by William Sitwell, Telegraph
Are you a charitable parishioner offering to help your church and community? Thou shalt first log on to the online learning portal
It’s a church that dates back to the 12th century. St Andrews, handsomely cast in limestone and rebuilt in the 14th century, stands proud in the village of Pickworth in Lincolnshire. And it’s like so many churches across the country; centres of the community, which, for centuries, have gathered folk to rejoice, mourn, pray and sing among the wooden pew seats.
At least, that was until recent decades when the presiding Church of England set itself on a path to empty its churches rather than fill them.
In its bid to modernise, to become relevant, most churches have dispensed with those nice old prayer books, bound in black, that you often find on shelves by a church’s entrance. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer which, along with Latin, has influenced and merrily tortured generations of children, can now mostly be found gathering dust in secondhand bookshops. And in its place are bits of paper, hastily printed, distributed and invariably blown by a gust of wind when the big door opens, fluttering like a wandering angel over the altar.
Then there are the nice old vicars, now kicked out at the age of 70 (which was the new 60 when I last looked), who – with no leader in the midst – see further dwindling of congregations.
And there’s the enforced secular informality, which to me removes the charming mystery of religion, its poetry and its charming obscurity. When the machinations of church are made as obvious as the rules of a Saturday night TV gameshow, it becomes less, rather than more, appealing. For isn’t the very challenge of church stimulating, my view being that to earn your pre-Sunday lunch sherry, you need to sit through a sermon. Which is especially the case on Christmas Day; no pressies in our house ’til you’ve done church.
And now, I hear – from the charming village of Pickworth – there’s a more dreaded axe falling on parishioners.