A Question of Faith: Why Did the CofE Go Wrong? — with Charles Malet and Alex Thomson

Charles Malet and Alex Thomson start to explore the failings of the Church of England, as viewed through the prism of history and scripture.

Write-up with links: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/a-question-of-faith-why-did-the-cofe-go-wrong

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Alex, we're going to begin a discussion.
That's a sizable topic, and I'm sure this will carry on over a
few more discussions. But we're going to begin today
with an examination, let's say, of the Church of England in
particular, perhaps set within awider context.
We'll see where we go. And as I say those words, I'm

(00:30):
sure anybody listening or watching will bring to mind a
litany of specific issues that the church in their minds will
have got wrong. And rather than necessarily
nitpicking our way through the details, I think what we're
hoping to get to today are the connections between those things
and indeed the influences behindthem.

(00:52):
So I I might say, where better to start than with Justin Welby?
Who, although has somewhat gracelessly now fallen on his
sword or at least his crook. He was interviewed by the BBC
earlier in the year and in expressing his sorrow, or at

(01:12):
least his regret for some of thethings that he believes he
didn't handle too well, he said if you want perfect leaders, you
won't have any leaders now. What do you think he was hoping
we would take from that? I think Charles, that Welby was
hoping that we would continue tosee the Church of England in the

(01:35):
way that he and many of the bishops he has seen promoted or
encouraged to get promoted wouldlike to see the Church of
England and would like us to seeit.
Namely that it is just another core national institution with
the same kind of strategy, forecasting and business as
anyone else. And we could take this question

(01:57):
of leadership in any particular direction.
But it's a very secularised, contemporary forward looking way
of saying nobody's perfect Gov or we all have our foibles.
Or with a nod towards the alleged Christian mission of the
Church of England. He was saying we are all
sinners. But OK, to give him his due,

(02:18):
well, we probably correctly thought that people are so jaded
at this point with him in general, him in particular, the
church in general, Christianity,not even more generally, that
they didn't want to hear words like Sinner in toned by Welby
falling on his sword because it would seem like a hollow piety.
But we could take this a little further.

(02:40):
I'll give you the decision on where we go with this, but I'll
just say that it is an intenselypersonal matter for me, this
idea of whether the Church of England or other Christian
denominations exists to furnish people with leadership, and if
so, which people. Let's start with the words of
the founder and head of the Church, Jesus Christ himself,

(03:02):
who told Peter according to one section of the church, but not
the Church of England. Peter was the first Pope, but in
any case the the spokesman of the apostles in that first
generation after his restorationfrom his fall at the end of the
Gospel according to John. And in his turn also Peter tells
other Christian elders, in modern terms clergy this in his

(03:26):
own epistles. Their job is to feed the flock.
And it's a very simple point, almost facile, but one that
needs making that the church exists for its own members in an
earthly sense. I'm not trying to contrast that
with glorifying God or being in Christ.
I'm saying that if you are wanting to ask, answer the
question for whose benefit should the clergy?

(03:51):
To use today's terminology, the leaders of the Church be
thinking and doing and sacrificing.
It is emphatically for the flockthey've got.
Now in the particular case of the Church of England that means
let's cut to the caricatures. But many is the word of truth in
them. This means the half dozen

(04:11):
grannies you have in your parishChurch of a Sunday morning at
Matins or Eucharist are the people for whom the clergy are
to think and act and self sacrifice and speak inspiringly
and truthfully and comfortingly.It is not.
No matter what kind of churchmanship that is, style of,
of belief of, of, of how to be aclergyman, no matter what the

(04:33):
churchmanship is, no Church of England clergy person is
biblically or historically free to say, but I feel called to the
whole parish. Well, we could unpack these
ideas later, but that is the core error that you've made
straight away. If you talk about leadership.
I mean, I could get into later how I had more than a trifling

(04:54):
chance of having been the Archbishop of Canterbury myself
If I'd totally taken a completely different path in
life in my early 20s. That might sound startling, but
genuinely I think I could have been or any other of the lads in
the same social circles as me. We could get into the the
hijacking of the of England by certain interest groups, but
that's why it's personal to me. And just the final thing I'll

(05:15):
say in this opening response is the first thing I did after
graduating from Cambridge 20 years after Welby was one of the
leading lights of the Kikyu, theCambridge Intercollegiate
Christian Union there. That's the oldest student
Christian union in the whole world.
I think the first thing I did was I went out to the former
Soviet Union where I was astonished to see that in both

(05:36):
Russian and the local languages of the former Soviet Union, this
Calc Word leadership was being borrowed into Russian and the
other languages out there and was not known in general
discourse, but was very much a buzzword in the evangelical
churches there, not even the local Orthodox or Catholic
churches. But the evangelical churches had

(05:57):
suddenly imbibed overnight from Anglo American evangelicalism in
its various guises that the thing to do was to be a leader.
So there's a few strands to get us going.
It's not a historical concept, Leadership in the church.
Well, it's certainly great points that we will pick up on
as we as we go. I think that the, the bit that
I'd like to get to is the the link between your description of

(06:20):
a congregation, which of course is is absolutely accurate for a
vast number of churches now, which is a couple of old
grannies making up the congregation.
But of course, you and I, being of similar age and background,
have been through a childhood that certainly, I mean, unless
you would differ, but which involved being in churches where

(06:41):
there were absolutely more than a few grannies there.
There are, there are notable exceptions now I think in urban
areas where there are swelling congregations, particularly of
younger folk. And that's all well and good,
but but what is it that connectsthe dwindling congregations with
the sorts of things that we could point to in terms of

(07:03):
church policy or indeed the the misguided approach to the very
subject of leadership in the 1stplace?
There's there's no ignoring thatcorrelation between society
apparently on mass, but certainly by community in
effect, turning away from the church.
How do you look at that? And, and I mean, is it possible

(07:24):
to to to go back to a particularpoint or a series of points at
which that started to change? We certainly can pinpoint a few
and I think viewers, I hope, will bear with me if I give a
little historical detail becauseit is one of my specialist
subjects. I have translated a fair amount,
like whole magnum opuses of major church historians on how

