In my previous blog, I talked about Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead’s recent book, That was the Church, that was (which I’ll refer to as TWC): its gloomy portrait of the present state of the Church of England and its summary of the things which the church will have to consider seriously if there is to be any hope of recovery. Among these considerations were:
Congregations, as the paymasters, need to be given a full say in the running of the Church, and that members who hardly ever show up but value the Church’s services need to be respected and included.
The job of clergy needs to be radically rethought (because they are expected essentially to do everything), and many of their functions need to be transferred to, or shared with, lay people, while self-supporting clergy should become the norm.
The Church of England needs to recover its mixed nature, with mutual recognition of value between all forms of churchmanship, and once more be a church for the nation rather than for itself.
I have by me another book, which for reasons which will become apparent I will for the moment call the White Book (WB). This consists of a number of papers given at what sounds like a very stimulating and radical conference focused on the role of the laity. Coming from within the ranks of C of E members, rather than investigative journalists or experts on religious practice, WB is very different in scope, coverage, and feel from TWC, but its arguments are likewise expressed in pretty plain language, not theologese. What strikes me is that, despite its quite different origins and aims, WB shows so many points of agreement with TWC.
One very important overlap is the subject of the clericalization of the Church of England, about which several contributors to WB are emphatic. They make the same points as TWC about lay involvement having declined since the days when the parish vestry had local government responsibilities, so that the C of E has come to be regarded as just ‘provided’. Meanwhile, they point out, the clergy think and act as a professional group who have all the know-how while the laity are powerless.
They insist that there must no longer be a sense that the clergy person is the leader and the lay person the passive receiver and helper; both ought to be working together and learning from each other; the laity should take their rightful place of leadership with and not below the clergy. They quote with approval another writer’s critical words: ‘The picture of the parish in action which the Anglican Church wishes to emphasize and perpetuate: a struggling vicar grappling with an impossible task, visiting, organizing, evangelizing, preaching, praying, teaching, celebrating, while his churchwardens, and those of the faithful who can be persuaded, help him.’ They also insist that the church should recognize the value of those who rarely appear in church, but whose commitment is expressed through their involvement in the ordinary world, and in fact recommend that such involvement should be rated above the kind of absorption in churchy activities which mark out the ‘clericalized’ lay person. One contributor even says: ‘It is a serious question for the lay person whether they can really exercise their discipleship primarily within the religious organization or not.’
As regards church partisanship, a contributor says that the church should not be a ‘place where religion of a certain brand brings people together at stated times for stated activities, but a brotherhood where everybody finds his or her place and his or her task and where the creative fact is the living Christ’—this is expressed in a more ‘religious’ way than TWC would put it, but places the same emphasis as it does on tolerance and the abandonment of infighting. And again: ‘A church which is not outward-looking has ceased to be a church as the Body of Christ and has become a club for the benefit of its members’.
In fact in some ways WB is a lot more radical in its critique of the C of E than TWC is. For example, one contributor considers (in defiance of the mantra that there is a shortage of clergy) that too many priests are ordained, and that a bad priest is worse than no priest (certainly TWC features some classic bad ones). Another says ‘There will need to be a radical reorientation of the way in which Church spends its time and a ruthless elimination of many activities, especially a radical re-examination of those which seek to concern themselves exclusively with membership of the church.’ And one contributor calls for a movement of lay people that is initiated and led by lay people without clergy sponsorship: ‘The next great transformation could be over the role of the laity, though I don’t say necessarily that it will be. I think it ought to be.’
There is a great deal of powerful language in WB about what the church ought to be like, moving inevitably into areas with which TWC doesn’t concern itself, while not of course dealing with the kind of scandalous activities which the other book exposes. But enough has been quoted here to give you a flavour.
Now what is remarkable is this. Here we have TWC in 2016 laying bare the rottenness of the C of E and giving a wake-up call—which may possibly be too late, who knows. And we have WB speaking out in similar, but, if anything, stronger terms; but WB was published in 1963. The conference it reports was held in 1962, at the instigation of J. A. T. Robinson, the notorious Bishop of Woolwich. (The book’s real name is engagingly un-PC: Layman’s Church.)
We should take a moment to reflect on this. Many of the fundamental weaknesses in the workings of the Church of England highlighted by Brown and Woodhead in 2016 had already had been set out, with suggested remedial action, fifty-four years ago. A whole generation of Anglicans has gone from confirmation (I was confirmed in 1966) to retirement while virtually nothing has been done to address these problems. It seems that Bishop Robinson and his associates had minimal influence on the counsels of the church and their voices went unheard. What is so tragic is that they write, back in 1963, with an air of optimism and enthusiasm. Their language, despite some dated expressions, is fresh and agile, free from the managerial and theological cliches that populate the prose of today’s church people.
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