by Gabriella Swerling, Telegraph
Campaign group calls on leaders to save the places ‘that baptise our children, celebrate our marriages and bury our dead’
Parish churches are facing “annihilation”, vicars have warned.
More than 400 churches have been shut down in less than a decade, leaving clergy warning of the threat to parishes as “the bedrock of the Church of England”.
A manifesto issued by Save the Parish, a campaign group, has called on the Church’s leaders to save parish churches “that baptise our children, celebrate our marriages and bury our dead”.
The Rev Marcus Walker, the group’s founder and rector at St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, said: “We have a choice: rebalance and restore the church and help it revive or continue on a path to annihilation. This is the time when people of goodwill across the country can make a difference. Stand up, and be counted.”
Clergy and campaigners have long warned of burnt-out, overstretched and underpaid vicars covering multiple dioceses at a time, volunteers plugging the gaps and crumbling buildings unable to afford vital repairs. All of these factors have resulted in an increasing number of church closures.
The decline of parishes is another issue faced by Dame Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, alongside how the Church will navigate the topic of same-sex relationships and declining numbers of church congregants.
She is believed to be much more sympathetic to the parishes than her predecessor, Bishop Justin Welby. Under his tenure, clergy numbers were cut, and hundreds of millions of pounds were redirected from parishes to central Church schemes.