(07:50):
the Church of England is similarand how it differs from other
established churches in Europe in the crucial period that's the
early modern era. So I'll try not to give a whole
thesis here. But I think it is necessary to
do so because even very clued upviewers that we may have in
other English speaking countries, even Australia, which
is the most similar when it comes to understanding

(08:11):
Anglicanism to what you find in England and the particular brand
of evangelical Anglicanism that's very until very recently
made that nation in Australia so, so vigorous.
If you're talking to even those very well clued up viewers, you
will find that they don't quite get it.
I mean, I've heard American clergymen who have been

(08:34):
explaining their close links with the British churches to
their congregations back home inthe States, saying to the very
clued up historically illiteratepeople in the churches in
America. You guys don't get it unless
you've been over to England and lived there, just how
fundamental this dichotomy is inEnglish Christianity between

(08:54):
Anglicanism and non conformity. We don't want to give a whole
history lecture on that. But it really is even more than
another European countries that historically had a state
endorsed or established church. It is the bedrock of what went
on. I mean, I could take a a
snapshot of almost every century, but that would be far
too much. Suffice to say that the early

(09:17):
Church, even the very institutionalised kind in what
you might call early Roman Catholicism, did understand that
the believers in Christ, any in any locality, formed the
congregation. And even at the height of
mediaeval papal absolutism, thatwas something that to give Roman

(09:38):
Catholicism its credit to this day is still acknowledged, but
that runs in tandem with such a thing as Canon law.
That is how the church governs itself.
Now here we have to be very specific already, because if you
look at Magna Carta, well understood by many of our
viewers and listeners, what are the institutions right there in,

(10:00):
in the early 13th century which are already strong enough in the
English establishment? That which you and I recently
went through as well in our various ways, which are the ones
which are strong enough to say towards what is becoming the
House of Lords, the backbone of Parliament?
Hey, well, you're rejecting royal absolutism, but you can't

(10:20):
interfere with our ancient privileges.
They are the City of London, thebeginning of the banking world,
that is, of course, and they arethe Church, but before, during
and after the Reformation, and this will surprise a lot of our
viewers, even if they're clued up the Church in that legal
definition and the scope of operation of Canon law, it's not

(10:42):
ambiguous. If you talk to any proper church
lawyers, such as the legal advisers to a particular
diocese, that means the clergy. No one else is either bound by
Canon law or enjoys the privileges at law of being the
church. No one else is governed by first
of all, the Parliament's of the United Kingdom and then since
100 years ago, effectively the Synod, but it's still kept at

(11:05):
arm's length from Parliament. It's one of the few duties that
Parliament in Westminster still has and and is very keen to get
rid of. So that that's a a bit of a
starting point. There are so many more points,
which I'll just take a couple. During the Reformation, many
people who like to Cocker snook not just Roman Catholics, but
other people like cynics of about religion will say, Oh,

(11:28):
well, this was I'm just Henry the eighth, who who founded this
church on on nothing on his own marital requirements.
If you look at a three part series, which I did interviewing
my father, which you'll find on ukcolumn.org simply by searching
for literacy in the search bar, and I'm sure you'll be able to
link them to this piece. You will see my father's

(11:48):
painstaking case that while it'strue that there were politics
going on, what made the Church of England unique among European
Reformation models was that there was very much a
groundswell, as in Germany, a bottom up.
Lots and lots of what you might call emergent middle class or
mercantilist. People who could read and had
time and who could see, who could see that there was a need

(12:11):
for a, as they saw it, a split with the tyranny of Rome, but
also a rethinking in a biblical sense of what the church was
precisely over this point. Is the church a body of
believers that's visible, or is it the whole of society that's
been Christianized, that's been christened, sometimes by force,
but it was a reality then. As you go through, I mean, the

(12:31):
term Anglicanism by universal historical consensus doesn't
really get going till a good century after the English
Reformation, and a bit longer really till the mid 17th
century, the time of Archbishop Lord and the Civil War and the
subsequent intolerance of Puritanism that follows.
All of these might sound a long way away from the experience of
people listening if they're not engrossed in church history.

(12:53):
But the point is, at every moment here you've got the
establishment, the archbishops, the bishops, but also the
secular establishment, parliament, courts, the crown,
especially the people hanging onto the crown invisibly like the
Privy Council. They are always saying, well,
the church is part of our power structure and compared with our

(13:16):
continental nearest cousins, theGermans, Dutch, Scandinavians,
who went to either the Lutheran or the Calvinist model, we have
in the English model, even distinct from Scotland, we have
this unique settlement under Queen Elizabeth where she said
that she did not wish to make windows into men's souls.
In other words, and this was repeated during the Williamite
Revolution, the Glorious Revolution at the end of the

(13:38):
17th century. There was an act of toleration,
not of complete freedom of religion.
The idea was we will deliberately blur from
henceforth in England specifically, not the whole of
the United Kingdom. We'll blur the distinction
between committed Christians whohappened to be in the parish
church building and therefore allied with the state and the
whole parish. The idea of the cure of souls

(14:00):
being responsible for the conversion and well being of
everyone in the locality. So the clergy have inherited A
poisoned chalice. They are continually being told
by their own political strategists and by the political
classes in private, that your job is to keep hearts and minds
on side with the state agenda. Even as they very well know from

(14:22):
their own Bible study and what'sleft of their seminary training,
which is pretty wretched compared with how it used to be
a generation ago. They will know perfectly well
that that is neither a biblical nor a historical nor even a
logical position for what their role is.
Going back through the history, I mean, sadly, obviously not
going to be time to to cover everything that's certainly

(14:43):
within your range of of knowledge.
But you're absolutely right to point back to that.
And I think I think there's thatsense certainly that people who
do still attend church or even don't, but but it's kind of part
of their consciousness will by and large be unaware of that.
One of the things I was going towant to talk about is not just

(15:06):
to change to congregations, but also to clergy.
I think it's observable that thetype of person this is perhaps
unfair because by and large thisis perhaps done on appearance.
But I think it might be fair to say that the type of person that
represents the Church of Englandin this day and age is somewhat

