty of prayers for the environment, for peace in various conflicts etc. This is all highly ancedotal and could be because I live in an affluent area – but the sense is that the ‘poor’ are somewhere outside the Church and are passive objects of charity, that people inside the Church have other concerns and are not to be concerned with worldly success and wealth (often coming from people with low or paid mortgages, secure jobs or good pensions). The net effect for people in the middle (strivers) is to feel like they don’t belong in the Church as they will get little or no sympathy for sleepless nights over how specific economic trends are going to impact somebodies family life (and I’m taking about inflation, interest rate increases, tax rises & other general economic issues – I’m deliberately not being party political here but it is a fact that since 2008 wages have stagnated).
I think the concerns and focus of these groups are not those of working people.
It’s far more basic than that. Working-class people know that they have to change the way they speak to feel accepted in church. Trump’s recent electoral victory was incomprehensible to everyone who did chat about it in my (evangelical) church and responding to it with anything other than sour-faced comments of disapproval would not have been tolerated. No MAGA jokes. No banter. No doing the silly Trump dance.
Nobody in my bible study has even heard of Joe Rogan!!
Yes.
Is Christianity only coded to soft Blairite centrism or does it recognise that that the ‘system’ is failing and that the lights on the control panel are flashing red.
Gary makes some very interesting observations. In my own (Baptist church) which is situated in a small coastal town, our congregation is overwhelmingly working class in categories D and E . Only the minister and myself ( I am a lay pastor) would be classed as B and A, with one of our deacons also B.
The town is highly polarised culturally, with second home owners, yachts people and very wealthy middle class retired folk occupying one half of the town and working class the other, who live on estates at the back of of the town where our church is situated. The main Anglican church is situated in the centre among the well-heeled middle class who are their main clientele.We do not have a great deal to to with the Anglican church although we do have some Anglicans who occasionally attend our church from outlying villages as their local churches are devoid of numbers and vicars.
We have found that there is an unspoken attitude from the Anglicans that they are ‘the professionals’ and we are ‘ the amateurs’. In fact the middle-class folk in the town condescendingly regard the estate where we are situated as ‘the reserve’ despite it being made up of working -class people who are essential to keep the town’s essential low -paid utility services like shops and transport etc running for the benefit of all.
We have a thriving toddlers group but we did have one well -heeled christian lady who came and left because the other mums weren’t ‘her kind of people’ and didn’t want to mix with them. We also have people come in to our church with complex social and mental needs for which the Anglicans simply don’t want to know. In fact we have had them referred to us.
We encounter this middle class attitude in other ways as well. A long standing elderly member of our congregation died and her family wanted the local Anglican church to conduct the funeral as they were the ‘proper church’. This was despite her verbal wishes that it should be conducted in our own church. The local Anglican church drafted in a vicar to take the service who knew nothing about her, took the service (and money) and that was that. The family afterwards were shocked by the impersonal nature of it all and wished it had been done in our church – and, we would have done it for free!
I have found that preaching to a mainly working class congregation means I have to adjust both the style and content of my preaching and find methods of connecting with them in ways they can resonate with which often means avoiding lengthy theological discourses and words and speaking from experience. They also like the ‘Bible Project’ animated material which I sometimes show in the service. Song -wise the we use a lot of MP songs but try to avoid the ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ stuff which does not go down well at all.
These are only my own observations, but I am guessing that the ‘middleclassness’ in Anglican churches is less prevalent in non-conformist ones, although I may be wrong. However, Jesus’s own disciples were a motley crew from diverse class backgrounds yet they went on spread the gospel effectively. In time, they also managed to get along with each other.
After all, we may choose our friends but it’s God that chooses our next door neighbours..
Thanks Chris for this great contribution. It mirrors my experience in a C of E parish which was very divided socially by a main road. We were the only church but the social devide was too big for us to bridge it effectively and the congregation was almost entirely from the more prosperous area.
Great observations Chris.
