Church of England is ‘standing on the brink of a precipice’

Feb 25, 2024 by

by Susie Leafe, Christian Today:

As the General Synod of the Church of England gathered once again in London on Friday, Rev Ian Paul, a member of the Archbishops’ Council challenged the agenda in forceful terms.

Suggesting that Synod had made “avoiding reality a bit of an art form,” he claimed that the Church of England is “standing on the brink of a precipice”. A precipice which could leave the next generation with nothing but a “heap of ruins” to fight over.

Rev Paul suggested that the last 10 years of discussions about sexuality have left the Church “more anxious, more divided and more uncertain than ever before,” and he held out little hope that another eight hours of debate – as scheduled next week – would provide any answers.

“Fiddling while Canterbury burns doesn’t even capture it,” he said, pointing to the real problem of a Church on the brink of disintegration.

“Over the same 10 years adult attendance has declined by 30 per cent, child attendance by 40 per cent,” he said.

He said that “there is a very real prospect that ministry is going to completely collapse in large parts of the Church of England within the next five years.”

However, he was clear that decline was not inevitable.

“The Church in England is not in decline, other churches are growing,” he pointed out. “But we are reluctant to learn from them. We now represent less than 18 per cent of all Christians in a church on a Sunday.”

This view is backed up by the Bible Society – who found that the proportion of people attending church changed very little between 2018 and 2023. Their research showed 7% of the population attend church weekly and one in ten attend once a month.

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