(15:31):
different from those people 50 years ago or even perhaps less.
Do you, do you think that they really are different people, not
just in appearance, but but in their manifest beliefs and the
motivations that have brought them into the Church in the 1st

(15:52):
place? And and if that is or isn't the
case, why again would there be that change, transitional or
apparent sort of point of disconnection?
Well, I think some of it is not even specific to spiritual or
religious considerations. Charles, very recently you gave
an illuminating discussion with Brian Gerrish, which I think

(16:15):
likewise was going to be to turnout to be the first in the
series on the question of the military.
One of the core issues in that first episode of yours is what
kind of people go forward for recruitment and more
particularly for officership. And you obviously it pains to
stress the centrality of the, the tradition of military
families. And although it's not a biblical
practise and some kinds of very committed Protestants have

(16:38):
fulminated against this as beingnot spiritual, the historical
reality has been that certain families supplied their sons or
one of their sons generation by generation as the well, there
are various terms, the rector, the vicar, the incumbent, the
priest in charge, the I mean, these are, these are all nuances
depending on the legal structureof, of how the man in question
came to fill the parish pulpit. But the man who preached in very

(17:01):
biblical terms, the elder of thecongregation there this, this is
the way that things were in supplying the army, but also the
church. Of course, it can be rightly
caricatured. There are times such as the mid
18th century when everyone was LAX.
The term at the time was latitudinarian and thought, ha,
as long as you do your duty, nobody really cares much about
book learning or or biblical accuracy.

(17:23):
But that's how it was. And these families supplied a a
jolly high degree of backbone. They would stand up against weak
bishops in very many cases and jealously guard their
independence. I mean, to this day, when the
new kind of bishops come in, often managerialist is the best

(17:44):
word for them. They're the reshapers of
society, the ones who are, in a nice Dutch idiom, trying to keep
all noises, all noses, pointing the same way.
When they decree that henceforthwe will worship this way, or for
the sake of openness and inclusivity, we'll no longer do
that. These bloody minded older men,
which is what they almost alwaysare, will know that they have a

(18:05):
leg to stand on. They are part of a vanishing
breed of men appointed for life and apart from gross indecency,
they can't be removed under Canon law by the bishops.
And they will say no. What has gone on and and much of
it is undercover of or mixed up with the bringing on board of
women 1st 30 years ago as clergyand then very recently as

(18:26):
bishops is that those who have been rights to point out this
trend towards managerialism and the idea of creating community
as as the key calling and no biblical literacy or or ministry
to the to the to the comfortless.
Such people have been accused ofsimply being dinosaurs or
misogynists. But you can give the light of

(18:48):
that by comparing it with how togive the two closest examples to
the Church of England, the United Reformed Church, which is
effectively the success 22 denominations that were close
successes to the Puritans in England.
The ones that didn't get on the boat and leave since the 1970s.
They decided to ordain women, a position that I'm not personally
in favour of, but they did so and you still got the same

(19:12):
solid. OK, you could quibble with
details, but old fashioned ministry to the congregation
there, you didn't get a revolution overnight.
Likewise the Church of Scotland from from if memory serves 1969,
I think it was onwards, the established church north of the
border did the same thing. And again, there was not the
same immediacy of revolutionary change or takeover that you saw

(19:37):
there. Now it has to be said that both
of those examples, the English URC and the Presbyterian Church
in Scotland, are, by their founding documents, opposed to
the idea of bishops. There is no hierarchy above the
local minister in those denominations, except a national
Synod. But be that as it may, something
specific clearly went on in England, specifically with the

(19:59):
Established Church, the Church of England.
To mount some kind of coup d'etat and the arrival of women
both as clergy and then very recently as bishops and now it
seems as archbishops once now come in Wales and probably
Canterbury will get one too thatis being used as as the the
smokescreen I think to cover up the complete revolution that's
going on. Revolution seems exactly the

(20:19):
right word for it. And actually interesting that
you brought up the the armed forces or, or the military
referencing the conversation that I had with Brian recently.
Military matters, it's called for anyone who's not quite
certain. And we'll have a link to that in
the show notes as well. But but but funnily enough that
that's opposite, because one of the things I was going to talk
about in so far as the superficial, at least

(20:42):
superficial hypocrisy of it is the messaging that's gone on
around what they're describing as the preparation for war.
And it was Hugh Nelson, who's now Bishop, recently appointed
Bishop of Worcester and and Bishop of the armed forces.
And he, he spoke out saying that, well, first of all,
telegraphing the fact that he absolutely believes that we are

(21:05):
about to go to war, but also that the the church should step
up, not let people down in the way that he perceived that they
did during the COVID event. And I find that fascinating.
That's been followed up at General Synod by a Brigadier in
the chaplaincy service, Brigadier Mann, who finished I

(21:28):
think finished his talk by saying that whilst the Church is
sometimes overlooked, it is always there in times of need.
And I found that spectacularly ironic.
Perhaps not in a military context, because to be fair,
chaplains do turn up. And they certainly in my

(21:51):
personal experience, they were people of good substance and
they were in the right place at the right time.
And, and I would go along with that.
But interesting that Nelson would specifically cite the
COVID event alongside the preparation for war.
And it's so easy to point over the last, just just the last

(22:12):
five years alone, the many instances in which the church
have been almost willfully blindto what might be going on in the
minds of those people that really are part of the
congregation. And that level of hypocrisy, to

(22:32):
me seems like something that would not have characterised the
church that you've been describing through the ages.
No, very much not, because the understanding was there for
centuries that the parish was the basic unit.
Now, whether you're talking established churches around
Europe, Roman Catholic Church ofEngland, various kinds of

(22:55):
Lutheran or Calvinist, or whether you're talking non
conformist, that's the Baptist, Methodist, and others.
There's always been agreement that that is the case.
If the devil's in the details, if you'll pardon the pun, parish
is not actually the oldest New Testament Greek term for a local
gathering of Christians, Paroi Kia in Greek, an even older one

(23:19):
from where we get the word diocese, that is the seat or CS
EE of a Bishop and his seat of authority.
That's an even older word. Deoi caesis in the Greek New
Testament and related terms are etymologically they're the
concept of the believers and their elders who oversee them,
their Episcopal, which is the word where we get episcopacy or

(23:40):
Bishop bishops. They go from house to house, a
term that you will find frequently in the New Testament
in any Bible translation. Not to check up on each other,
but to comfort and exhort one another, to learn from each
other, to worship, to break bread together, read the
Scriptures together. So the diocese historically is a
very, very old term, but the term is, I would say, hijacked.