We have a thriving toddlers group but we did have one well -heeled christian lady who came and left because the other mums weren’t ‘her kind of people’ and didn’t want to mix with them.
A lot of church life is just social stuff and it is a lot easier to mix with your own ‘kind of people’. This lady was only doing what working-class people do but it would be much easier for her to find another church where she did feel at home.
This middle-class imbalance shows up clearly at Christian festivals – which pull in people from across the country. Ministers should pay attention to who in their church never go to these whole day/weekend gatherings.
Thanks Chris.
Given the radical economic and social changes that have been sweeping across the world on account of the digital revolution, it seems increasingly difficult to tease out precise groupings of people and to understand what is going on in their minds. But two truths are unchanged: the human heart remains as it ever was since the start of humankind; and the tendency towards tribalism (however it manifests itself) will probably always be with us.
I had the privilege of being born – literally – in an evangelical C of E vicarage. I became a day boy at a public school (which also had a lot of borders). I could cycle there and back the 2.5 miles from our village. The education was second to none but school life was never my thing, although I did subsequently do the 3 years of university expected of middle class children. From the age of 14 I used to head off to our local farm in the school holidays and get ‘real life’ education – out in all weathers, fixing and using farm machinery, handling cattle and mixing with some seriously tough guys; I loved it, not least because I’m an outdoor type of person. I view getting the chance to understand the contrasting experiences and attitudes of the people in those utterly different environments was an amazing benefit. But it also made me a lifelong misfit in the sense that the perspective I’d gained meant that I could never fully sign up to either group!
I think Gary Jenkins has got it right. Working class people retain a more enduring affection for, and reliance on, and even understanding about, those basic physical, social and economic realities which sustain life. They have no choice about that because, even in our relatively affluent western societies, they live nearer to the edge than their middle class neighbours. So while their ability or desire to engage and articulate at a more academic level may be less obvious, they may well possess a practical experience and wisdom about life which deserves genuine respect. We can all learn from each other – but it sometimes requires humility.
Whatever our own personal background, we Christians should love and respect people whatever their circumstances. If the vision of our equal citizenship in heaven seems insufficient for us to overcome that divide (viewed from either direction), we might do well to engage our imagination more seriously with the geographic, physical and social reality of Jesus’ 3 year ministry as it actually played out in the gospel narrative rather than instinctively try to spiritualise every event and personal encounter. Perhaps such an exercise could help us see what really matters in our church life and its mission to our surroundings. We not only have to leave our social prejudices outside the church door as a conscious imperative, we have to banish them from our hearts as a permanent way of thinking.
Donald – this is very good and its a theme that I cannot get away from; the world we all grew up in – if we are over 40 at least – was a world in which the ‘1st world’ was light years away developmentally from the ‘developing world’ (think about Band Aid & Live Aid) and which material prosperity was increasing year on year. It was a world in which we could coast a little, living off the interest of resources built up from the imperial era and the industrial revolution that proceeded it.
Now I would say we are in a time of decadence (see Ross Douthat’s excellent book of the same name) – where we seem to be bumping up against the limits of technological (real space, not digital) technologies and our culture is stagnating (look at TV and Movies in the last 15 years) There are still great disparities in wealth globally, but many more countries have a decent sized fairly affluent, well educated middle-class. In a digital world our children will have much more competition from university educated all around the world. In the west we have had economic stagnation accompanied by a baby bust and unprecedented levels of immigration.
What does any of this mean for the Church? I’d suggest that rather that seeking revival and transformation of society, I’d say that Churches should be considering how they can offer sanctuary and safety from the world at large; Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ style ‘thick’ communities rather than ‘Seeker Sensitive’ or ‘Attractional’ services.
The ‘thick’ communities are usually cult-like. Evangelicals have tried this a million times with the same results: a socially conformist subculture organised around a charismatic leader or a mission project so focussed as to be inhuman (with the inevitable churn of abuse cases). Love is always missing from this attempts at sanctuary and safety from the world at large. Jesus certainly never tried it.
