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

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

Suggesting that Synod had made “avoiding actuality a little bit of an artwork kind,” he claimed that the Church of England is “standing on the point of a precipice”. A precipice which may depart the following era with nothing however a “heap of ruins” to battle over.

Rev Paul prompt that the final 10 years of discussions about sexuality have left the Church “extra anxious, extra divided and extra unsure than ever earlier than,” and he held out little hope that one other eight hours of debate – as scheduled subsequent week – would offer any solutions.

“Fiddling whereas Canterbury burns does not even seize it,” he stated, pointing to the actual downside of a Church on the point of disintegration.

“Over the identical 10 years grownup attendance has declined by 30 per cent, youngster attendance by 40 per cent,” he stated. 

He stated that “there’s a very actual prospect that ministry goes to fully collapse in giant elements of the Church of England throughout the subsequent 5 years.”

However, he was clear that decline was not inevitable.

“The Church in England will not be in decline, different church buildings are rising,” he identified. “But we’re reluctant to be taught from them. We now signify lower than 18 per cent of all Christians in a church on a Sunday.”

This view is backed up by the Bible Society – who discovered that the proportion of individuals attending church modified little or no between 2018 and 2023. Their analysis confirmed 7% of the inhabitants attend church weekly and one in ten attend as soon as a month.

In an article for Baptists Together, Mark Woods, a Baptist minister stated, “In phrases of total numbers, the Church in England and Wales will not be declining. But it’s altering form, and more and more much less white.

“However, when historic denominations extrapolate a story of inevitable decline from their very own difficulties, this turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy – who needs to take a cruise on a sinking ship?”

This will not be the primary time Rev Paul has tried to attract Synod’s consideration to those difficult statistics, neither is it prone to be the final. The query is whether or not anybody will hear.

“Brothers and sisters,” he completed, “if we proceed to keep away from this actuality, if we proceed with this fruitless dialog, that would be the legacy we depart – the Church of England – a heap of ruins for the following era. It’s as much as us.”