(24:01):
I don't think that malice by individual bishops is is at
play. I mean, you've got huge amounts
of history to contend with here,such as the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire so that theclergy were the only men left
standing who could save Western Europe from anarchy and and
disorder. But they end up taking on
administration, even secular administration.
And before you know it, they sitin a Bishop's palace next to a

(24:23):
cathedral and they have staff around them.
That sounds very obscure becauseit's 1500 years ago, but it goes
right through to the present andwhat you're talking about
because anyone who within or from outside, but on behalf of a
group of concerned parishioners in the Church of England, anyone
who knocks on the door of the diocesan office.
So where the Bishop and his staff hang out is in for a

(24:45):
couple of shocks from this historical legacy if they really
pry into it. 1 Is that the diocese, the Bishop and his
staff at headquarters in each region of England, You could say
it's not quite county, but more or less they are a ring fenced
separate charity at law. I mean there's more we could say
about the Church of England and charity law.
Many of our viewers will not know, for example, that the

(25:08):
charity, Charity Commission for England and Wales keeps
extending an overdue period of grace with the Church of England
to let them cook their own books.
I'm sorry to be blunt there, butthey do.
Because the, the, the current excuse by the Charity Commission
is it's such a volume that we wouldn't be able to cope with
the auditing. And there's this continual
promise that eventually the Charity Commission will treat

(25:30):
them like any other religious orsecular charitable organisation,
but they don't. So the key point there on the
charity law is the diocese. So the Bishop and the staff in
in any town, the the the the seat of the the Diocese of any
Shire. They are a separate charity at
law. The salaries there, the stipends

(25:51):
or whatever you want to call them for the secular staff as
well, like the lawyers and the PR people.
Increasingly they are separate flows from the Parisians that
the parishioners giving the parishes are being leaned upon
mightily to give their parish share.
We've covered this in some UK column content, but if it all
goes belly up the the diocesan staff are paid out of a

(26:14):
different pot. So it rings hollow if they say
we're all in this together. That's one of the things that
shocks. Another is if you go to the
diocesan staff and say the parish church in ex has got a
valid case that you not take anymore of its giving into central
coffers because the roof is leaking.
Or whatever it may be. Or they can't meet the the
latest onerous health and safetyor safeguarding regulation for

(26:36):
our foreign viewers. Safeguarding is the ubiquitous
British term now for suspecting everyone of child abuse until
proven otherwise. The first thing the diocesan
office will not. The first thing, the last thing
if you really push them, will. They will be that they will
grudgingly admit that they are all there for His Grace the
Bishop. They are not there to serve the
parish with decent legal advice or to put their interests first.

(26:59):
It's a bit like HR in a corporation.
They're there to cover the backsides of the men in and
women increasingly in authority over that structure at the
Episcopal, the diocesan level. Well, I could go on about that
further, but those are a couple of the things that repeatedly
campaigners in the in the positive sense of the word, I'm
not being snotty about them. Campaigners within the Church of

(27:20):
England will find that they really are on their own within
the institution, even though it's universally acknowledged
that the building was built by the blood, sweat and tears of
countless pre prior generations.And nobody, even the most
deceitful type within the structure, has ever claimed that
that building exists because some central authority willed it

(27:42):
to be so. It's not like a school or a
library built by a municipal or national authority or even EU
taxpayers money or whatever it may have been.
The Church of England and indeedother established churches
around like the Church of Scotland are nakedly stealing
some of these buildings now whenthey put them up for sale to the
highest bidder. And I'm afraid to say a lot of
non conformist denominations in England, the Baptists and

(28:04):
Methodists in particular, are guilty of the same in recent
decades going completely over the head of the the
parishioners. This is not just a a matter of
principle, it's an actionable matter of law.
Trust law because even if the word trust is not used in some
of the key documents, the grantsand testaments which which prop

(28:24):
up the the money of a local congregation, whether it's a
parish or a non conformist one. Trust law, if fairly operated in
the courts, will always say these people hold their building
and their funds in trust from previous to future generations
of the same local worshipping congregation.
No hierarchy has got a look in in using those funds or

(28:45):
hypothecating them for a grand project.
Yeah, I'm, I'm really glad you brought that up, Alex.
I mean, I want to come on to theto the area of finance, but this
will this will strike a massive chord with anyone who has any
involvement at the parochial church council level or has had
any dealings with the biosis andadministration because it is

(29:05):
absolutely the case. And I can say that with a with a
degree of authority from admittedly an anecdotal
perspective, but I am involved at that level and and that is
precisely what I do see. So you are totally correct to
make that point. And I think I would go slightly
further, perhaps sort of sideways in terms of the way in

(29:30):
which the appointed priest will deal with some of this, which I
think can in many cases be to forget that they are indeed the
incumbent. And as such they have specific
and particular responsibilities for the period of their tenure.
But that does not mean that it is that you know, that that

(29:53):
physical building, that entity, that that church becomes their
possession with which to do as they choose.
And therefore the degree of influence, which is exactly what
you're talking about, the degreeof influence to which the the
the either the incumbent priest in charge or indeed the diocese
should have over the future of the church building should be

(30:13):
extremely limited. But I think this is increasingly
forgotten because of the structures that you describe.
And the, what I really want to get on to is that is the bigger
picture in terms of finance because as you say, I mean, find
me a church in the land that doesn't have a leaking roof or,
you know, sort of broken floor tiles or something like that,

(30:33):
where they're constantly callingon the same people to put their
hands in their pockets at the same time as the Church
Commissioners sit on £10.4 billion.
Now, I dare say UK column viewers and listeners will be to
a certain extent aware of this. And I've written a couple of
articles about the investment policies of the Church

(30:55):
Commissioners. But to set some context, that
number, that figure of what is now 10.4 billion increased by 1
billion during 2020, which is anabsolutely staggering statistic.
Not only that, but despite theirwell, at least what they call

(31:16):
their ethical investment policy,they are restricted, but only to
a point concerning investments in things like pornography or
embryonic stem cell research or indeed the production of weapons
that are specifically designed to kill.