We aren’t Jesus. We are the Church. What did the Church do to carry the faith through the collapse of empires, to live under hostile regimes and times of strife?
Such an endeavour doesn’t need leaders to follow, so much as a baseline of practices and habits. I think “evangelicalism” is doomed to die.
It’s a problem in the Catholic Church in the West too.
Below is an insight from an American priest. He raises two points that from my own experience ring true. As a child, I remember Sunday Mass being communal gatherings and social occasions as well as worship. There were parish clubs for men, women and children. And Sunday was still a special day for families, with shops closed, special Sunday dinners and listening to the radio together in the afternoon and watching family programmes together in the evening on TV.
In the highy industrialised City where I gew up, the industries have gone along with the surrounding rows and rows of tearrced housing and the many pubs.
There was a large Catholic Church presence (supported by on site Catholic clubs (as an alternative to pubs).
Now there has been a substantial withdrawal of the Catholic Church (and CoE) and the terraced housing is being replaced by ‘aspirational’ middle class housing with multi -national occupant, with no sense of history of place.
In the 1970/80’s it was known that Jesuits lived and worked there as labourers.
Do churches want people back as cultural Christians? Some denominations might say “Yes, fine we’ll take that” but evangelicals will probably say “No, faith is more than showing up on a Sunday”
The working-class seemed to have abandoned both frameworks – genuine belief and cultural affiliation. The cultural alienation part is easily understood (most churches are now solidly middle-class spaces and working-class people no longer feel at home there) but it is not obvious why working-class people are less likely to be lacking in spiritual curiosity or a more profound interest in religious ideas.
It could be that evangelicals are just as likely to be cultural Christians as any other kind of Christian (despite their claim to be the ‘Bible-believing” authentic kind) and the disproportionate number of middle-class people in evangelical churches isn’t something that requires further explanation.
Maybe there will be a new working-class revival (independent of any middle-class attempt at outreach) and it will no longer be difficult to explain why ‘regenerate’ people always prefer to go on walking holidays in the Lake District.
Thanks for this article, Gary.
As well as the Faith in the City report in 1985 there was also the (very poor in my view) Mission Shaped Church Report of 2004. It made the basic error of arguing that localities (i.e. in church terms, parishes) didn’t matter much because we now lived in networks and were free agents to travel where we wanted. This played in to the middle class and urban choice based approach to gathered church mission which has been very damaging and has encouraged us to select the type (brand, theology) of church that suits us rather than simply going to the local church and discovering the Kingdom of God there with the mixed bag of people from that area and the mixture of theological perspectives they bring. There is so much to learn from working class communities and their churches.
Some churches still play poor attention to “localities” and with the emaciating effect of “gathered church” can shoot themselves in the foot regarding evangelism/mission.
“Gathered church” does have its strengths, if nothing else, in momentum aiding, higher numbers. But that assumes a certain shape of church and is not alway without negative effects on other churches.
In the days when attendance was often higher the realities were made less visible. Those days are gone. It’s not easy to re-engage in mission as it is to let it wither.
I recently got a taxi from Marylebone station which went past the Victoria in Strathearn Place, Paddington. This pub has the oldest bar furniture in London (1860s) — elaborate woodwork and cut glass — a rare survival. Imagine what it must have been like in the old days, with gas lighting and a fire. A warm, sparkling community, different from one’s home. It is this Gin Palace environment that the Anglo-catholic missions of the late 19th c. were competing with. Worship that “put on a show”, conveyed a sense of the numinous, took you out of yourself for a while, and made a break from your daily circumstances — while at the same time you knew that the priest (upper middle class) was making an effort to understand your world — hence the origins of Christian Socialism.
On occasion last year, I attended the Liturgy at the Orthodox Cathedral in Chiswick. 90 per cent of the congregation, Russian and Ukrainian, are the demographic we are speaking of.
