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The church of England—rip?
Contemporary Review, Winter, 2007 by George Wedd
Last Rites: The End of the Church of England. Michael Hampson. Granta Books. [pounds sterling]12.99 p.b. v + 244 pages. ISBN 1-86207-891-2.
When Henry VIII made his one attempt at codifying what he actually believed, and got Parliament to enact the Six Articles in 1539, the Act was splendidly entitled 'An Act Abolishing Diversity of Opinions', and talked about 'this Church and Congregation of England'. Things are very different now and Michael Hampson gives a clear, succinct and very readable description, and analysis, of the various groups within the Church. Fortunately, no one faction--not even the liberal charismatic evangelicals--has a clear majority everywhere and always, and each victory is followed by a reaction. The result is fairly chaotic.
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Everyone knows that there is something badly wrong with the Church. Michael Hampson thinks it starts with the bishops, who have achieved a power over the parish clergy which enables them to suspend benefices and thus decide who shall have a licence, a job and a house. It continues with the ferocity of the leading partisans of each party, who wage war on their fellow-clergy with an unseemly bitterness. He is too kind about the parish level of church life. The shrinkage of numbers has left most parishes in the grip of a clique, who can, of course, justify themselves as the 'righteous remnant' who see that the church is kept open, heated and insured and do the weary round of menial jobs required to see to that; and if they are remote and welcome only people they approve of, well--too bad.
Mr Hampson is gay, and describes clearly the discomfort, amounting to persecution, that gay men have to endure. He skips over the rather similar harassment inflicted on women priests who, after a dozen years, still have to endure insults at the very Communion rail and when applying for jobs can only do so in parishes where the prevailing clique is ready to accept women.
The ordinary clergy only hit the news when they are behaving badly. It is a great tribute to them, paid every day by the media, that a clergyman, or woman, behaving well, even being saintly, is only doing what is expected of him (or her), is taken for granted, and is no news. Fortunately, nine thousand creatures of flesh and blood can generate quite sufficient bad news to keep the Church on pages ten or eleven, and ensure that it is not forgotten: that, and not Professor Dawkins, is the real enemy of the Church (the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference).
Mr Hampson, good on a lot of things, is weak on history. This is a pity, since Christianity as a whole depends on some historical facts, and the version of it which includes the C of E depends more particularly on the Reformation. He should not have tried to cover all that in a dozen pages. The Reformation, especially in England, is like an onion. As each layer is peeled away, it is so easy to say 'Aha! Now we have reached the real thing! It was really about money, or the sex life of the jovial ogre who occupied the throne, or the status of England as an independent 'empire', or resisting the aggression of the reformed Curia, or cutting the clergy down to size, or recovering the Apostolic life lived by the earliest Church, or getting rid of abuses such as pardons or transubstantiation--or fifty other things. He thinks--or, rather, hopes--that the C of E is in the Catholic tradition of Western Christendom and would like to think well of the Council of Trent. One cannot believe he has read much about that Council, its attendance or its debates.
The author has not much use for the 'fixed plant' of the Church. All he can see is a lot of long stone buildings with inconvenient seating and bad acoustics, awkward to heat and to serve coffee in after 'family communion', which put off the young. Their value as repositories of parish history, as places where prayer has 'been valid', leaves him cold. He wants light cosy brick boxes where the congregation can, he rather hopes, use the Alternative Service Book, which he regards as one of the better things the Church has done. He thinks the Church can survive only if it breaks down into networks of like-minded gatherings, each with their own structures, leaving at the centre a Church Residuary Body to manage the real estate and the investments. All this is, as the French would say, a point of view.
This is a useful book, and an easy read. One hopes a few bishops get round to reading it. One doesn't think the Archbishop of Canterbury needs to do so.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