(31:38):
And you know, there's obvious contradiction, an enormous
contradiction here as well as we, you know, we could go on.
I mean, they, they, they espouseto be pursuing net 0, whatever
exactly that's meant to mean this week at the same time as
being able to invest in thermal coal.
So the whole thing is a completenonsense.
And in fact, now, just to take it back to the parish level,

(32:01):
there are now funds made available to parochial church
councils. They can invest in them, but the
investment criteria are the same.
So you might find unwittingly, because people have a tendency
not to read this sort of detail,that many parishes are investing
their money in exactly the sortsof things that to my mind, the

(32:24):
church shouldn't be touching with a barge pole.
But the what I want to get to really get going backwards is
that it is hard to see now how the church could operate as it
does without the enormous sums of money it does sit on.
My question to you is why shoulda church hold vast sums of

(32:47):
money? And I mean I, I mean that sort
of in a practical sense, but also with relationship to
history and indeed scriptural interpretation.
What, what is your view on the use of money in the in in this
capacity in the first place? I'll take the second half of
that excellent question first because there's a single verse

(33:10):
of Saint Paul in Scripture that talks about it at the end of his
first Epistle to Timothy, which is specifically giving
directions for how the church isto be governed by elders and the
other titles that exist in the early church.
Paul says that one of the main pitfalls is that the love of
money is the root of all evil. A New Testament Greek, Rizagar,

(33:32):
Panton, Kakun, he, Phil Arguria.So a couple of things to say
about that. There's no article there in the
Greek, so it can also validly betranslated is a root of all
kinds of evil. Clearly, philosophically, if you
use your novel, there are many sins and high crimes that are
committed without pecuniary gainin mind.
And secondly, the word for all in Greek there can also mean all

(33:56):
kinds of all manner of endless. So Paul is in one sense saying
whatever category of sin you might find in the church or the
world, it may well be occasionedby this money grabbing tendency.
But that is just an ongoing given of our fallen world and
one that Paul in First Timothy and joins the church,
particularly its clergy to understand the reality of and to

(34:20):
mitigate the risks of prayerfully and vigilantly.
Now, the first half is what about the first half of your
question was what about this accruing of vast wealth?
Well, that's a perennial issue. I mean, within the very large
decent parts of the Roman Catholic Church over a vast area
of time and space that it's existed.
This has been one of the philosophical objections.

(34:41):
The humanists of the same generation as Martin Luther who
wouldn't go along with his decision to leave the hierarchy
and start again. Men such as De Sedarius Erasmus
were very, very hot on this evenbefore the Reformation.
Men called the morning stars of the Reformation because they
were the first Bible translatorsinto the vernacular in their
countries, and that they weren'table to spark a reformation,

(35:05):
that they suffered heavily for it, but they they started the
ball rolling. In the 13th and 14th centuries,
men like Jan Hoose in Bohemia and John Wickliffe in England
were already fingering particularly this point of
priests and monks. Let's not forget all the
monastic life as well, in some cases living it up and in other
cases simply, you know, be living fairly soberly but

(35:27):
sitting on massive piles of gold.
Nowhere more so by the way than in Britain where this against
the continental average of something like 1/5 of the far of
the arable land being church possession.
It was on the eve of the Reformation in England 1/4 and
in Scotland where good land is areal at a real premium,
something up to 1/3 of the land being owned by the church.

(35:49):
Well, how did this happen? You've got to blame naive
Christians in some sense, because the well to do or those
who'd suddenly come into money and fortune in their life in
those years, there's those the centuries leading up to the
Reformation would in vague termsleave a lot of their wealth to
the church or some central authority or hub such as a

(36:11):
monastery and all that. We've said so far about the
church being the local worshipping body of believers
biblically and at Canon law. That's that goes out of the
window. If the money has by a secular
deed of, of trust law gone to the church in the sense of what
now is called the church Commissioners.
They weren't called that then. But the men at the centre who

(36:32):
hold the purse strings of the national or regional wealth, you
cannot mitigate that in law. You have to have a clean slate
really. Or set a mental break from that
and ask yourself, what do we do at local level with the funds
still coming through? One of the key insights I've
gleaned from my father on this broad issue is that whether
you're talking secular terms in the City of London or religious

(36:54):
terms, particularly with the Church of England, the insights
of the men that govern us is always that the little people's
accrued money power is still more, more trillions more orders
of magnitude than the big guys and the big institutions.
The fight, the really grubby mitts fight, is still for the

(37:15):
fresh flows, OK, small, but endlessly multiplied across time
and space and generations of giving that come in.
And this came to a point in the second half of the 20th century
as the Church of England collapsed, I wouldn't even say
downgraded, but gave up biblicalpositions on every area of life,
notably sexuality. Decade after decade.

(37:38):
One of the three big parties of churchmanship or conviction in
the Church of England alongside the Anglo Catholic or High
Church and the liberal in this in the old sense of social
gospel, was the evangelical wing.
That is what you might call the Bible bashes from outside.
And their nominated leaders, to use that dreaded term again, did

(37:58):
go beating a path to, if memory serves, Archbishop Robert
Runcie's door in the early 80's,the Thatcher era, and made yet
another idle threat. That if the parishes and the
evangelicals individuals we represent are not satisfied that
you're using your money responsibly and and not
frittering it away on on national policy or even arms

(38:21):
sales or whatnot, we will up sticks and walk.
And Runcie being a wise man, notparticularly an excellent one,
but said that he knew what was going on and said, well, if if
you're making this idle threat, then don't say it.
Do it. You can only do it once.
And that shut them up because going back to generate 2 decades

(38:41):
before that to the mid 60s with the famous confrontation between
Doctor Martyn Lloyd Jones and John Stott over whether
evangelicals should be in the Church of England or even any
biblical biblically minded people of any particular
persuasion. The whole issue was do we stay
in and seek to influence this behemoth or do we come out?
Well, frankly that's that's argument was already made in

(39:03):
Blood and torture and exile 2 centuries before that in
England, even more powerfully inScotland than the killing times.
And it had already crystallised through emigration, puritanism,
decisions to stay or leave the Church of England.
It was all shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted
by the mid 20th century. But the point I'm making here is
through all of that time, a large number of prominent men

(39:25):
who would like to go by the credentials of solidly
evangelical and biblical set themselves up as the anointed
and appointed leaders of evangelical Anglicanism.
In some cases, even the term Reformed Anglicanism is used
within England. I'm talking about, It's
radically different in, for example, the Archdiocese of
Sydney and Australia or some parts of Canada and New Zealand.