Is any part of the above relevant to our situation?
Yes, in some poor areas of south London (c1870 -1940) the C of E was more effective at engaging with working class people than the Methodists who were seen as very respectable and drew the prosperous working class.Poorer people were welcomed at the parish churches for specific occasions: baptisms, weddings, funerals, watch night, Christmas, Easter etc. They were mainly Anglo-Catholic churches led by Father figures. Incarnational theology and the centrality of the sacraments were the heart of the parish.
20 Schemes, in Scotland may have some pointers for engagement and learning (though the leadership demographics may be found to be to far beyond the pale for CoE ecclesiology or networking cliques.
Here is a link through
Mez McConnell founder.
https://20schemesequip.com/multi_author/mez-mcconnell/
At the start of covid, we listened to some services from a new churh plant in Charleston, Dundee, wih young minister Andrew Roberston.
It was so far outside anything we’ve encountered in our church life but so encouraging.
It is is so far from middle class systems in any denomination.
Nevertheless there can be an irriducible commonality between classes: pride and its divisivness, only overcome by the Gospel of Jesus.
This discussion asks too little about why the working class has neglected the churches. Less of a class or socio-political left / right axis would reduce prejudices from all sides within and beyond the churches.
Secular radical feminism and their masculinist dupes, calling on identitarian CRT have side-stepped the Church and Gospel into their synthesised do-gooder world. They fail to perceive the inevitable fallenness / flawed rationality of human nature in themselves, observing it only in those they condemn. Their well-anchored philosophy appears to have no Aristotelian or Platonic kindness. They rest on compassion and charity only for those they define as a class of victims, survivors and the oppressed of past centuries.
Critics of rhe Christian church can be as bad virtue signallers as Chrisian leaders themselves. World Christianity within and beyond its institutions believes in and endeavours to live socially according to Judaeo-Chrisiian values subtended upon well-known creeds, all publicly declaimed lin liturgies, ceremonies and prayers, similar in orthodox denominations.
My appeal to the ‘classes’, with whichever you identify, forget the semantics of left, right, virtuous and principled or the great unwashed you love to ‘other’ or destroy. Immerse yourselves in a life of service to the world and not merely your chosen virtue set.
Has the Christian Church ignored the working class or have working class elites after the enlightenment, urbanisation and secularisation ignored the church? Have they preferred economically wasteful international sport, imitation travel luxuries and indulgent popular or celebrity entertainment?
Let us point a little more to the great saints of every faith, instead of peering critically into the souls of those whose virtue we fail imitate, then trying to destroy historic institutions we choose to dislike. Rationalists! Have a look inside the Christian Church, you workers, bourgeoisie and nobility (select your class, race, age, gender or ism), and list the virtues and ideals you might do well to practise!
A distinction should be made between working-class and low income or ‘deprived’. Millionaire footballers and the silicon enhanced wives are as working-class as anyone on benefits. A roofer earning good money will feel as ‘out of place’ in a typical middle-class Anglican church as anyone who can’t afford to put more than a few coins in the collection bag.
If anything, it is the ‘deprived’ who will play the middle-class game in exchange for free stuff – while the working-class who don’t need charity stay well away from snobby church people.
Joe S,
Yes, social class is a slippery concept that is difficult to define solely by income/employment?
In 1969 I spent a week at the home of my new university friend from Aberystwyth — his father worked as a railway signal man and his mother in a sewing factory. The tin bath hung on the wall of their humble home.
But the walls were lined with books, Radio 4 was on most of the time, and the conversation erudite – often about Welsh poetry — they were all bilingual.
What is for sure it was totally different to my more affluent traditional working-class home.
Colin
Have you come across the remarkable book “The intellectual life of the British working class” by Jonathan Rose?
Anton,
No. Have just acquired it on Amazon and will read it.
I wonder if the British working class still have those autodidacts and intellectually curious; I think social media and smart phones have made them dumber.
