Up with the parish! Down with the archbishops!

Is it really as simple as that?

Welby’s resignation has exposed dissatisfaction with the national institutions of the Church of England. But over-elevating the parish is not the answer. We need a deeper conversation about the proper roles of the national, diocesan and parish church.

The resignation of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury is a remarkable event, unprecedented in the modern history of the Church of England. The resignation, the safeguarding failures behind it and the call for further resignations has occasioned a great deal of commentary on the state on the Church of England. A common theme of this commentary has been the argument that the centre, especially under Welby, has become too powerful, too dominant, too unaccountable. All this has come at the expense of the local: it is argued that the parish, seen as the proper focus of the Church of England, has been neglected, deprived of resources, and pressurised to conform to the agenda of the evangelical tendency in the ascendant in the national church.

Giles Fraser, for example, asserts that

So much of the local energy — and money — that was once spent on the ground is now taken up responding to the demands of the centre.[1]

In response he urges that we ‘burn down the machine’, meaning the national church bureaucracy. In an article for The Times, Martyn Percy takes a similar line:

Cutting back on the hierarchy and top-down management of churches — “heavy pruning”, to borrow a phrase from Jesus’s teaching — might let in some much-needed light and air for local recovery and growth at ground level.[2]

I should acknowledge that I am sympathetic to these arguments insofar as it does seem to me that Welby’s time in office has been dominated by top down initiatives that focus on key features of an evangelical agenda (evangelism, discipleship). My problem with this agenda is not that I have anything against either evangelism or discipleship but that they are offered as simplistic solutions to complex problems and result in pressure on dioceses and parishes to pursue policies and practices about which they have not been consulted. As a programme this seems to me to lack either organisational or ecclesiological validity.

So it does seem likely that some sort of rebalancing of power and focus in favour of parishes is called for. But we must beware of the same tendency to simplistic solutions in those who do not like Welby’s legacy as in those who do. Reading many of the comments on social media concerning recent events one might imagine that all the Church of England needs to do is leave the parishes to get on with it. But is this a credible conviction?

I do not think so. In my experience parishes lack the resources and vision to take on the challenges of the modern context on their own. We do not use the phrase ‘parochial’ as a criticism without any cause. The advantages enjoyed by parishes are all about being close to the action, as it were. But this is also their weakness. Someone needs to be attending to the wider picture. In many places, for example, it is clear that collaboration across parishes is an essential ingredient of the way forward. This could happen entirely as the result of local initiative and choice but relying on that seems unduly optimistic. In fact, ironically enough, a primary reason why safeguarding has improved so much at the local level is because of the far greater accountability to the diocese that the processes now involve. This last point illustrates well how the realities of contemporary society militate against the idea that we can or should go back to the good old days when the local vicar was king in his castle.

These are practical, organisational objections. But there are ecclesiological considerations. The Church of England is already drifting towards congregationalism I suggest, under the influence of models such as those associated with Holy Trinity Brompton and its network. The Church of England is not a collection of parishes, of local centres, but an episcopal, national church in which bishops are a focus of unity and a bulwark against parochialism and congregationalism. Percy wants bishops to be more accountable – and that is, in itself, hard to argue against – but how would you achieve that without creating unintended consequences that might undermine the Anglican tradition of episcopacy? There may well be an answer or it might be right to take the risk, or one might decide the tradition needs to be discarded, but it would be wise to have considered the matter carefully before acting.

I want to see the church thinking more deeply on these important questions and being less quick to reach for ‘solutions’ – on these as on nearly all the problems that face it. We need to think more systemically and more ecclesiologically about the way forward. One feature of such a venture would be a much more careful and informed conversation about the proper roles of those occupying positions in the different ‘levels’ of the church. What should we expect of archbishops, of bishops, of parishes? What structures and resources should exist to make the church effective at these different levels?

If we ask these questions it will not be long, of course, before we realise we cannot answer them without giving deeper consideration to the question of the identity of the Church of England, to defining its mission and ministry, and to the outlining of some narrative about the church’s future. These, in my experience, are the questions with which those working in the national church do not want to engage. But I suggest that the role of the clergy and officers of the national church should be - not to decide - but to offer leadership on precisely these matters.

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[1] https://unherd.com/2024/11/burn-down-the-church-machine/

[2] https://www.thetimes.com/article/b6ecef89-afed-4405-bbcc-786f11396b83

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