(39:47):
But they continually said we make idle threats to leave.
And when the chips were down, when they were told by an
Archbishop or a Prime Minister, well, off you go and do it then
and become disestablished. They decided, inevitably, that
respectability and positions of influence were more important
than that. And these are the networks of
people who tried to tap me up when I was at Cambridge, through

(40:08):
whom I may have eventually become something big in the
Church of England if my conscience had been wired rather
differently than it it actually is.
Yeah. I mean, I, I'd meant to comment
on your reference to that earlier in the discussion,
because I think it seems far less outlandish to consider that
you might have been Archbishop of Canterbury than it does to

(40:30):
consider that Justin, well be did actually become Archbishop
of Canterbury with, with his background.
It's still, it still does seem very discordant, but just just
to stick on the, the idea of money and you talk about
exerting influence. And funnily enough, that's
that's more or less exactly the phrase that the Church
commissioners use with regard totheir current portfolio of

(40:53):
equity holdings, because they are heavily invested at the
moment in the microchip businesspertaining to artificial
intelligence. And, you know, in effect,
enabling that through the amounts of money they're
dedicating to it, as well as being very much invested in
Amazon. And that their explanation for

(41:13):
this is that it's better to be able to exert influence by being
in the room. That's the phrase they used in
the room. Of course, they are unable to to
point to a single instance wherethey've changed the course of
any of these vast tankers as they navigate their way across
the, you know, seas to greater and greater profits and control

(41:37):
and and all the rest of it. But I think the question is, I
referred to what they described as an ethical investment policy
in church terms. I mean, it is the idea of
ethical investment a contradiction in terms.
I think you won't find a single verse in Scripture, Old or New
Testament, that will answer thatcleanly for us.

(41:58):
And more to the point, many whole passages of Scripture,
whole chapters in both Old and New Testament.
And to complete Thomas Hooker's triad, the use of tradition and
reason in the church as well, which is the the classic
foundation of Anglicanism. You use them in that descending
order of, of hierarchy, Scripture, tradition and reason.
Will not will, will tell us if we put our mind to it, that

(42:21):
because money is a means of exchange.
OK, it's subverted into many other things in the age of Fiat
currency, but because it's a representation of people's value
in the in the true sense of whatthey'll bleed for, what they'll
spend their time for, what they'll wreck their health for.
Obviously there is going to be so much human motive and so many
mixed motives and so, so much impurity marvelled with nobility

(42:48):
in all of these decisions aroundmoney.
The only clear point, as we havein the New Testament in
particular, is that money given to the church in the biblical
sense of the worshipping local body, or if you want also to
include a Synod, a group of churches overseeing each other
in the biblical and historical way.
The money is there for diaconal purposes.

(43:11):
So that's another Greek word we have to look at in the New
Testament. Diaconos is a general ancient
Greek word for a servant, not the only word used in the New
Testament for a servant. There's also who peretes, which
is more like an attendant and a noble servants, you know, one
who who serves with with with thought a diaconos not to do it
down, but it's a practical role.You can read in chapters 6 and

(43:34):
seven of the book of Acts of theApostles in the New Testament
precisely why that church officewas hived off from that of
elders so that the men involved could dedicate themselves to
seeing to the practical needs. But here's the thing of whom?
The whole New Testament, not just that passage, but the whole
New Testament makes it abundantly clear that you take
care of the household of God first.

(43:55):
If you don't provide for your own people within the family or
within the local congregation, you are, as Paul says again to
Timothy and to Titus, you're worse than an unbeliever, you're
an infidel. So the diaconal role, the role
of deacons in the church, the reason for church collections,
the reason why there's a Kitty physical or now digital at local
level from which you can give a a share now up to the centre,

(44:17):
which is what we're talking about when it all goes wrong.
The reason is only biblically and historically that there are
weak and infirm people in your midst who are genuinely unable
to provide for themselves. Set against that, as Paul writes
to Titus, is that if a man, and it's deliberately a male person,
if a man is unwilling to work, he shouldn't be allowed to eat

(44:37):
in the sense of don't give him ahandout from church coffers.
So there is the question of the deserving poor here.
I mean in the Dutch Reformed setup that I have ended up with,
they take that to a logical extreme, not a bad one I don't
think. Whereby they actually make use
of the conscience, conscientiousobjection provision that Dutch
law has not to insure themselves, even their basic

(44:58):
health insurance or car insurance in some cases.
But it's not anarchy or irresponsible to their
neighbours because when something does happen, like a
bad car accident or an expensivecourse of treatment is needed,
the entire church nationally, ifneeded, will hold a whip round
and in no time we'll get half €1,000,000 together for the need

(45:18):
so that your liability is covered there.
That is the biblical sense of why money is collected.
Paul gives detailed instructionsin his first official to the
Corinthians. In the middle chapters he says,
I'm passing through your city again to give you some fresh
instruction. Don't have a frenzied southern
whip round when I come, but every time you meet on the first

(45:39):
day of the week, have a collection for the poor.
That's the only real New Testament sense in which money
and the church go together. For Christ said himself, my
Kingdom is not of this world. So that means not only no
weapons by held by church officers, but no political
influence wielded by them either.
Regardless of where you stand inthe whole spectrum of how
political should Christians be, on which there's been centuries

(46:00):
of philosophical argument, of course.
Yes. Well, I think that's something
that, you know, what you've justarticulated is certainly not to
be found in the text of the Church Commissioners Act 1947.
It's a very obviously sort of veered off at a significant
tangent. And I think what I'd like to do,
you know, we've, we've covered alot of ground and I think sort
of we're, we're setting a reallyimportant context in so far as

(46:25):
the history and scripture is concerned.
I think just to turn our focus to what we have in front of us
and indeed, therefore to point to obviously a hypothetical
future because none of us reallyknows what's going to happen.
But it is interesting, given what you say about church
collections for the poor, the needy, the deserving poor.