I think of Mark E Smith: the kind of working class genius only the Manchester of Peterloo and Engels is (was) able to produce.
Indeed. The same could be said for parts of Scotland in the not so distant past, where relative poverty could often go hand in hand with a literate book-centred culture – very often, the Bible and metrical psalms. It would be interesting to consider how far television killed off reading. Even today in middle class ‘university’ educated circles you find a great aversion to reading anything longer than a blogpost.
Yet publishers keep turning out the books. Are they being read?
In Scotland the best known attempt at reaching the working classes was the work of the Gorbals Group. Between 1963 and 1971 three Church ministers – led by the Rev. Geoff Shaw – lived in a flat in the worst slum area of the day, the Gorbels in Glasgow. With an ‘open door’ policy, they were in constant contact with the local population, running youth clubs, street activities, dealing with people’s problems, including representing them in court. Interestingly, any attempt at organising worship failed (although the local Catholic Sunday mass was quite well attended). This experience led Shaw into Labour politics as a local Glasgow councillor, and later Convener of Strathclyde Regional Council, covering half of Scotland.
Typically the Church of England has always been a largely middle class and upper class church led church. Even in the 19th century in rural areas the landed gentry and aristocracy would have their own pews separate from those of their working class staff.
Working class people who are still Christians tend to gravitate now to evangelical churches like the Baptists or Pentecostals or which are independent charismatic. In Wales before the Methodists decline it was historically the working class and lower middle class who were Methodists and the upper middle class who went to the Church in Wales. Even the Roman Catholic church has percentage wise had more working class worshippers than Anglican churches, especially in areas like Liverpool.
Now yes the C of E can try and reach out to working class worshippers in Parishes in working class areas and engage in community activities but it will remain largely middle class. Even its great C of E cathedrals are in largely middle class Remain areas like York, Canterbury, inner London, St Albans, Chichester, Norwich, Winchester etc rather than working class Brexit voting areas like Stoke, south Essex, Hartlepool, East Kent, the Black Country etc with a few exceptions like Lincoln
Slightly OT, but can I ask why Christians are so low-key on the subject of assisted dying? It is the conversation with the most obvious ‘religious implications’ out there in the news today and yet Christians seem to be dodging it. Is it the middle-class tendency to niceness in evangelical churches that prevents them from saying anything controversial?
Who will stand up and say there are eternal consequences for a “right to choose” (the historic Christian position). The leadership in my church won’t make that claim – which I find astonishing – and would rather focus on families, babies and anything that is inoffensive to vast majority of people, Christian or secular.
Joe, you seem to have a polemic against evangelicals. Yet the faults in others which you condemn are found across the board. Have you ever heard a liberal condemn abortion?
“Assisted dying” is another infernal euphemism for aiding suicide, which has always been a crime in this country. The same dishonest use of language is found in calling killing unborn babies being “pro-choice”.
Suicide was lauded in pagan antiquity and was sometimes commanded (e.g. the Senate ordered Nero to kill himself). It was only Christianity which made suicide a mortal sin.
The slippery slope of a post-Christian (anti-Christian?) culture goes in a very predictable way.
First, you separate sex from marriage.
Then you approve abortion because of all the extra-marital pregnancies.
Then if it’s no big deal to kill unborn life, then why not really sick people with no hope of recovery – as long as they ‘consent’, of course.
Next …. well, those with dementia. those who are chronically depressed, those who are seriously handicapped ….
and hey presto, eugenics (which didn’t start in 1933 but the 1920s) is with us.
Joe, you seem to have a polemic against evangelicals
I persevere among them (as my core beliefs line up). But they are not “my people”. There are churches where I would feel more at home socially but they tend to be very liberal to the point of unbelief (and none are nearby). My family are working class – which is why I’m all over this topic. On the ground, I don’t speak up or cause a fuss about any of the cultural stuff but the sense of feeling “out of place” never goes away. The majority of evangelicals I have met are middle-class and were raised in the culture. There’s no denying that this makes a difference to any newcomers from different backgrounds.
