The neoliberal revolution within the Church
by Giles Fraser, UnHerd:
The ancient institution has been asset-stripped by an expanding bureaucracy of management-speak types.
On the ground, many of us parish clergy are getting increasingly cheesed off. In The Church Times this week there is yet another advertisement for a non-parish job loaded full of vacuous HR devised buzzwords. Sheffield Diocese are looking for an Associate Archdeacon — which is a new one on me — to be a “transition enabler”.
Their job will be to “grow teams of lay and ordained leaders shaping a mission-focused church fit for the challenges of the 21stcentury.” This is the new church-speak, a strange combination of woke-ish managerialism and charismatic Christianity, and which represents an almost unreported revolution within the Church of England.
It is one of the biggest changes in the Church’s history, although a revolution more Thatcher than Tudor in nature. It is the story of how the parish church was stripped of its treasure, its talent and its energy — and the most miserable part of the story is that it was an inside job.
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