(46:49):
I can't see that anybody would disagree with that.
And yet we see that congregations have dwindled.
We see that people have turned away from churches.
We see that ironically, at leaston the face of it, people decry
the fact that British culture, English culture is being

(47:09):
dissolved, eroded, degraded, andwith the very significant impact
that recent and one might say torrential migration has brought
about is of course an influx of new cultures, new face.
Well, when I say new, I mean different.
And people are apparently at thesame time lamenting the fact

(47:35):
that another faith might be showing, let's say, dominant,
where Christianity or indeed theChurch of England isn't.
And and yet what doesn't seem possible to discern is that
people are coming together as church congregations and

(47:55):
actually doing anything about this.
And your your point is well madeabout leadership at the start.
I think that is a very importantpoint to make.
But then again, it's perfectly possible for particularly
bishops who do have a sort of effectively a public facing, you
know, a public role to set a moral or spiritual example,

(48:20):
which I would say is sort of as distinct from leadership in the
way that you were referring to it earlier.
Do you think that there is a point at which, or a situation
in which people will gravitate back towards the Church and the
sorts of concepts of money goingin the right direction and

(48:42):
helping the the sorts of people that of course have not been
looked after at community or church level and therefore have
become in effect victims of the state welfare system?
You know what, when one thinks about it on a very simplistic
level, there are so many things that could be taken care of in
one fell swoop if the Church of England as an organisation and

(49:04):
indeed a parish level worked as it was supposed to and was
supported by the majority of people living within the
parishes that do have churches. I don't know whether I'm being
too idealistic or optimistic. What are your thoughts on sort
of where we are now and where itcould go?
And in a way, you know, so as I say, the irony of the situation

(49:25):
in which people seem to be articulating the problem but at
the same time perhaps not realising that they are part of
the solution, yet they're not being drawn towards it.
We have all the historical models both in the church and
in, shall we say, adjacent institutions like building
societies in which British Christians, non conformists in
this case, led the world to solve this issue.

(49:48):
If we don't want to sully ourselves, our reputations, or
even our our liberty now by handling money in in an
increasingly totalitarian model,we'll be where we'll be accused
of funding terrorism or what not.
If we if we pay for each other outside the system values, we
can easily set up at local levelor even further afield,

(50:09):
something like a time bank wherewe put in ours and our skills to
assist each other. I mean, you don't need to be a
Christian or even any kind of believer to understand this.
Many of the people who've implemented it have been
principled atheists in various countries around the world.
It's a thoroughly biblical approach.
The injunction that several of the apostles give in the New

(50:30):
Testament in several ways to thefledgling churches is that one
or two in full vigour, particularly a duty upon men.
One ought to be earning enough or have enough resources.
If we want to de financialize the concept, have enough skills
and time that one not can not only can provide for one's own
in the immediate sense wife and children and ailing elderly
relatives or whatever, but also to have something left, as Paul

(50:53):
put it at one point for those who were in need.
That is within the local body ofbelievers adherence.
So this can easily simply simplybe done now in institutional
terms, if a congregation decidesthat it's still theologically
Anglican, still committed to that interpretation of the

(51:13):
Reformation and church history and biblical interpretation and
authority and hierarchy, but thinks literally to hell with
the current archaeopiscopal model and all that.
It hangs on to it in, in terms of the underbelly of the state,
there are ways to go. There is one shining example in
England of what was done there. It's it was the late Reverend

(51:33):
Melvin Tinker in Hull, one of the most godless cities in the
whole world, certainly I'd say astrong contender for the most
godless major city in England who had the gumption some years
ago at the end of his earthly life to lean upon his
congregation who said yes to come out of the Church of
England legally. This was a large evangelical,

(51:54):
non heretical, no funny ideas congregation that simply did it,
stuck politely speaking 2 fingers up at Canterbury,
Westminster and everyone in between and said we are
Anglicans but we're no longer the established church in this
locality. The building is ours, the people
are ours, the money is ours, youcan whistle for it and at law

(52:16):
and common sense and morally they were entirely borne out.
There's also one case in Scotland of the closest
parallel, the Established Churchof Scotland.
As I said earlier, no bishops there in that established
church, but roughly similar at law.
That's the Reverend Willie Phillip at what was called St.
George's Tron in Glasgow, now simply called the Tron Church.
They did have to leave their building very unjustly of

(52:38):
course, because they paid for everything like a new organ and
it was, it had to be forfeited to the Church of Scotland.
But they likewise said we are Church of Scotland, we are
Presbyterians of the establishedtype, type in Scotland, but we
do not want to be associated with this wicked state and its
sexual policies in the church anymore.
And they did it. It can be done institutionally
and as I was saying a moment ago, in terms of giving.

