Response to Christina Rees on the Future of the Church of England
by Michael F Bird, Patheos:
In a recent Guardian article, Christina Rees offers her own diagnosis and prescription for how to revitalize the Church of England.
As an Anglican priest and a British expat living down-under, I can relate to the issues that Rees raises because we face many of the exact same issues in Australia.
I think Rees also points out a problem with an ecclesial system centred on the local parish. The reality is that the village church or suburban church was a great thing, it created community, because you had high street shopping and high church liturgy all within walking distance.
However, the reality is that cars and the internet are maybe not killing, but undermining the parish system. People would rather drive 20 minutes to a church that they like than walk to their local parish. Concurrently, the internet has created as a smorgasbord of on-demand sermons, videos, podcasts, social media, and on-line communities that have come to substitute for the parish community. In addition, some multi-site churches equipped with pastors, musicians, and techies are now practical dioceses within themselves. In response, proposed initiatives based on increased community involvement and alternative models of church are certainly one way of addressing this issue if we want to avoid English Anglicanism becoming reduced to twenty or so mega-parish networks, thirty or so cathedrals, a smattering of small niche churches for people united by their disgruntledness on women bishops or LGBTI inclusion, and a strange array of e-churches.
But I found Rees’s suggestion to be very lacking:
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