The end of mainstream Christianity in Britain…
by Neil O’Brien, Substack:
… And what will we do with all the churches?
St. Wistan’s Church in Wigston is being decommissioned. It’s to be sold off.
It has been shut for several years, and is profoundly sad to visit.
Because of a lack of maintenance, a chunk of the east wall has fallen away. If anyone buys it there will be hundreds of thousands of pounds needed to shore up the crumbling masonry.
St. Wistan’s isn’t alone. Several of the churches around where I live in Leicestershire have already been decommissioned, or are in the process of being sold off. You can buy one here if you like.
Lots of other churches without much of a congregation are still technically open, but only for festivals or special occasions.
In various villages in my constituency people are trying to figure out and talk to the Church of England about whether there is a way to prevent their church being closed and sold off. People are trying to find ways to keep them open for community use and occasional worship.
Where they are sold off, it is profoundly sad to see something that was so important to so many people turned into a house or a carpet shop.
But the costs of keeping them open are formidable, and getting harder for the C of E to meet with a shrinking number of worshippers.
In Britain there isn’t the same separation of church and state as in the US, so I asked some Parliamentary Questions to the Church Commissioners about how many people are involved in the Church of England these days. The results are pretty doomy for the C of E.
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