(52:59):
In fact, more to the point than that, there were centuries in
the early church under the persecutions of early Roman
emperors where Christians not just had the option to, but were
obliged to use frankly black market, barter and time bank
methods to help each other out. There were blacklists from the
professions back then. There were places sometimes for

(53:21):
protracted periods where Christians officially would
couldn't get any kind of employment, but they survived by
the grace of God precisely by having these kinds of attitudes.
What's holding us back at the moment is that this damned
quest, wretched quest for respectability socially, which
even some of the key authors within the evangelical

(53:42):
Anglicanism like Oliver Barkley have frankly admitted in their
books, was both, you could say the strength, but also the
downfall of Anglicanism in the latter half of the 20th century.
This determination that we will be given our place in the sun by
this state and by its bien Poisson, by the by the great and
good. That's what led, what's led them
to be supine through all the successive waves of sexual and

(54:04):
other degeneracy and wickedness that have crept into the church.
And if that's addressed as it has been locally by some, yes,
there is every prospect of caring for one's own.
Yeah, it's, it's really well putand I think it's it's
heartening. And I think that, you know, what
I would come back to, of course,is the, is that really, if
you're looking at it as somebodywho's either considering going
into the church or already involved, this, this, this time

(54:29):
should really be seen as a tremendous opportunity.
You know, the, the, the number of areas in which we could
rattle through and suggest that either the controlling
influences have pushed people off track or society has gone
off track. However you, however you
actually decide you're, you're wanting to explain it, the point
is that there, there is a very, very obvious role for the church

(54:53):
there and, and to take the sortsof actions that you've just been
describing. I mean, it's, it's still
remarkable to me that we live inan age where the Church of
England will say that, that theywill not conduct same sex
marriages, but that they will conduct marriages for people who

(55:13):
don't routinely go to church or belong to a congregation or
indeed have no faith at all. And, and rather remarkably, they
will conduct marriages in churchfor people who belong to a
different faith and even for people who hold a gender

(55:34):
recognition certificate. So it is possible to do all of
those things but not be married if you're part of, you know, if
two people belong to the same sex.
I mean, the the number of inconsistencies and these sorts
of issues are are just seeminglyendless.

(55:55):
And I think still a point of enormous incomprehension to
people who who look on and, and can't quite consider how it is
that we could have got to this point.
But I think you point by citing those examples, I think you
point to a way in which the church can assume in a genuine

(56:18):
sense, a much greater degree of relevance in people's lives if
only the right people would in effect, sort of stick their head
above the parapet and and say the right things.
So I think what we've covered sofar in the discussion today is,
you know, is a great a great introduction to this.

(56:41):
I mean, clearly absolutely vast topic.
What I would just ask you to do with what I've just said in mind
about the presentation of an opportunity.
And, and, and in a way, you know, the sort of cometh the
hour suggestion you, as you saidright at the beginning, you've
been involved very closely with,let's say the church in, in the

(57:05):
wider sense. I mean, obviously, you know,
you're not in the United Kingdom.
So your, your knowledge of the Church of England is clearly
very deep. And a lot of that is based on
personal experience. But from what you are seeing in
the circles within which you, well, not necessarily move, but
the people you're in touch with,do, do you see a generation of

(57:26):
people coming forward who might be taking the mantle and and
making these sorts of changes, proclamations and everything
else? Definitely.
And until a couple of years ago I would have said not with an
axe to grind, but as a as a as aregretful truth that very few of

(57:46):
them were ethnically English. This was something I was, I
would bewailed, but also accept with my whole coterie of friends
that there may be impeccable Anglican congregations chanting
Coverdale Psalms and all the other things you would expect in
the various shades of churchmanship Evangelical High
Church in the future. But they wouldn't be white

(58:07):
people. They would be yellow, brown and
black skinned people. And I'm not making a moral point
there, but it's just a forecast that we were making because
there was very little gumption to be seen in, shall we say,
traditional English evangelicalism or Anglicanism in
any of its settings. That is changing, and as other

(58:27):
commentators have started to notice in the past year, it's
changing particularly in the biggest urban areas in England.
And it's not just the case now that, to use the old cliches,
but true ones, you've got vibrant Afro Caribbean or West
African or ethnic Chinese or ethnic Korean congregations
mushrooming. Although they certainly do, and

(58:48):
many of them have appropriated serious historical Anglicanism
and it's theology with far more gusto than the the native
English have. But by this point we do see a
lot of, to use the new jargon, Gen Z or even Gen Alpha young
men in particular, aiming to be scholarly, erudite, self

(59:08):
effacing, and in the true older sense of the word leaders.
I mean to close the circle I began with, I would say that
this kind of man would be described in other languages
like Russian, using the native words for leaders and not the
one borrowed from English leader.
Which kind of makes it transparent that another
concept, one being pushed from English speaking countries is,
is being meant, you know, the the old idea of laying down your

(59:30):
life and giving your best for the flock.
Yes, I do think that quite a fewof the young men that we we see
are determined to, in the old sense, take holy orders or be
this would be another discussion.
But to become lay readers, that is men who are licenced by the
Bishop and that's the there's the bottleneck.
They're unwilling to do it at Bishop level, but who are

(59:52):
recognised and licenced to do everything that an ordained
clergyman can do except administer the sacraments,
baptism and the Lord's Supper orEucharist as it would be called,
or communion in Anglican circles.
These lay readers for which you should see E7 and E8 in the
Church of England Canon Law, easily found online.
They are the obvious solution tothis.

(01:00:13):
But with them, and even with ordaining regular clergy, some
of the bishops in the Church of England have since the 90s
already been seeing which way the wind is blowing and saying I
will not ordain or I will not licence as a lay reader, any of
these hot heads who actually believe the Bible.
So yes, there are bottlenecks. It may require, as previously
discussed, some of the parishes to leave the Church of England,

(01:00:37):
but in Anglicanism and wider afield in English Christianity,
I do not think all is lost. And on that note, Alex, I think
we have to capture that particular moment because that's
that is a really positive place to come back to.
And it does exactly like you say, it links right back to the
beginning. We've, we've covered, I would
say a lot of ground, but but at the same time scratch the

(01:00:58):
surface and there will be a lot more to talk about.
But I think that's a great placeto start and to and to draw this
particular discussion to a closeand have a think about what we
might go on to explore in future.
So Alex, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I've enjoyed that enormously as I hope you have.
And I would just say to anyone listening or watching, there

(01:01:22):
will be links in the show notes to all the various UK column
content that we've referred to and indeed other resources.
If you've ended up listening to or watching this somewhere other
than the UK column website, and you want to know more about what
we do and indeed how you might support us as a member, then
please go to ukcolumn.org. But I think we'll leave it

(01:01:44):
there. And I'll just close that by
saying thank you very much indeed, Alex.
And I look forward to the next one.
Thank you very much indeed, Charles.