“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Romans 15.7
I’m from a very poor working class background (grew up mainly on benefits), but most of my (intelligent) family became middle class professionals through university education and hard work. Social change can happen all the time, and if a person is religious, it’s usually in an upward direction as the virtues of study, thrift, ambition and temperance are played out. John Wesley understood this point well. Very often to be a Christian in working class culture means swimming against a hostile tide (not that middle class atheists are any nicer, maybe they just hide it better).
My own congregation in a university city is very middle class, full of highly educated professionals – and also extremely committed to helping the poorest people in our city, through a make lunch club, mums and toddlers group, an open youth club and several free community events in the year (family fun days, holiday club). Others were sent out from the church to re-plant a congregation in a poor estate. All of this is expensive and makes big denands on people’s time. But I have no doubt they are committed to sharing the gospel with everyone. Including sacrificial giving to educational mission work among Africa’s poorest.
I am often humbled by people’s generosity.
There’s earnings and then there are cultural factors (including education). Low earnings and culture do correlate but, to be honest, a lottery winning working-class person is going to struggle to feel at home in any of the ‘top tier’ evangelical churches. A broke individual from a middle-class raised-in-the-culture family will have no problem fitting in.
The irony is that the 1st century super-Christians were chavs by our modern standards.
Is it a question of class, or a one of the doctrine of universalism that is abroad in the church, or even of unbelief: that death is the terminus of bios?
The very consideration of eternal matters, separates Christianity from mere works or the so called social gospel, which, without Christ, is merely secular, or demononstration of God’s common grace.
It’s Ian’s blog, and if he chooses to post an essay about it then I expect many of us will have plenty to say. Otherwise, it would be off-topic.
Talking to few people in my church about it last week (someone else brought it up) I sense there is class element to discussing /not discussing the topic and what anyone can say about it. The one person (elderly woman) who wanted to know if those who opt for AD are going to hell is one of the few working-class people in the church. Her question was then handled ‘sensitively’ as they say by the team – and the discussion quickly directed to a less disruptive topic.
And sure, it’s Ian blog – so he can write about whatever he likes.
(Bishop) Graham Tomlin published an article in the Times about this subject (spolier: he is against assisted dying). That’s not exactly ‘low-key’.
The Christian Institute has been quite vocal in articles and encouraging people to write to their MP.
Also a former bishop of Worcester wrote from personal experience against ‘assisted dying’ when George Carey was foolish enough to advocate it a decade ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/17/my-wife-knew-she-was-dying-but-chose-life
Most people agree with the saying that extreme cases make bad law. The assisted dying debate is about a minority of a minority – those who can’t kill themselves but want to.
We must call it by its proper name: it is not assisted dying, it is assisted suicide.
Hospice care is assisted dying.
This is the rejection of a basic medical principle since the days of Hippocrates.
I agree. Thank you.
German doesn’t mess about: its word for suicide is Selbstmord.
Recently, a well known political commentator quoted with approbation the following musing of the Victorian poet William Henley: ” I am the master of my own fate. I am the captain of my soul. ” In the light of the recent decision by the Commons “assisted suicide, the commentator added the following rider: ” does our country truly believe that each of us is guaranteed dominion over our own bodies and souls? All the available evidence says most people take Henley’s view.
This raises at least two salient issues: First, what does he mean by ‘ guaranteed’? But more to the point: he has clearly not followed through the transparent logic of Henley’s simplistic stance!
The subject can be broached but nobody will talk about the ‘eternal consequences’ of self-deletion (the historic Christian position).
The CoE was once the church of the rural poor (who were sometimes obliged to attend weekly), but it has never really reached the urban working classes, with the partial exception of Anglo Catholic mission in the 19thC.
The CoE needs more priests like Alex Frost and Luke Larner.
