Who has the power?

Does the Church of England need some help?

At a time when the world continues to change at pace, the national Church of England’s capacity to respond is severely weakened both by scandal and organisational incoherence. Can the Church of England make necessary changes by itself?

As all Anglicans reading this know and feel acutely, the recent safeguarding scandals involving bishops have left the Church of England in a most uncomfortable place. Morale and reputation have both been severely damaged. We find ourselves in this place after many years of decline in attendance at church services and influence on society. The latest events are the last thing we all need. What can be done to address this situation, one which feels like it is spiralling out of control? We might start by being honest about the nature, scale and difficulty of the task facing us. In this blog I will be looking at the national church, rather than the challenges faced at parish level, though, clearly, the two are related.

A good place to start is to consider the kind of organisation we are dealing with. At the national level the Church of England is a bureaucracy.[1] Most large organisations are, because that is the prevailing model and bureaucracies are good at maintaining order. Bureaucracies do well at sustaining and refining existing processes in a stable environment. They are not designed to manage change. Bureaucracies struggle especially to cope with a fast changing context. Many of the woes of the Church of England are at least linked to this characteristic. The world has changed a great deal in the last fifty to one hundred years and, it seems, at increasing pace. The Church is not the only institution to struggle to keep up. By keeping up I do not mean simply ‘going along with change’ but formulating considered responses to new circumstances in a way that preserves the integrity of the Church’s fundamental commitments whilst listening for the voice of God speaking to us in what is happening.

In bureaucracies, however, it is extremely difficult to take a systemic view of the organisation in its context. Knowledge exists in separate ‘silos’ and there is little capacity to reveal and consolidate it. When bureaucracies do attempt to manage change they typically have a limited range of tools at their disposal. Because the capability for change is not ‘built in’ they rely on special initiatives and programmes. These factors add up to a great reliance on reform through structural or procedural change. There is a long history of such changes in the NHS, for example, and none have proved lasting solutions to the service’s problems. ‘Head office’ changes what it can change with the result that other ‘softer’ factors such as behaviour or culture are neglected.

A further problem is that the programmes and initiatives which are undertaken require immense amounts of additional energy and focus to sustain. This creates the risk that insufficient attention will be given to other matters of importance. We know that the pursuit of particular targets can distort organisational culture – it has been noted in the NHS for example.[2] It is possible that the Church of England’s focus on congregational growth has had the effect of causing a loss of focus on other aspects of our mission and identity, such as how we credibly live out our role as the national church.

All this makes life challenging enough, but there is a further difficulty. In a bureaucracy such as a large company it is clear that whatever the difficulties there is a board of directors whose job it is to find solutions. The Church of England, on the other hand, has no such body, but instead, a range of national institutions whose relation to one another is complicated and unclear. Sarah Mullally has spoken powerfully about this in an address to Synod (yesterday as I write):

I have gazed into the heart of the Church of England and found, at its core, incoherent governance structures, in which a number of bodies which need desperately to be joined up are free-floating. While there are governance proposals coming to the General Synod this week, they fail to resolve how the functions of the Archbishops’ Council, the Church Commissioners, the national church institutions, and the House of Bishops relate to one another.[3]

Mullally goes on to address the resulting lack of accountability. The implication for reform is that it is far from clear which individuals or groups have the legitimacy or means to get a grip on the situation. The archbishops have moral and spiritual authority but little formal power. The moral authority is currently damaged and one has resigned. General Synod is too large, too unwieldy, to exercise active leadership and the House of Bishops likewise. My understanding is that the Archbishops’ Council is expressly not seen in those terms.

The lack of coherence, clarity, accountability and ‘joinedupness’ may well be, at some level, deliberate. It ensures that none of the church’s parties is able (entirely) to get the upper hand. If this is true we are paying a high price for adopting such a clumsy means to manage our internal political difficulties – a kind of institutional paralysis along with the other damage. At the same time the things that do happen may well be decided by those well-placed enough and determined enough to keep pushing. When I researched the rationale of Renewal and Reform I discovered that this was the story behind the genesis of that programme. There has to be a better way. Not least, it ought to be possible to have clarity of leadership and accountability but use it to frame and enable discussion and action rather than decide or dictate it.

For some time now I have argued for a kind of national conversation which attempts to achieve a sufficient shared understanding across the church (and, perhaps, the wider community) about the purpose and future of the Church of England. I believe such a shared understanding (which would not be required to deny all differences or solve all disagreements – far from it) would allow a much more sustainable and confident adoption of particular policies and actions. As I said in my last blog many senior church people believe this to be too difficult and too time-consuming. I say it is better to take your time, grasp the nettle and get it right. But I am wondering who now has the capacity or legitimacy to make any such systemic approach happen? A bishop I talked to recently argued that we might need to begin by addressing governance in order to create such a capacity. This is Sarah Mullally’s argument too. I remain convinced that it is better to address the question of organisational identity and direction before changing the structures, but perhaps, needs must.

A more radical solution occurs. Is it time to appeal to a higher authority? Is it time to ask parliament to appoint a commission to draw the threads together and lead on a reassessment of the role, and future of the Church of England? I thought I read such a suggestion recently but I cannot now remember nor find out where or who. It seems a jarring idea in many ways, but can we manage what is required by ourselves? The alternative appears to be to place a heavy weight of expectation upon a new Archbishop of Canterbury. The way we are set up is not designed to be adequate for times like ours.

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[1] A bureaucracy is an organisation divided into ‘bureaus’ or ‘offices’, gathered in departments and characterised by strict, formalised division of task and responsibility

[2] Amongst many examples see https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/preview/1443943/11817.pdf

[3] https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/14-february/comment/opinion/bishop-of-london-safeguarding-crisis-should-not-be-seen-in-isolation