The failure of Anglican managerialism
By Gerry Lynch, Artillery Row:
As well as paid parish vicars and curates — like me — and chaplains in places like schools and prisons, the Church of England would not function without a platoon of unpaid, volunteer priests, who have taken at least three years of part-time third-level courses, but who work in secular jobs. The equivalent of special constables or territorial soldiers, they celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays, but during the week work as accountants, doctors, lawyers, and occasionally non-graduate jobs. Although the idea came from French Catholicism’s “worker priest” movement of the post-War years, in the C of E they are drawn mainly from the upper bourgeoisie. This is not necessarily a bad thing — many are highly intelligent and motivated people who make superb preachers and teachers and bring a wealth of life experience.
The most high-profile of these “Ministers in Secular Employment”, as they are officially termed, is now undoubtedly Paula Vennells, the disgraced former Post Office boss. While it is possible for priests initially recruited as unpaid volunteers to later move into paid roles, sometimes senior ones, it is unprecedented that Vennells was one of three candidates interviewed as a possible Bishop of London in 2017, despite never having held an actual paid job in the Church.
That says much about the C of E’s obsession with management and “leadership” as a panacea for the problems of institutional decline. Since around 1990, the C of E has been strangely convinced that its crisis of attendance and vocations was caused by poor management.
One feature of this obsession is that since the mid-2010s, all up-and-coming clergy talent-spotted as potential bishops, Cathedral deans, or similar top clergy are now expected to attend a bespoke course on management theory and issues such as the role of the Church in a “modern liberal democracy” — a sort of clerical MBA, and not necessarily a bad idea in principle. Ironically, as a priest with top-level business experience, Vennells was one of the teachers on this course. In the main however, it was taught by the sort of people who teach secular MBA courses, such as organisational psychologists and management theorists.
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