All Anglican priests should have to do a minimum of seven years in a poor parish. Make it a condition of ordination.
Also weight the stipend: the richer the parish, the lower the pay (not least because the house, as benefit in kind, is worth more). That would help fix the inexplicable call to “nice” areas.
Anglican clergy are not Catholic priests – childless unmarried men you can stick in a house with other childless unmarried men.
If you want to call for single or childless missionaries, fine. But remember there are very often already Pentecostalist and other missions operating in these places. Will Anglicans have the humility to work alongside them?
Remember also that vocations have crashed in the C of E: they are down 40% from whee they were a few years ago. Have you any solution to this? Compulsory ordination?
No, richer Parishes in the C of E already subsidise poorer Parishes without their vicars having to take lower pay too. If vicars in poorer Parishes want higher pay they can increase the weekly congregation and Sunday collection and giving and their pay accordingly
“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” cried Scrooge. “There are,” said his nephew, “but those within them would rather die.” Scrooge replied, “If they would rather die, they had better do it and reduce the surplus population.”
Christmas comes early thanks to Ebenezer Simon, who has voted in favour of (Even More) Assisted Dying for the Church of England.
The Church of England has £8 billion in assets and investments and could survive quite comfortably without a single priest in poorer areas. Indeed it probably makes a net loss from having a presence in poorer areas as the weekly giving of the congregation is likely less and their Parish share payments lower so they have to be subsidised by richer Parishes.
Now in Christian terms the C of E should maintain its presence in poorer areas and encourage priests there to build up congregations in them. However financially and balance sheet wise they don’t make much money for church funds.
I also oppose assisted dying as do most Anglicans except George Carey
I was referring to your complete lack of interest in seeing the Gospel being proclaimed among the poorest people in Britain. You would be quite happy to see the C of E disappear there, as long as country churches are open for same-sex ‘marriages’ and similar essential services.
Do you really disdain poor people?
That wasn’t our Lord’s attitude or his apostles’. ‘Not many of you were rich ….’
If your primary interest is proclaiming the Gospel in the poorest Parishes, just join a Pentecostal or Baptist or charismatic evangelical church in a deprived part of an inner city or poor ex industrial or seaside town.
The C of E is an Anglo Catholic as much as an evangelical church whose primary role is providing Parish ministry as well as weddings and funerals in the existing historic Parish churches it already has.
Same sex marriages are not relevant on that either way particularly, though at the moment the C of E Synod has voted still not to approve them in its churches only services with prayers for same sex couples in its Parishes.
As for poor people, as Mrs Thatcher said the Good Samaritan wouldn’t have been of much use if he didn’t have the wealth to help the distressed traveller.
‘If your primary interest is proclaiming the Gospel in the poorest Parishes, just join a Pentecostal or Baptist or charismatic evangelical church.’
What? And I thought you kept banging on about the parish system, and how it meant the C of E covered everyone…??
‘The C of E is an Anglo Catholic’ Not if you actually read the Articles, which still define the doctrine of the C of E.
‘could survive quite comfortably without a single priest in poorer areas’
Survive as what?! I thought you kept claiming that the parish system meant that we should be reaching everyone…
It does, a C of E church in every Parish for parishioners to attend every Sunday, once a month or at Christmas or Easter or only for weddings and funerals as they wish. The C of E is half Anglo Catholic (hence for example it performs infant baptism and has Bishops of apostolic succession) and half evangelical
The idea that clergy are all equally suited to rich/poor areas is obvious nonsense…
Secondly…you don’t seem to know much about clergy housing. I’ve worked in both kinds of area and the assumption rich area = good housing is naive. Try living in a vast Victorian house with poor heating that you can’t afford to turn on much… or a house that turned your furniture and clothes mouldy.
A stipend is not a salary or reward.
You are right, Ian, he has no idea of the housing reality that Anglican clergy typically face, even in well-to-do parishes.
John Stott lived in a flat above a garage for many years.